A creative operator who builds working products, brands, and stories with whatever's lying around. A laptop, a camera, a stick of gum, a paper clip, and 23 years of figuring it out.
You have a side bet that could be huge. It's been sitting in a doc since 2023.
Most great business ideas die in the side-project graveyard. Not because they're bad ideas. Because the executives who have them don't have the time, team, or playbook to build them. Sound familiar?
Your A-players are running the business you already have.
They can't also be the founders of your next one. That brilliant new product idea isn't on anyone's sprint board. It's a Google Doc collecting dust.
Agencies build whatever you spec.
They can't tell you what to build, who to sell it to, or how to price it. That's still on you. After you spend $200k, you find out the spec was wrong.
The idea keeps getting moved to next quarter.
Like a gym membership you never use. Solid idea, real market, growing window of opportunity. But nobody owns it, so nothing happens.
One operator. The whole stack. Your idea, shipped.
Most founders need a team of six to ship a product. Bear's whole career has been proving you can do it with one person who knows enough disciplines to own the entire thing. That's not a flex. It's the offer.
Strategy you can defend in a board meeting.
Market math, pricing logic, and a positioning story that holds up when your CFO starts asking pointed questions. No buzzwords. No "innovate-disrupt" bingo.
Brand that doesn't look like a template.
Twenty-three years of brand systems for companies from startups to Fortune 500. The visual identity, the voice, the story. It looks like you, not Squarespace.
A real product, not a deck.
Working software. Real users. Stripe collecting real dollars. Not a roadmap of someday-features. Not a Figma walkthrough. Something you can demo on a phone.
A go-to-market that doesn't need a CMO.
Launch playbook, content engine, first-customer plan. The kind of stuff that usually requires a full marketing team. Built so a non-marketing operator can run it.
Three lanes. One operator. Twenty-three years of evidence.
Most of these were built solo or with tiny teams. That's the point. The MacGyver part isn't a metaphor.
Documentary & film
Films that made it to PBS, won Tellys, and held attention for a decade. The kind of storytelling executives wish their internal teams could pull off.
- Paving The Way
- HAPPYMESS
- Telly Awards
- Red Meat Lover
SaaS & digital products
Real software. Real users. Real revenue. Built mostly solo using the venture-studio playbook Bear is now offering to executives with their own side bets.
- SignUpGo
- TradeKit
- UserFinder
- FileJoy / MoneyFun
Brand & marketing leadership
The fractional CMO work that proves the strategy thinking is real. 100+ brand systems, 50+ nonprofit clients, and a track record that beats most full-time marketing departments.
- Grimco (Fractional CMO)
- Subaru, WashU, Seattle U
- Unify Your Marketing
- 100+ brand systems
Resourcefulness is a method, not a personality trait.
Inventory what's in the room
What does your business already have? Customers, channels, capital, data, relationships. The fastest products use what's already there. The slowest ones invent the wheel.
Find the smallest viable version
Not the MVP a developer would describe. The actual smallest thing that produces revenue. The version that proves the bet before you write a serious check.
Build it the way one person would
Modern tools, AI assistance, smart architecture. The same product that used to take a team of six and a year now takes one operator and a quarter. That's the unlock.
Ship it before you're ready
Get it in front of real customers and let their behavior tell you what's wrong. Most failed products died from over-planning, not under-building.
"The whole point of being a Digital MacGyver is that constraint is a feature. Small budget, small team, short timeline. That's when the interesting stuff gets built."
A career's worth of "yes, that actually happened."
The reason any of this matters.
Bear lives in Manchester, Missouri with his wife Jennifer and their two sons. He started Sizzle in 2002 because he wanted to do creative work that actually moved a number, not creative work that looked good in a portfolio.
Twenty-three years later, the mission is the same. The tools just got a lot more interesting.
Outside of work, he's at the Ethical Society of St. Louis running AV, building backyard patios, watching his kids' games, and yes, trying to figure out how to help his family without taking himself too seriously.
You have the idea. Let's see if it has legs.
Thirty minutes. No deck, no pitch. Just a conversation about what you're sitting on and whether it's worth building. If it isn't, you'll save yourself six figures and a year. If it is, you'll know exactly what to do next.
Book a call with Bear