Business development through the lens of an Idea Engineer.
I help organizations grow strategically by identifying new opportunities, leaning out cost of goods, forming key partnerships, and building long-term value, not just closing deals..
Free. No pitch. Battle-tested advice. If I cannot help, I will tell you.
Three moves. That is the whole job.
Business development is not a deck. It is walking your floor, naming the accounts you are not calling on, and making the first call myself.
Walk the floor before I open my mouth.
Most of the money is hiding in plain sight: a print bench set up wrong, a label spec nobody has questioned in eight years, a bulk pack that should be a tote. I find it by looking at it, not by asking for a spreadsheet.
Find the next vertical.
The product you already make almost always fits a customer you have never called. Small arms parts to the Marines. Frozen aerospace epoxies. Phase-change materials for PCB boards. Peelable windshield masking. I connect the product to the buyer.
Open the account, then hand you the keys.
I do the first meeting, the first sample, the first PO if that is what it takes. Then your team runs it. You do not pay me to hold a relationship hostage.
Products I have actually sold, sourced, or built.
Not a category list. A short sample of what has moved through my accounts and my shop.
- Marine Corps small arms components
- Frozen and mixed aerospace epoxies
- PCB phase-change thermal management
- Peelable windshield masking
- Thermal camera foam pivots
- Tool shadowing + ergonomic benches
- Retail barcoding compliance
- Pallet-scale PPE during COVID
Eight areas. All aimed at one thing: revenue you can measure.
Labeling and Barcoding Compliance
Open shelf space at Walmart, Amazon, Target, and Home Depot. Kill chargebacks. Choose the right substrate, adhesive, and print method the first time.
Industrial Sales and Daily Operations
Adhesives, labels, barcoding, packaging, foam protection, tool organization, specialty metal fabrication. Whale hunter account targeting, channel mix, 5S and lean floor discipline.
Pricing and Margin Recovery
Find margin your customers quietly took back over the last three years. Surcharges, escalators, LTA renewals. Language that survives procurement pushback.
Product Development and Sourcing
Napkin sketch to patent to first production run. Domestic fabrication in Georgia, overseas sample sourcing in Asia and Latin America, or the hybrid that actually fits your margin.
IP Strategy and Defense
Five issued patents, five issued trademarks, 4.5 year federal defense won against Monster Energy Drink Corporation. IP advice from someone who has actually paid the lawyers.
Small Business Operations and Cash
Vendors, AR, AP, working capital. The boring stuff that keeps you alive. When to use a factoring company, and when it eats you alive.
AI for Operations
Where AI actually pays back on a shop floor or in a warehouse, where it does not, and how to vet the consultants selling it to you. Internal usage policies included.
Website Design and Development
Landing pages that capture leads, informational sites that rank, multi-page builds with real API connections and storefronts. No lock-in to one vendor.
Keaton Smith. Owner-operator. Not a podium consultant.
Keaton runs Country Innovation & Supply and Beast Hack out of Winder, Georgia. Two decades of building, selling, sourcing, and defending products. He supplies some of the largest manufacturing and defense companies in the world, fought a federal trademark battle against Monster Energy Drink Corporation, sold pallets of PPE to Honeywell during COVID, and grew a distribution company from a $35,000 survival year into a multi-product million dollar operation.
Read the full storyFundamentals first. Fill the gap. Build the thing that doesn't exist yet.
What are you selling that nobody knows about yet?
Free. No pitch. Battle-tested advice. If I cannot help, I will tell you.
What I have actually done.
Built a manufacturer and distribution company from $56K year one to over $1M in revenue, through anxiety, depression, and a $35K survival year.
Survived and grew during COVID by pivoting to PPE for Honeywell and barcode labels for testing labs.
Invented and patented Beast Hack: 5 US patents, 5 federal trademarks, 4.5 year trademark defense won against Monster Energy Drink Corporation.
Trained at 3M Converter College. 18+ years deep in industrial sales, sourcing, labeling, barcoding, and specialty fabrication.