I'm a ship-it person. My instinct, in almost every context, is to get something out, learn from real people, and iterate from there.

In the world of Oui, We Studio, that's how we've operated. I love beta testing new services and new ways of working with our community.

(More on that towards the end of this issue.)

But Casa Noon was different.

When it came to Sabbatical Serum, we had to get the science right. Then the packaging. Then the proprietary IP. Then the brand. So three years after concepting it, we finally launched — and this week, Sabbatical Serum won Best Retinol Alternative in the Shape awards.

Amongst every other brand out there. I cried. Happy tears. It’s hard to explain to someone who hasn't poured that much time into something without knowing if it would ever land, I know you know.

Thank you to everyone who's believed in this brand so far. This one's for all of us.

Three things we've done in the last few weeks that I'd recommend you consider, no matter what stage you're at in building your brand:

1. Turn your earliest supporters into affiliates — all of them.

We emailed our first 3,500 Casa Noon newsletter subscribers and invited every single one to become a ShopMy affiliate. Not a select few or the ones with big followings. Literally all of them. 115 community members signed up to promote the brand in the first week alone.

This matters for a few reasons: people who already love your product are your most credible marketers, and giving them a structure to participate makes that love actionable. Affiliate programs aren't just a revenue play, they're a belonging play. When someone can say "I'm part of this brand," they talk about it differently.

2. Activate creators beyond the affiliate layer.

Affiliate is a great entry point, but it's still transactional. I decided my next move was to go deeper. In the last few weeks, we opened an investment round in Casa Noon structured specifically for creators.

My friend Jaclyn, she’s the CEO of Bento, the platform for creators, and I built this opportunity together because so many founders and creatives have been asking about getting into angel investing. And I personally want those people as actual stakeholders in this company. A creator who has equity shows up differently than one who has a discount code.

They're invested in the outcome, not just the post. If you're at a stage where you can offer that kind of participation, think seriously about who you'd want it to be. (I share this with no intention to solicit or give personal investment advice).

3. Get into rooms where decision-makers actually are.

Personally, I'm going to Cannes Lions for the first time. June 22–26, Cannes, France — the International Festival of Creativity. I've watched this event from the outside for years, followed the work, read the case studies, and this year I decided, I’m getting in the room (or on the beach, actually).

I'm approaching it differently than I would before. Not trying to see everything. Not building my schedule around panels I could watch on YouTube after the fact. I'm going specifically for the conversations. I'm paying attention to LIONS Creators — their dedicated creator economy track — and the Insights & Trends stream.

The real ROI of an event like this isn't just the content. It's being in a place where the people shaping your industry are also between sessions, also looking for a real conversation, also more reachable than they are in any other context. That's the move if you ask me. I'll report back.

Blank Brand Syndrome — And How to Get Out Of It

Do this right now. Pull up three "premium" brands in your space. Cover their logos. Ask yourself: do you know who they are? Can you feel anything that distinguishes them?

If the answer is no — that's Blank Brand Syndrome.

Here's how it happened: somewhere between 2018 and 2021, a visual vocabulary crystallized for what "trustworthy, modern, premium" was supposed to look like. High-contrast serifs (usually Cormorant Garamond or something adjacent). Cream or off-white backgrounds. Sparse layouts. Lowercase wordmarks. Muted, skin-toned imagery.

Brands like Necessaire, Westman Atelier, and Soft Services were early to this — and they built real, recognizable businesses. But then the template became so widely adopted that it stopped communicating anything. When everyone agrees on what expensive looks like, expensive stops looking like anything.

This wasn't anyone's fault. It was the natural entropy of a trend. But the result is a landscape full of brands that look credible and feel interchangeable.

What's breaking out of it right now:

The brands generating real cultural attachment, not just engagement, are the ones with what I can only describe as a mark of a human hand. Something that couldn't have been AI-generated. Something that couldn't have been built by the same template as everyone else.

Look at what Miu Miu is charging $2,550 for right now: a hand-embroidered crochet bag. Loewe's most coveted accessories are hand crafted pieces like this. At the highest level of luxury, the signal has shifted from refined to made by a person.

Casa Noon was built with this in mind from the start. Coastal blue. Surf report references. Handwritten postcard elements. Things that are specific to a world — not just a category. And I'll be honest, we had to fight for it. There were early conversations about pulling it more "clean." But clean-and-elevated is exactly where everyone else was running.

The test I give every brand I work with:

Cover your logo. If someone who knows your category could mistake your brand for any of your competitors — you don't simply have a differentiation problem, you kind of have a world-building problem. Your brand hasn't created a universe someone wants to live in. It's borrowed one someone else already built.

The good news: this is fixable. And the window to fix it is now, before handmade, textured, and genuinely idiosyncratic become the next template, too.

What you can actually do with this:

Two ways to work together right now. Both are built around the same thing: getting you clear on what makes you magnetic, and giving you a plan to build from it.

I shared this on threads and had so many requests to make this a service….

It truly is something I've known about myself for a long time: I can spot your zone of genius, your lore, and what will make people fall in love with you before you can.

I created a service for this, and it's now available as a 45-minute 1:1 intensive.

You have a zone of genius. The specific quality that makes people obsessed with you, your work, and your point of view — a through-line connecting every chapter, every pivot, every interest you thought was a random side quest. Most people can't see it in themselves, not because it isn't there, but because you're always too close to your own story to see the shape of it. You cannot read the label from inside the jar.

Here's how I do this:

Strengths spotting. A strength isn't just what you're good at — it's what makes you feel strong doing it. I can see the overlap between what makes you feel strong and what makes other people respond to you. That overlap is where your genius lives.

Empathic accuracy. Psychologist William Ickes found that you read people most accurately when you have no personal stake in the outcome. I'm not you. I have no ego investment in your blind spots, your fears, or the stories you've been telling yourself — which means I can often see you more clearly than the people closest to you, and more clearly than you can see yourself. This is the thing I'm exceptionally good at, and the hardest one to explain until you've experienced it.

Narrative intelligence. The ability to see your story and put language to it before you can tell it coherently — the thread connecting every version of you, every chapter, every interest you thought was a detour.

If you’d like to book a session, you can do so here.

This is the deeper version. A full day together, including lunch and dinner, with focus on one (or more) of these four areas:

1. Offer Architecture & Revenue Alignment Design or refine your signature offers — courses, retreats, memberships, CPG products, or physical spaces — and align your pricing, structure, and sales model with how you actually want to live and earn.

2. Cult Brand Blueprint — Lore, POV, Rituals & Vibes Build the foundation people become obsessed with: your brand's origin story, point of view, rituals, and the specific energy that makes someone say "I need to be part of this." This is the work that turns a good brand into a followed one.

3. CEO Strategy Visibility, press, creator partnerships, and high-impact opportunities — 5-figure brand deals, media features, speaking gigs, book pitches. Plus the decision-making clarity and leadership presence that makes all of it sustainable.

4. Creative Direction & Content Strategy We'll shoot content together and build your story-forward strategy — visuals, messaging, and a clear plan to post with purpose.

Every session includes my Cult Brand Blueprint™ — a full strategic audit and brand document from me and my team that you keep and build from long after our day together.

I have two openings in LA for July or August, one in Paris the week of June 29th and one in New York in September.

Payment plans available. Inquire at [email protected].

Think of me as your brand sherpa: I know where you're going, how to get there, and I make sure nothing goes out misaligned. Each month, we have a strategy call, and you get an updated content plan and brand strategy document. It's all built on my Cult Brand Blueprint™ framework.

This one is for you if you have an audience, a product that's ready, and a brand that needs the strategic infrastructure to match. Beauty founders, fashion labels, wellness brands, creative entrepreneurs — the ones who are generating revenue and know that what they're missing is the foundation underneath.

This is the number one request we've been getting. You need a creator to help you — and you don't want to go to a traditional agency for that.

So here's the plan: You'll get brand strategy from me. Content from my Studio team, created and delivered to you each month — ready to post. It'll be either photo-forward or video-forward, depending on where your brand lives and what we decide you and your company need.

This one is for you if your brand needs help and you need a team that can execute from a brand brief — not a mood board and a vibe.

Engagements start at $3,500/month.

If you're interested, simply let us know here, and we'll set up time to chat.

My friend Michele has built a company for crafters called GoSadi. During New York Tech Week, she’s hosting a Crafting Community Conversation. Register here.

Interested in joining a community of founders learning to raise capital led by women who’ve done it time and time again? Join Dream Ventures founders circle (I’m also a member!) here.

One more thing before you go: we turned part of the Cult Brand Blueprint™ into a free guide — How to Build a Brand World — and it's built for the founders who are ready to go deeper than aesthetics. Stay specific. Stay honest about who your brand is for. The brands that do that work don't have to fight for attention — they attract it.

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