Introducing Grow Pro: A Fractional CPG Rolodex
Your first hires, before you hire.
Most CPG founders don’t hire full-time first. They hire fractional.
A head of marketing for a few hours a week. An ops lead to fix what’s breaking. A finance person who actually understands retail.
The hard part isn’t knowing you need help. It’s finding the right person fast. Warm intros run dry. LinkedIn’s messy. Guesswork is expensive.
Grow Pro is a rolodex of CPG operators across growth, marketing, finance, and operations. People who’ve done the job and can step in before you’re ready to hire full-time.
So we asked a few of them: If you joined a scaling CPG brand doing $1–5M tomorrow, what’s the first thing you’d fix?
"The packaging. Every time. At $1–5M, the product is usually outperforming the brand. Wrong category register. Wrong buyer signal. Talking to the wrong person entirely. I'd run a fast diagnosis: retail audit, competitive set, honest look at what the packaging is saying vs what the brand needs to say. Most of what I find is fixable without a full rebrand. The right packaging fix doesn't just clarify the brand, it opens doors to retail channels the current packaging is closing." —Matthew Cave, Brand Identity & Packaging
"Forecasting exactly how much cash they'll need." —Abby June Richards, CPA-TX, The CPG CFO
"The first thing I'd fix is alignment around a single, shared understanding of why your customer buys. Most scaling CPG companies don't lack data, they lack a clear, consistent truth teams actually use in their daily decision making. I'd start by comparing the strategy to real customer conversations, distill core emotional drivers and frictions into a simple view, and make it the foundation for decisions across marketing, product, and sales. Until that's in place, more data will just amplify confusion and wasted effort, not performance." —Samantha White, Audience Aligned Strategist
"If I joined a scaling CPG brand doing $1–5 million, the first thing I'd fix is the debt stack. Most brands don't set themselves up to access the amount and type of capital they need when they're able to get it. At that stage, there's real traction, a velocity story, probably an equity investment. With the right foundation, the brand could take on and manage up to $1 million in non-dilutive working capital financing. That sort of flexible funding is the difference between stalling out and making it to $10 million." —Pedro Noyola, Accounting & Finance
"If a brand doesn't yet have a brand guide, that's what I'd make week one so anyone touching the brand, including AI, produces assets that all build upon each other. And it doesn't cost anything. Making sure all assets look on brand (same logo, same colors, same message, similar photography style) and are distinct. That makes every dollar go further. Without that, it's like advertising different brands each time. It takes longer to convert someone and it's wasting already limited funds." —Perri Gordon, Fractional CMO for Emerging Brands
"The first thing I'd ask is, do you actually own your product, taste, and cost? Two things I'd lock in immediately: First is taste, taste, taste. Taste is king, but it's a procurement problem as much as an R&D one. Is your recipe spec locked? What happens to flavor if you switch suppliers? Recipe changes worry everyone from marketing to sales to operations, and buyers don't forgive them unless there's a very good reason. Second is cost structure. Watch which commodities you're exposed to. Wheat, oils, dairy, cocoa… these markets move, and they move a lot. If you're not paying attention, your COGS will silently eat your margin. And then you're facing a choice nobody wants: either absorb the hit or reprice the customer." —Michele Peroni, Fractional Agri-Food Procurement & Commodity Forecasting
"I'd fix the price-pack architecture first, ensuring profitable pricing and a clear multi-year channel strategy to support scalable growth." —Mark Gregory, Revenue Growth Management
"I'd fix structure. Most $1–5M brands lack a clear commercial strategy, so sales ends up selling to anyone who will buy, creating the wrong mix with the wrong partners. I'd prioritize margin and brand equity, then align distribution to build profitable, scalable growth." —Tiffany Wright, MBA, Fractional Chief Commercial Officer
"Typical challenges I see at this scale: scaling manufacturing while maintaining product consistency, retail readiness gaps (labeling, certifications, shelf life documentation), formulation performance breaking down at larger batch sizes, no formal quality systems (processes live in people's heads), lack of technical expertise needed but full-time hires aren't feasible yet, margin erosion from rising input costs and inefficient supplier management, and regulatory blindspots that surface at the worst possible time." —Irina Risukhina, Product Development & Quality Systems
"Bright packaging, clear value prop, instantly understandable. And making sure I have a new-biz scaling engine and data platform to back up my advertising decisions." —Shauna Sloms, Sales & Data Strategy
"First, I would do a deep dive into the brand and product goals, along with the current pain points and foreseeable future issues. From that, I would look to optimize the current successful products for easy scaling based on the needs of manufacturing process and demands of the sales channel, with a focus on increasing margins while maintaining brand integrity. This would likely start with ingredient sourcing and production limitations, since that’s where I have seen most emerging brands have gaps. Once that was underway, the learnings would be used to build an aligned innovation pipeline that leveraged a focused development approach for quick reaction to customer requests and future channel expansion to support the growth goals." —Dan Howell, Strategic Innovation & Product Development
"The first thing I'd fix is whatever actually needs fixing. And I won't know that until I've taken a real look. Most fractional leaders come in ready to tear things down and rebuild. That's not how I work. Before I make a single recommendation, I want to get the lay of the land. What's driving growth? What's causing growth to slow or stall? I want to understand what the team is doing because it's working, versus what they're doing because no one's stopped to ask why. If something is working, I want to amplify it. If something isn't working, or the team isn't sure what role it plays in the foundation of the brand, that's where I start. I'm not interested in activity for its own sake. I'm interested in decisions that are grounded in what the brand actually needs." —Jenica Oliver, CMO