Suede’s first birthday was in June, and while we celebrated and reflected on her first year with loved ones at her birthday party, I also found myself reflecting on how much I have changed over the past twelve months. I saw a Substack Note around then that really resonated with me; it reads that “a child’s birthday is also a mother’s anniversary,” and a time to celebrate who she became, as well as who the child is becoming. Having a baby is a transformative experience for a mother’s mind, body, and soul; your life is forever divided into “before” and “after” your child comes into your life.

So, to commemorate this milestone, I thought I would do a one-year postpartum check-in (two months late, which just feels fitting for the season of life I’m in) and share how my relationships to things like caffeine, a public life, sacrifice, and much more have changed in this whirlwind, life-changing year.

If you follow me on Instagram, you already know that reestablishing my relationship to caffeine postpartum has been a journey. I quit caffeine while I was pregnant, but started integrating matcha back into my daily routine after giving birth. But one year postpartum, I’m still feeling highly sensitive to even the slightest bit of caffeine. Last week, I experimented with a decaf latte, and it made me feel so jittery and antsy.

While this development is slightly disappointing, since an iced matcha has long been a cherished ritual of mine, I’m making an effort to listen to what my body needs rather than forcing an old habit into this new phase of my life.

Reestablishing my relationship to caffeine is honestly a metaphor for how my relationship to everything has changed postpartum. Ordinary parts of my routine that were once a given, like a daily matcha, are now things that I have to be more mindful about. Living more intuitively and being flexible with my routines is a big theme for me postpartum. That being said, if you also have a postpartum caffeine sensitivity and have found some low-caffeine beverages that work for you, let me know!

How liberating to admit! I recently saw a mom I greatly respect talk about this. For some of us, the first 6 months are so hard that it can feel like you are doing everything you can to make it through. That was me, and I feel confident enough in my love of motherhood to admit that.

When I was in the thick of the newborn phase, I worried that my emotional exhaustion wasn’t maternal. That I was failing. That I (and now you are going to hear my darkest inner thought) shouldn’t be a mom. One thing I will remind myself of next time around is not to take anything I think about myself or my mothering in the early days to heart. I’ve thought a lot about whether I wanted to share this type of sentiment publicly, but I feel deeply compelled, from the root of my being, to make other mothers who struggle in the first year not feel so alone. Another thing I will do differently next time if I am experiencing the same things I felt this first time around: see a therapist! It’s okay for some stages of motherhood to be harder on you than they are for your friends or family members.

There are so many wonderful, incredible, fulfilling, amazing things about motherhood. AND, it comes with a lot of sacrifices. As anything worthwhile should! My mind is never fully present, my hours are not my own, my heart is walking around outside of my body. I say all of this not with disappointment but with reverence. It is a gift to be so devoted to motherhood that your selfishness has been suffocated. The sacrifices of motherhood aren’t easy but I believe they are the most meaningful and joy-producing sacrifices of my life!

Motherhood has forced me to recalibrate my relationship to virtually everything in my life, which was so hard and disorienting in the beginning. But on the flipside, it has been such a gift to become something new!

Being in the public eye brought a unique set of challenges, because I am a person who changes, like all people. But I also have a personal brand that is supposed to stay consistent. While many people loved my transition into motherhood, I got a fair share of “I liked you more before the baby” (a real DM I actually received, if you can believe it), “not interested in baby content,” “not here for baby recipes,” and it made me feel like I couldn’t step into my new season of life. My birth story got shared on Reddit, my breastfeeding journey got picked apart, and I got judged for having a nanny. Now that I’ve crossed over and am firmly on the other side of the transition into motherhood, I can look back on my early months with compassion for myself, a first-time mom navigating a massive transition in the public eye, and know that if I ever have to do something similar again, I will come out stronger and more compassionate on the other side.

Breastfeeding was a challenge for me, but solids have been my jam! I love introducing new foods to Suede and finding ways to pack her meals with nutrients. I do feel like it’s been a huge win for us that she will eat pretty much anything — roasted beets, pickled carrots, lemongrass soup, ginger chicken meatballs. I only have one kid, so I am slow to credit her eating habits to anything I have done (I’m leaving room for the reality that a future child could humble me), but we’ve been really intentional about exposing her to different flavors and textures from the beginning. I’ve written about how we introduced solids to her before if you want to read about that here.

Since Suede is mostly eating solids now (we are still doing two bottles a day, at wake-up and before bed, which I realize, as I’m writing this, I need to drop soon), I’ve been extra mindful about incorporating more protein and vegetables into both of our diets, since she loves to eat everything I eat. Even when I’m making something for Kyle and I, like this zucchini carrot bread with blueberries, I try to sneak some more nutrient-dense vegetables in because I know she’ll be wanting some. This has also made me wonder, “why don’t I always do that for Kyle and I?” Cooking for Suede has made me even more mindful of how many veggies we’re eating too. For dinners, Suede is a big fan of this gluten-free, dairy-free hamburger helper and sloppy joe skillet (big beef girl apparently), both of which are made with just one pot! Steamed vegetables and veggie egg bites have also been meal prep staples for me. If you’ve found some other go-to meals for your baby or toddler, share them in the comments!

Nothing could have prepared me for how gratifying and demanding the first year of motherhood would be! Beyond experiencing the joys and challenges of caring for a new life, becoming a mom has encouraged me to confront my own lifestyle habits head-on and reevaluate my relationship to just about everything. The result is a life lived more mindfully, less selfishly, and with more intention and depth.

In 2026, I’m wearing more hats than ever in my personal and professional life, juggling my content creation schedule with mom responsibilities, Annadea Beauty, and working on my first print cookbook, which is out early next year. Adding more to my plate means that my day-to-day routine is often a balancing act, making sure I’m allocating enough time to the most pressing work items, while also reserving ample time to spend with my family and fill my own cup.

The truth is, I often end most days with more on my to-do list than I started with, and I’ve learned to accept that. There are only so many hours in the day, and I’m so blessed to spend so many of them working on projects I’m passionate about with talented people who share my vision. Not every day looks exactly the same, but here’s a look at what a typical one looks like for me lately.

5:45 AM - Wake up

Rise and shine! Ideally, I like to wake up way before Suede to squeeze in some time for movement.

6:00 AM - Evlo strength workout

In the morning, I like to get some form of movement in before jumping into the day. Sometimes it’s a walk or a run or a pilates class but today it was an Evlo strength workout.

7:00 AM - Suede wakes up

From 7 to 8 it’s sweet time with my favorite girl!

7:30 AM - Breakfast

I love a quick and easy breakfast, and these protein overnight oats, topped with nut butter and berries, have been my go-to for years at this point

8:00 AM - Get ready

You can probably guess which products I’m getting ready with. Annadea, all day, every day! Today’s outfit was a little more dressed up than my usual work from home fit, since I was headed downtown for a very exciting meeting.

9:00 AM - Annadea executive team call

Once a week the Annadea executive team convenes to discuss the big picture, brand strategy, hiring decisions, budgeting, planning campaigns, and much more. Since we all work remotely, it’s great for all of us to get some face time and catch up on the latest.

10:00 AM - In-person meeting with TikTok

Going to an in-person meeting in downtown Austin took me back to my days of working a corporate job. If me from six years ago knew that I would be meeting with TikTok to discuss upcoming content plans for my beauty brand, she would be beyond ecstatic.

11:00 AM - A call on the go with the Annadea social team

Then I met with the Annadea social team on the way home to go over some new content we’re planning on sharing. Last week, we had a massive filming day with some amazing content creators, which included bedazzling some Annadea products. I’m so excited about how that content turned out and can’t wait to share it with you all soon!

12:00 PM - Meeting with my book publisher

After meeting with the social team, I met with my book publisher. Publishing a print cookbook has been a dream of mine since I started sharing recipes online, so the whole process of writing and producing this has been full of “pinch me” moments. Now that Annadea is live, I’ve been shifting gears a bit and spending even more time on the cookbook ahead of its launch early next year.

1:00 PM - Lunch

On especially busy work days, I’m extra grateful to have lunch prepped and ready to go. A grain or salad bowl packed with protein and colorful vegetables is my ideal mid-day fuel so I can avoid hitting that 3 PM slump.

2:00 PM - Work on the post that goes live today

After lunch, I spent some time editing a post that I was aiming to get live by the end of the day. I tend to film and edit my videos on separate days, so I’m not scrambling on the actual posting day.

4:00 PM - Post, then Suede time

After posting around 4 PM, our nanny went home, and it was time for me to spend some time with Suede!

5:00 PM - Grocery store trip

Around 5, we headed to Suede’s favorite place in the world, our local grocery store, Central Market. Getting a balloon at the front of the store and eating blueberries out of the container while we grocery shop is Suede’s version of Disneyland, her face lights up every time. We picked up some groceries for the week and headed home.

6:00 PM - Family dinner

After such a hectic day, it was a bit challenging to muster up energy for dinner, but I managed to do it! We made a version of my one-pan honey mustard chicken and potatoes dish, which is a delicious lifesaver of a weeknight dinner.

6:30 PM - Kyle takes Suede in the pool while I clean up

When it comes to getting household chores done, dividing and conquering is the best method. A few months back, Suede started taking swim lessons and has really loved being in the water. It’s also a great way to ensure she is more than tired enough for bed!

7:15 PM - Start bedtime routine

Around 7:15, we’ll start winding Suede down before bed. We’ll give her a bath, put on her pajamas, and read her some books while she drinks her baba, and (if we’re lucky), she’s usually out within thirty minutes!

8:00 PM - Work while we watch Silo

After Suede is asleep, Kyle and I will catch up on some work and and a TV show at the same time. Right now, we’re loving Silo on Apple TV+. Even though we’re still doing some work, this is definitely a wind-down ritual I look forward to.

These days, it often doesn’t feel like I have a moment to rest from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed. I end some days feeling depleted, and other days it feels like I hardly got anything done that I wanted to. But as exhausting as life can be, when I look at this schedule written out, I can’t help but reflect on how grateful I am to have my days be filled with so much that I love doing. Moving into this busier season of my life has helped show me that I have an even greater capacity to show up as a creator, boss, and mom than I previously thought I did, and that I can add boundaries and subtract chaos when necessary to keep directing my energy towards growing this life I love.

It’s been about six years since I decided to leave my corporate job to pursue a full-time career as a content creator. Since making that leap and growing my platform, I’ve only become a fiercer believer in the power of influencers to build trust between brands and customers. Content creators help brands meet consumers where they’re at, showing followers how a product can fit into their everyday routine, rather than showcasing a less relatable, highly stylized ad campaign.

But many marketing gurus online claim we’re approaching the end of influencer marketing, thanks to the rise of highly efficient affiliate marketing programs through ShopMy, TikTok Shop, and other platforms. The affiliate space is competitive, with some brands offering as much as 40% commission on sales, which can entice many influencers to participate, but eat away at a brand’s margins.

Plus, the priorities of brands and creators can sometimes be at odds. For example, many brands won’t consider a paid partnership with a creator until the creator has proved they can sell products through affiliate campaigns. But, on the other hand, some creators are reluctant to sign up for a new brand’s affiliate program, as it’s more challenging to introduce a new brand to followers and convince them to try it, rather than relying on an established, trusted brand name.

When it came time to plan Annadea’s marketing strategy with Chief Brand Officer Amy Lovell, I knew I wanted influencers to be a big part of how we spread brand awareness. But given we are a bootstrapped company, Amy and I wanted to ensure we were working with creators who were offering real value for the Annnadea brand. We also wanted to create a compelling affiliate campaign via Amazon in tandem with these influencers.

It turns out this was a lot harder than it looked. It required us to be even more thoughtful about the creators we decided to work with, thinking outside the box about who would best be able to help introduce Annadea to the world. Here’s some of what we’ve learned along the way.

When it came to reaching out to creators, Amy and I knew we didn’t want to just stick to beauty influencers. The Annadea brand is about being bold, spirited, adventurous, and balancing many things at once. We wanted to find ambitious women who lived out this ethos at full volume, unafraid to say “Yes” to what they really want and lead multifaceted lives.

We ended up gifting 400 To Dew Glow Serums and around 100 Glow-To trios to influencers, sixty of whom were influencer friends of mine. 75 of these creators came to us through our Annadea Partnerships Gifting Form, where influencers self-selected to be UGC creators for the brand (feel free to fill out this form if you’re interested in this program!). All of the creators we gifted products to were hand-selected, which was a time-consuming process, but ensured we sourced the perfect Annadea creators. Knowing that we wouldn’t be able to send thousands of units of product, we wanted to be especially intentional about who we gifted to.

While our largest influencer cohorts consist of lifestyle and casual beauty creators, we also reached out to corporate girl, makeup artists, moms, brides, nurses, active lifestyle creators, as well as creators who are vocal about having acne-prone skin. By partnering with a broad range of influencers, we aimed to show audiences how Annadea fits into a variety of lifestyles, especially for those on their feet all day who reach for long-lasting products and effortless beauty routines. Partnering with makeup artists at launch was also a great way to build credibility as a clean, high-performing beauty brand.

Amy and I also prioritized working with nano- and micro-influencers for the Annadea launch. Nearly 70% of the creators we ended up working with at launch had less than 50,000 followers. While I understand why it might be tempting to put all your energy towards securing mid-tier and macro influencers to maximize reach, we knew that partnering with emerging creators would likely increase our chances of engagement given that Annadea is also an emerging brand, and generate a larger volume of content.

When I was starting out with my influencing career and had less than 5,000 followers, I felt so honored when brands included me in their campaigns. I wanted to pay that feeling forward to influencers who are early in their careers right now.

Across these cohorts, we sought influencers who had big, bold, authentic stories to tell and partnered directly with them to develop content ideas. For example, we found an incredible creator, Isabella, who pitched us on filming her content in Croatia since her friends had just invited her on a last-minute trip. Not only did we immediately say yes, but we encouraged her to make the spontaneous trip a part of her content. Going on an impromptu adventure is completely in line with who we envision the Annadea girl to be.

On the other hand, another creator who is deep in wedding planning used Annadea to get ready for a date night. In her content, she mentioned remembering to find presence in her relationship instead of just focusing on planning the future. By showcasing a breadth of content, we wanted to highlight how Annadea can fit seamlessly into people’s full lives, through special, once-in-a-lifetime occasions and everyday routines alike.

One of the major takeaways from our influencer launch campaign was the importance of product education. Annadea’s makeup-skincare hybrids are unique in pigment and texture compared to other beauty products on the market. We learned that colorless products, such as the To Dew Glow Serum, require extra product education and content guidance to ensure they’re being best showcased on camera. Ensuring our creators understand the intention of the products is essential for capturing captivating images and videos.

Overall, I’m so pleased with how our influencer launch campaign turned out, specifically the breadth and depth of stories that creators told in their content. Seeing all of the products being shared on socials on launch day after solely using the products myself for months was a surreal moment.

Across influencer content, organic social posts, and reviews, it’s been so gratifying to see how Annadea fits in with a variety of lifestyles for women of all ages. Given my history with cystic acne, I know firsthand how personal the experience of beauty and skincare can be, so it warms my heart to see so many of these creators pouring their own personal stories and experiences into their content. I’m proud of the foundation we’ve built with this initial launch campaign, and excited to keep finding creative ways to bring Annadea to life in the months to come.

A few weeks ago, I was pushed to shake up my typical routine in many ways when I traveled to Oregon with my husband and baby for my brother’s wedding. I was so excited when my sister-in-law asked me to be one of her bridesmaids! The occasion called for a more full-coverage, high-glam makeup look than I usually wear, so I knew I needed to start practicing a few months in advance in order to nail the look and not be left with breakouts afterward.

Typically, I’m a natural makeup girl. I love a five-minute makeup routine consisting of a tinted SPF, my Annadea Glow-To Trio, and a little brow gel and mascara. When my acne was at its worst, I often shied away from wearing heavy makeup out of fear of making my breakouts worse.

But after lots of trial and error with skincare and makeup, I’ve found a handful of go-to products that I can wear on high-glam days without worrying about acne flare-ups. When I’m getting dressed up and know lots of photos will be taken, it’s fun to do a glam look to make special occasions feel even more celebratory.

I love watching people do their own version of a full-beat glam (if you do too, you will LOVE Shay Sullivan’s wedding makeup routine) and hearing what products they use when they want to look their best. I started practicing this look a couple of months in advance and was so happy with how my makeup turned out.

Here’s an overview of the products I used to achieve my high-glam bridesmaid look (with links!) as someone with acne-prone skin.

Annadea To Dew Glow Serum

This is the perfect serum base to prep your skin for a full glam look, adding a radiant, healthy glow under foundation. My makeup artist uses this on me, and her other clients, and every complexion product added on top melts effortlessly into the skin for the most natural, luminous finish. To Dew is a staple for both my no-makeup makeup days and full-beat glam days!

m.ph Le Skin Weightless Serum Foundation

This is the most gorgeous foundation I’ve ever used, blending effortlessly to give a flawless, second-skin finish. It doesn’t break me out, doesn’t appear cakey, and when paired with the To Dew Glow Serum, the finish is so radiant and natural, it practically looks like my own skin.

Make Skin Mimetic Concealer

I love this medium-coverage concealer that has a luminous, skin-like finish. It layers perfectly over the m.ph foundation to spot conceal and brighten the under-eye area.

m.ph Underpainting Face Highlight & Contour Palette

I primarily used the cool tone in this palette as a cream contour. For a full-day event like a wedding, where I want my makeup to hold up through many hours in the sun and through a night of dancing, I like layering cream products like this that adhere nicely to the skin to last all day.

Westman Atelier Contour Stick

This contour stick in the shade “Biscuit” is a tried-and-true staple in my makeup bag. The stick packaging makes it so easy to place the contour precisely, and it blends out smoothly for a natural, medium-coverage finish, adding the perfect cool-toned shadow to sculpt my cheekbones and nose bridge.

Annadea PTO Glow Bronzing Serum

After applying a cool-toned contour, I like adding some warmth back to my face with the Annadea PTO Glow Bronzing Serum. I love blending this bronzing serum on the high points of my cheekbones and temples for a buildable, sun-kissed glow that doesn’t appear overly orange.

Annadea Power Walk Blush Serum

The Annadea Power Walk Blush Serum gives a radiant, rosy glow to the cheeks that holds up through a full day of wedding festivities. I used the shade “Rose Trail,” a neutral, slightly cool-toned dusty rose that pairs well with so many different lip colors and eyeshadow looks.

Glossier Boy Brow

This brow gel is a cult favorite beauty product for a reason. The smaller brush makes it easy to comb through the brows precisely, and it holds the hairs in place all day without flaking.

Makeup Forever Artist Color Pencil Long-Lasting Lip Liner

I love the richly pigmented, blendable formula of this lip liner. I wore “600 Anywhere Caffeine,” a nude, pink color in a matte finish — it is my go-to lip contour shade!

m.ph Lip Ciggy Sheer Lipstick Balm

This lipstick balm keeps my lips hydrated and nourished all day and gives off a sheer, natural shine that lays beautifully over the Makeup Forever lip liner. I used “First Base,” a slightly cool-toned, mauve shade that matched my Power Walk Blush Serum shade perfectly.

Refy Lip Gloss with Hyaluronic Acid

To add even more shine to my lips, I layered this Refy Lip Gloss over the lipstick balm in the shade “Rosewood,” a slightly warm-toned pink shade. This also added so much moisture to my lips all day, so I didn’t have to worry about dryness or flakiness in photos.

Kosas Cloud Set Baked Setting & Smoothing Talc-Free Vegan Powder

For full-beat, long-wear makeup days, it’s so important for me to set everything in place with a translucent powder. I love that this powder sets all my makeup in place, adds a smooth, soft-focus finish to my skin, and keeps my shine at bay without getting rid of my glow.

If you have acne-prone skin like me, I totally understand the feelings of uncertainty when it comes to wearing full-beat glam makeup. But with the right combination of nourishing, non-comedogenic products, I’ve found a good routine that allows me to get glammed up without fear of breakouts. Let me know if you try out any of these products for your upcoming special occasions!

It feels like just yesterday I was ringing in 2026 and announcing plans to launch Annadea Beauty in the summer. But just like that, it’s already July, and Annadea is officially launched, with products available to purchase on annadeabeauty.com and Amazon (this still feels crazy to me).

Since launching a new beauty brand was one of my main objectives this year, my 2026 goals have looked a little different compared to past years. Instead of setting many small goals for myself, I set one giant goal. With that in mind, the words I chose to describe my intentions this year were “expand” and “expander.” Let me explain.

Let’s talk about the big goal: launching a new brand in a new-to-me industry while 1) running my current business at the same capacity, 2) writing a cookbook, 3) being a present and patient parent, and 4) staying sane (this last part is questionable).

I knew that starting Annadea was going to require me to rise to a new level of myself, which would ask me to be open to learning, asking questions, and drawing on a reserve of energy and patience I didn’t necessarily know I had. In short, I would need to EXPAND.

Stepping into the CEO role for a new brand is very different from being a content creator for your own personal brand. While I do work with brands and collaborators as a content creator, I can usually rely on myself for more of my day-to-day tasks. My schedule is a lot more flexible, and there are fewer stakeholders and team members to coordinate with. But leading a company is a whole other story.

The roles and responsibilities, and expectations and anxieties of being a CEO have stretched me to what I previously thought was my capacity, and then demanded even more. That feeling is exhilarating and inspiring. But also taxing. In this exciting new period of my life, I’ve found it necessary to be extra intentional about where I’m placing my energy so I can effectively rise to these new levels of myself.

Recently, my friend Margaret posed these questions to our friend Alex at her birthday party, and I think they’re so great to orient a mid-year check-in around:

• What are you leaving behind?

• What are you taking with you?

• What are you picking up?

Here’s what I’m leaving behind, taking with me, and picking back up as I continue to expand and find new levels within myself (and hope to inspire others to do the same).

Sugar-coating things. Kindness will always be a pillar of the way I operate in my personal and professional life. But as I’ve personally grown and expanded my business, I’ve learned that kindness can look like being clear, direct, and honest, rather than beating around the bush.

At Annadea, we’re a small team and are often all wearing multiple hats at once. Avoiding misunderstandings by getting straight to the point is often one of the best things I can do for a team managing many moving parts at once.

Living based on other people’s expectations. Everyone has their own idea of what it means to live a big, full life. And everyone should be free to pursue their version of that.

But I think it’s important to filter through the noise to figure out what I specifically want my own life to look like. It may not always look as flashy as “big lives” look online. It might not be exactly what my family, friends, and loved ones picture for their own lives. And that’s okay. Making sure I live up to my own expectations for myself is what matters most.

This came up for me most recently in the context of summer travel with a baby. There is so much external pressure (whether it be online or from well-meaning family) to travel with young children. Maybe for some that is a “big” life. But in the season I’m in, “big” looks more like the peace of routine. It’s okay to romanticize being home.

Mom group friends. In April, I started hosting swim lessons at my house for a group of mom friends and, I don’t say this lightly, it completely changed my experience of motherhood for the better.

I have remained close to my friends who don’t have kids yet, but I had no idea how much I needed mom friends. Now that swim classes have wound down, we’ve started a book club, and we’re discussing doing a Bible study. We set up play dates and go to chaotic happy hours with our babies. It’s so liberating to bond with people who understand the wild new-parent lifestyle.

Expanding the Annadea team. As I mentioned, we’re currently a lightweight team, all handling a lot of responsibilities at once. But as we grow as a brand, I’m excited to take on more talent who share our vision of creating clean, high-performing makeup-skincare hybrids that support ambitious women.

Recently, we just hired a social media agency that I’m so excited to work with. They actually learned about the opportunity through my social media profile, which is so amazing. I love growing our team from within our existing community. And on that note, we’re actually looking for someone to lead affiliate marketing at Annadea. If you think that might be you, please reach out to amy@annadeabeauty.com!

Date nights. It’s been quite a busy year for Kyle and me. I wouldn’t necessarily recommend starting a business and having a baby if you’re looking to optimize connection time with your spouse. But spending quality time together is important to us, so I’m excited to fit routine connection back into the chaos!

Regular massages. Now that I’m a mom, I’ve learned that I have to schedule time to relax, otherwise, it won’t happen naturally. Planning out regular massages where I’m away from my computer and phone and can have a small slice of me-time is something I’m looking forward to picking back up. If you have any masseuse recs in Austin, please let me know!

Auditing my work relationships. My content creation business was a one-woman show for quite a while, but I’ve been lucky to take on some talented team members as I’ve expanded. Ensuring everyone I hire operates at a high level of excellence and fits into my business as it grows will be important as I continue expanding my team.

Hiring a creative director and strategist for my content business. After launching Annadea, I’m going to start shifting a bit more of my focus to my upcoming cookbook launch. I’m taking on a creative director and strategist who can help me level up my content business’ brand strategy, positioning, and creative direction, and guide corresponding team members and agencies.

I can confidently say that 2026 has been one of the most exciting years of my life so far: from celebrating my daughter’s first birthday, moving into a new house, writing my first physical cookbook (more on that soon!), and launching Annadea Beauty. It has also been one of the most trying years of my professional life.

Because the truth is, we’re really just getting started. I truly can’t wait for what’s to come. And I’m looking forward to being even more thoughtful about my time and energy, leaving behind the things that no longer serve me and expanding myself even further to push the limits of my potential.

This is, to date, the single most exciting post, newsletter, email, whatever you want to call it, that I’ve ever written. Today we launched Annadea Beauty, the company I’ve been working on for the past 18 months and dreaming of far longer than that. Annadea is the combination of everything I value: joy, ease, sophistication, ambition, high-performance, and fun. I’ve been asked countless times to start a matcha brand, a protein-based brand, a supplement brand, and several other things that fall squarely in the food and beverage wellness industry. It makes sense, given my focus on creating recipes. But I knew I’d never build something just to put a product in the world that has my name on it. I wanted to make something that felt like a true extension of me and my life’s purpose, and would benefit many other people along the way.

So without further ado, here is Annadea.

We have three serum-based launch products: a blush serum, a bronzing serum, and a glow serum. You can read more about them here.

My favorite way to wear the products is to use the To Dew glow serum as the last part of my skincare routine, putting a generous amount on my entire face after my moisturizer. I like to apply the PTO Glow bronzing serum directly to the parts of my face I want to shade and contour, and I blend it with a brush. I finish with a couple of dots of Power Walk blush serum (often in the Rose Trail shade, though I love and use them all), also blended with a blush. We wanted to bottle that “wow, where did you just come back from?” vacation glow with these products, and I think we nailed it. Kyle and I haven’t traveled anywhere for over a year, but when I wear our Annadea products, people often think we’ve just arrived home from somewhere warm, rejuvenating, and revitalizing.

The thing I’ve cared about most throughout my entrepreneurial career is helping women feel like the best version of themselves. I use food to better my own life and I share my recipes in the hopes that they can help others feel better, too. The same goes for Annadea. We can’t always be jetting off to Mexico or Capri, but we can use products that help us get the same glow. And we, the Annadea brand team, can create a brand that celebrates women being healthy–the real kind of healthy, not the fad diet, trend-based health nonsense that clutters a lot of our algorithms. The kind of healthy that includes drinking tons of water, eating a balanced and colorful diet, having fun with friends on the weekend, getting outside for some sun and movement, and taking time for ourselves when we need it.

You can read more about how we brought our brand campaign to life in southern Morocco here, about the team that made it all possible here, how we funded the whole thing here, and the brands that inspired me while building Annadea here.

And of course, you can find Annadea on our website here or on Amazon here. If you’re an Amazon creator, we have an Amazon campaign live right now that you can sign up for. If you’re browsing the products, I’d be remiss not to point you in the direction of our Glow-To trio—it’s all three products, plus a scarf designed by a brilliant French artist, specially for Annadea.

If you have any questions as you dive into the brand, feel free to drop me a comment here or email support@annadeabeauty.com. Thank you all for your support along the way–we’re just getting started and I cannot wait for all that’s to come!

Today is a big day! I started dreaming about Annadea in March 2025, we committed to the idea and made our first couple of hires in April 2025, and we’ve been working on our product formulations and building our team for the past year and a few months. We announced Annadea, the company, back in January (in our defense, we thought we’d be launching sooner), and it’s been a painful six months of not being able to share the products we’re launching with you. Now that we’re exactly one week out from the big launch, I can finally tell you…

We are launching three incredible products:

To Dew Glow Serum, PTO Glow Bronzing Serum, and Power Walk Blush Serum.

Obviously I am biased, but these are truly my favorite products in my makeup bag. But don’t just believe me–our early testers have said the same thing.

Let me introduce you to each one, and to what I hope they’ll mean to you—join the email list to be the first to shop the launch.

To Dew is the entire ethos of Annadea, in an absolutely beautiful package. Annadea is all about accessing the healthiest version of you, the version that gets eight hours of sleep, drinks tons of water, eats well and lives even better. To Dew bottles that radiance and vitality. It’s sensorially rich but won’t clog your pores, it’s luminescent without being glittery. It’s versatile, working as well below makeup as it does on top of it. It’s the extra glow boost I’ve been looking for in my makeup routine

The most important thing, from a cosmetic standpoint, was that this product produces a natural looking glow. Most of the competitors on the market have some shimmer or sparkle that makes the product feel a little young or unnatural. The high-shine highlighter is great for a photoshoot or a big night out, but I wanted a product that would give a subtle glow, day or night.

Our final formula delivers! It’s a silky, hydrating serum that creates a natural glow while it works on your skin over time, layering niacinamide and licorice root to visibly brighten and even tone, a lipid and humectant complex to replenish what daily life strips away, and a four-part hyaluronic acid complex to hydrate at every level skin can absorb it. Ceramides and cholesterol reinforce the barrier underneath all of it, so the glow you see on the surface is backed by something structural happening underneath.

I wanted a product that could be the first or only step of a makeup routine, depending on the day. Worn alone, it reads as “did you just get a facial” skin. Mixed into foundation, it turns a flat base into something lit from within. Tapped onto the high points of the face, it becomes definition without a highlighter’s glitter. I’ve never loved a product that made me choose between looking done up and looking like myself. To Dew was built so I’d never have to.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I love a good bronzer. The issue I have with the existing bronzer market is that most of the products are too warm, reading orange on my face. The other thing that was important to me was performance–I have way too many products that I love the look of when I put them on but that fade within a few hours. I wanted this bronzer to stay put throughout the day and night.

The result is a weightless bronzing serum built around niacinamide and an antioxidant complex of astaxanthin, resveratrol, CoQ10, and tocopherol, so it’s doing something for your skin while it sits there, rather than simply sitting on top of it. It melts in and builds easily, so you can build your own desired level of bronze. Mixed into moisturizer, it gives you an all-over wash of warmth. Swept across the high points of your face, it sculpts without a trace of orange or shimmer.

I think blush is the new lip gloss–at least for me–because I love playing with different colors and textures. I never tire of trying new shades, and I think it’s fun to use a deep, toasted terracotta one day and a bright pink the next. The only issue is that, like my other color products, my blushes usually fade quickly. Or, they stay on all day but they clog my pores. Power Walk is the answer I’ve been looking for. It’s a blush that behaves like a serum, and has enough grip to hold color on the skin and enough slip to blend without dragging. It took us longer to get right than either of the other two because we refused to compromise on payoff, performance, or texture. I think you’ll feel that the moment you use it.

It’s built around hyaluronic acid, which plumps and hydrates while you wear it, and an antioxidant defense of bakuchiol and coffee seed extract, so the flush it gives you actually improves your skin’s texture over time rather than merely coloring it. The pigment is layerable in a way that most cream or liquid blush isn’t, which means one product can take you from a bare-faced flush to a full, considered color moment, depending on how much you build. It comes in three shades: Soft Step, a light, barely-there pink; Rose Trail, a dusty, muted rose; and Late Date, a warm terracotta.

The image I had in mind while we built this one was specific: the flush that shows up after real movement, after a laughing fit with friends, after the perfect kiss.

These aren’t three unrelated products that happened to launch on the same day. They were designed as a system, meant to be worn together, layering into a single finished look that no single one of them achieves alone. To Dew lays the foundation of hydration and light. PTO Glow adds warmth and dimension on top of it. Power Walk finishes the picture with color exactly where your body would naturally put it.

Our motto is Lived in Color, and I chose those words carefully. I am inspired by women who say yes to risky, bold, audacious opportunities. I admire women who lean fully into the lives they built for themselves, who embrace every single moment. Those are also the women who often feel pressure to do or be everything, the women who desperately want balance in one form or another but are hard-pressed to find it. I created this brand for those women–women who will take pleasure and delight in the texture and performance of our products, women who don’t have time to watch a makeup tutorial explaining how to blend and contour, women who want a little extra boost of glow. And I wanted to do the research, the diligence, and the hard work to formulate each product in a way that would perform at the level these women expect. We make ambitious products that work as hard as our Annadea women do.

None of this would mean anything to me if it came at the expense of what’s actually in the bottle. Every formula in this collection was built to the same standard I’d want for my own skin. That meant real actives at real concentrations, not just marketing ingredients. It meant antioxidant complexes that do something–astaxanthin, resveratrol, CoQ10, and tocopherol in PTO Glow; bakuchiol and coffee seed extract in Power Walk–rather than a single trendy ingredient positioned at the top of an ingredient list. It meant a full ceramide and hyaluronic acid architecture in To Dew, built the way a serious skincare serum is built.

It also meant real formulation constraints that most color cosmetics never have to solve for. A serum has to be non-comedogenic, or the entire premise collapses the first time someone breaks out from wearing it. It has to absorb rather than sit, or it reads as skincare pretending to be makeup rather than the reverse. Getting three different products–a bronzer, a blush, and a glow serum, each with its own pigment load and its own texture demands–to hold that same standard took our formulators over a year, and there were versions of each of these that never made it out of the lab because they looked beautiful in a swatch and failed the standard on skin. I’d rather ship late than ship a compromise, and more than once, we did exactly that.

We launch Tuesday, July 14th. All three products, and the option to buy them as a set we’re calling the Glow-To Trio, which includes To Dew, PTO Glow, and your choice of Power Walk shade–and a little extra gift, designed for our first purchasers of the set. If you sign up for our email list, you’ll be the first to know so you don’t miss out if we sell through inventory faster than we planned.

I’ve wanted to write this post since before Annadea had a name. Thank you for reading this far, and for being here before the products even existed. One more week!

Today I’m sharing something that, until now, we’ve kept between our team and the lab. When Annadea launches on July 14th, you will see that all three of our first products are serums. They are genuine color formulas built on a serum foundation, not skincare serums tinted as an afterthought or conventional makeup wearing a serum-sounding name. It is one of the most consequential product decisions we’ve made in building this brand, and the reasoning behind it is, in many ways, a reflection of the brand itself.

I really think that one of the most fun parts of being a girl is getting to indulge in a beauty routine. Sometimes it feels like a science experiment trying to figure out the right combination of skincare products, but I enjoy the trial and error. It’s also somehow soothing to watch videos of girls doing elaborate makeup routines; I’m always amazed by the creative ways people use products. But for me, personally, I like a routine that’s fun and efficient, something that feels like a “get to do” vs. “must do” but is also possible to do in a relatively short amount of time. When I reach for a snack in the kitchen, it’s something I’m excited to eat. Makeup should be the same. It serves a function or purpose, yes, but it can also bring you joy! In my opinion, texture is one of the best ways to achieve this feeling of joy in a beauty routine. When I look forward to pumping something in my hands, or smoothing it on my face, it’s because I enjoy the sensorial experience. And for me, serums are the most luxurious. They’re hydrating, nourishing, thick but not heavy. They feel like an indulgence.

In my dream world, Annadea’s color products would have the same sensory quality, so we worked closely with our product developer and lab partners to achieve exactly that.

I built Annadea to put that joy of the routine back at the center. Long before we had a name or a finished formula, the brief I kept repeating was that using our products should feel easy, forgiving, something you look forward to rather than move through thoughtlessly. The most flattering product in the world is worthless if it doesn’t feel good going on, because it will stay in the drawer while you reach for something that does.

Consider the last serum you loved, not for what it did but for how it felt: the cool, weightless drop in the palm, the way it melts the instant it meets warm skin, the faint cushion it leaves behind, that plumped, quenched, softly luminous finish.

Skincare has spent years teaching us what that sensation is worth. The entire language of glazed, freshly-facialed skin was written in serum textures, and it rewrote our expectations: we no longer want to see where the product ends and the skin begins. So our team asked the question: if the serum is the step people genuinely enjoy, why has it been confined to skincare? Why should color belong to a heavier, higher-maintenance category? What if color could feel like a serum?

“Skincare-makeup hybrid” has become a loose phrase, applied to anything with a virtuous ingredient list. We mean it literally. We didn’t want makeup that merely contains a good ingredient so the claim can go on the box; we wanted makeup whose texture is genuinely doing something kind for the skin all day–hydrating, cushioning, nourishing–so that the longer you wear it, the better your skin looks beneath it. We wanted formulas you forget you have on, until you catch your reflection and see the quality of skin we became obsessed with: glowy, active, faintly flushed, luminous in a healthy way.

When color is suspended in a serum, it doesn’t mask the skin, it joins it, so the flush appears to rise from underneath and the glow looks like your own. A serum that has truly absorbed has no hard line to break down, so it wears away softly and evenly rather than separating into patches or settling into fine lines. And because it melts in rather than sitting on top, it flatters a far wider range of skin–heavier textures behave differently on dry skin than oily, on deeper tones than fair, while a luminous veil that becomes part of the face adapts to whoever is wearing it.

As I’m quickly and repeatedly learning in entrepreneurship, the same quality that makes an idea beautiful is usually the one that makes it nearly impossible to execute. A serum feels extraordinary precisely because it is fluid, slippery, and weightless, and those are the opposite of what you need in a product that must deposit color and hold it, evenly, through a day of talking, eating, sweating, and hands against the face. A serum wants to travel; makeup has to stay. Reconciling those two qualities is one of the genuinely hard problems in this category, and it tested us most.

We moved through round after round chasing the version that had both: the melt-in slip on application and real grip once it set, the kind that survives the morning rush and is still intact when you finally sit down at night. Early formulas felt wonderful and faded by midday; later ones wore beautifully but lost the sensation that was the entire point. The answer wasn’t a single clever ingredient but the ratios between many of them; the precise relationship between what makes a formula glide and what makes it grip. I couldn’t be prouder of where we landed. The formulas launching soon are the ones that stopped forcing us to compromise.

Anything designed to feel dewy and rich is working in exactly the territory that, handled carelessly, congests pores. Much of what feels luxurious in beauty earns that feel from ingredients that clog the skin over time, and that is a trade I was never willing to make. I have fallen in love with countless products that seem wonderful immediately upon application but wreak absolute havoc on my skin in the long run.

So non-comedogenic was a fixed constraint from the first brief, and it made an already hard problem harder by an order of magnitude. We were now asking for a texture that melts in, grips all day, delivers true color, and cares for the skin, while being formulated to not clog pores. That meant scrutinizing not just the actives and pigments but every emollient and carrier that gives a serum its slip, since those are often the culprits, and then testing the result. It is much of why this took as long as it did. The first question I know people will ask is the oldest one in beauty: will this break me out? And I wanted to be able to answer “no” honestly and confidently.

We are launching with three serums because we began from a feeling rather than a category: makeup should be a joyful part of the day, not the most effortful, and no format delivers that pleasure like a serum. We wanted color that behaves like skincare–it absorbs, cares for the skin, and produces that glowy, faintly flushed look that seems to come from within, and we were stubborn enough to insist it also grip, wear, and stay clear of anything that could clog a pore.

We’ve been living with these formulas for a long time, testing them on ourselves, our team, and our most honest friends, and the response is remarkably consistent: people forget they’re wearing anything at all, until someone asks what they’ve changed about their skin.

That is exactly what we set out to make. Very soon it will become yours!

Kyle here—Olivia’s husband and co-founder / Chief Operating Officer of Annadea. I run the operating side of Annadea, so when Olivia asked me to take this week’s letter, the natural subject was the one she hasn’t written about yet: how we have paid for the company. Short answer: we bootstrapped it. We have funded every part of the business ourselves, without outside investment, and that was a deliberate decision. We could have raised money but we chose not to.

The question we get more often than any other is who is behind the company financially—which fund, which angel, which strategic partner. There isn’t one. It is the two of us, and that single fact has shaped almost every other decision we have made. I wanted to use today’s Extra Scoop post to lay out the reasoning behind it, the tradeoffs it has required, and what I would tell another founder weighing the same choice.

We started with an advantage some first-time founders don’t have: an existing business that already generates cash. Olivia’s creator business produces real revenue, and that revenue gave us the runway to fund Annadea out of our own pocket. We never had to persuade anyone to write a check before we knew whether the product worked. That changed the entire decision. Once you can finance the business yourself, outside money becomes optional, and we treated it as a decision to be justified rather than an assumption to be made.

When we examined it, the issue came down to control. Outside capital comes with conditions. Investors have a legitimate interest in how their money is spent, how quickly the company grows, and when it begins to perform, and that interest becomes influence over the decisions you make. We were not willing to accept that influence before we had proven the product on its own. Surrendering authority over the company in exchange for money we did not strictly need, at the precise moment we had the most unanswered questions, was a poor trade. We wanted to own our decisions outright, including the ones that might not work out. The right time to bring in investors, if we ever do, is after the product has demonstrated demand, when we can negotiate from evidence rather than a hopeful forecast.

Timelines are part of this as well. An investor is deploying a fund with its own horizon and obligations, and that clock does not necessarily match the pace at which a brand should be built responsibly. Capital that needs a particular return by a certain date can push a company toward growth it isn’t ready for, or toward an exit that suits the cap table more than the people who built it. We wanted the company’s pace set by the product and the customer, not by someone else’s reporting cycle.

There is also the matter of personal exposure. Olivia and I are personally responsible for every dollar that has gone into the company. Neither of us takes that lightly. It means we treat the company’s money the way you treat your own (and we have the same expectation of all of our team members), and that shows up in nearly every decision we make.

The capital we have put in has gone strictly where it needed to go in order to build a real product, and most of it will be invisible to our customers. It has gone to custom formula development and several lab rounds with our contract manufacturers, stability and formula testing, a first inventory run, and then already a second. We’re funding influencer and affiliate programs, web development, a handful of outside contractors. Of course we have to pay for day-to-day operations, legal fees, intellectual-property protection, and entity formation. Inventory in particular consumes more cash than anything else, because you pay for it in full long before you sell through it. Formulation, too, is rarely a single attempt; reaching the standard we wanted meant repeating lab rounds and retesting until the result held up, and every iteration carried real cost.

We have kept the team small by design. Every hire is a fixed cost that must be covered in a weak month as well as a strong one, and fixed costs are the fastest way to shorten a runway, so we have added people slowly and only when the work clearly demanded it.

The same logic shaped smaller choices. Custom packaging is one of the first places founders spend money to feel like a serious brand, and we declined. We used stock packaging and put the money into the decoration instead: the printing, the finish, the tactile details that determine whether something reads as premium when a customer picks it up. The component is an off-the-shelf part, but the execution we applied to it is what makes the product feel considered in hand.

Our PR boxes follow the same reasoning. The category has trained everyone to expect an elaborate unboxing, and we ship our product in a plain brown corrugate box. It is less photogenic and considerably cheaper, and at the volume we send, that difference funds the product itself rather than the packaging around it. That is the priority we would rather spend against.

The principle is consistent across all of it: we invest in what the customer sees and touches, and we economize on everything they never will. Our influencer and affiliate programs are built on the same idea, weighted toward performance rather than flat fees, so that the spending tracks results instead of running ahead of them. It is a slower way to build awareness than buying it outright, but every dollar in it is accountable to something.

Funding the company ourselves made us better operators, which I did not anticipate at the start.

When the money is yours, every dollar has to justify itself. You scrutinize spending in a way that well-capitalized companies often do not. A funded team can tell itself it will sort out the economics later, or raise again, or that any single line item is too small to matter. We never had that cushion, and its absence turned out to be an advantage.

It also forced a degree of deliberateness into decisions that many founders make on autopilot: vendor payment terms, influencer rates, the size of a second production run. We negotiate harder than we likely would with someone else’s money because it is ours. The same attention applies to the money coming in as much as the money going out, from payment terms to the structure of every contract we sign. It is demanding work, and it has built a discipline into how we operate that I expect we would keep now regardless of how the company were funded in the future.

It changed how we think about time as much as money. With a small team and no outside cushion, we cannot pursue every opportunity that presents itself, so we have had to get disciplined about what we decline. A funded company can chase several directions at once and absorb the ones that fail. We have to choose, and choosing well, repeatedly, has probably done more for the business than any individual decision about where to spend.

Every founder lives with the tension between profitability and growth, funded or not. What changes when you are self-funded is that the tension resolves toward profitability whether you want it to or not. We cannot pursue growth at any cost, because there is no reserve of outside capital to fund the pursuit. Every marketing dollar has to produce a measurable return; we cannot run negative unit economics for months on the assumption that we will eventually grow into them. The business has to work now, on its current economics, not on a projection that depends on the next round closing.

In practice that means holding every channel to a standard. We look at what it costs to acquire a customer and how long it takes to earn that back, and we move the budget toward what pays and away from what doesn’t. Impressions, follower counts, and gross top-line figures detached from margin do not survive long in a company spending its own money. None of that is glamorous, and it is precisely what keeps us clear about which efforts are contributing and which only appear to be.

The discipline that imposes is, in my view, undervalued. Funding the company ourselves obligated us to build something that stands on its own economics from the beginning. A meaningful number of brands that appear to be winning are well-capitalized experiments operating on borrowed time, and because we never had that capital, we had no choice but to build a business that works without it. It also pushed us to identify our efficient acquisition channels earlier than we otherwise might have, because we could not afford to subsidize the inefficient ones while we waited for the picture to clarify.

The cost of that discipline is real. We will, at times, grow more slowly than a competitor who has raised a large round and decided to buy market share outright. In beauty, attention moves quickly, and capital can buy attention. Watching a funded competitor saturate a channel at a scale we cannot match is genuinely uncomfortable, and it is a real and recurring consideration.

It is tempting to assume the funded version of Annadea would be the same company with more money behind it, simply moving faster, but that is not how outside financing works.

We would have more capital, and we would also be sitting across the table from investors whose role, in that negotiation, is to question every assumption beneath our valuation. Early-stage investors are trying to acquire as much of the company as they can for as little capital as possible; that is how the incentive is structured. The result is that your valuation gets taken apart, and you frequently give up a significant share of what you have built for money that does not go as far as you had hoped. And dilution compounds. The share you give away in a first round is followed by more in the next, and more in the one after that, so the percentage of the company you ultimately retain can shrink considerably across a financing history that felt reasonable at each individual step. Founders consistently underestimate how quickly that accumulates.

Dilutive financing also changes whose timeline you operate on. Once you have taken it, the schedule is partly theirs, and decisions that used to take an afternoon become matters for the quarterly board meeting. What was a quick judgment call becomes a scheduled discussion with people who were not in the room when the problem arose–appropriate governance, and also a genuine change in how quickly a company can move. The speed and autonomy that make early-stage building productive give way to process. Some founders want that structure, and first-time founders in particular can benefit from the oversight. We did not want it at this stage.

In fairness, the right investor adds real value: relationships, credibility, operating experience the founders do not yet have. At the right moment, a strong investor can change a company’s trajectory. But that caliber of investor is uncommon at the earliest stage, and the odds of securing one are low. More often, early financing comes down to selling equity cheaply for capital alone. We decided that if we were going to sell a part of the company, we would do it later, from a position of strength, with a proven product and a real financial record standing behind the number.

For anyone facing the same decision, there are a few things to consider, with the caveat that our circumstances are specific and no one should draw a universal rule on financing from a single company.

Establish your real capital requirements before anything else, using actual numbers rather than an optimistic estimate. I will readily admit that this business required considerably more capital than I expected at the outset, and I came to it with a finance background and a fair amount of confidence. Understand what the company genuinely costs to build before you decide how to fund it.

Then determine, honestly, whether your channel can reach cash-flow positive without outside money. For some businesses it cannot, and raising is the right call. But a well-positioned Amazon or DTC business, with the right product and a genuine distribution advantage, often can get there on its own. The question is whether your contribution margin and your channel can compound without external fuel, and for a sound product with a distribution edge, frequently they can. Do not assume a round is necessary simply because the founders you follow have raised one.

If you already have a revenue stream, use it before you consider diluting. This is the point I would emphasize most. Do not raise because the option is available, and do not raise because a term sheet feels like outside validation. A term sheet is a financing offer, not a judgment on the quality of your idea, and it deserves the same scrutiny as any other financial decision.

Finally, keep the team lean for as long as you can. The moment you take on fixed overhead, your runway contracts faster than your projections suggest. Headcount can feel like progress, but it is fixed cost committed ahead of the revenue meant to cover it, and it shortens your runway accordingly.

The reality of funding your business yourself is that it’s extremely stressful. The amount of times per day I look at a literal daily cashflow should not be overlooked. It’s a constant game of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Going from my left pocket to my right. All while trying to make sure everyone gets paid, and paid on time.

None of this reflects an ideological position. If the right capital became available at the right time, on terms that respected what we have built, I would take the meeting. We did not bootstrap out of principle. We did it because we had the means to fund the company ourselves and concluded that keeping control was worth more to us than the capital we would have traded it for.

What the decision has given us is straightforward. We own the company and we own its decisions, the sound ones and the mistakes alike. And we have been required to build a business that works on its own terms, with no reserve of outside money beneath it. It is a more demanding way to operate. For a company at our stage, I am convinced it is the right one.

I’m the type of person who is endlessly inspired by others. I love looking up to women who have built impressive businesses or dreamed up imaginative brands. I turn to my trusted advisors when I have big questions that I don’t want to make in a vacuum. I love to collaborate and learn from people who push me in every way. That’s also why I looked to so many brands for inspiration when I started building Annadea. We’re surrounded by incredibly capable, brilliant creative women who have built multi-million or even billion dollar businesses and I have a lot to learn from them. People often ask me which brands in particular stand out to me, who I admire most, so I wanted to share some of the companies and founders who have been endless sources of inspiration and motivation.

When I looked at these brands, I asked myself: what were they getting right? What had they learned the hard way? And what was the unglamorous decision underneath the beautiful result?

Something I only noticed once the list was finished: nearly every brand on it was built by a woman who saw a gap and simply refused to let it exist.

Here are the brands that taught me the most, and the lessons I carried straight into Annadea.

The first thing I’ll say about building a beauty brand is that you cannot charm your way out of a formula that doesn’t work. If a formula isn’t good, there isn’t any campaign or founder story that will prop it up. A few brands understood this with a rigor that genuinely raised my standards.

Tower 28 is the clearest example I know of a brand built backward from a real, specific need. Amy Liu spent more than two decades as a beauty executive—Smashbox, Kate Somerville, Josie Maran—and the whole time, she couldn’t actually use most of what she was helping to sell, because she’d lived with severe eczema her entire adult life. So in 2019, at around forty, she built the brand she’d needed the whole time. Tower 28 is, to this day, the only makeup brand fully compliant with the National Eczema Association’s ingredient guidelines, and what I find so smart is that Amy refused the usual trap of “clean equals safe.” As she likes to point out, poison ivy is natural too. The hero product, the SOS Daily Rescue Facial Spray, went viral during the mask-wearing years not because of a clever campaign but because it actually calmed people’s skin, and the community had the before-and-afters to prove it. The brand is named after a lifeguard tower in Santa Monica, a symbol of safety, and that idea sits underneath everything: products that are safe for the most sensitive skin, but made for all, kept deliberately under thirty-something dollars so the door stays open to everyone. That phrase—made for sensitive skin, but made for all—reorganized how I think about inclusivity in a formula. It’s a positioning we hold ourselves to at Annadea.

Westman Atelier taught me the opposite end of the same lesson: that “clean,” “luxury,” and “high-performance” don’t have to be a contradiction. Gucci Westman spent twenty-five years as one of the most sought-after editorial makeup artists in the world, and her whole thesis is that makeup should behave like skincare. Her Vital Skin Foundation Stick—the product that started the brand—reportedly took around fifty trials to get right, built without silicones, engineered to melt into skin like a liquid while quietly doing the work of an antioxidant-rich treatment underneath. Fifty trials for one stick. That number stayed with me every time we were frustrated that the lab didn’t get it right on the second or third try.

Sofie Pavitt Face is the brand I point to when I want to talk about texture and efficacy as a feeling, not just a claim. Sofie is a New York facialist with the kind of waitlist that has a waitlist. She’s been nicknamed “the acne whisperer,” and her expertise is the brand. Her Mandelic Clearing Serum is built around an 8% large-molecule acid that works slowly and gently precisely because it doesn’t barge into the skin the way harsher acids do. What I love is how honest the experience is: it’s lightweight, almost watery, there’s no sting, and the results arrive gradually and then, one morning, all at once. In a category addicted to the promise of instant, here’s a brand confident enough to sell gradual and real because the expertise underneath it has earned that patience. That’s a kind of confidence you can’t fake, and it’s the energy our developer and lab partners brought to our own custom formulas, where the skincare benefit has to be as real as the color payoff.

A formula gets someone to repurchase. A world gets them to belong. Two brands here are masterclasses in how differently that can be done.

Rhode is the world-building case study of our generation. Hailey Bieber launched it in 2022 with just three products and one extremely specific aesthetic: the “glazed” look she’d already made her own. What’s brilliant isn’t the minimalism, it’s the cohesion: every drop is a full sensory rollout. When the Cinnamon Roll lip treatment launched around her birthday, the campaign went warm and brown, cinnamon-roll recipes circulated, there was even a coffee collaboration, and the logo itself got dusted in sugar. The brand built a universe so consistent that buying a single lip treatment felt like buying into an entire way of living—right down to the viral phone case made to hold the tube, which did millions in revenue on its own. The discipline paid off in the most literal way possible: e.l.f. Beauty acquired Rhode in a deal worth roughly a billion dollars, and it went on to become one of the biggest launches in Sephora’s North American history. The lesson I took wasn’t “be minimal.” It was be consistent—decide what world you’re building and then let every email, every shade name, every photograph live inside it. It’s exactly why we shot our launch campaign in southern Morocco. The world had to feel like somewhere specific, not anywhere.

MERIT taught me that branding can be a discipline of subtraction. Katherine Power—who also built Who What Wear, Versed, and Avaline—launched MERIT in 2021 into a market drowning in newness, and did the unthinkable: she made less the entire point. Seven multifunctional products, a calm, editorial, almost quiet aesthetic that reads as understated luxury rather than another candy-colored Gen Z drop. The brand has actually wiped its own Instagram before a launch—I still don’t know if I would have the confidence to do that! They once positioned their complexion stick alongside the Bic pen, the Mason Pearson brush, and Levi’s 501s—objects whose design never needed to change. That’s not a product post; that’s a worldview. MERIT proved you can be both cross-generational and razor-sharp, that restraint photographs as expensive, and that a brand with a truly distinct point of view doesn’t have to shout to be heard.

Not every brand that shaped Annadea is a beauty brand. Some of the most important lessons came from women building in entirely different categories.

FORM is my answer whenever someone asks what real community looks like. Sami Clarke and Sami Spalter built their fitness and wellness platform out of the free Instagram Live workouts Sami was running during the pandemic, and the thing that makes it work isn’t the workouts, it’s that the community genuinely steers the ship. Members asked for mat pilates, so they launched mat pilates. They asked for nutrition, so a whole new vertical launched. There are local WhatsApp groups and monthly community walks in LA, and people refer to themselves, unironically, as the “FORM fam.” What I took from it is that community can’t be a marketing layer you apply at the end. It has to be the center of gravity, and you have to actually let it change what you make.

Popflex is the brand I think about when I think about innovation that comes straight from listening. Cassey Ho—the founder behind Blogilates—designs activewear, in her words, “with a why,” and her customers are part of the design loop in a way that’s rare. Her Pirouette Skort became so iconic (it went stratospheric after Taylor Swift wore it) that she patented the design to fight off the inevitable dupes—but my favorite detail is smaller than that: she made the back hem of the skort a touch longer in a later version specifically because customers said they wanted more coverage. Pockets in everything. Sizing from XXS to 3X. That’s a founder treating feedback as the raw material of the next product, not as noise to manage. We try to build that same listening posture into how we develop–we are actively thinking about the best way to solicit and incorporate community feedback into our future product pipeline.

Siete is the one that’s a little further afield, and maybe the most personal to me as someone whose whole platform is built around food. Veronica Garza was diagnosed with autoimmune conditions as a young woman and found herself cut off from the foods that connected her to her heritage, so she reverse-engineered a grain-free, almond-flour tortilla so she could eat tacos and enchiladas again. From a single tortilla sold out of a CrossFit gym, the Garza family—all seven of them, which is where siete comes from—built a brand that PepsiCo acquired for $1.2 billion. But the number isn’t the lesson. The lesson is that they made better-for-you food feel like joy rather than restriction—vibrant, nostalgic, rooted in culture, something you’d want at the table whether or not you “needed” it. That refusal to let healthy mean joyless is something I think about constantly, in food and in beauty alike.

Looking at the list now, the common thread is obvious: every one of these brands was built by someone who started with a genuine problem and an unreasonable amount of conviction, and who refused to choose between rigor and beauty, between efficacy and delight, between substance and a world worth belonging to. That’s the standard I hold us to. It’s why we obsess over formulas that perform and feel like a treat, why we built a brand world we’d actually want to live inside, why we aim to keep the people who buy from us close enough to shape what comes next.

None of this is built alone, and none of it is built without studying the people who came before. I’m endlessly grateful to the founders above for the lessons (most of whom have no idea they were giving me a class) and I’m even more excited for all of you to take part in what we’re about to launch.

More soon.

Hi everyone! Amy here. Olivia introduced me in last week’s post and interviewed me the week before that, but now I’m here to tell you about the most epic photoshoot I’ve ever been part of. Four months ago, we flew two team members (me + Olivia Eckerson), three models, two photographers, one makeup artist, and one surf coach/producer to Dakhla, a city in Western Sahara (which is technically part of Morocco) to shoot the Annadea launch campaign.

Morocco is undeniably having a moment right now. Sirat–one of the best movies I’ve watched this year–and The Odyssey, which is coming out soon, were both filmed in remote parts of Morocco. I saw that Madonna was just there, plus a handful of other celebrities. I’ve seen Morocco featured in fashion campaigns, and I’ve seen more and more Moroccan designers teaming up with American and European designers on new collections. I didn’t choose Morocco because of the recent attention, mind you, I’ve been enamored with the country for the last six years. In fact, I almost bought a riad and moved to Marrakesh instead of Lisbon back in 2022. Morocco is sensorially indulgent, fantastically whimsical, and unquestionably romantic. The colors are bold, moody, and passionate; the design is rich and textured, the food is full of spices and flavors.

What drew me to Morocco, though, was the people. Moroccans are some of the most generous people I’ve met, always sharing whatever is in front of them: tea, food, soda, anything. They’ll drive six hours one way to pick you up at the airport, they’ll stop to give a ride to an older person who’s having trouble walking in the heat of the harsh sun. They’ll welcome you into their homes and they’ll prepare massive amounts of food for you.

I had been to Marrakech and the Atlas many times, but in October of last year I visited the coast for the first time. I was participating in a women’s surf retreat and spent a week in Imsouane, a tiny surf village two hours south of Essaouira. During those seven days, I met Aymen, a very talented photographer and videographer who took a cinematic approach to filming surf content. I met Ikram, one of the managers at the local surf camp. I met Bamboo, a surf coach who is also the most helpful and resourceful person on this planet. Through these people, I was exposed to gorgeous women, women who I thought would be perfect models to introduce Annadea for the first time. They were surfers from different parts of the world, they were entrepreneurs who had started their own businesses, and they were women who were, frankly, unstoppable. They were pursuing life paths different to those that were more traditionally laid out for them, and I thought: that’s the essence of our Annadea girl. She’s bold, audacious, and spirited. She’s active but she’s a girl’s girl. She can dress up or dress down, she’s as comfortable at a trendy restaurant as she is in the ocean.

Then, Bamboo sent me the Instagram profile of White Dune Canyon in Dakhla. Within a week I was on the phone with the owner and developer, Nawfal, and a month after that I went on a location scout. The place was perfect–turquoise water that you can rarely find in the Atlantic, long stretches of uninterrupted coastline, a beautiful resort with a very nice pool, restaurant, garden, and bungalows, great waves, and a driver who would take us to every remote spot that would be good for shooting. I spent five days surfing, riding horses, going on a jetski, sailing a boat, exploring a deserted island–all in the name of finding the right locations for Annadea.

I shared the photos and videos with Olivia and Kyle, and they approved. We all liked that there was something unique about the environment–it’s not somewhere like the Amalfi coast, or Tulum, or Miami that would be easily recognizable from a million other photoshoots–but it wasn’t so exotic that it was off-putting. It could be somewhere in Mexico or California with the dry desert landscape and the cliffs up against the ocean, but not quite.

Over the next couple of months, Olivia Eckerson worked on the world’s most comprehensive shot list; we must have had thousands of shots on there. She created a very detailed schedule for each day, which we planned in accordance with the tides, the wind, and the sunlight. We pulled together a wardrobe–a combination of gifted products, our own closets, and a few purchased items–and we even created custom Annadea longboards with a Moroccan surfboard shaper.

We took a chance with almost every single part of this shoot. Aymen was not an established photographer, with decades of beauty campaigns under his belt. Two of our three models were not professional models, though they had experience with local brands. Olivia Eckerson had never been on a photoshoot like this before, much less produced one. I had never been the creative director on a campaign. Olivia and Kyle had never been to Morocco, and they weren’t on set during the shoot. But to be honest, I like it this way. I like working with unproven people who want to prove themselves. I like the adaptability, curiosity, and down-for-anything attitude that accompanies professionals who haven’t been worn down by the cut-and-paste approach to their industries. I really do believe that if you want to stand out, if you want to be different, you have to do different things. If we wanted to look like every other beauty brand out there, we’d hire a beauty photographer who shoots for Glossier and Rhode, we’d bring in an art director who has worked for the same brands, and we’d shoot in LA, New York, Ibiza, or some other recognizable location. There’s a time and a place for that, and I’m sure we’ll do it at some point in the future.

But to make a splash–surf/water pun intended–we wanted to embrace the Annadea ethos we penned months before. We wanted to live in color, to take the risk, to embrace the unknown, and to go 10000% all in on the hunch that we could create something incredibly special.

We can’t wait for you to see the full campaign in a few weeks!

One of the most valuable lessons you’ll learn in life—both personally and professionally—is that it takes a village. You can’t do everything on your own; even if you technically could, it likely wouldn’t yield the best results. I see a lot of founder-led brands, even content creators, who make everything seem so easy, like they’re seamlessly running businesses worth hundreds of millions of dollars all on their own. They’re not. They have a lot of help. I’ve never been overly precious with my own work, I often have the instinct to hire people to do things that I know I’m not good at or don’t want to spend my time on. Hiring a team to build a beauty brand, however, was a new level of trust, delegation, and getting intentional on what we really needed. Especially considering we’re bootstrapped—meaning Kyle and I are funding this on our own—so we couldn’t afford to hire the wrong people.

Fortunately we assembled an all-star team, and I want to introduce you to each of them because Annadea would not be the company it has become without every single one of them. I wouldn’t be able to continue producing recipes for my Instagram platform, or finish my cookbook if I didn’t have the full support and expertise of the team. They’re also all quite interesting people with varied backgrounds and I learn something new from them every day! Without further ado, here are the people building Annadea.

My husband and I have been business partners for a while now. About a year into my content creation career, once I started earning real money and we both saw the potential, he joined to help me with all of the operational, behind-the-scenes things: HR, finance, operations, ads, etc. I genuinely don’t think I could run a business without him. I know a lot of people raise their eyebrows when they hear about a married couple working together, but it works so well for us. We have totally different–and complementary–skillsets. Where I’m creative, Kyle is extremely detail-oriented. I like to think about product vision, and Kyle is the one who works with the vendors to ensure that the products I’m dreaming about are 1) realistic from a budget perspective, 2) produced to the highest standards of quality, and 3) are delivered on time. He’s also meticulous with our budget, and brings a level of financial rigor to the business that ensures we’re able to grow responsibly. He has such a business-oriented mindset: he thinks in terms of cash flow principles, measured growth, platform strategy, and operational timelines. And we’re both equally ambitious so it feels nice to share this exciting new business together.

I just interviewed Amy here, but she’s helped me with my content business and my cookbook; now, she’s leading brand and creative for Annadea. Her creative perspective is informed by her many world travels and her years of leading brand and marketing for some of the most beloved consumer brands, including Glossier. It was her idea to shoot our launch campaign in southern Morocco, inspired by her time spent surfing in Imsouane. She found and hired our creative agency who she and I worked closely with to develop the entire Annadea brand world. She oversees all copy, creative direction, art direction, messaging, and brand channels. Alongside her creative skills, she has a sharp business acumen which enables her to be extra strategic about her brand and creative ideas. Plus, she has invaluable beauty industry experience and has helped us bring on most of our team members.

Ken has been mine and Kyle’s best friend for years–he was the first person to welcome us to Austin with open arms and we would not have our current community without him–but he also has incredible career experience: he spent over a decade at Tesla, where he established the company’s environmental commodities trading desk and supported both government affairs and financial planning and analysis. He left as Tesla’s Vice President of Sales Finance. He’s wildly smart but equally kind, which is so important to us. He’s put together numerous financial models for us, helping us decide things like whether or not we should bring on outside funding, how to think about payment terms with vendors, understanding contribution margin and consequently figuring out how much to spend on marketing for each platform. He brings the standards of excellence that he learned from his impressive tenure at Tesla to our business, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have him on the team because it’s rare for a brand new startup to have such a strong CFO from the get go.

Olivia Eckerson was our first non-executive hire and we found her through the FeedMe job board. I still remember her application–she included illustrations on her resume and cover letter, she was so professional, and she was a great writer. In the first interview, we learned that she started her career in wine. She had completed two sommelier levels, lived and worked on several vineyards across the world, and had even worked in wine education at one of the most prestigious wineries in Napa Valley. When we found her, she was working for an influencer marketing agency running campaigns for consumer brands. She was equal parts creative and organized, essential for someone in this role. Since joining the team in October of last year she has contributed so much to our overall brand vision, she’s running our influencer and affiliate program entirely on her own, and she’s responsible for most of the content you see on Instagram!

Umaimah has almost two decades of experience in beauty and consumer goods. She worked with Amy at Glossier (that’s how we found her) but she has been on the back end of many beloved brands, most recently Savannah James’ Reframe Beauty. She is a true operational wizard–she lives and breathes timelines, she’s excellent at vendor communication, she’s a great partner to us because she is realistic about what’s feasible but she also pushes our partners to always deliver their absolute best. She manages all of our packaging vendors–once you see our products you’ll understand why we’re so proud of this–and she chose our DTC warehouse and shipping partner, she manages the cost of goods calculations for our products, and she has helped a lot with our website design and customer service experience. She is one of the most reliable, helpful, and refreshingly direct people I’ve ever worked with.

Our first three launch products are a direct result of mine and Melissa’s early days of ideating which categories would truly best represent the Annadea brand ethos. Melissa also worked at Glossier, with Amy and Umaimah, and is the developer behind some of their bestselling products. She moved on to Luxury Brand Partners and worked on ONE/SIZE, then led all of product development and marketing for Curology. She created the lab briefs for our first products, ensuring they were all custom formulas designed with equal importance on cosmetic effect (color payoff, long-wear) and skincare benefits (hydrating, nourishing, etc.). Now, we are working with Andrea Rodriguez of Marcha House, to continue our product development pipeline. You guys don’t know the launch products yet but we’re already thinking about what we’ll be launching throughout 2027! Custom formulas work on long lead times.

We have other agency partners (shoutout to Orchidea and Haley Withers for creative and website development, respectively) and consultants (Cam and Madison who help with Amazon strategy and copywriting, respectively), and a wonderful summer intern, Ava. Chelsea, mine and Kyle’s assistant, also works on some Annadea projects and we recently brought on an email marketing agency to help build our email flows.

I couldn’t be prouder of the team, and I know you’ll be hearing much more from and about them in the coming weeks and months!

The beauty world can be tricky to navigate as a consumer. So many brands and products advertise themselves as “clean,” “healthy,” and “good for your skin,” but it’s hard to make sense of what that really means on the surface, since different brands have different standards for their products, and different ways of presenting those standards to the public.

A few years ago, I started to educate myself on what was in my beauty products after cleaning up household products containing toxins. I learned a lot by looking closely at ingredient labels, and even tried switching to fully natural skincare and hair care products. But with a fully natural regimen, I found that my skin was quite dull and lifeless, leading me to appreciate a middle ground where natural and synthetic ingredients combine for the best results. After diving in deeper as a beauty founder, I’ve gained even more knowledge that wouldn’t have been as accessible as a consumer.

After learning more about what goes into makeup product development and reflecting on my own struggles with cystic acne, I knew I wanted Annadea Beauty products to be European clean and non-comedogenic, to ensure they meet the highest quality standards. But what do these standards really mean?

“Clean” and “non-comedogenic” are two words that get used frequently in beauty marketing, but they meet completely different consumer needs.

A “clean” product is made without certain ingredients that a brand or retailer considers undesirable. “Clean” is not a regulated term, different brands and retailers have different standards for what they consider acceptable in “clean” beauty. “Sephora Clean” means something different than “Ulta Clean,” which is different than “Credo Clean.” But some common ingredients that are excluded in “clean” beauty products are:

• Parabens

• Phthalates

• Sulfates

• Synthetic fragrance

• Certain silicones

• PEGs

• Mineral oil, sometimes

On the other hand, when a product is labeled “non-comedogenic,” that means it was formulated to be less likely to clog pores and cause acne. Similar to the “clean” label, “non-comedogenic” is also an unregulated term, meaning different brands can apply it to their product marketing while having completely different standards for comedogenicity. There are many pore-clogging ingredient checkers online, and if you’ve used them before, you will notice that each checker has a different standard for what ingredients they will flag.

Something else important to note is that a product can be “clean,” but highly comedogenic and acne-triggering. For example, coconut oil and cocoa butter are considered “clean” ingredients by many brands and retailers, but they are highly comedogenic and have a high likelihood of clogging pores. This is something I didn’t realize as an early beauty consumer, as I assumed that clean ingredients that were “natural” were healthier for your skin and wouldn’t lead to breakouts. Turns out that’s not actually the case.

The United States and the European Union have very different standards for what they consider “clean” in beauty products. The EU has much stricter cosmetic regulations than the U.S. in several ways.

Generally, the EU has:

• More proactive ingredient restrictions

• Stronger pre-market safety frameworks

• More transparency requirements

• Earlier bans/reviews of certain chemicals

The EU actually bans and restricts many ingredients in cosmetics that are still technically allowed in the U.S. So when brands advertise themselves as being “European clean,” it means they’re likely adhering to a stricter level of ingredient safety and regulation than brands that are just clean by American standards.

Since “clean” isn’t a regulated term, every brand has to decide for themselves what is truly important to include and exclude in their products. At Annadea, we’re not just prioritizing “clean” ingredients for the sake of checking off boxes on a marketing checklist, or promoting fear-based ingredient claims. Instead, our brand is focused on creating products that are safe, thoughtfully formulated, and compatible with sensitive and acne-prone skin.

For this reason, Annadea not only follows European clean standards but also has an even more extensive ingredient exclusion list, in addition to the exclusions listed above. Our products are free of potential skin irritants and endocrine disruptors like parabens, phthalates, sulfates, and synthetic fragrances, so they’re safe for all skin types, including those with sensitive skin. We’ve also infused our products with skincare actives that enhance skin health over time. So not only are they non-irritating and non-inflammatory, but they’ll actually protect and improve your skin barrier and texture with each wear. We believe beauty products should do more than just avoid certain ingredients, they should actively support skin health while delivering exceptional performance.

At Annadea, we work with chemists specially trained in formulating non-comedogenic products, as well as third-party comedogenicity testing to ensure our products meet our standards of non-comedogenicity. I dove deeper into this on social media, but comedogenicity is an incredibly nuanced topic. Many fear-based marketing messages communicate that comedogenicity is a black-and-white issue. Some brands will suggest that comedogenic ingredients should be avoided at all costs. But as with most hot topics, the truth lies somewhere in between the extreme takes.

In our products, you will find some ingredients with a comedogenic ranking above zero, meaning that in isolation and when not properly formulated, they may clog pores. As a brand, we have chosen to take the more rigorous path of comprehensive product formulation and thorough testing to ensure our products are non-comedogenic as a whole, rather than simply avoiding all comedogenic ingredients, as some are essential to ensure the performance of the product.

Grounded in evidence rather than trends, Annadea products contain the skin health benefits of skincare and the long-lasting cosmetic payoff of makeup, all while adhering to an incredibly high standard. As a customer, I’ve been searching for products like these for years, and I’m excited for them to finally be yours next month.

I’ve been working with Amy for several years now–she started coaching Kyle and me on our content business, and quickly became a go-to for many projects: she helped with my cookbook proposal (she has experience in publishing), my Substack strategy and content, and now she’s the Chief Brand Officer of Annadea, my forthcoming beauty company. She has held a number of impressive roles across different companies—Communications Director at SeatGeek, Head of Comms and Brand at Glossier, Chief of Staff to Emily Weiss at Glossier, Chief Operating Officer at Haus to name a few—and she also coaches a number of successful entrepreneurs and content creators. When I think about Annadea’s slogan, lived in color, I think of Amy. She loves to travel to remote corners of the world, she embraces risks that other people would not (she bungee jumped in Zimbabwe in December!), she is the biggest cheerleader of the people she works with, and she has packed a lot of life into her thirty six years. I wanted to ask her some questions about how she thought about developing Annadea’s brand because I think her approach is unique—it’s informed by her worldly perspective and people-first life philosophy—and I hope she inspires you, too!

Let’s dive in.

What initially sparked your interest in working on Annadea?

So many things! I had already been working with you, Olivia, for a year or so as your business coach, so I knew what kind of founder and entrepreneur you were. You’re one of the rarest types of leaders–both deeply empathetic and ambitious, compassionate and uncompromising. You have incredibly high standards for what you put into the world but you take a human-first approach to everything and treat your team with the utmost respect. From a leadership perspective I knew it would be a treat to work with you. And then of course there’s the beauty industry–one I truthfully didn’t think I’d get back into (after being at Glossier for four years) but found myself really excited about when the opportunity presented itself. I am personally in a stage of life where I am fully leaning into my “girl” energy—planning girls’ trips, seeking out new female friendships, exchanging dozens of voice notes back and forth daily with my closest girl friends—and Annadea really brings this “girl’s girl” spirit to life. I knew I wanted to have a role in shaping the brand and to help bring it into the world.

How did you land on the visual aesthetic of the Annadea brand? What are you hoping to communicate through the branding?

We wanted the Annadea brand to be elegant but not pretentious, sophisticated but not soulless. We wanted it to be playful, bold, and ambitious. We also wanted it to be clear to our customers that we want the best for them–we want them to feel energized, healthy, nourished, rested. We want to make our girl feel like she’s the best version of herself. In order to do that, we needed to toe the line between aspirational and attainable; a brand that motivates and pushes her but also encourages and supports her. We didn’t have a specific color palette in mind, but both Olivia and I gravitated towards bold, punchy colors. Our early mood boards had lots of tropical fruit, girls playing in the ocean, travel, and movement.

Our slogan is “lived in color” and I hope our branding truly does encourage our customers to live their lives in color. To us, that means daring to take some risk, to ask for things that feel uncomfortable, to set lofty goals and enjoy the pursuit, to soak up new experiences and make the most of the more quotidian moments as well. You know when you have that nagging thought in your head, like maybe I should just do xyz…well, I hope Annadea can inspire you to DO the thing!

How has your experience working on Annadea differed from your past brand-building experiences? What’s been particularly exciting or interesting about this experience?

When I was working on brand at Glossier, it was in the very early days of selling beauty on the internet. We were writing the playbook, so there were no brands to copy or people to look to. Everything was completely original. Now, the online beauty market is far more saturated. There are countless brands and products, and truthfully many of them are good. Some people would look at this and think, ok the challenge now is to stand out. I don’t agree–beauty isn’t a zero sum game, you don’t win only through innovation. I think the challenge now is to create something that engenders a true sense of belonging for our future community. We are not solving the problem of “how does someone create product pages that accurately show the color of a blush or lipstick on a vast range of skin tones so that someone feels comfortable purchasing a product they’ve never seen in person”—there are best practices for this that come from all of the existing beauty brands. What we are solving for is creating a sense of emotional knowing and resonance that tells our Annadea girl: I see you, I understand you, and I support you.

What do you hope customers take away after using Annadea products for the first time?

I hope they fall in love with the texture as much as we did when we were creating the products. The sensorial experience of our products was an important part of the product development process—we wanted them to feel luxurious, and we wanted our customers to genuinely look forward to using them. Olivia has such beautiful, glowing skin (she never uses a filter on IG!) and I really think the texture of these launch products capture and recreate that glow for everyone.

Travel is a big part of your life—every time we are on Zoom, I have to ask you where in the world you are! How does that impact the way you think about brand, and Annadea specifically?

I travel for my own personal pleasure, but it inevitably impacts the brand work that I do. I’m constantly exposed to different beauty standards, different cultures, different perspectives, and different ways of living and expressing. That exposure helps reduce my bias (I hope!) because when you’re in one place for too long, especially with our algorithmically-driven lives, you do end up in an echo chamber. You get used to seeing the same facial features, same ways of applying beauty products, same style, same way of talking. When you are always refreshing where you are physically, you don’t get used to anything because everything is in-flux. On the other hand, the more I travel the more I realize how similar we all are. Girls are girls in the U.S., in Morocco, in Spain, in Mexico, in Botswana, in New Zealand, everywhere. We are all struggling with the same things: pressure to do or be “enough”, imposter syndrome, feeling like we’re crazy for thinking or feeling certain things, trying to find balance. We also all take pleasure in the same things: connection with others, meaningful relationships, a purpose-driven life, and life-changing experiences.

I try to harness both things when I’m thinking about Annadea’s brand: what are core feelings or experiences that are inherently human, and how can I bring some of the outside influence that I’m constantly exposed to into the brand in a way that inspires women and feels a little different from every other piece of content you see in your feed? This is why I wanted to shoot our launch campaign in Morocco, with models from all over the world. Sometimes the setting looks vaguely familiar–sand, ocean, a nice pool–but you also have a vintage red Land Rover driving through the Sahara Desert with the models hiking in the dunes. Hopefully those images will make you stop and actually notice the details, and inspire you in some way.

You have beauty experience through your years at Glossier, but you’ve also worked in a lot of other industries–live experiences, publishing, consumer tech, and food and beverage to name a few. Do you think working in other industries helps you?

100% yes! My ability to be successful in building a beauty brand is not contingent on years of beauty industry experience—it’s contingent on deeply understanding human behavior and understanding how to communicate effectively both visually and with language. Knowing how people make decisions about all sorts of things in their lives—what they drink, their price sensitivity for certain experiences, what they’re willing to order online and wait a few days for vs. what they want to buy immediately in person, how different phases of their lives impact what they’re looking for from the brands they love and trust, all of that comes from having a diverse set of work experiences.

If you want to read Amy’s Substack about creativity, entrepreneurship, and travel, you can find it here, and if you want to follow along on her adventures, follower her on Instagram!

I often get asked how I manage to “do it all,” from developing new recipes and creating content every week to founding a beauty brand, all while raising an almost-one-year-old. But to tell you the truth, I don’t necessarily always manage to get it all done. I usually end my days with so much still left on my plate to tackle. It often feels like there are more items on my to-do list than I’m able to get to.

However, I find that when I’m fueling myself well, I’m able to unlock my capacity to meet way more of life’s demands. When I’m eating well, I can harness stable, long-lasting energy that helps me thrive as a founder, content creator, wife, mother, and friend. I’m able to make better professional decisions, be more present for my family, and even fill my own cup by having enough energy to get a good run or workout in. When I eat to fuel my best self, it’s like I’m tapping into a reserve of energy I didn’t know I had, and I’m able to do even more than I thought I was capable of.

As I wrote about a few weeks ago in my post about fueling a full life, I try not to let food control my thinking. I avoid following rigid rules about what I should or shouldn’t eat, as that can hold me back from living a balanced life. However, food is the first lever I pull when I want to fully show up in all areas of life.

While I’m not overly strict about my diet, I’ve developed a formula for fueling my best self that I always come back to when I’m thinking through what to eat. It involves eating nutrient-dense foods that provide reliable energy and mental clarity instead of foods that contribute to a spike-and-crash energy cycle. Here is a taste of what I prioritize eating in my daily life to stay full and energized so I can meet all of life’s demands.

Many fad diets will try to convince you that one single, magic ingredient is key to staying nourished and full for longer. This isn’t necessarily the case. Instead of prioritizing one silver bullet food in my diet, I try to ensure I have quality protein, fiber-rich complex carbohydrates, and healthy fats, which come in many forms, to ensure I am full and nourished enough to maintain energy throughout the day and sleep soundly through the night.

Protein is all the buzz right now. I can’t walk through a grocery store without confronting a new snack food claiming to deliver a sneaky dose of protein. But I find that I stay full longer and have more stable energy when I eat “quality protein,” instead of highly processed protein snacks. Some of my favorite types of quality protein include:

• Organic poultry

• Grass-fed beef

• Wild-caught fish and shellfish

• Organic tofu

Meals lacking adequate protein can contribute to energy spikes and crashes, which can lead to cravings and brain fog, key signs that I’m lacking the energy I need to meet the day’s demands. For this reason, I always try to prioritize protein in all of my meals, especially breakfast, so I can start the day with an ample energy supply. In my e-book, Protein-Empowered, I actually share 21 protein-rich recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner that are gluten-free, dairy-free, and refined sugar-free. Click here to check that out if you’re curious!

Of all the macronutrients that have been vilified by the fad diet industry, carbs have certainly suffered the most. But complex carbs are essential for staying energized and focused. While it’s true that a meal containing only simple carbohydrates can leave you feeling sleepy and unsatiated, complex carbs that contain plenty of fiber are essential for staying full and energized for longer. Some of my go-to fiber-rich complex carbs include:

• Gluten-free rolled oats

• Brown rice pasta

• Bean and lentils

• Quinoa

• Sweet potatoes

If my dinner is too light or too heavy with simple carbs, my blood sugar may dip overnight, which can trigger a stress response that wakes me, leading to a hard time getting out of bed and getting the day started. Prioritizing fiber-dense complex carbs promotes steadier overnight energy so I can wake up feeling refreshed and ready to tackle the day.

Historically, fats have also received a bad rap from the trend diet world. But in reality, foods rich in monounsaturated fat support brain function, keeping me mentally sharp longer and providing sufficient satiety. An easy way to incorporate healthy fats into my meals is by cooking with extra-virgin olive oil, cold-pressed avocado oil, or coconut oil. But I also consume healthy fats in these forms:

• Chia seeds, flaxseeds, and hemp hearts

• Nuts, seeds, and nut and seed butter

• Avocados

Incorporating seeds, nuts, and avocados into my breakfasts and lunch salads is a surefire way to keep me full and focused for longer. Also, foods containing omega-3 fatty acids, like eggs, edamame, salmon, and winter squash, support blood sugar balance and cognitive health, allowing for stable energy and mental sharpness.

When juggling a hectic schedule full of parenting and work responsibilities, I understand the impulse to deprioritize food. It sometimes feels like the most productive way to eat as a parent and boss is to consume whatever is most accessible and easiest to digest,.

But chronic undereating and malnutrition can signal stress to the body, straining our metabolic and hormonal systems. That’s why I follow my formula for fueling my best self and look to food to provide extra energy and focus. When I nourish myself properly, I’m able to bring generous energy to all that I do, concentrate harder, and get more impactful sleep at night, which allows me to unlock my capacity to meet all of my daily demands.

Even when we love what we do for a living, feelings of burnout have a way of creeping in now and then, letting us know when it’s time to rest and reset. This has been top of mind for me lately, since my team and I have been moving full steam ahead with the Annadea Beauty launch around the corner. Typically, I’d take a vacation when I begin feeling the strain of burnout. But with the upcoming launch, my hectic content creator schedule, and caring for a child under one, I’m in an especially busy season and don’t have the option to take a vacation right now, as amazing as that sounds.

Instead, my solution to avoid burnout these days is being extra mindful about my daily schedule to sustain my energy long-term. When I give myself enough of what I need day-to-day, I’m able to meet the demands of business and parenthood with confidence, and enjoy this career that I love even more. Here’s what that looks like in practice:

Moving my body even a little bit every day is the perfect way to settle a busy mind. Lately, running has been one of my favorite ways to get out of my head and into my body. My feet repeatedly hitting the pavement, the thump of my heart, and the feeling of a healthy sweat quiet any looming anxieties about work, restoring my spirit so I can keep working hard. Movement is the perfect way to take me out of the grind and turn off the noise, even just for a moment, so I can return to my work feeling rejuvenated.

When I have an especially busy week, sleep sometimes feels like the first thing I should sacrifice. In the early months with Suede, I even got somewhat used to operating on a few hours of sleep every night. But all the caffeine in the world isn’t a match for a night of good, deep sleep. I find I operate best when I get at least seven hours. When I’m disciplined about my sleep, I wake up feeling fully recharged and ready to tackle the day.

Nothing soothes a hectic mind quite like fresh air and sunshine on my face. Getting outside and mindfully taking in the sights and sounds of my neighborhood brings me back to earth after hours of staring at my phone and computer. Even just a walk around the block can completely bring me back to life.

The people we surround ourselves with can highly influence our energy, mood, and priorities. With that in mind, I feel best when I’m surrounded by ambitious, go-getter women in my personal and professional life. When I’m with highly motivated, hardworking people, I feed off their energy, and the inspiration I feel overshadows any feelings of burnout.

If I’m being completely honest with you, even when I’ve moved my body, eaten well, and gotten sufficient sleep, I still have occasional moments of overwhelming exhaustion. Who doesn’t! Even after a good streak of maintaining my healthy habits, sometimes the demands of being a founder, content creator, author, wife, friend, and new mom get to be a bit too much. In those moments, I give myself permission to fully feel my feelings, and even have a full-on breakdown if need be.

It’s tempting to bottle my feelings up so I can put on a good face for those who are looking to me for leadership. But I know that holding the negative feelings in only causes them to stew even more. Every now and then, it’s important to release, which is why I’m thankful to have an amazing support system. When it gets to be a bit too much, I cry to my loved ones, and I always feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders.

Even when we have the career of our dreams and are surrounded by people we love, it’s normal to feel moments of dissatisfaction and fatigue. It doesn’t mean that we’re not grateful for what we have. It means that it’s time to pause and redirect.

Above all, when feelings of burnout start creeping in, the best thing I can do is give myself a little extra love. Sometimes that looks like going on a run and getting some fresh air, and sometimes it looks like treating myself to a good cry and some time to rest. Setting balanced daily habits is the best way for me to maintain my energy long-term, so I can show up for myself and others, and keep doing more of what I love.

Like all career journeys, my path to becoming a beauty founder is a twisting, non-linear route. Believe it or not, I wasn’t even that interested in makeup in high school and college, a time when many begin heavily experimenting with it. How, then, did I get to the place I’m at today, launching Annadea Beauty in just a couple of months?

My makeup journey began at age fifteen, when I started wearing minimal products in high school. At this point, I was about five years into battling intense acne and was in constant search for ways to clear up my face. My mom wasn’t a big makeup wearer, and I technically wasn’t “allowed” to wear much makeup at that age, but that didn’t bother me, given I wasn’t so interested in it yet.

In college, I began dabbling in makeup a bit more. I can remember buying a Laura Mercier tinted moisturizer, Lancôme Définicils mascara, and the iconic Urban Decay Naked palette (which I probably used for five years straight). At this point, I had learned that I prefer to wear a natural, minimal makeup look. But, due to my acne, I still tried to wear makeup as sparingly as possible, concerned that it would clog my pores and break me out even more. But that was before I became a content creator.

When I began my job as a content creator, I quickly became really interested in makeup. I figured out that getting good at applying it was a necessary part of my job since I was on camera every day. I also started to receive PR from brands, which allowed me to experiment with a wide range of products. Receiving new products to try is a major perk of being a content creator, and part of why I look to other influencers for product recommendations, knowing how many products we try before forming an opinion about the ones we like.

Around this time, I also began looking a bit closer at the ingredient labels in household, skincare, and bodycare products to remove the ones containing toxins. This prompted me to take a closer look at my makeup products too, inspiring me to switch to “clean” beauty products. I tried out a few products from “clean” brands and, to my surprise, they broke me out. I had assumed that products with “natural” ingredients would be better for my skin. I was wrong.

It turns out that not all “natural” or “clean” ingredients are necessarily good for your skin. For example, coconut oil is comedogenic, which can lead to clogged pores, and essential oils are highly irritating. Learning this completely changed the way I view and shop for makeup products.

One time, after getting a facial, the facialist asked me if I used a tinted moisturizer. I told her which one, and she suggested I switch because the one I was currently using was clogging my pores. So, I did as she suggested and switched to a non-comedogenic product, and, well, it was like my pores shrank before my eyes. It was like I had a new set of skin.

I had always thought that I just had naturally large pores that would forever get clogged with makeup. I thought the problem was exclusively with my skin, but it turns out that the makeup products I was using played a bigger part than I thought.

However, after making this discovery, I tried out different clean and non-comedogenic products, and found that many of them didn’t perform as well as the makeup products I was using previously. I found that many clean products, in particular, had little color payoff and melted off my face by the end of the day.

This is where the seed for Annadea Beauty was planted. I realized no one should have to decide between clean, non-comedogenic products and high-performing products. Why shouldn’t makeup boost skin health and last throughout the day? After making this discovery, there was no turning back. I was inspired to create a beauty brand that produces high-quality products that are clean, non-comedogenic, sensorially-rich, and high-performing, all in one.

When I set off to create Annadea, I knew I wanted to create products that are net positive for my skin, that don’t undo the good work of my skincare, but actually amplify it. I want every product that touches my skin to have an immediate cosmetic benefit and a long-term skin benefit. There’s no reason why we should trade long-term skin health for the immediate reward of color payoff.

After years of struggling with heavy acne, learning about what works for my skin has been one of the most important things I’ve ever done for myself. But it was a long road to get here, full of trial and error with many, many products.

That’s why my team at Annadea and I made the intentional decision to prioritize research with our product developer. I know what it’s like to be on the consumer side of things, and I want to relieve women of the burden of endlessly analyzing ingredient labels. I want customers to feel confident knowing they don’t have to look up a single ingredient because Annadea products have gone through countless rounds of testing and iteration to get the formulations perfect.

I hope that Annadea can fast-track the search for the right products for women who want high-performing, non-comedogenic beauty that meets European clean standards. It may have been a long road for me, but it shouldn’t have to be for everyone else.

From the outside looking in, it might be easy to assume that my life is all about food, all the time. And it’s partly true: as a recipe developer, food is pretty central to most of my days. I’m constantly thinking about what to cook and eat, whether it’s wondering what to make for dinner as I wander through the grocery aisles or brainstorming recipes in my kitchen to develop for my blog.

But the truth is, food is only a fraction of what contributes to the wholeness of my life. That’s why my tagline is “Effortless recipes for a full life.” Food is just one important ingredient, not the whole recipe.

While I put a lot of thought and care into what I cook for myself and my family, and the recipes I publish online, I try my best not to let it consume me, which can be challenging. While I am an advocate for “clean” eating, what I consider “healthy” or “nourishing” really depends on the context. Let me explain.

Everyone has a different picture in their head of what a “full life” looks like. To one person, it might look like a highly career-driven life, with long hours spent working on projects they care about. To another, it could look like prioritizing family and living within minutes of the people you grew up with. It could look like daily walks on the beach, the faint sound of waves in the background of your day. Or it could look like an apartment in a bustling city, the buzz of people and cars soundtracking your life. Or it could look like any combination of these things!

To me, a “full life” is all about expansiveness. It’s about having the capacity to pursue your ambitions, being present with the people you care about, feeling confident in your body, and experiencing joy in everyday moments. To me, living fully isn’t about living too widely or too narrowly, but allowing for the right balance of structure and flexibility.

Like all people, my day-to-day life is a juggling act of responsibilities. I’m constantly switching hats, balancing entrepreneurship and motherhood, while carving out time for creativity, physical activity, moments to cultivate my relationships, and even periods of stillness to find mental clarity. With that in mind, I try to think of food as a way to fuel all of these roles and functions. That’s why all my recipes are developed with protein for stability, fiber-rich carbs for sustained energy, and healthy fats for satiety and hormonal balance. I also always make an effort to include colorful produce rich in micronutrients and antioxidants, and anti-inflammatory ingredients that consistently make me feel good.

With this approach, I try not to consider food as a way to control myself, but as a way to give myself what I need to show up in every part of my life. My approach towards food isn’t about perfection. It’s not about meticulously tracking my calories and macros, or restricting what I eat to shrink myself. It’s about fueling myself the way I need to in that particular moment, so I can perform well in the moments that matter most to me.

The older I get, the more I realize that food directly affects so much more than just my physical body. What I eat affects my energy, focus, patience, mood, productivity, and presence in relationships. I’ve realized that I’m a better mom when my blood sugar is balanced. I’m a better boss when I’ve eaten healthy fats that fuel my brain and allow me to make good decisions. I’m a better runner (a hobby I took up this year!) when I have complex carbs to fuel my muscles. I decide what to eat with all of these aspects of my life in mind.

My relationship with food transformed when I stopped asking myself, “Is this healthy?” and started asking, “How is this meal supporting the life I want to live?” My end goal isn’t to adhere to a rigid definition of “healthy.” My end goal is to live a full life. Sometimes a full life comes in the form of an abundant salad, packed with a rainbow of veggies and topped with grilled chicken. Other times, it comes in the form of a burger, fries, and a margarita on a Friday night with my husband. Both ends of the spectrum, and everything in between, are necessary for me to live my life to the fullest.

This is why I design my recipes with ease in mind. I understand that we all want to feel our best, but don’t want to spend countless hours cooking complicated meals or becoming overly fixated on what’s “healthy” and what’s not. Each recipe I publish is developed with simple methods, approachable ingredients, and balanced nutrition. I publish the meals that I actually want to prepare and eat, food that fits into my real, busy life.

In my eyes, wellness isn’t about drawing hard lines in the sand about what I should or shouldn’t eat. It’s about eating food that gives me energy, clarity, and stability, in every sense. It’s about physical and mental nourishment, and fueling myself in the right ways, so I can fully show up in every part of my life.

I have a funny relationship with imposter syndrome–I wouldn’t say I welcome it, exactly, but I like what it means to me. It means that I’m being challenged to do things beyond my current capabilities, and I like the challenge. Lately I’ve been feeling the imposter syndrome to a much larger degree than usual. I’m building a beauty company with zero prior experience of building a consumer goods company nor experience in the beauty world. I wrote my first cookbook but am feeling quite nervous about how I can get creative enough with the marketing strategy when it comes time to launch it. Not to mention the fact that I’m doing this while raising my first child, which is a constant reminder of just how little I knew about motherhood going into this.

When that doubt started to rear its ugly head this weekend, I thought to myself: why not me?

There are countless examples of famous entrepreneurs who built successful businesses in industries they were completely unfamiliar with. Sara Blakely spent seven years selling fax machines door-to-door before she launched Spanx. She had no experience in fashion, no experience in manufacturing, no connections in the hosiery industry. She had $5,000 in savings and a pair of pantyhose with the feet cut off. When she drove around to hosiery mills in North Carolina trying to find someone willing to manufacture her product, every single one of them turned her away. They’d ask who she was with, and she’d say “Sara Blakely.” They’d ask who was financially backing her, and she’d say “Sara Blakely.” She was a woman with a communications degree and a background in cold-calling businesses about fax machines, pitching an idea to an industry full of men who had been doing things the same way for seventy-five years. She had absolutely no reason to believe she could pull it off, except that she believed she could. Today, Spanx is valued at over a billion dollars and Blakely became the youngest self-made female billionaire in the world.

Vera Wang didn’t design her first dress until she was forty years old. Before that, she was a competitive figure skater who dreamed of making the U.S. Olympic team. When she didn’t, she became one of the youngest editors at Vogue, where she spent seventeen years before being passed over for editor-in-chief. She moved to Ralph Lauren for a couple of years, and it wasn’t until she went shopping for her own wedding dress and couldn’t find anything she actually liked that she thought, maybe I should just design it myself. She had no formal design training and no bridal experience, just a deep frustration with the options available to her and a conviction that she could do better. She opened her first bridal salon in the Carlyle Hotel with financial help from her father, and today, Vera Wang is arguably the most iconic name in wedding fashion. Her gowns have been worn by Kim Kardashian, Ariana Grande, and Hailey Bieber, among many others.

Emily Weiss was a twenty-five-year-old fashion assistant at Vogue with no experience in digital media or beauty when she started her blog, Into The Gloss. She just had a hunch that the beauty industry was talking at women instead of with them, and she wanted to flip that dynamic. A few years later, without any prior business experience, she launched Glossier–a beauty brand built from the ground up on the idea that the consumer should have a voice in the products being made for her. When she first pitched the company, eleven out of twelve firms turned her down. Today, Glossier is one of the most recognized beauty brands in the world and helped redefine how an entire industry thinks about community and customer relationships.

When I look at these stories, the common thread isn’t that these women had all the answers before they started, it’s that they didn’t let the absence of answers stop them. They identified a gap, trusted their instincts, and got to work. That’s something I think about constantly as I build Annadea. I’m a food content creator whose only corporate experience was at PwC working in consulting–about as far from the beauty industry as you can get. But when I pitched my business coach on the idea of starting a beauty company, she didn’t laugh or tell me I was crazy. She told me it made sense, because the thread connecting my entire career has been figuring out how to take care of my skin and heal my acne. I started cooking and developing recipes because I was trying to heal my skin from the inside out, so creating beauty products that would do the same from the outside in is the natural next chapter.

I think imposter syndrome gets a bad reputation. We talk about it like it’s something to overcome, something to push past, something to defeat. I see it differently. Imposter syndrome is just the emotional cost of doing something new. It’s the tax you pay for growth. And when I feel it creeping in–when I’m sitting in a meeting about supply chain logistics and I don’t know a single acronym being thrown around, or when I’m reviewing product formulations and realizing how much chemistry I never learned–I try to remind myself that discomfort isn’t the same thing as inability. I can learn, I can ask questions, and I can hire people who are smarter than me in the areas where I need them to be.

That last part has been one of the most important lessons of this entire journey. Building Annadea has taught me that being a founder doesn’t mean being an expert in everything. It means assembling a team of people whose expertise complements your own, and then trusting them to do their jobs while you do yours. We have people on our team who have built billion-dollar beauty brands, who understand supply chains inside and out, who live and breathe financial modeling. My job is to bring the creative vision, the connection to the consumer, and the willingness to keep learning even when the learning curve feels impossibly steep.

The “why not me?” mindset isn’t about ignoring the fact that you’re underqualified. It’s about refusing to let that be the end of the conversation. I don’t have a background in beauty, but Sara Blakely didn’t have a background in fashion. Vera Wang didn’t have a background in design. Emily Weiss didn’t have a background in business. They all started from a place of “I don’t know how to do this yet”–and the “yet” is the part that matters and changes.

One of the things I’m planning to do with Suede when she gets older is to ask her what she failed at each week. I want to normalize the idea that failing means you’re trying, and trying means you’re growing. Sara Blakely’s father did the exact same thing–he would ask his kids at the dinner table what they’d failed at that day, and if they hadn’t failed at anything, he was disappointed. I love that. I think we’ve built a culture that’s so afraid of looking like we don’t know what we’re doing that we’ve stopped doing things we don’t know how to do.

Here’s what I’ll say to anyone reading this who is feeling the weight of imposter syndrome right now, whether it’s in your career, in motherhood, in a creative project, or in some entirely new venture you’re secretly dreaming about: the doubt you’re feeling isn’t evidence that you can’t do it. It’s evidence that you care enough to want to do it well. The people who never feel imposter syndrome are either not pushing themselves or not paying attention. The fact that you feel it means you’re in the arena. And once you’re in the arena, the only question that matters is: why not me?

A disclaimer I want to give this newsletter before we dive in: I want to be clear that when I talk about how I am approaching certain motherhood things, I don’t necessarily think my approach is the RIGHT way. We are so inundated with advice as mothers and that advice can often make us feel like whatever approach we are comfortable with/suits our family might not be the “correct” one. Just know that this is what fits my family and there is no judgment about however you choose to feed your precious ones!

Over the last few months, I’ve been getting many DMs about how I’m approaching solid food for Suede. As with everything else I do, my approach has been part research-led and part intuition-led. After combing through dozens of articles, studies, and forums about different approaches, I decided to rely on baby-led weaning, offering a variety of foods early on, and introducing her to allergens sooner rather than later.

According to the research I found, the first year of a child’s life is a powerful and important window to shape their relationship with food, taste preferences, and even long-term health. Baby-led weaning encourages babies to self-feed soft, whole foods instead of relying on purées. This is supposed to support motor development, build independence, and help foster a more intuitive connection to hunger and fullness cues. Simultaneously, focusing on variety early-on helps to expand a baby’s taste palate and may reduce picky eating later, while also supporting a more diverse and resilient gut microbiome.

I’ve also been intentional about early allergen introduction. I want Suede to be able to eat as many things as possible without issue, and research shows that introducing common allergens like peanuts and eggs during infancy, instead of delaying them, can significantly reduce the risk of developing food allergies. The “100 foods before 1” isn’t necessarily about hitting that exact number; for me, it’s more reflective of my mindset. I’m prioritizing variety, repetition, and exposure during a time when Suede is likely to naturally be more open to new tastes and textures. It’s less about doing everything perfectly and more about creating a positive, low-pressure foundation around food that emphasizes nourishment, curiosity, and ease from the beginning.

At six months, we started introducing super soft foods that she could hold on to: things like avocado, steamed carrots, and sweet potato. We also tried whipped bone marrow but she didn’t like that and it was a nightmare to clean up–it was basically the texture of bacon grease, which grossed me out.

We chose to do a modified version of baby-led weaning that works for the style of parents that we are. The thought of handing Suede a bowl of yogurt or marinara sauce and letting her fling it all over the house and herself is an anxiety I don’t particularly want to endure, so we give her whole foods to feed herself (steamed veggies, pieces of chicken, bananas, avocado, etc.) and spoon feed her things like cottage cheese and soup.

One question I get, given my gluten, dairy, and refined-sugar free lifestyle, is about whether we are feeding her dairy. We are! I so wish I could eat dairy and would love for her to not be afflicted with my inability to process cheese, so exposure to dairy early on was important to me.

I approach her meals similarly to how I approach mine. I build them around a protein source and then add a fat source and a carbohydrate. I also always make sure she has a veggie on her plate at lunch and dinner. I give her fruit at the end of her meal so that she doesn’t just go for the fruit right away.

A typical meal for her looks like: a beef burger patty, avocado, roasted sweet potato, steamed broccoli, then we finish with blueberries.

Each week I prep the following things for her:

• Various steamed or roasted veggies: carrots, zucchini, sweet potato, broccoli, cauliflower, green beans

• Fruit: berries, bananas, oranges, etc.

• Lightly seasoned protein sources: ground beef or burgers, chicken thighs, ground chicken

• I also keep Serenity food pouches (linked in this baby feeding essentials list) stocked for her for on-the-go.

• Other things I keep stocked: cottage cheese, deli turkey, grass-fed sharp cheddar, yogurt (coconut and Greek), eggs

Here is a recipe I’ve been making for Suede lately that she’s been loving:

Ingredients:

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1/4 cup nut milk, at room temperature

1/4 avocado oil

1 tsp vanilla

1/3 cup applesauce

2 cups shredded zucchini, lightly squeezed to remove excess moisture

1 1/4 cup almond flour

¼ cup tapioca flour

1 teaspoon cinnamon

½ teaspoon baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup blueberries

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350. Grease a mini muffin tin and set aside.

In a large mixing bowl, add the eggs, nut milk, avocado oil, applesauce, and vanilla and whisk to combine. Stir in the shredded zucchini.

In the same mixing bowl, add the flours, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt, and stir gently until just incorporated. Stir in the blueberries.

Scoop the muffins into the prepared tin. Bake for 18 minutes until the muffins start to get golden brown on top.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack. Enjoy!