ICYMI

Hello! Hi! Happy Sunday HSR!

First of all, it's my better half's birthday! And no, it's not Courtney, he's an alpha Cancer, (thank god). It's Katie's birthday! To know Katie is to love her and I hope she reads this knowing that my life and HSR would never be the same without her.

I also write this to you eight days post-op from endo surgery and a lot happened in the pop culture business world, which left me feeling genuinely anxious without being able to gossip about it and give my two cents on the internet this week.

The full list of consumer trends I’m gossiping about is below but I had to call out the news I was heavily obsessed with: the ChatGPT x personal finance news, Gstaad Guy x Bentley Motors, Martha Stewart's $10M AI home bet, the Zimbabwean Princess $4.5M raise, and of course 4AM's $4M raise which I am so grateful to be a part of. We have a full case study on the brand below for our paid subscribers!

With Brian from Quan Media Group, the agency behind Rare Beauty OOH, Skims, Lola Blankets and more, and with the help of so many HSR Angels, we co-designed our first billboard on Beverly and Alta Vista and did a fun scavenger hunt to reward some of you who played along to go visit it in my absence! Thank you to everyone who played along. It brought me so much joy!! The winners will be contacted by the HSR Instagram this week to enjoy a facial on me at HeyDay which is right next door.

I also randomly posted my wedding photos this week which I was not planning on, but when you cannot do much else while recovering, you just go for it. And I am so glad I did because it gave me a low risk way to start really leaning into Claude to automate more in the business. I had this idea to upload all my wedding photos to Pinterest and link back to my Instagram, figured there had to be an easy way to build something to do it, messed around with it for thirty minutes, and Claude basically told me paying someone twenty dollars a month to handle this was a much better use of my time than becoming a part-time Pinterest developer. Humbling but fair.

I genuinely hate being bad at new things but I am digging in and spending the second half of my recovery week learning how to move past the basics of AI and actually level up. If anyone has tips, creators to follow, or AI consultants they love, please send them my way!

So let's get back into it now that I am feeling a bit more like myself ❤

If you’re ever wondered if investing in your wardrobe and dressing well can make you successful, this is the episode for you.

Founder of Heaven Mayhem, Pia Mance joins me on Hot Smart Rich to talk about what it takes to go from stay at home wife to power couple after building a $10M accessories brand. They get into the unspoken financial rules of marriage, pregnancy planning, viral products, personal stylists and refusing to be known as “just an influencer”.

Pia started Heaven Mayhem with just $900 (from a transfer she set up from her husband’s account) , sold 11 necklaces on her first drop & turned it into one of the internet’s most wanted accessories brands! No business plan, just taste and ‘I can do it’ attitude!

She shares how one faceless creator’s reel drove a $38K sales day, why dressing better changed her business, how she uses AI, and why people pleasers need to start saying no!

We also gets all the gossip on how Pia manifesting her pregnancy in Canva, she is preparing for motherhood as a founder, Kelly bags, credit cards, and building a life on her own terms!

all the brands, people, places, things we’re gossiping about this week

Women’s Health & Beauty

Media, Entertainment & Creator

Consumer, E-Commerce & Retail

Tech, Business & Investing

Here’s 4AM’s Exact Strategy (and Why I Wired $25,000 Without a Single Phone Call)

Last fall 4AM’s business bank account hit its lowest point ever. At one point, the company had just $469 left. This month, the brand is launching in 1,750 Target stores nationwide after closing a $4M seed round led by CAVU Consumer Partners. Not bad for a company selling makeup wipes, or what the founders now refer to as skincare wipes, a category most of beauty had largely written off.

But this is not really a story about wipes. It is a story about what investors actually fund now, and it is not always scale or the obvious metrics. While most founders are still trying to force themselves into traditional VC frameworks and optimize for arbitrary milestones, the smartest consumer investors are increasingly looking for something much harder to quantify but impossible to ignore: momentum.

And 4AM had the kind of momentum investors were scared to miss. That’s why I invested $25,000 without picking up the phone. 

Here’s their story.