I get several inquiries a month from people who want help but can’t afford to hire a startup branding consultant.

Founders who have just left a good job try to convince their spouse that the salsa recipe everyone loves at the holiday party is actually a business.

They are trying to figure out what to do first, and they don’t have the budget to hire an experienced marketing advisor.

So here is the free version of what I share.

Eleven pieces of advice, in the order I think matter most, based on years of advising more than fifty entrepreneurs. None of these suggestions requires a marketing degree. Most of it requires slowing down before you jump.

1. The Problem You Solve Comes Before Everything Else

Before starting on the recipe, packaging, and pricing, you need one honest sentence that explains what problem your product solves and for whom.

Rebel Cheese didn’t set out to make “another vegan cheese.” They set out to fix the actual problem: most plant-based cheeses taste like a sad compromise for people who are lactose intolerant. Their answer was cheese made from cashews using real aging and culturing techniques, so it tastes like cheese, not like a consolation prize.

If you can’t say what problem you solve in one or two sentences, you don’t have a product yet. You have a commodity.

2. Know Your Numbers Before You Make a Single Unit

This is the one thing nobody wants to hear, and it’s the one that kills more food businesses than bad marketing ever will. Before you find a co-packer, design packaging, create a brand name, or build a website, sit down and figure out exactly what it costs you to make your product. Then figure out what a store would need to pay you for it, and what that store would then charge a shopper.

If that final shelf price makes you wince, you have a problem to solve now, not later. A lot of founders fall in love with a brand name or a novel recipe, and then fall back on the business model. Flip that order. Know the economics first. The recipe can be adjusted. Channels of distribution can be changed. A business that loses money on every unit sold cannot survive. Know your numbers at startup, and estimate whether you can build volume and get better pricing at scale.

3. Solve One Problem, Not Five

New founders love to list everything their product does. It’s healthy. It’s convenient. It’s sustainable. It supports a cause. It tastes amazing.

Pick one.

A shopper walking down an aisle gives your package about two seconds. Two seconds is not enough time to read a list of virtues. It’s enough time to understand one clear idea. What is the single reason someone should buy this instead of the ten other things sitting next to it? Answer that question honestly, then build everything else around it.

4. Get It In Front of Real Strangers Before You Spend Real Money

Your friends and family are not a focus group. They love you, and they will tell you your product is great even when it isn’t ready. Before you invest in packaging, a website, or a big production run, find a farmers’ market, a local pop-up, or a neighbor’s backyard barbecue where you can hand your product to people who have no reason to be nice to you.

Watch their faces before they say anything. That reaction is more honest than any survey you could run.

If your product is for new moms, put it in front of them to get an honest reaction. Find creative ways to get honest feedback.

5. Start Small and Prove It Works Close to Home

Every founder dreams about a wall of their product at a national chain. That dream is fine to have, but it’s not where you start. Start with the store down the street, the local co-op, the market where you can actually walk in and see how your product is doing.

Selling well in one store and selling well again the next month in that same store tells you something a big launch never will. It tells you people are coming back. That is the real test, not the size of the first order.

I often advise that getting distribution is the easy part. But will your customer come back and buy again and again? Testing and learning locally is much easier than at a distance.

6. Make Your Package Do the Talking

You will not be standing in the store to explain your product. Your package has to do that job alone, in about two seconds, from a few feet away. That means a clear name, a clear picture of what’s inside (if it helps), and one clean message about why someone should care.

Resist the urge to cover the front of your package with every award, certification, and claim you’ve earned. Save those for the side or the back. The front has one job. Everything else is a supporting cast member, not the star.

7. Get Into the Right Stores, Not Just Any Store – or Online

Not every store is the right store for your product, even if they’ll take you. A store’s shopper needs to match the person who actually wants what you’re selling. A high-end health food shop and a busy convenience store attract two very different customers, and your product might make sense to only one of them.

Chasing every yes is tempting when you’re small, but a shelf that doesn’t match your customer is a shelf where your product quietly dies. It’s better to be strong in a few of the right places than thin and invisible across a lot of wrong ones.

8. Build Relationships With the People Who Decide, Not Just the People Who Taste

A buyer at a store is not the same as a shopper trying your sample. Their first question is often, ” What new customers are you bringing to this category? The buyer cares about things like how fast your product sells, how reliable your deliveries are, and whether you’ll still be in business next year. Getting to know that person, being honest with them, and showing up when you say you will matter just as much as how good your product tastes.

Food and beverage is a relationship business before anything else. The founders who last tend to be the ones buyers actually like.

9. Protect Your Cash Like It’s the Last of It, Because It Might Be

Growing a food business costs money at every single stage. Ingredients, packaging, shipping, a bigger cooler, and a new labeling machine. It adds up faster than most first-time founders expect, and running out of cash is one of the most common reasons good products never make it.

Before you say yes to a big order or a new piece of equipment, ask honestly whether you can actually afford it, not whether you can find a way to afford it. Those are two very different questions, and the second one gets founders into trouble. You can use Claude or Chat GBT to create financial models that help predict cash flow.

10. Expect It to Take Longer Than You Think

Nobody’s product blows up overnight, no matter what the founder’s social media interviews make it look like. Most of the brands you admire spent years building, one store and one customer at a time, before anything looked like an overnight success from the outside.

If your growth feels slower than you hoped in the first year or two, that doesn’t mean you’re failing. It might just mean you’re doing it the normal way. Patience is not a weakness in this business. It’s usually the difference between the founders who make it and the ones who quit right before they would have. Most founders who succeed don’t ever quit. They keep finding a way forward until they succeed.

11. Focus on Getting People to Buy It Again, Not Just Once

A first sale is easier than a second one. Anyone can get a curious shopper to try something new. The real business is built on the customer who buys it again next month, and then again after that, without needing to be convinced all over again.

If people aren’t coming back, that’s a signal worth paying attention to, even if your first sale numbers look good. A business that lives on repeat customers can actually grow. A business that only wins new customers over and over is a business that’s always starting from zero.

Four Key Takeaways

Bring a solution to a community in need. Find a group of people with a problem and try to deliver a product that solves that pain point. Don’t be a vitamin; be a painkiller when you start with a community, like those with dairy intolerance who would love to eat cheese again, make a cheese they can enjoy without the lactose issues.

Your numbers matter more than your recipe. A great-tasting product built on a business model that loses money on every unit is not a business; it’s an expensive hobby. Know your costs and your pricing before you fall in love with anything else.

Clarity beats cleverness on the shelf. Shoppers don’t have time to read a list of everything your product does. Give them one clear reason to pick it up, and let the package do that job without any help from you standing there.

Patience and repeat customers build real businesses. The founders who make it are rarely the ones with the fastest first year. They’re the ones who kept showing up, kept the customers they earned, and let the business grow in the slow, steady way that actually lasts.

I didn’t figure any of this out on my own, and neither will you. Hopefully, this saves you a few of the expensive lessons I learned the hard way.

Connect with Jeff at The Marketing Sage Consultancy. Interested in setting up a call? Use my calendly to schedule a time to talk. The call is free, and we can discuss your brand, marketing needs, and challenges.

Feel free to email me at jeffslater@themarketing sage.com or text 919 720 0995. Thanks for your interest in working with The Marketing Sage Consultancy.

The post Starting a Food Business? Here are Eleven Pieces of Sage Advice. appeared first on The Marketing Sage.

One in eight American adults is now taking a GLP-1 drug. That number has more than doubled in eighteen months.

That is not a trend.

That is a structural shift.

And if you make, market, or sell snack food, the data from Cornell, Numerator, and Circana tell a story you cannot ignore.

The people on these medications are not just eating differently. They are buying differently.

And the categories they are walking away from first are the ones that have driven snack-aisle growth over the past two decades.

Who Is Using GLP-1 Drugs and How Fast Is This Growing?

The headline number comes from RAND Corporation research published in August 2025: 11.8 percent of U.S. adults have used a GLP-1 such as Ozempic or Wegovy.

A separate Gallup survey from mid-to-late 2025 put the weight-loss-specific number at 12.4 percent, up from 5.8 percent in February 2024. Prescriptions have more than tripled since 2020.

The household picture is even more striking. Circana reports that 23 percent of U.S. households now have at least one GLP-1 user. By 2030, they project that GLP-1 households will represent 35 percent of all food and beverage units sold in this country.

Who is on these drugs matters as much as how many.

The demographic profile has shifted sharply. In 2021, the majority of GLP-1 prescriptions were issued to patients with type 2 diabetes. By 2025, Circana found that 78 percent of users say they are taking the drugs for weight loss, up 41 points from 2021. The RAND data shows use is highest among women aged 50 to 64, while women aged 30 to 49 are more than twice as likely as their male peers to have used a GLP-1. Circana characterizes the typical GLP-1 patient as Gen X, with a household income of over $100,000.

That income profile is not a footnote. Higher-income households are disproportionately likely to purchase premium snacks, specialty retail products, and natural-channel items. When their consumption changes, it shows up fast in the data.

What the Purchase Data Actually Shows

The most rigorous study to date, by Cornell University and Numerator, was published in December 2025 in the Journal of Marketing Research. Researchers tracked grocery and restaurant spending for 2,623 households with at least one GLP-1 user, drawn from Numerator’s 150,000-household consumer panel. They matched these households against surveys that asked when medication began and why.

The headline finding: within six months of starting a GLP-1 medication, households reduce grocery spending by an average of 5.3 percent. Among higher-income households, the drop is over 8 percent. Spending at fast-food restaurants and coffee shops falls by about 8 percent.

The reductions are not spread evenly across the store.

Calorie-dense, ultra-processed foods saw the sharpest declines.

• Spending on savory snacks dropped roughly 10 percent.
• Sweet bakery items, cookies, and sweets declined by similar magnitudes.

The Cornell and Numerator data specifically call out chips, sweet bakery, side dishes, and cookies as showing the largest declines in individual categories, ranging from 6.7 to 11.1 percent.

Numerator’s GLP-1 Trends Hub, launched in October 2025 and built on quarterly surveys of 30,000 consumers, adds another layer. Among GLP-1 users focused on weight loss, packaged bakery, snacks, prepared foods, and beans and grains showed year-over-year buy rate declines of 10 to 20 percent compared to non-users. Users focused specifically on losing 15 or more pounds reduced spending by 10 percent across more than 100 categories in grocery, quick-service restaurants, and tobacco within six months of starting the medication.

One data point on the other side of the ledger matters here. The Cornell research found statistically significant increases in only a handful of categories: yogurt, fresh fruit, nutrition bars, and meat snacks.

Weight-loss users specifically showed modest increases in fresh produce and yogurt. Protein shakes rose 38 percent among GLP-1 users. Superfoods climbed 58 percent.

The biology drives the basket. GLP-1 drugs suppress appetite and reduce cravings for high-fat, high-sugar foods. Protein becomes increasingly important for preventing muscle loss. Fiber supports digestive health.

Every calorie has to work harder, and users are making choices accordingly.

The Snack Industry Is Not Panicking Yet, but It Should Be Paying Attention

EY-Parthenon has been tracking this closely. Their analysis suggests GLP-1 adoption could put up to a $12 billion dent in snack food market growth and significantly slow the sector’s current 3 to 4 percent annual growth rate.

Survey respondents using GLP-1 drugs for weight loss reported declines in consumption of 40 to 60 percent across snack categories, while specialty and health foods climbed by nearly 50 percent, proteins by 65 percent, and fruits and vegetables by nearly 80 percent.

• General Mills CEO Jeff Harmening told analysts at the Consumer Analyst Group of New York conference that anti-obesity drugs will have a lasting influence on the food market.

The company is reformulating products, launching smaller portion sizes, and adding protein and fiber to existing lines, including Honey Nut Cheerios Protein and Ghost performance nutrition bars.

Nestle launched Vital Pursuit in 2024, its first major U.S. brand in nearly three decades, specifically targeting GLP-1 users with portion-controlled, nutrient-dense frozen meals. Danone rolled out an Oikos yogurt drink in 2025 designed to help GLP-1 users build and retain muscle mass.

Circana’s research adds nuance that matters for brand strategy.

GLP-1 users are still outspending non-users on CPG overall. Their spending shifts away from mass and dollar stores toward club stores and e-commerce.

Convenience stores have an emerging opportunity because the channel is already built around single-serve, on-the-go, and portion-controlled formats. And a meaningful share of users, even when they stop taking the medication, hold onto some of the health-conscious behaviors they adopted while on it.

There is also a rebound dynamic worth watching.

The Cornell research found that about one-third of users stopped taking the medication during the study period. When they did, food spending returned to pre-adoption levels. Indulgent categories like candy and baked goods typically rebound within 3 to 6 months after users stop using them.

• The demand shift is real while users are on the drug. It is not necessarily permanent.

What This Means for Food and Beverage Brands

The short answer is that the brands most at risk are the ones most exposed to calorie-dense, highly processed snack categories with no clear functional story. Chips, cookies, sweet bakery items, and full-sugar beverages are the categories experiencing the steepest declines among GLP-1 households. If your core SKUs are in those aisles, you need to think about this now.

That does not mean the sky is falling on indulgence.

Barclays and Morgan Stanley estimate widespread GLP-1 adoption could lead to a 3 to 5 percent reduction in total calorie consumption across the U.S. That is meaningful, but it is not a wipeout.

Seventy-four percent of Americans say they do not plan to take these medications. The core snack market is not disappearing.

What is changing is the market’s composition.

A growing cohort of health-focused, higher-income consumers is actively shifting their baskets toward protein, fiber, hydration, and portion control. The brands that have already built a story around those attributes are well-positioned. The ones that have not need to decide whether to reformulate, reposition, or find a different lane.

The opportunity is real. SKU proliferation in high-protein, low-sugar, portion-controlled snacks has increased by an estimated 47 percent year over year since 2024. Brands that can credibly claim the protein or fiber positioning, in the right pack size, in the right channel, with a real taste payoff, are moving product.

The harder problem is for mid-market brands without the R&D budgets to reformulate or launch new lines quickly. Those brands need to be honest about where they are exposed, which customers they are losing, and whether a packaging or messaging adjustment can meaningfully help. At the same time, they figure out a longer-term product answer.

One more thing worth saying.

The consumer on a GLP-1 medication is not anti-snack. She is pro-value. Every bite needs to earn its place.

That is an opportunity for brands with a genuine nutrition story, not just a label that says “protein” on the front and has 3 grams of it.

Three Key Takeaways

1. The scale of this shift is no longer speculative. Twelve percent of U.S. adults have now used a GLP-1 drug, and 23 percent of households have at least one user. Cornell and Numerator’s purchase data confirms real, sustained declines of 10 percent or more in savory snacks, sweet bakery, and cookies within six months of adoption. Circana projects GLP-1 households will represent 35 percent of all food and beverage units sold by 2030. This is not a wellness trend you can wait out.

2. Protein, fiber, and portion control are not nice-to-haves anymore. The GLP-1 user is maximizing every calorie. Categories winning in this environment are yogurt, nutrition bars, meat snacks, fresh produce, and high-protein beverages. Brands that can credibly deliver protein, fiber, or portion discipline, and actually taste good doing it, are gaining share. Brands competing purely on indulgence without a functional dimension are losing it.

3. Channel strategy matters as much as product strategy. GLP-1 users are shifting their spending away from mass and dollar stores toward club, e-commerce, and convenience stores. The convenience channel, already built around single-serve and portion-controlled formats, is unusually well-positioned. Distribution in the right channel, paired with the right pack size, is not a detail. For this consumer cohort, it is the difference between being in the consideration set or not.

The snack aisle is not going away. But the consumer walking it is changing. The brands that figure out which job they do for someone eating 30 percent less on purpose, with a very clear sense of what every bite is worth, will be the ones still on the shelf in 2030.

That is not a small ask. But it is the right one.

Connect with Jeff at The Marketing Sage Consultancy. Interested in setting up a call? Use my calendly to schedule a time to talk. The call is free, and we can discuss your brand, marketing needs, and challenges.

Feel free to email me at jeffslater@themarketing sage.com or text 919 720 0995. Thanks for your interest in working with The Marketing Sage Consultancy.

The post GLP-1 – The New Hunger Games appeared first on The Marketing Sage.

It has been 30 years since my maternal grandfather, Poppa George, passed away. But there isn’t a day that I don’t think about him and his journey as an immigrant to the United States. As the country turns 250, I want to honor and memorialize Poppa George.

He came to America on a boat from St. Petersburg in 1910. He was ten years old. He was alone. His mother died when he was 5. His father remarried, and, according to Pop, his stepmother was unkind.

Pops’ father thought he should go to America.

Then, his father died a few years later.

His two sisters stayed behind in Russia.

Whatever pocket change he carried was stolen from him by some thugs on the ship.

Pop would say that, for all 96 years of his life, he came to America without two nickels to rub together. And everything he had when he eventually leaves this world was all profit.

That nickeless boy was my grandfather.

His name was Gricha back in Russia. In America, in the care of his Uncle Henry and Aunt Pauline in Newark, New Jersey, he became George.

George Ginsberg.

And if you ever had the pleasure of meeting him, you never forgot him.

Pop died in 1996 at the age of 96, just shy of his 97th birthday. The New York Times ran his obituary. They called him the Penny Philanthropist. That title tells you almost everything you need to know about who he was. But the whole story is richer, stranger, and more remarkable than any headline can hold.

The Boy Who Came Over Alone

George’s parents died when he was young, leaving him an orphan in Russia alongside his two older sisters, Kate and Elizabeth. The family decided. George would go to America. Uncle Henry, who had already made the crossing, would take him in and give him a start.

My older sister Diane remembers hearing the details differently.

She reminded me that when Pop was 10, he was sent to the United States to get away from the war and the White Russians. She recalled hearing that Russians were kidnapping nine and 10-year-old boys and sending them out on the front to check and see if the soldiers were getting closer. Pop’s father, who was alive when Pop came to America, arranged for him to live with Uncle Henry in Newark.

In our family, we used to say, “ask Annette”. Our mother’s sister would always know the facts. I used to say, who needs the Internet when you have our Aunt Annette.

But our beloved Aunt is no longer with us. So the facts evade us.

In any event, Pop’s sisters stayed, and at age 10, Pop came to America.

The sisters were remarkable women by any measure. Both became doctors. Kate (Catherine), who was a dentist. Elizabeth was a practicing gynecologist who later wrote books in her field.

For Jewish women in early-20th-century Russia to achieve that level of professional standing, they had to be exceptional. Both lived long lives and built successful careers. George honored them throughout his own life by keeping their stories alive for his family.

There is one more thread worth pulling here.

George’s first cousin was Irène Némirovsky, the award-winning author of Suite Française, the stunning unfinished novel she wrote just before the Nazis arrested her at her home in France in 1942. The book was published by her daughter, Denise, in 2004.

Irene died in Auschwitz in 1942. George carried that grief as part of his story, too. When you understand what was left behind in Russia and Europe, you understand why he spent his entire American life in a state of profound and active gratitude.

The ten-year-old who boarded that boat had no way of knowing what was ahead. He just knew he was going on a long journey.

Uncle Henry’s Apprentice

Uncle Henry was a funny man with a sly sense of humor and was a working commercial photographer. George landed in Newark with nothing but his willingness to pick up a camera and soak up his uncle’s joyful disposition.

For his entire life, he always had his camera and an irrepressible sense of humor.

Photography became his trade, his art, his livelihood, and eventually his obsession. He learned to see the world through a lens and understood that a photograph is a promise. A moment happened, and a photograph makes sure it lasts.

That instinct shaped everything that came after.

Quaker Photo and the Camera Truck

By 1920, George had a small commercial photography studio in Philadelphia called Quaker Photo. He had a wife, my Grandma Fannie, and eventually two daughters, Annette and Beatrice. Bea, born May 22, 1927, is my mother.

Work meant commercial photography. Covering the sesquicentennial in 1926, celebrating 150 years of American independence, and capturing the city at work and at play. Photographing the Philadelphia Police Department when their new Chevrolet patrol cars arrived in 1940

But the idea that still makes me shake my head was the camera truck.

George built it himself with some wood, paint, and help from friends at Chevrolet. He shaped the truck to look like his large-format camera and bellows. He painted his phone number on the side: Walnut 4444. Then he drove it through the streets of Philadelphia.

This was the 1920s. The food truck concept, the branded vehicle, the rolling advertisement. All of it. Pop did it decades before the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile, decades before anyone had a name for it.

It worked exactly the way you’d expect. He’d pull up to a job in a new neighborhood, and people would come outside to look. The camera truck pulled strangers close and turned them into customers. George Ginsberg had a magnetic personality and everything he did drew people closer to him – and his camera truck.

You got near him, and you were drawn in. The truck just extended its radius.

He was a marketing genius before anyone even knew what marketing or branding was about. I know I got a few of his genes, but he was the original sage.

The Book – Documenting Our Family

Pop’s most important photographic work was lovingly known by our family as The Book.

Every year of my childhood, he made a photo album for each of his three grandchildren, starting in 1950 when my sister Diane was born, then me in 1954, and Mitch in 1960.

Not a simple album. A handcrafted scrapbook, assembled with corner holders and Elmer’s glue, packed with photographs, newspaper clippings, ticket stubs, and any small piece of paper that documented your life. When each one was complete, he had the cover stamped in gold leaf with your name, the edition, and the year.

Our Grandson Jeffrey Lynn Slater. Second Edition. September 1960.

I have over 21 of them. My sister and brother have at least as many. When his great-grandchildren started arriving in 1976, he made the books for them too, for Jaime, Garrett, Sarah, Fanny, and Harrison.

Sadly, his last great-grandchild, Georgia, never got any of his books – but has the blessing and honor of carrying his name.

When I take one of those albums off the shelf now, I am instantly transported in my own time machine.

My seventh birthday party with my neighborhood buddy, Philip Norulak, both of us wearing paper crowns.My ninth birthday bowling party at Echo Lanes.

The trip to Washington, D.C., to see the cherry blossoms bloom with my sister Diane and cousin Janie. A photograph of the television screen showing Jim Bunning’s perfect game, June 21, 1964. Summers at Camp Winadu with my childhood best friend, James Farber. Travels to Israel, Mexico, and eventually the University of Pennsylvania.

Pop saved a two-inch clipping from the Springfield Sun reporting that my basketball team, the Lakers, had won a game in the small-fry league. They spelled my last name wrong. Two t’s instead of one. Pop saved it anyway. Because it happened, and it needed to go in The Book.

I think about why he did this. He grew up without parents. Without grandparents to pass things down. Without anyone to document who he was or where he came from. So, he made sure we would never feel that absence. He spent thousands of hours making sure that every one of us would always have evidence that we were seen, loved, and remembered.

Those albums are the most valuable possession my siblings and I own. And today, I honor my grandson Bodhi by making annual albums for him.

The Penny Philanthropist and The New York Times

George Ginsberg was not a rich man. He and my Grandma Fannie lived modestly at 186 Tuxedo Parkway in Newark. Two bedrooms. Tight quarters.

I can smell the cinnamon on Grandma Fannie’s sour cream coffee cake baking in the oven. The sweet and sour fragrance of stuffed cabbage still fills my senses and memories when I see her photograph.

In their cramped apartment, the Mets are losing on television. Family everywhere. As grandchildren, it was like Buckingham Palace – and each of us felt royal and the richness of their love.

My grandfather had this odd habit.

Pop picked up every penny he found on the street.

He saved them, and then he wrote checks. Two dollars to the American Red Cross. Two dollars to the Cancer Society. Two dollars to a local veteran’s group. Hundreds of charities, over decades, in small increments. Not because the amounts were significant. Because the act was.

He was always talking about how lucky he was. Lucky to be an immigrant who got to start over. Lucky to have found his trade. Blessed with a family that prospered and cared for each other. George knew he was lucky to have Fannie as his wife, partner, and sidekick.

Lucky to be alive in a country that lets a ten-year-old orphan with no money own several photography businesses and gets to see his family grow and prosper.

The Helping Question

Every time I saw Pop, he would ask me a question at the end of each visit.

Jeffrey, who did you help today?

It wasn’t rhetorical. He wanted to know.

And I knew that he had his own answer ready, whatever form it took that day—a penny saved. A check was written. A story told to a grandchild so they wouldn’t forget where they came from.

George Ginsberg died in November 1996, eleven days before his 97th birthday.

The New York Times ran his obituary. Not because he was powerful or wealthy or famous in any conventional sense. Because of the pennies. Because of the two-dollar checks to hundreds of charities. Because someone at the paper understood that a man who spends his whole life finding small ways to help other people, who makes that his consistent and defining practice, is worth remembering and honoring.

The Times called him the Penny Philanthropist.

He would have loved that title.

He would have repeated it like one of his jokes, the same ones he’d been telling for twenty years, still getting his family to laugh every single time.

Did you know my grandparents are in iron and steel? My grandmother irons, and my grandfather steals. It still makes me laugh today.

The boy who arrived from St. Petersburg without two nickels to rub together died, known to the readers of the most important newspaper in the country. Not for what he accumulated.

For what he gave away.

What He Left Behind

I think about Poppa George a lot—more as I’ve gotten older, not less.

He built a business from nothing.

He invented a marketing idea decades before it had a name.

He documented his family with a photographer’s love and a storyteller’s instinct.

He honored the women in his life by making sure his grandchildren knew their names and their stories.

He gave away what little he had, consistently, without fanfare, because he believed that was what you were supposed to do.

He came here as a ten-year-old orphan with no parents, no money, and no language. He left behind 21 volumes of love on my shelf, a question I ask myself every night, and an obit in the Times.

Not a bad return on a boat ticket from St. Petersburg.

Three Life Lessons I Learned from George

Gratitude is a strategy, not just a feeling. George Ginsberg arrived with nothing and spent the rest of his life acting like he had been given everything. That posture, of genuine and active gratitude, shaped how he ran his business, how he treated strangers, and how he raised a family. It’s the reason his grandchildren still hear his voice before they go to sleep or think of the life he led.

Document what matters before it disappears. Pop understood something most people don’t act on: the present becomes the past faster than you expect, and the only things that survive are the ones someone took the time to save. Twenty-one handcrafted albums are more durable than any digital backup. They carry his fingerprints.

Small acts, done consistently, become a legacy. No single two-dollar check made a difference. All of them together, over decades, made him the Penny Philanthropist of the New York Times. The same principle applies to a business, a family, and a career. What you do every day is who you are. George knew that before anyone gave it a name.

So let me ask you a question.

Who did you help today?

Connect with Jeff at The Marketing Sage Consultancy. Interested in setting up a call? Use my calendly to schedule a time to talk. The call is free, and we can discuss your brand, marketing needs, and challenges.

Feel free to email me at jeffslater@themarketing sage.com or text 919 720 0995. Thanks for your interest in working with The Marketing Sage Consultancy.

The post From Orphan to Penny Philanthropist: The Remarkable Life Story of George Ginsberg, My Grandfather appeared first on The Marketing Sage.