Rising From LITERAL Ashes (bananas beginnings!)

Joseph Panetta

Fractional CMO | “makes the complex simple, the boring unforgettable and the risky wildly successful” | Experience Architect | Framework

August 28, 2025

Outside of starting my own company, I had always worked FOR or WITH someone.  I was hired in many capacities at many levels by multiple clients whose needs varied widely.

Phoenix Product Technologies was created out of the demise of a former entity (hence, Phoenix).

Fun story: The former entity bought a public shell in order to gain investment.  It was a penny stock, and the ‘founder’ came to regret being beholden to individual shareholders.  Turns out he was a charlatan who had run similar schemes before and narrowly escaped serious consequences.  Note: We found out all of this a bit too late, as the company crashed and burned and he absconded with $250,000 of investor money to Texas (last we heard). 

The real ‘victim’ here was the product – it was good.  Had a solid following.  By all accounts, it was a great topical pain relief product.  Most importantly, it had a client base.

That client base would go wanting, now that the parent company was defunct.

I was part of a group of executives who connected to form a solution for that client base – a firm that would keep making the product (different name, different variants) and supplying it to the growing list of customers.

An SEC investigation into the failed company was underway, and some investors stepped in to try to revive both the company and the brand.  Their attempt was as crazy as this story – and it failed too.

When we launched Phoenix, courtesy of two investors, we were profitable day 1.  The exec team took no salaries.  The only people who got paid were the sales team – commission only.

My fellow founders elected me CEO.  I pushed back, only relenting when they agreed that my job was to make myself obsolete.

I’ll spare you the twists and turns, but suffice it to say, it was a roller coaster like any other early-stage enterprise.  Luckily, we were a civil group, we worked well together and with our investors.  Scale was a problem (again, very much like other small start-ups during COVID).

After four years, I stepped down and away from the company, sold my shares.  I look back fondly on those days.  It was hard, lots of tough calls and tight situations, but somehow we pulled through. 

#learnedalot