Catching Up With Dr. James Richardson

Once Upon a Sonoran Work Shed…

Next time you’re walking by someone’s remote office shed in your neighborhood, don’t scoff. They may be like our friend Dr. James Richardson, author of the “CPG Bible” – RampingYour Brand. He’s the guy on LinkedIn telling founders to focus, focus, focus…OR… make yourself accountable to an actual plan… OR… stop chasing shiny tactics in desperate need of a strategy. If Dr. J had a motto, we think it would be something like “Listen up! Your strategy is sh*t!” Wait, that sounds really familiar…

We caught up with Dr. J recently as he prepares to unleash the updated edition to his best selling strategy book. Dr. Squatch’s team read it and listened. John Foraker made his whole company read it. Enough said.

Q1 – Dr. J! We have to start with the tough love. What are the two things most founders are still screwing up in 2025?

Dr. J: Only two? Look, I’d have to say. 1) Too many founders are still not working hard enough to build a fanbase no matter how broke they are. Memorability is the primary superpower of an early-stage insurgent brand, and it’s getting harder to sustain it in a smartphone-obsessed world. You have little money. Not enough staff. Probably not a well-rounded team either. But if you can be crazy memorable across multiple consumer touch points you do control, including every single design element. Your velocities will thank you. The second thing founders do not do well is brand health analytics in scanner data(i.e., from cash registers). This is super dry but important once you get into the eight figures.  If you know the correct variables to pick from these databases, you can use high school math to catch deceleration months ahead of competitors and make quick changes. I won’t name names, but it’s a big problem.

Q2 – We’d love to know your thoughts on how entrepreneurs can crack their category wide open and even re-define it?

Dr. J: The most dramatic way to do this is to find an underserved audience, hopefully a large one, in your core category. And then design your whole offering for them. When I say “underserved,” I mean an audience that no one has ever communicated directly to using the package, product, marketing, and other touch points. Dr. Squatch is a prime modern example of a business that was initially trying to use product innovation alone to grow. And it took six years to get to $15M or so in trailing revenue because the legacy audience for soap is women. The idea of selling artisan-priced $6 soap bars to men was counter-intuitive because there is a stereotype that “men” look at soap mindlessly like it’s a commodity. The other component of this stereotypical assumption is that men don’t care about smelling good. Huh? This is where consumer research on your early fans can be incredibly useful because you can listen for why your early fans are into the product line and then use an audience behavioral profile to intensify your focus on that lucky coincidence. But you have to work with what your original design has yielded in the market, not against it…The problem so many founders have is not perceiving who their lucrative core fans are…they just project their stereotype or personal motivations onto their fan base. It’s very easy to fall into this practice…If you’re selling $6 soap bars to ordinary middle-class people when the average soap bar is selling for60 cents in a multipack, there’s a mystery about your fans there you need to figure out, especially if you want to accelerate, like Dr. Squatch did. This audience discovery doesn’t have to be rocket science either. But sometimes, it’s a counterintuitive group the founder may not intuitively ‘get.’

Q3 – What is the most annoying question you get asked by founders?

Dr. J: This usually happens in my LinkedIn message box. But the most annoying and frustrating question I continue to get is: CanI pick your brain? No, you cannot.It’s not that big, for one thing. And I still need it to make money. So, no. Even though my book is well known and appreciated, this does not make me rich. Sometimes, it amazes me how violent metaphors just slip through in business conversations.

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