Hi there! Welcome back to On Brand - your weekly dose of cultural commentary, brand strategy, and what's actually happening in social media and the creator economy.

Announcement time, eeek! It's been two years of writing this newsletter every week, and it’s my absolute favorite part of what we do at Girls Club (other than meeting you online or irl, ofc!). Of course, I love social media, but this newsletter allowed us to dive a lot deeper into all things branding, content, and the internet.

We’re currently at 25,000 subscribers, with an incredible open rate, and we have big plans for 2026.

Here are some of the changes we’re making if you missed last week’s email:

I’m so excited for this new era of On Brand, and I couldn’t be more grateful for your support! Thank you so much, and here’s to many more years of yapping together about the internet. Love ya!

Big plans for 2026? You’re in the right place!

Join my business bestie Andi Eaton Alleman from Oui, We Studio, and me for a 90-minute, actionable workshop to help you get ready for your best year yet. 

This is what we will cover: 

You will leave the workshop with a clear plan for 2026 and a toolkit of resources to make it happen.

Big thanks to the team at Flodesk for helping us bring this workshop to you!

The best things we’ve read, watched and listened to + news from the internet.

Looking for a new gig?! We got you! Here are some of the coolest jobs in social media, the creator economy & female-led brands.

Chances are, if you’re an ambitious woman, you stumbled across Emma Grede’s (co-founder of SKIMS) podcast.

Or you’re following Grace Beverley for a good dose of girlboss-but-relatable content.

Or, like me, it was first hearing Sara Blakely’s story of going from selling fax machines to building Spanx into a billion-dollar company all those years ago that sparked the ambition for building something of your own.

Or maybe you love to keep up with the yoghurt, pickle, stationery, or insert a niche brand here founder on IG that’s just getting some initial traction, and you’re rooting for them so hard that you consider yourself an honorary member of their advisory board.

Founders and business owners are becoming niche celebrities, public figures, and role models, landing on our Pinterest vision boards as the new definition of success.

It seems like every celebrity and creator is launching a business. And previously offline founders are becoming creators. The throughline? It’s easier to build a business people love when people feel connected to the people running the business, not just your product.

The numbers back this up. 70% of consumers feel more connected to brands with CEOs who are active on social media. And companies know it. PayPal hired a Head of CEO Content earlier this year. So did Betches. Entire teams are being built around making founders & senior teams look good online because in 2025, the founder is the marketing. Or, at least a very important part of it.

We see founders of successful businesses stepping into the spotlight online (my new fave follow is Jing Gao from Fly By Jing). And new founders are catching on too - we see the rise of #foundertok and more people than ever are building their businesses in public as a means to breaking through the noise and kickstarting their business growth with a non-existent marketing budget.

In a world where you’re always one TikTok away from changing the trajectory of your business, who can blame them for shooting their shot?

Creating content is now becoming a part-time job on top of all the other duties of some of the busiest people on the planet (soz founders!). There are founders out there rewriting the rules of how businesses grow while everyone else is still debating whether they should “do Instagram” or “put themselves out there”.

...and started trusting “the person” instead. When institutions failed us repeatedly - hello, financial crisis, lay-offs, political scandals, the government?! (We’ve been through the wringer over the last couple of years as a collective) - we naturally looked for something else, more tangible to believe in. People want to follow humans who are transparent and accountable. And if anything, institutions are becoming less trustworthy, not more. So we keep betting on people instead.

Social media and the creator economy trained us to want close access and founders who post like humans feel modern and trustworthy.

With Gen Z and younger generations coming up, this expectation of access isn’t going anywhere. As we got used to the closeness that social media offers, we expect to know the founder and a certain level of access. A faceless, humanless brand feels almost suspicious.

While big brands like Nike or Burberry manufacture this human-level connection by partnering with celebrities, founders of brands without a huge marketing budget have no other option than to become the (no matter how micro) celebrity themselves.

If you wanted to reach people before social media, you needed PR teams, journalists, and media tours. Now? You can post something at 6 am and potentially reach hundreds of thousands of people by lunch. This fundamentally changed who controls the narrative.

The algorithms favor and push out personal content (because that’s what audiences find more engaging), so the most consistent & authentic CEOs are getting the highest reach.

Screengrabs from: Jing Gao, Grace Beverley, Emma Grede

There’s another reason behind the popularity of founders as public figures. We tend to project our own ambitions onto the founders whose journey we follow.

When we watch someone build their business in public and achieve things, we’re not just watching their journey but often also see it as a possibility for ourselves. We become more invested in their success because their wins feel like proof that our goals are achievable, too.

Every time we see a rise in female entrepreneurship - first with the girlboss era in the 2010s, now with the post-COVID wave of people launching their own thing - founder figures become somewhat cultural icons.

Personally? As someone who was so amazed by Sophia Amoruso, Emily Weiss, Sara Blakely and other OG girlbosses in the 2010s, I couldn’t be more grateful for the role models that inspired 20-year-old Alex to chase her wildest dreams!

There’s something so powerful in seeing the representation of what’s possible. And in a world where they (and by they I mean the patriarchy) sure hate to see an ambitious woman who does what she wants and accomplishes things? That’s a pretty cool thing if you ask me.

Our brains don’t distinguish between real and online connections (low-key scary). When you follow someone for months and engage with their posts, your brain releases the bonding hormone oxytocin as it would with people you connect with in real life.

So showing up online → building connection with audiences → earning trust and getting them emotionally invested → people are more likely to support the business. An editorial company page with perfect shots of their product could NEVER!

Those who post often, communicate clearly, and make audiences feel something are building parasocial relationships at scale.

When someone shows up helpful, capable, and occasionally vulnerable online, we assume they’re trustworthy and competent in general. And as a result, we trust their business more, too.

This creates self-reinforcing loops. The more founders show up, the more connected audiences feel, and the more they pay attention. And when founders or CEOs actually engage with their communities, ask for feedback, and act on it? People feel like collaborators. They’re more invested and don’t easily abandon things they feel ownership over.

We’ve seen this in the early 2010s with the rise of GirlBoss, and we see it now with the rise of the effortlessly cool female founder archetype on TikTok. This overglamorized picture of entrepreneurship often positions running your own business as the easier option and skips over the hard and unpleasant parts.

And anyone who has ever started or grown a business knows it’s possibly one of the most challenging things a person can do.

TikTok and Instagram are full of polished “day in the life of a founder” content - aesthetic morning routines, perfect offices, “this was our biggest month ever” videos that only paint 10% of the story.

Ali Kriegsman makes a great point about the deceiving image of being an entrepreneur on social media in her video here.

I don’t think so, and here are my reasons:

Being a forward-facing founder can be your lifeline for creating a buzz around your business without a big marketing budget, and for more established founders, their personal brands help them expand reach and impact beyond their business.

There are obviously 101 ways to build a successful business (and so many examples of female founders who built successful companies and we’ve never heard of them), and forcing yourself into doing something you know you’d hate is probably not a good idea. But if you have things to say and feel to pull to show up as a founder, it might just be your calling! The world needs more powerful female voices if you ask me.

💰 Starting your own creator business? You can now host your courses, digital products and online communities with Teachable. Try it for 30 days for free with an extended trial.

🗓 Hit the ground running in 2026 with our CEO Planner. Get clear on your goals, manage your projects, and stay consistent with this all-in-one planner I seriously can’t be without.

🍒 Planning a full rebrand for 2026? Grab the Rebrand Guide and kickstart your brand growth. You’ll get clear on your brand narrative, your signature content strategy, and workflow to stay consistent and so much more.

As always, thanks for being here! That’s it for this week and I’ll see you over on Substack!

The Girls Club Team

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