A Dynamic Creator and Leader of Consumer Brands and Disruptive Start Ups.
Five Decades of Experience from Fortune 500 Corporate Roles, to Madison Avenue, to Serial Entrepreneur and Author.
Current: Unbound Spirits Brands. Co-Founder-CEO. Crafters and curators of distinctive luxury whiskey brands, we are making waves in the spirits industry. We search for ways to create and blend the most masterfully complex bourbons and whiskeys. Our lead bourbon is The Maelstrom, a proprietary blend of different bourbons, extra-aged in custom-made new American oak-charred casks and tamed by the unrelenting waves of The Great Lakes. Our Irish whisky, Hooligan Soup is a curated blend that is extra-aged in our Maelstrom oak barrels. Our other highly crafted whiskey brands — Maelstrom Stormwatch, Les Terribles, and Hold Fast — are scheduled for late 2023.
Current: Continu Wellness. Founder / Chairman / CEO. We are creating a revolutionary approach to fitness and wellness: re-invent it as upstream preventive healthcare and re-engineer it through process, technology, and customer experience to be for people who are repelled by traditional fitness clubs and gyms. Our long-term mission is to transform the youth-oriented fitness business to put focus on the age 50-80 population who are under-served and misunderstood by traditional fitness operators. Integrating new technology, new science, and quantified self-techniques coupled with expert, experienced, caregiving coaching. On a mission to radically improve the trajectory of aging and enable people to live longer happier, healthier lives. Opening in Florida in 2025.
Founding Partner / ex-Chief Marketing Officer, Master Distillers Inc. A marketing and sales advisory firm and holding company for craft distillers seeking to become national brands. Hyper-experienced spirits experts focused on the blossoming craft distilling sector. Alaska Distillery, Pritchard’s Distillery, Mezcal Sacrificio, T1 Tequila Uno (Best Craft Tequila of 2016), the “Pappy Van Winkle of tequila” extra anejo Tears of Llorona, and others. In 2019, Tears of Llorona partnered with Infinium Spirits in San Diego, who have rocketed this ultra-premium extra anejo brand to broad distribution and accelerated growth.
Founder / ex-Chairman/CEO, Activate Brain & Body. Conceived in 2011 as a breakthrough brain fitness think-tank in Philadelphia as a partnership with the founders of Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust, and advised by the scientists at Functional Aging Institute, it went through various iterations before evolving into its current format: a small studio that opened location number one in Cincinnati in early 2022.
Here, promoting and evangelizing the benefits of brain-body fitness as the keynote speaker at the Functional Aging Institute Summit in Phoenix to an audience of top personal trainers and coaches.
Chairman / CEO / President, Elias Music. Led the world's most-awarded music agency through major changes in the music and advertising industry. Brought in by private equity owners to restructure and evolve the company. Gave annual seminars and workshops on Commercial Music and Audio Branding to creative, production, advertising, and music execs at Cannes Lions Advertising Festival and Dubai Lynx Ad Festival.
TED Conference. Delivered "The Power of Music" at TED in Monterrey, CA to highlight the significant role music plays in cultures around the world, and how its ubiquitous nature hides very powerful abilities to influence people in both positive and negative ways.
Chief Marketing Officer, Bally Total Fitness / Crunch Fitness. Led marketing for the world's largest fitness operation encompassing Bally Total Fitness, Crunch, Gorilla Sports, Holmes Place with 500 locations and 4 million members.
Left, on Good Morning America discussing how their new advertising and marketing approach created a record surge in membership that led to a Harvard Business School case study.
SVP / Worldwide General Manager, The Chess Team at Foote, Cone & Belding. Experts in creating competitive strategy, competitive analysis, and move/counter-move planning. Strategic marketing projects for mega-clients like American Express, US Postal Service, SC Johnson, Kraft, Tropicana, and many more. Gave seminars on six continents to thousands of client and prospect executives on "How to Outsmart and Out-think Your Competition" and "The Best Practices of the Best Companies" in technology, packaged goods, transportation, banking, automotive, and fast food.
VP Marketing, Heublein (now Diageo). Led all marketing, advertising, publicity and promotion activities for world-leading brands Smirnoff, Jose Cuervo, Black Velvet, Popov, Almaden, Inglenook, Famous Grouse, Highland Park Single Malt, Yukon Jack, Heublein/Club Cocktails, Blossom Hill, Christian Brothers Brandy, Arrow Cordials, and many others.
Empire State Building Climb for the Challenged Athletes Foundation. Compete annually with challenged athletes, celebrities, and pros to race up the 1,576 steps of the Empire State Building to raise funds for the Challenged Athletes Foundation.
Atop The Matterhorn. Standing on the summit of the Matterhorn, looming high above Zermatt, Switzerland. There's a good story behind all this, and it ties directly to lessons about business, entrepreneurship, fitness, anti-aging, and life in his current book The Secrets of Aging Well: Get Outside and the upcoming The Mountains Made Me An Entrepreneur.