Kinship, Grief, and the Real Stories Behind “Successful” Brands: A Solo Episode with Monique

Abnormally Confident: How Melanie Travis Built Andie from Zero to 1M Swimsuits Sold

She was a film director in training, working on indie sets and squeezing into cabs with other broke twenty–somethings on awards nights. Then she took a customer support internship at a little New York startup, fell in love with building internet brands, and eventually quit to sell swimsuits on the internet. That is Melanie Travis, founder and CEO of Andie Swim, and she might be the most “abnormally confident” person I have ever met. In this episode we talk about how a deeply awkward work offsite at a lake with all-male leadership turned into the spark for Andie, why being queer and an only child shaped her default setting as a leader, how a film-school brain translates into building businesses, and why she still heads to her oil-painting studio after work to stay sane. We also get into the messy middle: buying a second brand, guessing wrong on a big color launch, teaching yourself to love spreadsheets, and holding people’s livelihoods without letting it consume your entire identity. If you’ve ever wondered whether you are “too sensitive” or “too artsy” or “not finance-y enough” to be a founder, Melanie is your counterexample. In this episode: • The wildly awkward work retreat that made her realize swim needed a safer, smarter brand • How she went from customer support intern at Foursquare to founding Andie • Why she describes herself as “abnormally confident” and what that actually looks like day to day • Nature vs nurture: growing up an only child with two art-world parents and a gay dad • What film school taught her about directing a team and seeing the whole story arc • The honest story of acquiring Richer Poorer and immediately disagreeing with a big buy • Coconut Milk vs Rainforest: when your team goes deep on a color you personally hate • How she taught herself to love finance and why monthly close is now her favorite meeting • The difference between being a “hero” founder and being a world-class number two • Painting in oils, $56 screw-top wine, and why a studio saved her from burnout

How to Build a DTC Brand People Actually Trust (Not Just Buy From) with Eunice Byun @ Material Kitchen

She left Goldman Sachs and Revlon to sell kitchen tools. Eight years later, she voluntarily killed her best-selling cutting board because new research showed she could do better for customers. That's Eunice Byun, founder of Material, and this conversation is one of my favorites. While everyone's chasing growth hacks and viral moments, Eunice is building an "old soul" brand. Human customer service. Thoughtful design. Products you actually reach for every day. And a lifetime warranty that's just "reach out and we'll help.” We talk about why she only designs the must-haves (not the nice-to-haves), how she's built 8 years of loyalty through word-of-mouth instead of ads, what happened when she hid her pregnancy for 6 months at a startup, and why being a mom made her a BETTER founder. In this episode: • The moment Eunice knew she had to leave corporate and bet on herself • Why Material only makes products that pass the "reach for it daily" test • How she partnered with materials scientists to redesign a hero product from scratch • Why word-of-mouth creates stickiness that ads can't buy • What her daughters taught her about grace, empathy, and leadership • The "dance of the kitchen" philosophy behind every design decision • How to build customer loyalty that actually lasts (hint: it's not about transactions)This is for anyone building something different and wondering if "different" is good enough. Spoiler: it is.

How Lica Trains AI to Think Like a Designer with CEO Priyaa Kalyanaraman

What if your brand had a creative director in the cloud? In this episode, I sit down with my boss and Lica’s co-founder/CEO, Priyaa Kalyanaraman, to unpack what we’re actually building and why it’s very different from yet another “type a prompt, get a pretty picture” tool. Priyaa has been working in AI and design long before it was cool. From building presentation design agents at Microsoft to experimenting with social creatives at Snap, she’s been obsessed with one question: How do you give everyday people and brands a “personal storytelling agent” that actually understands taste? We get into: • Why so many AI image tools create visual slop (and what’s missing under the hood)• How Lica trains a model to think like a designer, not just mimic a camera• What “brand DNA” actually means in model form, and how we keep visuals on-brand over thousands of iterations• Why Priyaa refuses to sell “fire your team, just use AI” and instead leans on a crawl–walk–run rollout with clients• How AI is becoming a great neutralizer for small e-comm teams who want to play at the same level as legacy fashion houses• What this all means for photographers, models, and designers (hint: they’re not going anywhere, but the job changes)• Her favorite thought experiment for anxious creatives: What if we could distribute your brain to millions of people and you got paid for it?•The ethics question everyone asks: when do we have to say it’s AI? and how she thinks about honest use vs deception If you’re a founder, marketer, or creative who’s curious about AI but allergic to hype, this conversation is for you. We talk frankly about the limits, the opportunities, and the very human problems we’re trying to solve for brands and their teams. Listen to this episode of Creative Got Me on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube and let us know: What’s the one part of your creative workflow you’d love a “personal storytelling agent” to handle for you?

From Dot-Com Crash to AI Boom: Lessons From 30 Years Online with David Cost

What happens when you put a 30-year tech pioneer in a room with someone building AI for the next 30? In this episode of Creative Got Me, I sit down with David Cost, VP of Digital & Ecommerce at Rainbow Shops and former co-founder of one of the internet’s first price comparison sites, PriceSCAN.com [http://PriceSCAN.com]. David has quietly been at the front of every major tech wave so far: personal computing, the early web, mobile, and now AI. He’s seen the dot-com bubble burst, watched Google out-compete his startup, and then turned all of that scar tissue into a playbook for modern retail. We get into: • How a tiny 3-person dev team at Rainbow makes tech bets that let them compete with giants like Walmart • Why the iPhone, not the browser, was the real “great equalizer” for e-commerce • What he learned trying (and failing) to use AI to replace people, and why using it to assist people was a home run • The first time he saw “real” personalization work at scale, sending 100,000 unique SMS messages instead of one mass blast • How he thinks about risk, experiments, and knowing when to kill an idea without killing your appetite for trying again If you’re a founder, marketer, or operator trying to make sense of AI without losing your mind (or your job), this conversation will calm you down and challenge you at the same time. Listen in to learn how to treat AI like the next Excel: not a threat, but the tool that quietly separates the people who stay relevant from the people who get left behind.

Kinship, Grief, and the Real Stories Behind “Successful” Brands: A Solo Episode with Monique

You see the polished brand. You don’t see the brother who wired $5,000 at midnight because he believed in a tiny baby-hat idea. In this solo episode of Creative Got Me, I tell the story behind Kinship, the kids hat company I started in 2016 while pregnant and living in San Francisco. I share how my brother became my first hype man, investor, and co-founder… and how everything changed when he passed away from COVID in 2020. There are some things you can “figure out” in business: how to build a tech pack, how to find a manufacturer, how to ship a product. And then there are things you can’t hack: like grief, or losing a parent to addiction, or trying to keep building while your inner world is breaking open. Along the way, I zoom out from my own story into the bigger picture: • what we never see behind the brands we use every day• the quiet grief and failure sitting underneath so many “success stories” • why these long-form conversations with founders (Heidi, Jess, Dave, Katerina and more) have changed how I work • how motherhood has made me better at storytelling, not less serious • why I chose to step into one of the spiciest spaces right now: AI-powered creative at Lica I also talk honestly about AI: the fears I hear (“I never want AI to be considered art”), why I still chose to take a seat at this particular table, and how I think we can use AI to support e-commerce brands instead of flattening them. Full episode is live on every platform.