One of the most valuable lessons you’ll learn in life—both personally and professionally—is that it takes a village. You can’t do everything on your own; even if you technically could, it likely wouldn’t yield the best results. I see a lot of founder-led brands, even content creators, who make everything seem so easy, like they’re seamlessly running businesses worth hundreds of millions of dollars all on their own. They’re not. They have a lot of help. I’ve never been overly precious with my own work, I often have the instinct to hire people to do things that I know I’m not good at or don’t want to spend my time on. Hiring a team to build a beauty brand, however, was a new level of trust, delegation, and getting intentional on what we really needed. Especially considering we’re bootstrapped—meaning Kyle and I are funding this on our own—so we couldn’t afford to hire the wrong people.
Fortunately we assembled an all-star team, and I want to introduce you to each of them because Annadea would not be the company it has become without every single one of them. I wouldn’t be able to continue producing recipes for my Instagram platform, or finish my cookbook if I didn’t have the full support and expertise of the team. They’re also all quite interesting people with varied backgrounds and I learn something new from them every day! Without further ado, here are the people building Annadea.
My husband and I have been business partners for a while now. About a year into my content creation career, once I started earning real money and we both saw the potential, he joined to help me with all of the operational, behind-the-scenes things: HR, finance, operations, ads, etc. I genuinely don’t think I could run a business without him. I know a lot of people raise their eyebrows when they hear about a married couple working together, but it works so well for us. We have totally different–and complementary–skillsets. Where I’m creative, Kyle is extremely detail-oriented. I like to think about product vision, and Kyle is the one who works with the vendors to ensure that the products I’m dreaming about are 1) realistic from a budget perspective, 2) produced to the highest standards of quality, and 3) are delivered on time. He’s also meticulous with our budget, and brings a level of financial rigor to the business that ensures we’re able to grow responsibly. He has such a business-oriented mindset: he thinks in terms of cash flow principles, measured growth, platform strategy, and operational timelines. And we’re both equally ambitious so it feels nice to share this exciting new business together.
I just interviewed Amy here, but she’s helped me with my content business and my cookbook; now, she’s leading brand and creative for Annadea. Her creative perspective is informed by her many world travels and her years of leading brand and marketing for some of the most beloved consumer brands, including Glossier. It was her idea to shoot our launch campaign in southern Morocco, inspired by her time spent surfing in Imsouane. She found and hired our creative agency who she and I worked closely with to develop the entire Annadea brand world. She oversees all copy, creative direction, art direction, messaging, and brand channels. Alongside her creative skills, she has a sharp business acumen which enables her to be extra strategic about her brand and creative ideas. Plus, she has invaluable beauty industry experience and has helped us bring on most of our team members.
Ken has been mine and Kyle’s best friend for years–he was the first person to welcome us to Austin with open arms and we would not have our current community without him–but he also has incredible career experience: he spent over a decade at Tesla, where he established the company’s environmental commodities trading desk and supported both government affairs and financial planning and analysis. He left as Tesla’s Vice President of Sales Finance. He’s wildly smart but equally kind, which is so important to us. He’s put together numerous financial models for us, helping us decide things like whether or not we should bring on outside funding, how to think about payment terms with vendors, understanding contribution margin and consequently figuring out how much to spend on marketing for each platform. He brings the standards of excellence that he learned from his impressive tenure at Tesla to our business, and I feel incredibly fortunate to have him on the team because it’s rare for a brand new startup to have such a strong CFO from the get go.
Olivia Eckerson was our first non-executive hire and we found her through the FeedMe job board. I still remember her application–she included illustrations on her resume and cover letter, she was so professional, and she was a great writer. In the first interview, we learned that she started her career in wine. She had completed two sommelier levels, lived and worked on several vineyards across the world, and had even worked in wine education at one of the most prestigious wineries in Napa Valley. When we found her, she was working for an influencer marketing agency running campaigns for consumer brands. She was equal parts creative and organized, essential for someone in this role. Since joining the team in October of last year she has contributed so much to our overall brand vision, she’s running our influencer and affiliate program entirely on her own, and she’s responsible for most of the content you see on Instagram!
Umaimah has almost two decades of experience in beauty and consumer goods. She worked with Amy at Glossier (that’s how we found her) but she has been on the back end of many beloved brands, most recently Savannah James’ Reframe Beauty. She is a true operational wizard–she lives and breathes timelines, she’s excellent at vendor communication, she’s a great partner to us because she is realistic about what’s feasible but she also pushes our partners to always deliver their absolute best. She manages all of our packaging vendors–once you see our products you’ll understand why we’re so proud of this–and she chose our DTC warehouse and shipping partner, she manages the cost of goods calculations for our products, and she has helped a lot with our website design and customer service experience. She is one of the most reliable, helpful, and refreshingly direct people I’ve ever worked with.
Our first three launch products are a direct result of mine and Melissa’s early days of ideating which categories would truly best represent the Annadea brand ethos. Melissa also worked at Glossier, with Amy and Umaimah, and is the developer behind some of their bestselling products. She moved on to Luxury Brand Partners and worked on ONE/SIZE, then led all of product development and marketing for Curology. She created the lab briefs for our first products, ensuring they were all custom formulas designed with equal importance on cosmetic effect (color payoff, long-wear) and skincare benefits (hydrating, nourishing, etc.). Now, we are working with Andrea Rodriguez of Marcha House, to continue our product development pipeline. You guys don’t know the launch products yet but we’re already thinking about what we’ll be launching throughout 2027! Custom formulas work on long lead times.
We have other agency partners (shoutout to Orchidea and Haley Withers for creative and website development, respectively) and consultants (Cam and Madison who help with Amazon strategy and copywriting, respectively), and a wonderful summer intern, Ava. Chelsea, mine and Kyle’s assistant, also works on some Annadea projects and we recently brought on an email marketing agency to help build our email flows.
I couldn’t be prouder of the team, and I know you’ll be hearing much more from and about them in the coming weeks and months!
Congratulations to you and your team! Excited for you guys and all that’s to come!❤️