Creative intent
What the piece has to make someone see, feel, or do—before anyone picks a material.
Growth Consultant · Fractional Executive · Print Fanatic
I turn market
friction into growth.
I help print businesses create profitable new applications—and help growing companies build the commercial and operating systems that turn smart ideas into measurable results.
Now booking · Advisory retainers · Project sprints · Fractional & interim leadership
Marine, IllinoisRemote-first · Global reach
Pressroom reality. Boardroom clarity.
The best growth strategy
has to survive contact with the work.
Most growth plans die between the slide deck and the shop floor. The substrate will not run. The channel will not sell it. Nobody owns the launch.
I work in that gap—where customer need, technical possibility, commercial discipline, and execution all have to agree before anyone gets paid.
Equal parts growth executive, product architect, executive translator, and unapologetic print nerd.
THE PRINT SPECIALTY
Application development + substrate selection
The substrate is not the surface.
It is part of the strategy.
I turn a creative ambition into a printed piece that can be produced, finished, repeated, sold, and scaled—at a margin that survives the second order.
That takes knowing why a substrate works, not just whether it runs, and treating coating, ink, press, embellishment, finishing, durability, and economics as one system instead of six handoffs.
Substrate fit
Film, paper, synthetic, adhesive, opacity, texture, and the environment it has to live in.
Print + coating
Press compatibility, ink behavior, white ink, color, and adhesion that holds.
Embellish + finish
Foil, varnish, texture, converting, folding, cutting, and assembly—at production speed.
Prove + scale
Test it, price it, train the sales team, launch it clean, and learn fast enough to repeat it.
WHY RAVENWELL
Every pebble counts
The Raven and
the Well
Once upon a time, there was a raven who lived deep in the forest, near an old farm with a forgotten stone well. Every morning, he left his home, flew over the trees, across the wide fields, and down to the river to bathe and drink. It was a long journey, but he made it every day.
Back near the farm stood that old well. There was water inside, but it sat far, far down — too deep to reach.
One day, the raven picked up a single pebble and dropped it into the well. Then he carried on his long flight to the river, as always. The next day, he did the same. And the next, and the next. One pebble, every day.
A sly fox watched and mocked him. “Silly raven, why waste your time on something so small, when there's already a whole river that way?”
But the raven ignored him and kept going.
Until one morning, he looked down into the well — and the water had risen. High enough to drink and bathe right there, at home. All those tiny pebbles had added up.
The moral: small, steady actions, even when they seem insignificant, accumulate into something meaningful.
years building products, channels, applications, and teams that outlast me
year-over-year growth, delivered in consecutive years
faster concept-to-market once launches ran on a real system
more order-intake capacity after an ERP and CRM rebuild
WAYS TO WORK
From a two-week look to a seat at the table
Match the engagement
to the moment.
30-day growth diagnostic
A fast, unsentimental read on the portfolio, pipeline, customers, commercial engine, and operating friction. You get a prioritized action map and a straight answer about what is actually holding growth back.
Start here if you want clarity before committing time or capitalNew-application sprint
One hard application, solved end to end—creative intent through substrate, press, ink, embellishment, finishing, durability testing, costing, and launch. If it cannot be produced profitably, you find out early and cheaply.
Brands, printers, converters, OEMs, and material suppliersProduct-portfolio reset
Rebuild category logic, lifecycle decisions, ROI priorities, decision rights, and the review cadence—then retire what is quietly costing you money.
Manufacturers with portfolio sprawl or innovation that has stalled outFractional commercial leadership
An embedded executive across growth strategy, sales, product, partnerships, systems, and operations. Real decisions, real accountability, a fraction of the seat.
Businesses that need senior horsepower before they need a full-time hireInterim GM / VP assignment
Hands-on stabilization and momentum through a search, transition, integration, or operating-model change—so the business does not idle while you find the permanent answer.
Boards, PE-backed manufacturers, and executive teamsExecutive advisory retainer
Standing access to a candid outside read: pattern recognition, decision support, and someone who will tell you when the plan is fine but the sequencing is wrong.
CEOs, commercial leaders, boards, and product executivesBuilt forPrint service providersPrint manufacturersSubstrate + coating businessesOEMsPE-backed manufacturersBoards + recruiters
THE GROWTH LOOP
A practical way through complexity
Strategy should move.
So should the business.
01
Find the friction
Start where growth is getting stuck.
Customer pain, portfolio sprawl, a stalled pipeline, weak channel pull-through, or an operating model that quietly stopped fitting the company. I name the constraint before anyone prescribes a fix—because most failed initiatives were the right answer to the wrong problem.
Proof at the intersection
of strategy and doing.
From regional instinct to a global product operating model.
Portfolio governance + launch system. Eight launches in 18 months, 30% faster to market.
Read the case studyA commercial system built to accept more growth.
ERP + CRM transformation. 300% more order-intake capacity, forecasts within ±5%.
Read the case studyA substrate capability turned into a growth engine.
Print application development. $1.2M in first-year sales.
Read the case studyCredibility is better
when other people write it.
“Dan is always willing to try new and different materials that differentiate us in the marketplace and enable us to be more profitable. With Dan’s help, we are a more successful business.”
“Dan’s understanding of digital printing equipment and substrate coating technologies is unparalleled. He is a phenomenal asset in the digital printing industry.”
“One of my favorite things about Dan is the unique combination he possesses of being incredibly analytical and highly optimistic and energizing.”
“Dan is efficient and gets great results in short order. His work ethic and subject-matter expertise helped us launch a world-class, one-of-a-kind security paper product line. Even though he was technically a client of ours, we often found ourselves treated like VIP customers.”
“I am always impressed by his creativity and integrity—he definitely takes a true partnership approach to customer relationships.”
“In 20 years of purchasing I have not found anyone who brings more to the table to meet any challenge we may face.”
Twenty years of making
the work connect.
Sales taught me to listen. Product taught me to choose. Operations taught me that reality always gets a vote. Executive leadership taught me how to make all three move at the same time, in the same direction, without a committee.
Dan Lawellin is a global business executive, growth operator, and print-industry specialist with 20+ years across P&L, commercial leadership, product management, operations, enterprise systems, and new-application development. He serves on Kernow Coatings’ eight-person global operating board and has led growth, portfolio transformation, OEM strategy across eight Tier-1 print OEMs, ERP and CRM modernization, and commercialization across North American and global markets.
START A CONVERSATION
Have a growth or print problem worth solving?
Bring me the messy middle.
That’s usually where the value is.
Direct is good.
Tell me what is stuck, what is changing, or what you are trying to build. First conversation is 30 minutes, costs nothing, and you will leave it with at least one useful thing whether or not we work together.
dan@ravenwell.com +1 918 991 8343LinkedIn