Gaslighting my ADD into productivity
And a cool new brand for cold sores
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In today’s issue:
A kindergarten teacher for my morning routine
Perplexity AI’s new shopping feature
Should creators unionize?
And more
Hey, friends—it's your favorite ADD-fueled chaos gremlin Sophia here.
Update: I’m struggling.
After building multiple seven and nine-figure businesses and writing a book that literally had "boss" in the title, I've begun to realize that the very businesses that defined my career also turned out to be my accidental ADD coping mechanisms. Cute, right? Well, it was — until now.
Here’s the gag: in the early days of hustling, my life was essentially a self-imposed productivity cult. My days were jam-packed with meetings, and evenings with oysters and chardonnay (a time before I knew what inflammation was). The chaos actually worked for me because there was structure hidden in all the madness — a calendar tighter than my high-waisted jeans at the time and assistants (bless them all) who kept me on track at every scheduled moment. They’d pack me for trips, travel with me, claim my bags, then unpack me as I went straight into meetings, plugging in my laptop on the hotel desk and organizing my tampons like flowers in a drinking glass atop the bathroom counter.
More expensive (and effective) than Adderall paid out-of-pocket, I had a housekeeper to fill in the blanks at home who’d shop for groceries (pre-Instacart), find the lost socks, and even throw the list of shit I needed to take to work in a my purse before I left the house (late) each morning. And while I know how wildly unrelatable this may be to many, it was my life — one of internal chaos duct-taped together and masquerading as the example of a “highly productive person.”
Now, with no assistant and only one team member, I find myself intending to work but instead half-cleaning the cutting board while unwrapping AirTags to install on my poodles’ collars, all while internally debating whether or not one should use soap and water on a cutting board and trying to remember whether or not I took my insurance-underwritten Adderall.
The reality is, many of us are out here trying to gaslight our ADD into productivity, some better than others. It just looks like some of us do it better because we busy ourselves enough to bypass the eternal cognitive buffering that is ADD.
But I’m trying, and I'm actually kind of obsessed with this new tech stack I've built for my ADD era:
Sunsama, which helps me plot my commitments into time blocks, enable focus mode, and prioritize like a neuronormative person
Routinery, which is basically a kindergarten teacher for my mornings and evening routines
Duckbill, which is a team of assistants that are better than a lot of the humans I’ve employed without the hassle of talking about their future
Chat is open to all today: let’s swap some strategies, share wins (and fails), and giggle about the chaos together? Join in on the conversation below:
[Author's note: This was written over the course of 6 hours, with approximately 47 tab switches, 3 Uber Eats orders, and one existential crisis. No newsletters were harmed in the making of this content.]
— Sophia
Collabs on my radar
The SKIMS x Dolce & Gabbana collection has a lot of leopard print and is so hot, it crashed the site. I’m weary about a CPG brand making its mark on one of the most famous museums in the world, but L’Oréal’s partnership with the Louvre sounds pretty cool. “Of All Beauties” explores beauty gestures, rituals, and practices over more than 100,000 years of art and history. Charli XCX popped up in Times Square for a quickie concert as part of her partnership with H&M. It looked sick, unless you have a light sensitivity and were just trying to hit up the M&M store. SALOMON’s first collab with a Korean brand, VANDYTHEPINK. I want a box of these white chocolate “Girl with a Pearl Earring” cookies from Nudake and Jennie’s (from BLACKPINK) dessert collab. Sustainable fashion stylist Bay Garnett’s collection with knitwear brand Herd is very good. So is Alexa Chung’s second drop with Madewell. There was a pop-up in LA for Emma Chamberlain’s Warby Parker collab and it looked super cute, with free pastries, stickers, and bevvies, including my friend Melanie Masarin’s canned Ghia spritzes. You can now wear a JW Anderson crewneck with an eerily smiling Guinness on it. The Caroline Herrera x FRAME collection inspired by the pops of color in Mexico City is so fun. Rachel Antonoff designed holiday cookie jars for Pepperidge Farms. Your Snapchat Bitmoji gets some drip.
Stuff I’m wearing & loving
This wool trench coat from A.MERY
These wide-leg jeans from Citizens of Humanity in black currant
These mid-ankle boots from Dolce Vita in black leather
Links to make you smarter and more interesting
Substack CEO Chris Best shot down Elon Musk’s proposal to buy the newsletter platform.
Musk reportedly called Substack cofounder & CEO Chris Best a year after he bought X (then Twitter) because he wanted to acquire Substack to boost paid subs. “Mr. Best declined to entertain the proposal, and the short-lived discussion ended,” according to three sources. Since that call, Substack’s been on a mission to get more eyeballs on its political content, eyeballs once doomscrolling through X. And it’s working: Substack’s live election coverage this year reportedly boosted its subscription revenue by millions for publishers.
Substack quietly raised $10 million in new funding.
The company reportedly wanted backers with “a diverse set of views.”
Ebay glowed up.
The e-commerce site launched in 1995 (!) and its branding has long reflected that. Until now. The company’s internal design team is in the process of giving the most trafficked parts of its site an overhaul. Looking at before and after photos, it’s not some grand makeover. It’s still easily identifiable and not exactly worthy of a splashy announcement. I’m into it. It’s like when you drive through a middle-of-nowhere town and the Burger King drive-through still has the logo from the 90s. It’s refreshing. Not every brand needs continual updates to their color schemes, fonts, logos, etc. Especially if you have the brand recognition of Ebay. In this case, the design is about subtle modernization to make the experience more intuitive.
“We think about it as humanist design—it is about bringing that softness and warmth, to remove hard edges, soften the experiences, embrace white space, and give hierarchy its rightful place,” Ebay Senior Director of Design Tyler Moore said.
62% of people won’t tip if they order standing up.
The percentage is highest for baby boomers and tipped employees. I’m sure there’s a whole psychology deep dive to this, but it might also be as simple as: people feel less guilty hitting the “no tip” button in a speedier, self-service interaction.
AI search engine Perplexity’s new shopping feature is a sick way to shop online.
Perplexity’s move into e-commerce might rival the likes of Amazon and Google. Users can add an image to their search, and recommendations will include product details, pros and cons, key features, and reviews.
And it’s super frictionless: Users can save their address and credit card details and purchase items they like in one click. Paid subscribers also get free shipping.
There are no sponsored slots right now, but merchants can increase their visibility to consumers by enrolling in the program – with more info on the brand and items, it’ll be more likely to surface as a recommended product. Plus, enrolled brands get free API access to power search on their own site.
TikTok continues to bet hard on shopping on the platform by letting some creators add product links from third-party affiliate networks like Amazon, Target, and Impact.
It’s only eligible to selected creators at the moment and hasn’t been officially announced by the platform.
Fashion resale brands are banking on AI tools to boost efficiency. And sales.
If writing out your product description and details is the most tedious part of selling stuff online for you, you should look into Depop. The platform now has an AI feature that’ll automatically generate your listing descriptions.
Julie Schott is a branding genius – she made zits and Plan B cool, and now she’s doing the same for cold sores.
Julie, the sister brand of blemish sticker legend Starface, dropped a Cold Sore Treatment packaged like a beauty product. Everything from the silver and pink box to the copy (“use at the first sign of a tingle”) is a move to eradicate the shame associated with a virus. It’s so smart. What taboo ailment will she tackle next?? I’m seated.
The amount of content creators getting paid partnership deals is getting smaller, and it’s having smaller content creators rethink their day jobs. “And only once in the past five years has the average monthly income of a content creator been higher than the average weekly income of a typical full-time worker,” Bank of America wrote in a note last week.
Some creators are in the early stages of exploring how to unionize.
There’s no industry oversight when it comes to the creator economy, and it’s becoming a point of contention among creators struggling to make a living off platforms that are worth hundreds of billions of dollars. It’s no wonder content creators are ready for a worker’s movement. They want a say in the decision-making process.
“I think what we could be doing is giving creators a voice on the platforms, like having a say in how the algorithm changes, and more legal protections to recognize this work as legit work,” Fuck You Pay Me (FYPM) founder Lindsey Lee Lugrin said. “The people who are making the rules at the top, they’re so disconnected from it. It’s like deleting someone’s job if your page gets stolen.”
The desire for more benefits, protections, and opportunities as a freelancer is great for new startups like Jump and Pollen.
French startup Jump offers full-time contracts (and benefits) to freelancers while still allowing them to operate independently. Pollen is a new membership for freelancers looking for mentorship and networking opportunities. They recently raised $12 million and $4 million, respectively.
63% of the people delivering news on social media are men.
A depressing new gender gap. The recent Pew Research study also found that about one in five US adults regularly get their news from influencers online, with 65% of those saying the content helped them better understand current events and issues. The most common site for influencer news? X.
Coca-Cola made its Christmas ad this year using AI and we need a word for soulless content. Slop is for spam. What should we call AI-generated ads that have no spirit? You can watch the coke ad here if you want to feel… nothing.
Mélanie Masarin, Ghia founder and friend, uses her Night Shade Substack to add more depth to her “founder image”.
A lot of founders in my entrepreneurship community Business Class have asked about how to tell their company story online, especially women who might be hesitant to be the face of their brand. Social media can feel surface level and limited in its profundity. It’s why a lot of entrepreneurs in my course fear followers might make snap judgments or feel the content is too sales-y. Starting a newsletter is a great opportunity to give some behind-the-scenes content into who you are as a founder and share some recommendations in a way that feels authentic. And can be monetized. Masarin has earned thousands on her recs through ShopMy affiliate links (that’s what I use!)
Crying on camera might be your gateway to virality — and making it as an influencer.
Putting your pain on blast might be labeled cringe, but for those trying to make it as a content creator, it’s a tested model for going viral and making money.
Content creator Hannah Bronfman, who has invested in companies like Topicals, Ceremonia, and Our Place, is ready to become an institutional investor.
During an AfroTech panel last week, Bronfman said she’s thought about launching her own fund for a while. “We don’t have any [holding] companies for the culture,” she said. “Where is our Black LVMH?” She wants to build that one day. In the meantime, she said she’s looking to raise a fund focused on Series A. “And maybe one day I’ll get to that holding company.”
Google named Partiful the best Android app of the year.
The event planning platform has been called “facebook events for hot people” and is what I use for all my Trust Fund events. Google cited its intuitive design, creative approach to invite creation, and “Party Genie” tool as reasons the app secured the top spot.
A few more cool things:
Join Business Class, my digital entrepreneurship community and course for founders, freelancers, solopreneurs, creators, and side hustlers.
I also run a venture fund called Trust Fund. Have a B2B startup idea? Pitch us here.
I’m torn about whether to further engage on Substack via paid subscriptions. I’m trying to reduce screen time and am afraid that a paid subscription will keep me locked in and drive up my screen time.