How To Be The Smartest Person In The Room

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Time for my favorite part of the week, ICYMI!!!

ICYMI ⋆˚✿˖°

Bonjour Mes Amis!!

I’m flying to NYC from Paris on Paris’ Sliv Air with a coffee in one hand and cherries in the other. For those of you equally obsessed with their circadian rhythms, I’ve been digging into what actually helps you naturally beat jet lag and it turns out cherries is one of them. As you know, I’ve been quietly help build a brand in the circadian rhythm and hormonal health space so please prepare to enjoy all my learnings and findings.

Somewhere over the Atlantic, I ended up gabbing with celeb makeup artist Melissa Hurkman about our favorite celeb-founded beauty brands—especially after Rhode just became Sephora’s best-selling makeup launch in 50 years according to Sephora’s CEO. She told me her absolute top picks for makeup tools (yes, brushes), which are such an underrated part of unlocking main character energy. Here’s what she swears by—for foundation and for eyes.

We’ve been all over France this past week and truthfully, it was really nice to take the break off and be present in the South of France and Chantilly, just outside of Paris. And as per usual, I kept up my on-the-go workouts with Megan’s Sculpt Society. I even ended up packing the ball and bands to not let my workouts slide while indulging on 30 gluten-free croissants from Copains. I’m predicting they open in NYC in the next year or two. There’s nothing like Paris so if there is one thing I’m committing to before I die, it is to re-learn French (I was pretty close to fluent in high school!!!!). If anyone happens to know an LA based French tutor, please reply to this email!!

Lastly, I was in a lot of new rooms this week with some very smart, accomplished people. I love being out in the wild and examining how the people work the room so when I saw this quote I knew I would include it as the sign-off to this week’s entry back.

“The smartest person in the room, I’ve learned, is usually the person who knows how to tap into the intelligence of every person in the room.” - Scott Kelly

♡ Erewhon is not opening in NYC—at least, not fully. Reminder: Details Matter. Unlike in L.A., where anyone can drop $20+ on a smoothie just for the vibes, New Yorkers will need to cough up $36,000 just to enter the building and then $7,000 every year after. Erewhon isn’t launching a public storefront, it’s securing a JUICE and TONIC BAR spot inside Kith Ivy, the ultra-private padel club from Kith founder, Ronnie Fieg.

♡ Traditional membership clubs are losing their cool. NeueHouse just shut down all of its working clubs, abrupt, but not surprising if you’ve been inside. Then this post from a longtime Chief member popped up in my feed: she's leaving, too.

♡ HSR EXCLUSIVE: Arrae announces they will do $100M in revenue on the Hot Smart Rich Podcast. For all the details and how to get inspiration from their winning formula, listen here!

♡ The girls are now using beta blockers to manage nervous jitters thanks to your favorite influencers like Paige and Hannah from Giggly Squad.

♡ First it was L’Oreal with OF creator, Ari Kytsya but now it looks like the creators once considered “not brand safe” are arriving at their time to shine with Tana Mongeau partnering with Tarte for her new lip collab. This article on the return of sex-centric advertising was a good one.

♡ What Americans actually want to eat, according to Oura. Forget what TikTok says. Oura’s new food data reveals what people are really craving—and it’s not green juice and adaptogens. There’s real insight here for anyone building in wellness, consumer, or CPG. Trends come and go, but the data doesn’t lie.

♡ Cool VC Jobs Alert. There’s a killer manager role open at the intersection of venture capital, entertainment, and brand building—with Talent Ventures (WME). I’ve worked with them a ton—they’re the real deal. And if you’re eyeing VC from the platform side, Lucky #3’s firm , M13 is hiring a Director of Marketing role too!! Two totally different vibes, both worth checking out.

Last week on the podcast, we sat down with Siff Haider & Nish Samantray, co-founders of Arrae, to hear their raw story of love, sacrifice, and scaling to $100M. From immigrating to the U.S. with no safety net to betting their wedding fund on their business, Siff and Nish opened up about what it really costs to build big—sharing how they scaled Arrae from $1M to $100M in just 5 years, why most founders fail (and how they found the answers anyway), the truth about building as immigrant founders chasing the American dream, how to fight with your partner without breaking the business or the marriage, what it really takes to hire and scale culture, why they said no to selling even at $300M, and how treating money as math, not emotion, transformed both their company and their personal lives. You can connect with them on Instagram @siffhaider & @plentyofnish and check out Arrae—HSR angels get 15% off with code HSR15.

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

♡ Women’s Health & Beauty ♡

♡ Media, Entertainment & Creator ♡

♡ E-Commerce, Retail & Social ♡

♡ Tech, Business & Investing ♡

You know luxury is in trouble when the hottest item on the runway isn’t a $5,000 handbag but the thing dangling off it. Charms, from Kendall Jenner’s 818 Tequila minis to Miu Miu’s micro bags to Crocs’ customizable phone cases, have officially gone from playful accessory to brand marketing strategy.

This isn’t just about fashion anymore. It’s about survival.

Jane Birkin was looping trinkets on her Hermès long before TikTok gave us “what’s in my bag” culture. Fendi’s Karl Lagerfeld pushed the concept into the mainstream in 2014 with the Bag Bugs (Karlito is my personal favorite), plush monsters that turned purses into personalities.