You can’t be in every aisle,
every meeting,
and every pitch.

But your brand can.

Define the Story is a guided workshop for food and beverage founders.
It pulls what you already know about your brand out of your head and into writing,
so your brand tells the same story whether you’re in the room or not.

Define your story 
THE PROBLEM

You’ve lived with this brand in your head.

You know who it’s for and why it exists.
You know what it stands against.

But none of it is written down, and every true thing about it is competing to be heard at the same volume.

  • Your packaging says five things and lands none.

  • A shopper glances, then grabs the brand next to yours.

  • A buyer passes, and doesn't say why.

  • Your designer guesses what the pack should say.

  • Your newest hire tells a different story.

  • And every time, you’re the one who explains.

More design won’t fix that.

Clarity has to come first, and it has to be written down somewhere other than in your head.

Get it out of your head

It started with three days and $8,000.

In 2010, we paid a brand consultant $8,000 to help our studio get clear on who we were. That was a lot of money for a small studio back then, and it turned out to be the cheap part.

DEFINE YOUR STORY 
WHAT YOU GET

Your Brand Toolkit

After you finish the workshop and we talk it through, I take everything you shared and write your brand back to you, more clearly than you’ve been able to say it yourself. It’s still your brand. I’m just giving it shape.

It’s a working document, not a binder for the shelf. Every section ends with a plain answer to one question: What do I do with this?

There are 18 sections in all. Here’s a look at a few of them:

  • The Brand on One Page.

    Your mission, vision, brand words, who you’re for, and the one thing you want people to remember. If someone only reads one page, this should be the one they read.

  • Who We’re For.

    One person, one paragraph, in a real moment. When you’re stuck on a decision about flavor, price, or packaging, you stop guessing and ask what she would think.

  • The Shelf.

    Your real competition, the space nobody’s claiming, and a list of what everyone in your aisle already says, so you can stop saying it and start standing out.

  • Visual Direction.

    A mood board where your words start turning into pictures. One clear visual territory, tied to your brand words and to the exact customer you’re building it for.

  • Packaging Hierarchy.

    The order a shopper takes in your message, from what she sees first to what can wait. Get it right and a stranger gets your one true thing in just a few seconds.

  • The Decision Filter.

    A short set of questions for any new product, partnership, or campaign. Each answer points back to something you’ve already decided, so you never start over.

Built to travel.

The toolkit is meant to leave the building. Hand it to whoever designs your packaging, or to the person running your Instagram. Bring it into your next buyer meeting. They’ll get it without needing you to narrate.

Direction before design.

The toolkit sets the visual direction for your brand. The finished design work, like logos, colors, and typefaces, is a separate step with whichever designer you choose, and they’ll be building on something solid instead of guessing.

STEP 1

Work through the sessions.

Short video lessons paired with a workbook. None of the videos run longer than five minutes, and most of the exercises take about fifteen. Plan on around 12 hours total, about an hour and a half of video and the rest is you thinking and writing. An hour or two a night gets most founders through it in a week or two. It asks for real thought, but you fit it around your life instead of shutting the doors to do it.

STEP 2

We talk it through on Zoom.

When you finish the sessions, you book a 90-minute call with me. I’ll have gone through your workbook before we meet, so we can spend the call where it matters most. I’ll push on the parts that don’t hold up yet and help sharpen the ones that do. Some of the best material comes out of this conversation, because what founders say out loud is often truer than what they wrote. If you have a co-founder, they join too.

STEP 3

I write your Brand Toolkit.

After our call, I take your workbook and everything we talked about and shape it into your Brand Toolkit. It’s your brand written back to you, more clearly than you’ve been able to say it yourself, and every section ends with a plain answer to “What do I do with this?” It arrives within five business days of our call, ready to hand to your designer, your team, or a buyer, and to build on as your brand grows.

start the first session today

  • The more history you have with your brand, the more there is to draw out. Whether you sell online or on shelves, if you’re tired of being the only person who can explain your brand, this was built for you.

    It’s especially useful when you’re moving from online to retail. Your website used to do the explaining, and now your package has to do it alone. It also pays off right before new packaging, a new product line, or bringing more people onto the team.

  • You don’t need years of sales history for this to work. You’ll be leaning more on instinct than experience, and that’s fine. You’ll walk away with a foundation to launch from and refine as you learn what your customers respond to.

  • If you already have a brand strategy that you and your team believe in, use what you have.

    And if you’re hoping someone will hand you a brand idea from scratch, this isn’t that either. The workshop pulls out what you already believe about your brand. It doesn’t make it up for you.

  • Manufacturing, FDA, and supply chain are outside of this. It’s about clarity and story.

INVESTMENT

$1,750

  • Includes the full online workshop

  • A 90-minute Zoom session with me

  • And your written Brand Toolkit

You know your brand. We know packaging. After 20 years of designing it for food and beverage brands, we know what a designer needs from a founder before they start, and the toolkit gives any designer exactly that. If you decide you’d like that designer to be us, what you paid for the workshop goes toward your packaging project with Tenfold.

DEFINE YOUR STORY 
QUESTIONS

  • You do know it. This isn’t about teaching you your brand. It gets what you know out of your head and onto paper, so your package can say it in the few seconds a shopper gives it, with nobody there to explain.

  • No. The toolkit is yours, and it’s built to work with any designer or agency you choose. If you want to work together on packaging, your workshop payment credits toward the project.

  • Maybe not. If it was built with real strategy behind it and your team actually uses it, keep using it. If it’s mostly logos and colors and nobody can explain why, that’s the gap this fills.

  • Yes, and it’s worth it if you’re building the brand together. You’ll just need to work through the online sessions together too, so you both show up to our call having thought it through side by side. That’s often where the most useful conversations happen, because it’s where you find out what you each assumed the other one meant.

  • We go through your workbook together. I’ll ask follow-up questions, poke at anything that feels unclear, and listen for the things you say out loud that are truer than what you wrote down. A lot of the best material in the toolkit comes from that conversation.

  • Plan on around 12 hours for the online sessions. An hour or two a night usually gets it done in a week or two. Your Brand Toolkit arrives within five business days of our call.

  • That’s what our Zoom call is for. We pressure-test everything together before I write a word, so the toolkit reflects what we landed on. If something still feels off once you’ve read it, tell me what isn’t landing, and we’ll put together a plan to get it right.

  • If you realize within seven days of purchase that the workshop isn’t right for you, let me know, and I’ll refund you in full. After seven days, refunds are no longer available.

Your brand already has a story.
Let’s get it out of your head.

Work through it on your schedule, talk it through with me, and walk away with something you can hand to anyone.

Define your story