Work record / Brand / Lip Loi Creative

Lip Loi Creative: I became a brand studio's revenue function

Lip Loi Creative had the craft and nobody in charge of revenue. I came in as fractional CRO in 2022 and I am still there, running go-to-market and bringing most of the studio's work through the door.

The seat

My seat is fractional CRO, with go-to-market strategy, held through Common Ground since 2022. It began with a pitch. The studio wanted money for a concept of its own, and my answer turned that conversation into a standing role.

What I was brought in to decide

Lip Loi Creative is a Common Ground venture, a studio for creative and brand work. Craft is what it sells. It also has a two-phase method of its own, Market Reality and then Fundability. First you pressure-test an idea against real buyers. Then you turn what survives into something a backer can understand and fund.

I arrived in 2022. The studio had the craft but no revenue function. No one's job was to decide which engagements to take, how each should be positioned, what it should cost, or who would bring in the next one.

What we did

• The first thing I saw was a pitch. The studio had a concept of its own, Plunge Studio, a hot-and-cold contrast-therapy studio, and it was asking for funding. My answer was that it had to get better before anyone funded it. The units at its center were getting cheaper fast, so a high-end build would be paid back against a shrinking margin. The scope turned into capital strategy, go-to-market and construction cost, in place of a check.
• The fractional CRO seat grew out of that advice, and I took it. I run go-to-market strategy, own the revenue narrative on each engagement, price the work and bring it in.
• Every engagement gets the same division of labor. The studio does design and production. Common Ground sets direction and narrative, and for most of the roster it also brought the client.
• Five of the studio's six roster engagements came in through Common Ground's own ventures and clients. First, Drive for the Dream, along with the brand architecture for Jasper Sports Management. Second, Jasper Brands, a polo apparel brand that rides along with the show as a spinoff within the show package. Third, a personal brand for Luke Kwon, a golf creator who was leaving his group for new representation and sponsorships. Fourth, a sponsor-facing identity for Vincent Hancock, the Olympic skeet champion, built after the 2024 Games. Fifth, the Fluidmapper brand strategy, with a conversion architecture that took four funnel pages down to a single process-led page.
• On the Hancock identity I set the direction. It faces sponsors and not fans. The audience's need comes first. The medals wait until the reader is already leaning in. It ends on three offers that a corporate buyer could book. The studio built the piece, and we went back and forth until the narrative held.
• I put one standing rule in place for any concept that arrives as a request for funding. Have someone who has carried a build price it. Check which way the cost of the core equipment is moving. Settle the go-to-market before money comes up.

Results

• The roster has six engagements, and I opened five of them. Four are finished brand work, delivered. Those are the Fluidmapper brand system, Jasper Brands' 25-page polo apparel deck from September 2023, Luke Kwon's 20-page personal brand strategy deck from April 2024, and Vincent Hancock's 23-page brand identity deck from October 2024.
• In August 2024 Kwon won the inaugural PGA Tour Creator Classic. That win is his. The studio takes no credit for any of it.
• Today Lip Loi Creative sits inside the Common Ground portfolio. Common Ground also keeps the fractional CRO seat and the go-to-market strategy.
• Plunge Studio is still a concept in development. It is scoped as advisory work, not a funded round.
• There is now a written description of what the revenue seat owns and what the studio keeps, in a form another creative studio could take on.

The lesson

Make it better first and price what better means before any money moves. Advise before you fund.

Public record

• Lip Loi Creative

Questions about Lip Loi Creative, answered

Firm record

Common Ground keeps its own account of this engagement: Lip Loi Creative on the Common Ground wiki.

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