Blog
Notes on growing a product business.
Growth mindset, foundations, and scaling physical products. Written for the garage graduate, by people who have been one. Every masterclass is written up here the week after it runs.
Foundations · 4 min
The garage is a stage, not a home
Every product business starts in one. The mistake is staying past the point where the garage is what is holding the business back, and it is a mistake almost everyone makes.
August 25, 2026
Session notes · 4 min
Session notes: setting up business finances
Two accountants, eighteen founders, one shoebox held up as a warning. What was said about accounts, GST at the border, inventory, paying yourself, and the fifteen-minute monthly close.
August 24, 2026
Foundations · 4 min
Landed cost is the number that decides whether you have a business
The invoice price is not the price. Between the factory and your shelf are six other numbers, and the founders who do not know them are running a charity without realising it.
August 18, 2026
Scaling · 4 min
Your first hundred units are research
Founders treat the first production run as the launch. It is not. It is the most expensive survey you will ever send out, and its value is entirely in what you do with the answers.
August 11, 2026
Growth mindset · 3 min
Show up before it is obvious
Compounding is invisible for most of its life. The founders who make it are not the most talented or the best funded. They are the ones who kept turning up during the part where nothing seemed to be happening.
August 4, 2026
Session notes · 5 min
Session notes: legal filing and entity structuring
Sole proprietor, partnership, ABCA or CBCA. What two Alberta business lawyers said about the real options, the tax and liability consequences, and the contracts you will sign this year.
July 20, 2026
Session notes · 4 min
Session notes: how to write a business plan a lender will read
Two founders who raised on one and a lender who has read hundreds. What a plan is for, the one-page version, the model built from the unit up, and what the lender is checking.
June 22, 2026
Reading is free. So is the walk-through.
Everything on this blog is public and always will be. The desk is the part you rent.