Before the restaurant, I was the marketing director for some of Ontario's largest festivals. When new ownership took over the London Ribfest, I helped take it from 20 vendors to over 300 — completely filling the park. I've been a vendor at 50+ trade shows myself, and over my career I've professionally analyzed more than 250 — sales, marketing, promotion, lead capture, the works. If your business sells at events, festivals, or expos, I've already pattern-matched your problem.
In 2012 I opened a dessert shop in a market with 15 frozen yogurt competitors. By year three, every other one had closed. We ran from 2012 to 2022 on a full-stack marketing engine — gorilla campaigns, GBP ranking, social, digital ads, local partnerships, the works — averaging 300 to 650 customers a day, with a top sales day of 900+ people through the door. That decade taught me everything I now teach home service owners about customer flow, channel mix, and why most marketing budgets bleed where the owner never thinks to look.
I've written the playbook — through 28 years of running, owning, printing, festivaling, and selling."
For 28 years I've also owned and operated my own marketing agency — currently Chil Consulting, working with home service brands across Ontario. Twenty of those years were spent in print and physical marketing: paper, signage, magazines, vehicle wraps, promotional product. I've handled mass print & magazine distribution across Canada, helped startup food brands go national coast-to-coast, and consistently helped small home service operators 3× to 10× their lead flow.
The through-line: I'm a diagnostician. I walk into a business, look at every dollar coming in and going out across every channel — physical and digital — and I tell you exactly where you're bleeding. Then I prescribe the fix. After 28 years, I've usually seen your problem before. That's the only thing I sell.