
Ramping Your Brand
How to Ride the Killer CPG Growth Curve
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Buy for $19.95
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Dr. James F. Richardson
About this listen
"I wish I'd had this book 20 years ago." (John Foraker, CEO of Once upon a Farm, former CEO of Annie's Homegrown)
"I wish I'd read this book before coaching teams with CPG startups." (Tom Eisenmann, Howard H. Stevenson professor of business administration, Harvard Business School)
"This book provides an excellent framework for building a consumer brand in the 2020s." (Mike Mauze, general partner of VMG Partners)
Do you want exponential growth? In this book, Dr. James Richardson outlines a four-part approach to thinking smarter about growth as a CPG entrepreneur. It is based on years of anthropological research into how and why consumers pay for premium-priced CPG items and intensive 4P pattern analysis among an elite club of premium CPG brands that all reached $100M+ in less than a decade.
Part one - Designing to Command a Premium: This is where many founders fail without realizing it. There is a cultural logic behind premium products that grow extremely fast. You should learn it.
Part two - Managing a Small Experiment: Don’t hit the gas too early. Successful CPG startups manage a rolling, iterative experiment until key KPIs appear. You should learn this art.
Part three - Fine Tuning the Conversion Playbook: Steady velocity growth is essential to ramping your brand. Your team needs to learn the art of sustaining it in key geographies so that you don’t have to buy premature distribution to obtain growth.
Part four - Accelerating to Scale: There are three best practices in acceleration. Two of them are counterintuitive to CPG veterans without expertise in the ramping of premium CPG businesses. You need to learn how to deploy them.
©2019, 2025 James F. Richardson (P)2025 James F. RichardsonListeners also enjoyed...
-
How Brands Grow
- What Marketers Don't Know
- By: Byron Sharp
- Narrated by: Daniel May
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook provides evidence-based answers to the key questions asked by marketers every day. Tackling issues such as how brands grow, how advertising really works, what price promotions really do and how loyalty programs really affect loyalty, How Brands Grow presents decades of research in a style that is written for marketing professionals to grow their brands.
-
-
WARNING: "Empirical" Slight of Hand
- By M on 03-10-18
By: Byron Sharp
-
Contagious
- Why Things Catch On
- By: Jonah Berger
- Narrated by: Keith Nobbs
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why do some products get more word of mouth than others? Why does some online content go viral? Word of mouth makes products, ideas, and behaviors catch on. It's more influential than advertising and far more effective. Can you create word of mouth for your product or idea? According to Berger, you can. Whether you operate a neighborhood restaurant, a corporation with hundreds of employees, or are running for a local office for the first time, the steps that can help your product or idea become viral are the same.
-
-
A Primer on Viral & Memorable Marketing
- By Douglas C. Bates on 04-01-13
By: Jonah Berger
-
Elon Musk
- By: Walter Isaacson
- Narrated by: Jeremy Bobb, Walter Isaacson
- Length: 20 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist.
-
-
megalomania on display
- By JP on 09-12-23
By: Walter Isaacson
-
The Mom Test
- How to Talk to Customers & Learn If Your Business Is a Good Idea When Everyone Is Lying to You
- By: Rob Fitzpatrick
- Narrated by: Rob Fitzpatrick
- Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
They say you shouldn't ask your mom whether your business is a good idea, because she loves you and will lie to you. This is technically true, but it misses the point. You shouldn't ask anyone if your business is a good idea. It's a bad question, and everyone will lie to you at least a little. As a matter of fact, it's not their responsibility to tell you the truth. It's your responsibility to find it, and it's worth doing right.
-
-
Very insightful
- By jere on 10-26-21
By: Rob Fitzpatrick
-
Hidden Potential
- The Science of Achieving Greater Things
- By: Adam Grant
- Narrated by: Adam Grant, Maurice Ashley, R. A. Dickey, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We live in a world that’s obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distance we ourselves can travel. We underestimate the range of skills that we can learn and how good we can become. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn’t knock, there are ways to build a door.
-
-
Nope
- By Anna OConnor-McClure on 10-27-23
By: Adam Grant
-
$100M Leads
- How to Get Strangers to Want to Buy Your Stuff
- By: Alex Hormozi
- Narrated by: Alex Hormozi
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook contains the playbooks that took me from sleeping on my gym floor to owning a portfolio of companies that generate $200,000,000 per year in under a decade. Wanna know the biggest difference between those two time periods? How many leads I was getting.
-
-
Better than $100M Offers, But Read Both in Order
- By Jonathan and Hannah on 09-13-23
By: Alex Hormozi
-
How Brands Grow
- What Marketers Don't Know
- By: Byron Sharp
- Narrated by: Daniel May
- Length: 6 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook provides evidence-based answers to the key questions asked by marketers every day. Tackling issues such as how brands grow, how advertising really works, what price promotions really do and how loyalty programs really affect loyalty, How Brands Grow presents decades of research in a style that is written for marketing professionals to grow their brands.
-
-
WARNING: "Empirical" Slight of Hand
- By M on 03-10-18
By: Byron Sharp
-
Contagious
- Why Things Catch On
- By: Jonah Berger
- Narrated by: Keith Nobbs
- Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why do some products get more word of mouth than others? Why does some online content go viral? Word of mouth makes products, ideas, and behaviors catch on. It's more influential than advertising and far more effective. Can you create word of mouth for your product or idea? According to Berger, you can. Whether you operate a neighborhood restaurant, a corporation with hundreds of employees, or are running for a local office for the first time, the steps that can help your product or idea become viral are the same.
-
-
A Primer on Viral & Memorable Marketing
- By Douglas C. Bates on 04-01-13
By: Jonah Berger
-
Elon Musk
- By: Walter Isaacson
- Narrated by: Jeremy Bobb, Walter Isaacson
- Length: 20 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Elon Musk was a kid in South Africa, he was regularly beaten by bullies. One day a group pushed him down some concrete steps and kicked him until his face was a swollen ball of flesh. He was in the hospital for a week. But the physical scars were minor compared to the emotional ones inflicted by his father, an engineer, rogue, and charismatic fantasist.
-
-
megalomania on display
- By JP on 09-12-23
By: Walter Isaacson
-
The Mom Test
- How to Talk to Customers & Learn If Your Business Is a Good Idea When Everyone Is Lying to You
- By: Rob Fitzpatrick
- Narrated by: Rob Fitzpatrick
- Length: 3 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
They say you shouldn't ask your mom whether your business is a good idea, because she loves you and will lie to you. This is technically true, but it misses the point. You shouldn't ask anyone if your business is a good idea. It's a bad question, and everyone will lie to you at least a little. As a matter of fact, it's not their responsibility to tell you the truth. It's your responsibility to find it, and it's worth doing right.
-
-
Very insightful
- By jere on 10-26-21
By: Rob Fitzpatrick
-
Hidden Potential
- The Science of Achieving Greater Things
- By: Adam Grant
- Narrated by: Adam Grant, Maurice Ashley, R. A. Dickey, and others
- Length: 7 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
We live in a world that’s obsessed with talent. We celebrate gifted students in school, natural athletes in sports, and child prodigies in music. But admiring people who start out with innate advantages leads us to overlook the distance we ourselves can travel. We underestimate the range of skills that we can learn and how good we can become. We can all improve at improving. And when opportunity doesn’t knock, there are ways to build a door.
-
-
Nope
- By Anna OConnor-McClure on 10-27-23
By: Adam Grant
-
$100M Leads
- How to Get Strangers to Want to Buy Your Stuff
- By: Alex Hormozi
- Narrated by: Alex Hormozi
- Length: 6 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This audiobook contains the playbooks that took me from sleeping on my gym floor to owning a portfolio of companies that generate $200,000,000 per year in under a decade. Wanna know the biggest difference between those two time periods? How many leads I was getting.
-
-
Better than $100M Offers, But Read Both in Order
- By Jonathan and Hannah on 09-13-23
By: Alex Hormozi
-
$100M Offers
- How to Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No
- By: Alex Hormozi
- Narrated by: Alexander Hormozi
- Length: 3 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The methods contained within this book are so simple, so instantaneous, and so effective, it’s as if they work by magic. If you implement even one tactic in this book, you’ll see the change in your prospects' demeanor. And you’ll know the $100M Offers method worked when you start hearing, “What do I need to do to move forward?” before you even ask for the sale.
-
-
Great content littered with filthy language
- By Amazon Customer on 09-29-21
By: Alex Hormozi
-
High-Hanging Fruit
- Build Something Great by Going Where No One Else WIll
- By: Mark Rampolla
- Narrated by: Mark Rampolla
- Length: 6 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Mark Rampolla filled a notebook with potential start-up ideas, his wife asked him some tough questions. What about this idea is exciting, beyond the possibility of a profit? How will it fit into a life that makes you and your family happy? How will it change the world? Eventually Mark found his great idea: coconut water. He had seen the developing world use coconut water, but this valuable resource was being discarded in the US. While taking on the beverage industry was a big goal - high-hanging fruit - it was worth the risk.
-
-
10 Chapter Infomercial
- By KIM WILLIAMSON on 02-16-20
By: Mark Rampolla
-
Be Seen
- Find Your Voice. Build Your Brand. Live Your Dream.
- By: Jen Gottlieb
- Narrated by: Jen Gottlieb
- Length: 8 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
BE SEEN is a roadmap for building a personal brand that showcases your unique talents and strengths. Through relatable stories and actionable advice, Jen Gottlieb shares her own path to becoming a recognized expert in her field and takes you on a journey of self-discovery to help you find your voice and unleash your full potential.
-
-
Get ready for an energy high.
- By Adam M. Mattis on 03-23-24
By: Jen Gottlieb
-
The Creative Act
- A Way of Being
- By: Rick Rubin
- Narrated by: Rick Rubin
- Length: 5 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable. Over the years, he has learned that being an artist isn’t about your specific output, it’s about your relationship to the world.
-
-
Rick is Art
- By Ira Henke on 01-17-23
By: Rick Rubin
-
The E-Myth Revisited
- Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
- By: Michael E. Gerber
- Narrated by: Michael E. Gerber
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In this audio edition of the totally revised underground best seller, The E-Myth, Michael Gerber dispels the myths surrounding starting your own business and shows how commonplace assumptions can get in the way of running a business. He walks you through the steps in the life of a business, from entrepreneurial infancy, through adolescent growing pains, to the mature entrepreneurial perspective, the guiding light of all businesses that succeed.
-
-
Saved my Life
- By Christine on 09-17-08
-
This Is Marketing
- You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See
- By: Seth Godin
- Narrated by: Seth Godin
- Length: 7 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Now, for the first time, Seth Godin offers the core of his marketing wisdom in one compact, accessible, and timeless package. This Is Marketing shows you how to do work you're proud of, whether you're a tech start-up founder, a small-business owner, or part of a large corporation. Great marketers don't use consumers to solve their company's problem; they use marketing to solve other people's problems. Their tactics rely on empathy, connection, and emotional labor instead of attention-stealing ads. When done right, marketing seeks to make change in the world.
-
-
Series of Anecdotes Without Any Actionable Insight
- By JL on 11-19-18
By: Seth Godin
-
Principles
- Life and Work
- By: Ray Dalio
- Narrated by: Ray Dalio, Jeremy Bobb
- Length: 16 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ray Dalio, one of the world's most successful investors and entrepreneurs, shares the unconventional principles that he's developed, refined, and used over the past 40 years to create unique results in both life and business - and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve their goals.
-
-
Idea-meritocracy/Principles Reference
- By P Eberle on 06-30-18
By: Ray Dalio
-
Hacking Growth
- How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success
- By: Sean Ellis, Morgan Brown
- Narrated by: Sean Ellis, Morgan Brown
- Length: 10 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
An accessible and practical toolkit that teams and companies in all industries can use to increase their customer base and market share, this book walks listeners through the process of creating and executing their own custom-made growth hacking strategy. It is a must listen for any marketer, entrepreneur, innovator or manager looking to replace wasteful big bets and "spaghetti-on-the-wall" approaches with more consistent, replicable, cost-effective, and data-driven results.
-
-
Tough one
- By Amazon Customer on 10-12-18
By: Sean Ellis, and others
-
Ultra-Processed People
- Why We Can't Stop Eating Food That Isn't Food
- By: Chris van Tulleken
- Narrated by: Chris van Tulleken, Dr. Xand van Tulleken
- Length: 11 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How much of our daily caloric intake comes from ingesting substances that, technically speaking, do not meet traditional definitions of “food”? Chances are, if you’re eating something that came wrapped in plastic and contains a funky ingredient you don’t have in your kitchen, it's most likely—almost definitely—ultra-processed food, or UPF.
-
-
ridiculously biased take on data
- By Brit_TV_fan on 11-25-23
-
Alchemy
- The Dark Art and Curious Science of Creating Magic in Brands, Business, and Life
- By: Rory Sutherland
- Narrated by: Rory Sutherland
- Length: 9 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Why is Red Bull so popular, though everyone—everyone!—hates the taste? Humans are, in a word, irrational, basing decisions as much on subtle external signals (that little blue can) as on objective qualities (flavor, price, quality). The surrounding world, meanwhile, is irreducibly complex and random. This means future success can’t be projected on any accounting spreadsheet. To strike gold, you must master the dark art and curious science of conjuring irresistible ideas: alchemy.
-
-
One of the best books I’ve read
- By anon. on 07-23-19
By: Rory Sutherland
-
Traction
- How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth
- By: Gabriel Weinberg, Justin Mares
- Narrated by: Gabriel Weinberg
- Length: 7 hrs and 24 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most startups don't fail because they can't build a product. Most startups fail because they can't get traction. Startup advice tends to be a lot of platitudes repackaged with new buzzwords, but Traction is something else entirely. As Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares learned from their own experiences, building a successful company is hard. For every startup that grows to the point where it can go public or be profitably acquired, hundreds of others sputter and die.
-
-
Review from a marketing pro
- By SV on 06-18-16
By: Gabriel Weinberg, and others
-
Scientific Advertising
- By: Claude Hopkins
- Narrated by: Ty Carthage
- Length: 2 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Here it is: the spell book with all the secrets of advertising, laid at your feet. Pick them up! Use them! Make your fortune. In this Library of Congress Facsimile Edition, you get word-for-word exactly what Claude Hopkins wrote in 1923. No one has ever articulated the laws of advertising more clearly or compellingly. Hopkins understood the principle better than anyone. If you're looking to make money online, this book must be the first one you listen to.
-
-
The Narrater is horrible
- By Eric Keith on 05-21-18
By: Claude Hopkins
What listeners say about Ramping Your Brand
Highly rated for:
Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Amazon Customer
- 07-15-21
A Must for Increasing Chances for Scaling Success
Dr. Richardson has advised the world’s top CPG brands. Through his advisory roles and deep study of CPG brands, Dr. Richardson has put together principals and best practices for sustainable scale.
Ramping Your Brand will make it crystal clear there’s more to explosive growth than merely getting onto as many shelves as possible. It’s not about landing the shelves; it’s the strategic steps taken BEFORE landing the shelves that will determine whether your brand will remain on those shelves. And Dr. Richardson does a superb job laying out the key steps that will help premium brands create scale that’s sustainable. After all, what good is landing 10,000 shelves when you’re unable to sustain 9,500 of those shelves?
Dr. Richardson narrates the boatload of gems in a personable and at times playful tone. Personally I find it refreshing to listen to an academic with personality.
Dr. Richardson mentions in his Acknowledgments that his wife allowed him to pull equity from his home to fund the research and development of this book. Certainly illustrates that Dr. Richardson is a firm believer in the content of this book that he’s willing to back it with personal equity. A clear illustration of generosity with respect to his industry knowledge and expertise.
A must audiobook for entrepreneurs who seek to increase their chances for scaling success!
Thank you for this audiobook, Dr. Richardson
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Lacey Stevens
- 04-18-23
Straight up, Informative
The author is very straightforward, doesn't soften things. Which, in my opinion is great.
He tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear.
He provides information on different stages of growth for CPG companies.
This is the best and most well rounded CPG focused book I have read so far. I would highly recommend it to anyone interested or currently a part of the CPG industry.
Definetly worth listening to 2 or 3 times. he covers a lot of ground.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kassius
- 08-15-23
Simples mas não fácil
Tenho uma empresa neste segmento e estou aplicando os ensinamentos da maneira que entendi. Parece estar funcionando… fase 1 ON!
I hope I don’t fall on my ass very soon.
I will be back here on each fase end.🙏🏽😉
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Christopher L
- 04-23-23
A Must Read for Premium CPG Brand Founders
A Must Read for Premium CPG Brand Founders. Walks you through the dos and don'ts of launching and growing.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Trey Rummel
- 03-10-21
Extremely Insightful
Highly recommended to anyone in, or looking to get into, the CPG space. Great book.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- AZ20
- 03-30-21
Excellent book on the industry
This is a great book on CPG full of unique and valuable insights. Very candid and lots of useful examples - would definitely recommend
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- T.Y.
- 07-11-21
Perhaps Best CPG Book I’ve Ever Read
Brilliant. Have already passed along to all my fellow entrepreneur friends. After working in the food / supplement CPG space for the last 10 years and now starting a brand of my own - I couldn’t agree more with the points made in this book! Great stuff. Will be tuning into the podcast
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Alyssa N
- 12-24-22
Excellent perspective
Dr James dissects the CPG industry at a level which is severely lacking in a world of data analysis paralysis. He looks at it from a humanistic perspective, with data support, to demonstrate why the sales process starts in the consumers’ home and NOT in test kitchens or board rooms.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- J. Natiuk
- 10-31-21
Extremely valuable content delivered with some humor
If this content is relevant to you, purchase this ASAP. I saw comments of others who didn’t enjoy the performance. I felt quite the opposite. In fact, I’ve never felt compelled to comment on performance before. The narrator added a lot of fun and memorability to this title.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Mark E. Anderson
- 08-25-21
Was An Excellent Explanation for Just Diving in
I’m so glad I read this book before making some of the mistakes he mentioned in going too big too fast and not being able to meet demand. This book has everything to understand how to avoid getting in trouble, who to be wary of, and aiming to grow consistently without getting distracted by things that don’t make a difference.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!