Hello, stars!
WHEW, Q3 took turns I never could have scripted, and I’m on my second book and third round of The Artist’s Way, so I know a few things about scripting!
When I told you I was going back to the office last month, I told you about a lunch in East Hampton, the one I walked into skeptical and walked out of with a new job.
What I didn’t tell you is who made that possible. Kate McAndrew is the co-founder of Baukunst, a $100 million venture fund that invests in creative technologists, and the lead investor in YouPop, the startup I’m now Head of Growth at. While she has her own powerful social following, she had never seen a single one of my posts.
After one conversation at that lunch, she invited me to dinner the next night, where I sat next to YouPop’s founder, Sarina, and left with an opportunity.
A few weeks later, she invited me to her fund’s creative technologist conference in San Francisco, where we got to meet Steve Wozniak (Apple co-founder, genius!!!) and a.a. murakami made us custom tote bags. I’ll have to do an entire breakdown, and you’ll meet Kate soon in the next issue of Annotated. Her story is worth the wait!
OK SO, Q4. time to get down to business
There’s been a lot of talk lately about influencers going back to the office, and it might feel like whiplash because just a year ago, we were talking about how the creator economy was going to take over.
But things change, and here’s what’s shocking me about working again: I forgot I was actually smart.
Yes, I know. I named my entire media brand Too Smart For This, and I’ve spent the past year calling myself smart and teaching brilliant women to own their intelligence.
What I’d forgotten is the joy of contributing to something bigger than my own business: the whiteboard debates, the shared wins, watching an idea get better because five other people touched it. That’s hard to feel when it’s just you and your analytics alone!
I’m in rooms where people push back on my ideas and expect me to push back on theirs. For the first time in a long time, I feel smart again, sharply smart, like a muscle I forgot I had. Even though I’m physically exhausted (I do have an entire creator business that I’m STILL running!), I am so energized!
The thing I want you to realize is that Kate didn’t need JUST my follower count to invite me to dinner.
What gets me into these rooms today is a combination of two things:
The network and opportunities I’ve built over 6+ years in content creation
The credibility that makes all of it stronger: the Wharton MBA, my time on the YouTube Shorts launch team, and real experience doing actual WORK
Not just the successful moments, either. The “failures” count too: the robe company that didn’t survive the tariffs taught me what it feels like when margins stop working. The stretch where I stepped away from content for four months, came back, and kept going is the reason anyone still knew my name. Every room I walked into this fall, I walked into carrying receipts!
Emma Grede agrees with me….
You’ve probably seen Emma’s video by now, the one telling women to stop worrying about personal brands and go get great at something instead. Half the internet cheered. The other half lovessss to complain...
I’ll admit I felt a little called out, like sis, we were just together last week filming TikToks, and you know I love a personal brand!!!
I’ve built a whole business teaching women to be visible. Then I reread what Emma told me when I interviewed her for the first issue of Annotated last month. I’d asked her when she realized her perspective had become an asset worth building alongside her companies:
“I never set out to build a personal brand. I set out to build businesses. Over time, I realized people weren’t just interested in what I’d built, they wanted to understand how I think.” — Emma Grede for Too Smart For This
She’s been saying this for a minute, and she’s right. The work came first. She then wrote a book and started a podcast so people could see how she thinks.
That’s the part women skip when we argue about personal branding: showing your work is how you get more work, not “curating” it.
Remember math class? The right answer alone only got you partial credit. The teacher wanted the scratch paper, the crossed-out attempts and the margins full of arrows, because it proved you could do it again and showed how you think.
Since sometime around 2014, social media has let a lot of us get away with skipping the math.
We polished the answer, flattened ourselves into something easy to scroll past, and called it a brand. That era is ending.
People can feel when the person and the profile don’t match. The women (me, lowkey!) getting invited into interesting rooms are the ones with substance in both places.
The case for material
This season on Too Smart For This is Ambitious Material Girl Autumn, and I recently started thinking deeper about that middle word!
Everyone is ambitious now. Y’all know it bothers me a little — it’s in every caption, every bio, every launch email. I love that for us, conceptually. Ambition is a gift that should be cherished. Over the last year, though, I’ve realized that the middle word is actually more important to me.
A material fact is one that changes the outcome of a case. Material evidence holds up under questioning.
A material girl, the way I mean it, has a beautiful, full world you can see (the fit, the italian marble, the new Chanel) and an equally beautiful, full world you can’t: the conscious consumption, the theories she’ll defend over dessert, the skills she’s been stacking on the side. She’s interesting in the room and interesting on the internet, and it’s the same woman in both places.
That’s who I’d like us all to be this season, and as always, I’ll be right here with ya, sharing what I learn along the way.
Wanna do it together? Come find me this weekend
Saturday morning, I’m speaking at CultureCon at the Duggal Greenhouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. If you’re there, come find me and say hi!!! I’ll be on at 10:30!
Sunday at 11am ET, I’m teaching CREDIBLE, my free live masterclass. If you know you need a real career and a real presence online, and you’ve been dreading building one at the expense of the other, this is for you.
Nobody is going to discover you. I’ll walk you through how to make your work visible without sanding off your personality or your hard-won authority, and you’ll leave with a point of view you can actually use on Monday. Save your seat here.
If you want to get started now
Read my full conversation with Emma Grede in Annotated №001. It covers anger, agency, and (crucially) whether the Gucci thong is coming back.
Read My creator business is booming. So why am I going back to the office?, the full Hamptons story and the activity system behind my portfolio career.
See you this weekend.
Alexis xx
That's right 🔥