How to Turn Heads by Running Your Business Your Way with Alex Pratt

When taste, mission, and persistence collide

Alex Pratt started life inside a family business that fixed problems with metal and machinery. That upbringing taught him something entrepreneurs often learn the hard way: craftsmanship matters, but so does the discipline to choose what actually moves a company forward. Good Boy Vodka would eventually occupy a crowded shelf of ready-to-drink cocktails, but the route from trailer manufacturing roots to national distribution was a study in deliberate trade-offs—time management, smart spending, and a mission that made the product mean something beyond its ingredients.

Early decisions that shape longevity

Founders build muscle memory before they scale. Pratt describes his early checklist as almost ritual: a handwritten pad of daily objectives that separates what must get done from what might feel gratifying to chase. That habit reflects a broader principle for emerging companies that feel pulled in a dozen directions—the finite resource of time must be applied to tasks that move revenue, distribution, or consumer awareness forward, not only to items that provide immediate gratification.

The discipline of smart spending

Launching a beverage brand can be deceptively expensive. Pratt’s team adopted a rule of thumb: every dollar spent must have a measurable outcome. That shifted conversations away from vanity branding to investments that returned shelf velocity, measurable trial, or demonstrable reach. The decision-making framework reframes marketing and operations as an engine where accountability sits at every line item.

Understanding the buyer’s habit

Behind branding and creative is a simple behavioral question: why does someone reach for this can? Pratt emphasizes seeing products from the shopper’s perspective—taste, price, packaging, and health claims now dominate purchase decisions. Good Boy’s formulation—no sugar, zero carbs, clean ingredients—was intentionally aligned with a health-conscious trend in beverages, a detail that helped earn trial and repeat purchases in a market where small margins and short shelf time can kill a launch.

Distribution as the decisive filter

Pratt repeats a blunt truth: a great product without distribution is invisible. The early days were defined by relentless outreach and a willingness to accept small placements while building momentum. The beverage shelf is unforgiving; retailers will test novelty but will also quickly pull product that doesn’t sell. That pressure forces founders to think like sellers as much as makers—inventory forecasting, promotional cadence, and localized marketing all become survival skills.

Persistence over polish

Despite the dominance of large suppliers with massive advertising budgets, smaller brands can win by being nimble and creative. Pratt credits persistence—showing up repeatedly, polishing the pitch, and leaning into relationships with distributors—as the way to move from pleading for placements to receiving inbound interest. The transition from asking stores for space to hearing retailers request the product marked a turning point: an external validation that the brand could travel beyond the founder’s personal effort.

Turning product into purpose

What made Good Boy stand out wasn’t only the liquid; it was the mission. The brand’s tagline, “every pour helps a pup,” anchored a broader charitable approach that created emotional resonance. Money from sales funnels into a foundation supporting veterans, service animals, and breast cancer causes—hyper-local donations that scale into a national footprint. Pratt found that mission-driven positioning did more than create goodwill; it catalyzed relationships with retailers and consumers who wanted purchases to carry meaning.

Packaging purpose with partnership

Strategic collaborations amplified visibility. One example was a partnership with a well-known PGA figure that lifted the entire portfolio and opened doors that traditional advertising budgets could not. Pragmatic brand alliances—those that feel authentic to product and audience—can serve as multipliers, introducing a beverage portfolio to pockets of consumers who might otherwise never discover it.

Future-proofing a trendy category

Pratt acknowledges the ephemeral nature of beverage trends and designs the business with flexibility in mind. Product innovation stays tethered to consumer insights—health-forward formulations, targeted flavor extensions, and pricing strategies designed for the specific channels where shoppers buy. The company balances experimentation with guardrails: new SKUs are tested in real markets before national rollouts, and promotional spend is measured against tangible retail outcomes.

Operational readiness meets cultural relevance

Scaling also meant strengthening supply lines. When visibility spiked, co-packers and manufacturers took notice, reminding Pratt that operations must be able to absorb sudden growth. The lesson is pragmatic: brand momentum requires parallel investments in production and distribution capacity, so opportunity doesn’t stall into bottlenecked demand.

A moment when the brand outgrew its founders

The turning point came quietly: Pratt and his team noticed Good Boy appearing in stores and restaurants without their direct involvement, a sign that the brand had reached beyond the daily hustle. That moment—when placement and consumer traction started to occur organically—validated months of painstaking outreach and confirmed the combination of product, mission, and persistent selling could create independent momentum.

In marketplaces defined by crowded shelves and fleeting attention, a brand’s fate rests on a handful of compounding choices: how founders allocate scarce time, whether every expenditure can be justified by measurable impact, and how closely product design mirrors consumer habits. Add to that an authentic mission and the tactical courage to pursue unconventional partnerships, and the improbable becomes plausible. For founders watching Good Boy’s arc, the lesson is not a single hack but a mosaic: do the small, necessary things well, and sometimes luck arrives where effort meets preparation.

The industry will continue to shift, but the discipline behind those early decisions—the relentless prioritization, the measurable spending, and the insistence that the product must earn its place on the shelf—will outlast any trend.