Creative Women Don't Expire

ICYMI ⋆˚✿˖°

Happy Sunday HSR. We have quite a few new people in here, welcome!!!

This weekend I was in a consumption, not creation mode because it was my adhd reset weekend. I’ve never felt more ready to get back into creation mode after this reset, so I explain all about what an “adhd reset weekend” is here. In today’s edition, I’m sharing the person, podcast, article, piece of artwork, and the product that truly sparked something this week. So let’s get into it.

♡ Let’s start with my latest follow on substack: Tina Brown. She became the editor of Vanity Fair at 30 and built a career on taste, conviction, and guts, not follower counts. In a world obsessed with virality, Tina reminds me that influence is greater than followers. Her reinvention arc, from legacy media to startups, books, and now Substack proves that creative women don’t expire. They evolve. Again and again.

♡ The Daily’s podcast interview with writer John Green will hit hard for people with anxiety, especially this line: “The things that are good for me in the short term are bad for me in the long term, and the things that are good for me in the long term are bad for me in the short term.” If you’re navigating anxiety, burnout, or just trying to figure it all out, this one’s worth your time.

♡ Frida Kahlo just broke records for women. Her 1940 painting The Dream (The Bed) sold for $54.7M, officially becoming the most expensive painting by a female artist ever sold at auction. Iconic.

♡ Matt Alagiah from The Wall Street Journal reported this week that more men in tech are getting facelifts. It’s a conversation that manifested it’s way into this week’s HSR podcast episode with Amy Peterson too. The pressure to appear younger is no longer just a women’s issue. But if surgery isn’t your thing or you can’t afford a $150,000 facelift, there’s a not-so-mainstream alternative gaining quiet traction: Renuva. It regenerates your own fat cells, and we cover it all on the pod. Valeria Lipovetsky (who openly discloses she sees Amy Peterson too) just mentioned it on her latest podcast episode as well. It’s starting to gain traction. But if you’re looking for an easy place to start, I’ve been sharing how much I’m obsessed with my new Therabody Face MaskGlo. It’s the first mask I genuinely feel like I can see out of and do things in.

♡ PS. For any female founders building in the beauty and wellness space, Shopify x Sonsie are giving away $100,000 worth of grants and prizes to early stage founders! Deadline to apply is December 14!

♡ PPS - We are aware of our WhatsApp growth issue. We are working extra hard behind the scenes to figure out a solution and have had to put extra security and controls on it for now, which has deactivated all previous links shared. Please use this link and we will accept angels based on group limits. We shouldn’t have a problem accepting for city-specific groups but we are currently at capacity for the HSR Global Chat. However, please request to join as that will add you to the waitlist if someone leaves.

If you run or are launching a service-based business that depends on google reviews, word of mouth and people management instead of MOQ’s, this is the episode for you. The #1 Celebrity Aesthetician in Miami, Amy Peterson, holds nothing back about how to dominate a saturated market, invest in yourself and stay #1 for 6 years straight with no investors and IYKYK marketing. Plus, we dig into the secret treatments people (and men!!) are having done pre-facelift and what it looks like to anti-age and achieve facial symmetry without $150,000, retinol or botox.

And I couldn’t rave about my favorite skincare product without giving you a discount code so use HSR20 for 20% off The Laser Serum.

♡ the brands, people, places, things that have captured my attention ♡

♡ Women’s Health & Beauty ♡

♡ Media, Entertainment & Creator ♡

♡ E-Commerce, Retail & Social ♡

♡ Tech, Business & Investing ♡

If you had a choice between collecting multiple 7-figure endorsement checks to be the face of a global beauty brand or spending years building a beauty brand that may never get shelf space in Sephora, what would you choose?

Although this may feel counterintuitive after Rhode’s $1B exit to E.l.f., that was the anomaly, not the norm. And in the creator economy, beauty remains one of the most lucrative categories for creators and celebrities to stay open to. Brands spend aggressively because beauty converts quickly, and because a trusted celebrity face can move more product than almost any other marketing tactic that exists today. Beauty accounts for $24 billion of influencer and endorsement spend each year. Fashion, by comparison, sits at $6.8 billion. And when you zoom out to the entire $250 billion creator economy, it becomes even clearer which categories write the biggest checks.

We have spent the past decade watching every celebrity launch a beauty brand, but it comes with a cost. The opportunity cost. Once a celebrity becomes the founder or face of a beauty or skincare brand, they remove themselves from the highest paying endorsement category for at least five years. Sometimes ten. Beauty conglomerates do not hire the founder of a competing brand to serve as the face of their campaigns. It confuses consumers, weakens brand messaging, and undermines trust.

Hailey Bieber is the clearest example. As the founder of Rhode, she can still star in a Saint Laurent campaign or headline a national Chase Sapphire Rewards endorsement. But she cannot (or should not) lead a global campaign for Estée Lauder or L’Oréal as long as Rhode exists. That opportunity disappears the moment the brand launches, regardless of its success. This is the opportunity cost in action.

HSR Glossary:

opportunity cost
/ˌɒpəˈtjuːnɪti kɒst/ noun

The loss of potential gain when choosing one option over another.

Other celebrities have built ownership and equity by building in a less endorsement-lucrative category. Most recently, Elsa Hosk built Helsa, her fashion brand sold on Revolve. Fashion does not compete with beauty, or even high fashion and fashion weeks, which means she retains full access to high budget beauty and high fashion partnerships. So when Inde Wild, the minority founded creator-led brand by Diipa Khosla, selected her as the face of their Champi Slick Stick, the alignment made sense on every level. No conflict. No limitations. No closed doors.

This leads to a question very few celebrities consider before launching a brand. If beauty pays more than any other category, is it actually smarter to own the brand or to be the face of one?