GrowthWays Partners

10/01/2026

I’m speaking at Microbiome Times Forum USA this month!

October 21-22, South San Francisco.

This is my first time at this event, and I’m genuinely excited to be part of it. It’s always good to be in a room with people who are actually building in this space.

If you’re around the Bay Area that week, I would love to see you there.

Download the agenda and register: https://www.microbiomeforum-usa.com/

09/30/2026

We run every decision through two questions.

Does this move us toward our Destination AND is it Good for all stakeholders?

This isn’t just useful when making business decisions; it’s a framework for ANY of life’s decisions.

Clip below ↓

09/29/2026

Would you hand this to your grandmother? To your kid?

Not just “does it pass spec.”

Would you actually give it to them, for their specific need, and feel good about it?

At Ganeden, every formulation had to clear spec first. Testing, claims, compliance. Non-negotiable.

But spec was the floor, not the bar.

The real question came next: if your grandmother needed this for her joints, or your kid needed it for their gut, would you choose this for them?

Every single day, not just launch day?

If the answer was no, it didn’t ship.

Here’s why that matters. Your consumer is someone’s grandmother. Someone’s kid. They’re trusting you with the exact same need.

If it isn’t good enough for your family, why is it good enough for theirs?

I still call it The Family Test, and I still ask every founder I work with to run it.

Supplements. Skincare. Functional food.

Same test, every category.

09/24/2026

I recorded a podcast with Melinda Lee this week.

She hosts Speak In Flow, built for CEOs and leadership teams who want to get sharper at communication and decision-making. Right up my alley.

We talked about the Guardrailing® Growth Framework and why so many companies drift off course without ever noticing.

I gave her one of my favorite analogies: you don’t usually know you’ve made a bad turn on a mountain road... until you’re driving off the cliff.

Business decisions work the same way.

Everything can feel fine for months, sometimes years. Then the bad call finally catches up, and by then it’s expensive, or too late, to change course.

That’s the whole point of Guardrails. You feel the wheel drift while there’s still time to correct it. Before you’re airborne.

Melinda’s easy to talk to and asks great questions. I genuinely enjoyed this one.

Full episode is on YouTube:

How does a decision stick when priorities and how to accomplish the...

09/23/2026

Here’s what nobody tells you about patents.

Filing one does two things. It starts the clock on protecting your idea, and about 18 months later, it publishes exactly how your invention works, for anyone to read.

That second part is the one most founders don’t see coming.

You’ve just handed competitors a roadmap for designing around you. And you’re on the hook for prosecution costs up front, then maintenance fees for as long as you want to keep it alive.

Trademarks and trade secrets don’t get nearly as much airtime, and that’s a mistake. Trademarks can last indefinitely, as long as you keep using the mark and file your renewals on schedule.

Trade secrets go a step further and keep your actual method private, instead of handing it to anyone who pulls the filing.

None of this means skip patents. It means knowing exactly what you’re buying, and what you’re giving up, before you reach for the obvious choice.

Watch the video here ↓

09/22/2026

How to spot a red flag in the hiring process:

At Ganeden, most commercial hires went through an assessment I’d started using after years of getting it wrong.

One candidate came back with an interesting note.

The tool read him as someone who might be using the role to get into the supplement industry, learn the category, build the relationships, then go off and start his own thing.

Everything else about him was strong. Background, references, the way he carried himself in a room.

So I asked the question I always ask: where do you want to be in five years?

He said he wanted to start his own supplement company.

I remember thinking, wow, it nailed it.

I ended up passing on him.

Not over character, he was honest, and honesty is rare in a final-round interview. Part of me would have loved to have him on the team.

But he saw the role as a door into an industry. I was looking for someone whose first thought in the morning was how to serve our customers better.

Both are legitimate. The first one just wasn’t what I needed.

Here’s what’s interesting.

Destination clarity usually gets talked about at the company level.

But…

It turns out it works exactly the same way across a desk in an interview.

09/17/2026

Every founder we talk to has some version of the same instinct.

Grow aggressively, and the value follows.

So the focus shifts to more customers, more markets, more speed.

It feels productive. For a while it even works.

Then customer quality starts to vary. Margins start eroding. And the business gets harder to sell, not easier, even as revenue keeps climbing.

Take a listen ↓

09/15/2026

We were one of the first companies to trademark the strain name of a bacteria.

Sounds strange to say out loud. But at Ganeden, from an IP perspective, it mattered more than almost anything else we did.

Probiotics are a strange category to protect.

You can’t patent a naturally occurring organism. And once you publish clinical research, that research is public. Anyone can read it, anyone can cite it.

That created a problem for us.

Once BC30 had real published data behind it, other companies started citing our trials to support their own probiotic ingredients. But two strains can look identical on a Certificate of Analysis, share the same genus and species, and behave completely differently once they're actually in a product.

So we did something most ingredient companies hadn’t thought to do...

We trademarked the strain designation itself.

BC30's actual name is Bacillus coagulans GBI-30, 6086. That designation, not just the brand name “BC30", became a trademarked, defensible identity. It let us say, clearly and legally: this specific research is about this specific strain. Not the genus. Not the species. This one strain and only this one strain.

Once that was in place, enforcement got simple.

I’m not a guy who sends letters from lawyers.

I just pick up the phone. "Hey, your folks are using our clinical data to support your product claims but you know that’s not how it works. Clinical data is strain specific and the clinicals were not performed using your strain, so if you could stop doing that we would appreciate it."

No formal notice. No escalation. Just a direct conversation, one operator to another. And we never had an argument about it.

Most founders wait until a real threat shows up to think about what’s defensible in their business.

By then, it’s usually more expensive and a lot less simple.

It’s one of the many things we consider when we evaluate a business.

Contact us if you want advice from people who have been through it all before.

09/10/2026

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Michael A. Johnson on his podcast, “The 42 Podcast.”

The premise of his show is: We already know the answer. The job is finding the right question.

My question: What’s your Destination?

Not your goal. Your Destination. The actual place you’re building toward, and how you’ll know once you’re there.

We put that question to the test using Ganeden’s early years and the $155 million sale as the case study.

Watch it here:
https://youtu.be/4ZuHLeDnPDA

Thanks again to Michael; I had a great time :)

About This Guest:Michael Bush is the founder of GrowthWays Partne...

09/09/2026

A simple Destination checklist every CEO should think about if they want to sell their company one day:

→ How much, to the dollar?
→ When, to the day?
→ And to whom, by name?

That’s what an actual exit Destination looks like. Not “I want to sell eventually."

Having a clear destination lets you work backward from your goal to establish pricing, margin profiles, sales forecasts - everything.

After all, It’s helped me participate in over $300M+ in exits.