I help challenger brands find the few decisions that let them beat far bigger competitors.
Strategy honed at McKinsey & Reckitt
The idea
Big companies win on size. Smaller ones win on sharpness.
Incumbents have more people, more money, and more momentum. You won't out-spend them. But you can out-think them — the right insight, the right position, the one move made before they see it coming. Finding those few decisions is the entire job of Fifth Stone.
A single insight
Shoppers believed their detergent already cleaned the machine. Naming that one barrier — and rebuilding the position around it — tripled the business and lifted consumption ~90%. Not a bigger budget. A sharper decision.
What I do
Clarity before execution.
Find the one insight and the position that makes a challenger impossible to ignore.
Name the single biggest barrier to growth — and the one decisive move to clear it.
Turn a sharp position into a launch your team can actually run and measure.
A senior strategist in the room every month — without a full-time CMO hire.
How I work
Fewer, better decisions — made with you, not handed over a wall.
Start with the constraint that actually matters, not the loudest one in the room.
One sharp bet beats ten hedges. We choose it together and pressure-test it before you commit.
Strategy is worthless unshipped. I stay hands-on until the move is live and working.
About
I've spent my career finding the insight that changes a company's trajectory. At McKinsey, I owned global brand strategy for the firm's flagship events — Davos, CES, and the rest — shaping how those stages spoke to a few hundred C-suite leaders at a time. At Reckitt, I turned single consumer insights into growth, most memorably taking one brand from $6M to $20M.
The thread is the same everywhere: big-brand discipline, aimed at the few decisions that decide everything. Today I bring that to founders and challenger brands — including current advisory work with Northeastern University.
Engagements stay small and senior. You work directly with me — not a rotating bench of juniors.