Konbini Strategy
Experienced marketing leadership, not another consultant or agency.
Konbini Strategy helps companies earn attention, communicate value, and build reputations that compound over time.
Let’s work together
Konbini Strategy
Konbini Strategy helps companies earn attention, communicate value, and build reputations that compound over time.
Let’s work together
I’ve spent more than a decade helping technology companies communicate their value, earn attention, and grow.
Most of my career has been spent at the intersection of marketing, retail tech, and convenience retailing, where I’ve launched products, shaped industry conversations, secured national media coverage, and supported companies ranging from early-stage startups to established industry brands.
Today, I’m best known as a marketer, writer, speaker, and industry commentator. I write a monthly column for C-Store Dive called The Road Ahead, speak regularly at industry events, and have been featured in publications including CNBC, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Bloomberg.
Along the way, I’ve also hosted retail study tours, spent a month eating exclusively at gas stations to prove healthy options exist, and developed a deep appreciation for the role this industry plays in the communities it serves.
Outside of work, I’m a husband, traveler, coffee and wine enthusiast, and unapologetic convenience store nerd living in West Des Moines, IA.
After more than a decade in B2B marketing and public relations, I came to a simple conclusion: experienced marketers who truly understand fuel and convenience retailing are rare.
This industry has a steep learning curve. It has its own language, culture, dynamics, and unwritten rules. Companies often struggle to communicate the value of what they’ve built, even when they have talented marketers, because they lack the context needed to make their work resonate.
Over the years, I’ve helped companies bridge that gap, earn attention, and become household names within the industry. Eventually, I decided I wanted to help more of them do the same and build a practice around a simple idea: let’s make it really good.
Konbini Strategy is the result.
Konbini Strategy is built around a simple idea: let’s make it really good.
I believe there is value in doing work you can look back on and be proud of. While there are many paths to professional success, I’ve chosen to build this company around four priorities: craft, standards, honesty, and discipline.
These four values are not goals so much as guideposts. They’re how I stay anchored when it’s easier to settle for convenience, compromise, or mediocrity.
The world is a better place when people take pride in their work.
I come from a family of small business owners and tradespeople, the kind of folks who know how to make high-quality things with their own hands. I learned from an early age that there’s value in craft, and that doing good work for good people is a reward in its own right.
Over the years, I’ve found that the people I admire most tend to share that belief. Whether it’s a writer, retailer, designer, or barista, I admire people who care enough to get the details right in their work.
That’s why the tagline of Konbini Strategy reflects this. Let’s make it really good.
Good intentions aren’t enough. Even when you value craft, there will invariably be incentives and pressures to take shortcuts and make compromises.
Everything is always downwind from one’s own set of standards. Every professional needs to know where they draw the line, what level of work they associate themselves with, and what they’re unwilling to compromise on. Standards are how you keep your work consistent even when pulled in other directions.
High standards only matter if people trust you.
One of the challenges of professional life is that you don’t always know whose interests are being served. Consultants have businesses to grow, vendors have products to sell, and agencies have retainers to protect. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it can make it difficult to know whether someone is acting in your best interest or their own.
I’ve never been particularly interested in building a business based on dependency. If helping a client solve a problem means they no longer need my help, that’s fine by me. I believe that if you put your clients first and do right by them, success tends to take care of itself.
As a lifelong writer, I’ve always admired those who point out that waiting for inspiration is a fool’s game. We’re emotional creatures and sometimes just have to put the pen to the paper whether the mood suits us or not.
The same principle applies to professional life. Maintaining discipline is how you ensure you meet commitments and deliver on your promises.
Marketing should always be proportional to a company’s communication challenges. Konbini Strategy is flexible, looking to meet companies where they’re at with arrangements ranging from fractional leadership to advisory services and more.
Explore services →The best opportunities are often the ones you don’t discover until you start talking to someone. If you have something in mind, reach out and let me know.
Let’s talk