From Renovating a Boutique Hotel to Scaling a $40M Company: What Building Businesses Taught Us About Marketing

The best brands are built the same way meaningful places are. With intention, experience, and trust.

Before Herwood Creative existed, June and I built something very different. We bought and renovated a historic property in Woodstock, New York that would eventually become The Herwood Inn. It was beautiful in the way old buildings often are. Full of character, full of possibility, and full of problems you do not fully understand until you are standing in the middle of them covered in dust and trying to decide what can be saved.

We spent months restoring that space ourselves. We salvaged what we could. We built what we needed. We obsessed over the details. Not because we were trying to create something trendy, but because we wanted to create something that felt intentional.

When we reopened the inn, each suite was inspired by a legendary female musician. Carole King. Aretha Franklin. Joni Mitchell. Stevie Nicks. There were record players in the rooms. A curated sense of mood. A feeling we hoped people would remember long after checkout.

And they did.

That experience taught us something we still come back to constantly.

People remember how something feels long before they remember how it was marketed.

That may sound obvious, but a surprising amount of business strategy ignores it.

A lot of marketing gets built backwards. Companies focus first on channels, tactics, and outputs. What platform should we prioritize. How many posts should we publish. What should the ad budget be. What trend should we jump on.

Those questions matter, but they are not where strong brands begin.

Strong brands begin with experience.

At the inn, that meant asking very different questions.

How do we want people to feel when they walk through the door.

What details will make them feel welcomed, considered, and surprised.

What story is the space telling before we say a single word.

Those are branding questions. They are also hospitality questions. And if we are being honest, they are also human questions.

Years later, when I stepped into the role of Chief Marketing Officer and Chief of Staff at TelyRx, I found myself returning to those same instincts, even in a completely different environment.

TelyRx was not a boutique hotel. It was a fast-growing digital healthcare company trying to make prescription medication more accessible for people across the country. During my time there, the company scaled to more than $40 million in revenue, expanded access to 450+ prescriptions, and served 250,000+ patients across the United States.

People are trying to feel their way toward trust.

At the inn, guests were deciding whether they felt comfortable, inspired, and cared for.

At TelyRx, patients were deciding whether they trusted the brand enough to let it help them solve a real health problem.

That is the part of marketing people often overlook. We talk about awareness and conversion and acquisition, which are useful concepts, but behind all of those words is a much simpler question:

Does this feel trustworthy enough for me to move forward?

That question has shaped the way we think about business ever since.

It is one of the reasons Herwood Creative exists.

We did not start this studio because we wanted to be one more agency with a list of services and a vague promise to help brands grow. We started it because we have lived inside businesses where experience actually mattered. Where details mattered. Where trust had to be earned. Where brand was not something separate from operations, but something built through every interaction.

June brings a rare sensitivity to experience, aesthetics, and storytelling. She knows how spaces, visuals, energy, and emotional texture shape memory. She knows how to create something that feels like itself.

I bring experience in growth systems, campaign strategy, performance marketing, customer journeys, creator programs, brand partnerships, video production, and executive leadership. I know how to scale the right message without hollowing it out.

Together, that mix is the point.

Herwood Creative sits at the intersection of strategy and intuition, structure and creativity, business rigor and human feeling.

We believe the best brands do not just communicate clearly. They make people feel understood.

We believe great marketing is not manipulation. It is resonance.

We believe the strongest businesses are often built by people who notice what others overlook. The emotional friction. The trust gap. The missed opportunity to make someone feel seen.

And we believe that if you are building something meaningful, your brand should reflect that from the very first moment someone encounters it.

That is what we care about helping people build.

Not just content.

Not just campaigns.

A brand people can actually feel.