Why I Named My Business Tiger's Eye

My daughter just turned 1. My business turns 2 in June. That same month, my wife and I watched our embryo begin its journey to become Mei Margaret — and a seedling idea began its journey to become Tiger's Eye. My two babies. One growing in my body, one taking root in my mind — both with my whole heart.

For years, my notebooks were full of business ideas with no name attached. Just me trying to find my purpose — to make life better for someone else. This is the story of how I found it.

The name Tiger's Eye came to me in 2021, when I was building a plan to help artists navigate NFTs. The stone felt like the right metaphor — it forms under pressure and brings clarity. That's what I wanted to do for creatives overwhelmed by a technology that was moving faster than anyone could make sense of. But my gut said no. Not enough passion. Too many unknowns. I filed it away and waited for the right moment.

After nearly a decade at Starbucks, I joined a global consulting firm to lead their design practice. Within months, my role shifted entirely — suddenly, I was inside some of the world's biggest brands in retail, food & beverage, and hospitality, figuring out in real time what this new technology could actually do. Most people weren't running from it yet. They didn't even know it was coming. We were already inside it.

And everything I knew about brand started setting off alarms. Not because the technology wasn't powerful — it was extraordinary. But great brand work has never been about the tools. It's about knowing who you are, what you stand for, and how to make someone feel that across every single touchpoint. That understanding doesn't come from a prompt. It comes from years of living inside brands that actually mean something to people.

I was in a brainstorm when someone said:"What if we just replaced all your album artwork with AI-generated images?"

Absolutely not. That was my exit cue.

Tiger's Eye forms under immense pressure deep in the earth. What emerges brings clarity, balance, and vision — pressure doesn't just break things, it shapes them.

I think about that a lot right now. Brand leaders are being asked to do more than ever before with less than they've ever had. Budgets cut. Teams smaller. The expectation to produce more content, more GTM campaigns, more assets, faster — while somehow never compromising on quality or meaning. It is a lot of pressure. And I watch so many brands buckle under it, reaching for shortcuts that cost them the very thing that made people love them in the first place.

Brand excellence is not a luxury. It is the thing that makes people choose you, stay with you, tell someone else about you. And it cannot be outsourced to anyone — or anything — that doesn't understand brand first.

That's what Tiger's Eye is built on. Not AI. Brand. Deep, practiced, hard-won brand expertise — from people who have spent decades inside some of the most iconic brands in the world, who also know how to use every tool available to make that brand work harder and go further than ever before.