Rival Brands

11/11/2025

There’s still time to apply for The Hidden Brand workshops!
Both 4- and 10-week options have slots available. Grab your spot.
The link tree in the bio provides a downloadable PDF with information as well as the application link.

Is it for you?

Many business owners state, “I know how to talk about my business but not my brand.”? From start-up and fast-growth to mature and legacy brands, each business stage requires an awareness from leadership about the brand’s positioning, purpose, values, personality, and more. These elements help make up a business’s “brand strategy”. Understanding this ecosystem of ideas is what turns a brand with something to sell into one with something to say! I want to help business owners become more brand-aware and savvy. It’s my belief that this area of understanding is critical to making so many other smart decisions about product development, internal culture, pricing, marketing, and more.

Having clarity about these facets of their brand will help them build a company on a unified understanding of why they are on the planet, and what they’re trying to accomplish as an organization, and what the big idea they have is that’s worth rallying around!

My goal is to help founders and leaders amplify their impact on their business by increasing their confidence in the work that they do in leading their brand. I do this by helping them understand the fabric of ideas that support their brand’s BIG IDEA. The RIVAL UP! Your Brand workbooks, along with my consulting style, tend to turn business founders into believers. I was literally called “A Chief Belief Officer” by a recent client. I rebrand existing and brand new businesses all the time. But I’ve been told that some of my best and most important work is how I impact my clients by “teaching them to fish” and not just handing over their new brand.

09/24/2025

Have you ever reached an important milestone that you should celebrate, only to have your internal voice say things like, “You took so long to get this done.”, or “I hope people think this is as great as you do.”

Well, regardless of what the “voices” are telling me, I’m here to tell you about the launch of The Hidden Brand Academy.

The Hidden Brand Academy goal is to inspire business founders, leaders and marketers to believe that they can guide and grow their businesses through the insightful ideas that bring their brand to life.

The workbooks and workshops work through the mainstay concepts found in brand strategies but focuses less on the jargon and more about the questions they help answer and the way to use these answers to make informed and intentional decisions about how to grow your brand.

The fulfillment of this dream of mine comes by way of a generous grant from the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets and the Vermont Working Lands Enterprise Initiative. For that I am completely grateful.

Through this grant, I am excited to announce the first series of workshops will be offered exclusively to food, forest and farming businesses in Vermont. Details about this exclusive offering can be found via a downloadable PDF found in the linktree in the bio as well as a link for the application itself. Applications are currently being accepted but will close by November. Act fast!

For those of you outside the criteria of this first workshop series yet still interested in the workshops or workbooks, there’s a link for The Hidden Brand at the Rival Brands website.

What’s the big idea you want to share with the world?

Let’s find it!

08/07/2025

The calm before the storm. The Big E starts September 12th! I’ve been at the Vermont building for the past few days working with and coaching exhibitors on how to capture and communicate what makes them and the state of Vermont, unique.

It’s been fun to meet so many producers, each walking a different path, telling a different story, and facing unique challenges. I hope I’ve been able to impact their trajectory and increase their confidence for their big show.

06/28/2025

09/11/2024

The start of a beautiful day with VSFA members and fans!!!

Rival is proud to sponsor such an iconic organization. Let’s go!!

06/20/2024

Believability is important for any brand. Belief and trust go hand in hand.

The idea of what your brand is doesn’t start and stop with you. It doesn’t start and stop with your audience either. It’s a mutual understanding that takes time to foster.

Your brand has as much to do with your product as it does with your vision, the promises you make, the experiences you deliver and the way you verbally and visually communicate.

Believability happens when what you do and say aligns with each other and is cohesive. Trust happens when you can do that repeatedly.

You must have belief if you are creating a brand that goes beyond the superficial and engages at the core.

05/21/2024

When you’re an entrepreneur you often table initiatives for your own business to create time to serve who you created your business for.

I’m not sure when the work for these clients will make it to my website (or be photographed where necessary) but it doesn’t mean I don’t love the work we’ve created.

I’m really proud to be making a difference for clients right out my back door and around the country. Stay tuned for the details coming soon on my website.

That’s when we’ll really show off!!

04/04/2024

For the past two days I had the opportunity to immerse myself into the fabric of what makes dairies of the northeastern states so unique.

I was invited to the Northeast Dairy Innovation Summit in Albany, New York as a contributor to and moderator of a panel discussion on branding and marketing for dairies. Along with me (L to R) were Jessica Dizek from Mapleline Farm, Cate Kennedy from Wrights Dairy Farm, and Curt Alpeter from Runamok Maple and most recently the newly appointed CEO of Grafton Village Cheese Company.

The struggles are real for northeastern dairies. But so too is the unsurmountable optimism and ingenuity.

To be given the opportunity to share my faith in the opportunities for growth through brand and marketing initiatives with this tireless group of farming families and businesses strikes at the heart of what gives me the most joy about the work I do. It’s a, “teach to fish” experience that I have come to savor more than anything else.

I’d like to thank Laura Ginsburg and Katie Spring from the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets for their faith, invitation, and for highlighting my branding work for Oak Knoll Dairy, as well as the panel partners mentioned above for all of their wisdom and insights during the session.

My only question is when do we get to play together again?

#

04/01/2024

Fist batch of homemade green yogurt is in the books. Took a while but ultimately it was very easy. And it’s sooo smooth.

03/31/2024

A bumper crop of Babka happening over here. Happy Easter to those who celebrate this day and time of year.
💞

03/25/2024

I've signed up for the Vermont 50…mile mountain bike race this coming late September and I will be supporting Vermont Adaptive. I'm hoping there might be some supporters out there that would be kind enough to chip in anything as a means to help me help them. If you are interested you can follow this link.

Thanks in advance to those who choose to give.
I appreciate it very much.

https://runsignup.com/vermontadaptiveandme

10/16/2023

Every brand’s BIG IDEA needs an ecosystem of aligned supporting ideas surrounding it to succeed.

How do the ideas about your company, customer and competition strategically come together to form this ecosystem?

I’ve put together the RIVALUP! Your Brand strategy workbooks to help founders as well as CMOs explore these territories with context and insights so that you can enhance the knowledge about your own brand and lead it forward more successfully.

✅ Company Workbook 01
Your Purpose, Vision, Mission, Values

✅ Company Workbook 02
Your Personality and Archetypes

✅ Competition Workbook 03
The Market and Your Unique Selling Proposition

✅ Customer Workbook 04
Ideal Customers and Your Value Propositions

These are the building blocks to a brand strategy. What will you build with them?

Click the link in the bio to learn more about the HardWork Books and see where you can go!