What do people think of me? That’s all I could think about as I was speaking to a very famous celebrity who referenced a friend of mine and said “that guys a genius”, because whatever nice things he said after that just disintegrated into a blur, as all I could think was “fuck, I don’t think that guys a genius”. He’s smart, sure, and he hustles like a mother. But a genius? Damn…… “what do people think of me?”

You see that’s brand. And it’s what people say about you when you’re not in the room. This guys a genius whether its true or not, because that’s what people are saying. And perception is reality in a world where Johnny appleseed is no longer going fire to fire telling stories but instead now makes a single post that millions of punch drunk readers repeat as truth because their attention span only goes as far as the headline. Didn’t you hear….

When I think about brand, I always go back to this CNN commercial from a few years ago. It was when the world was questioning truth. When the columns of traditional media were starting to crack and the stories we needed to hear were being held back by the advertisers who were the real editorial control board. Fucking Pharma!

Its efficacy was built in its simplicity. It was an apple well lit, sitting alone on a white cyc. The camera slow panned in, and a bold voice came about and said “this is an apple” “some people may try and tell you that it’s a banana”… “they might scream banana banana banana” “and they may even yell BANANA in all caps” “you might even start to think that this is a banana” ...... “but its not; this, is an apple”.

CNN is shit, but the commercial was genius, because in reality, what people say does matter. And whether you like or not, what happens in the comments may be more important than what’s said in the clip. And that tells us a thing or two about human nature and society today.

My wife asked me if I read the comments of my posts. As I started putting out more content, doing more interviews, and sharing more stories about my life, people who don’t know me naturally have something to say. I could tell you I don’t care what other people think and they could go fuck off, but I’d be lying. Because what they think is what they write, and if that's their perception of the truth, well… if I don’t listen and try and shape it, that perception then is the truth whether I like it or not. And that then, becomes my brand.

So maybe you can help me, because the exercise I tell others on how to solve this problem is to ask 10 friends. And if they all say something different, well, you have a brand problem.

So, since I don’t have 10 friends; what do you think of Jeff?

→ Every Founder Must Know: Ashton Hall passed on the flat-fee endorsement. He signed as Global Brand Ambassador AND Investor at Price.com. The "Investor" word is the whole deal.

→ The Operator: Justin Bieber moved $15 million of Skylrk merch at Coachella. The all-time festival record was $1.7 million. He owns the brand.

→ The Signal: Bryan Johnson just opened a lab. The longevity influencer is now a longevity clinic.

Ashton Hall spent 2025 becoming one of the most-watched creators on the internet. His 4am morning routine videos, the ones with the banana, the ice-water face dunks, the Saratoga bottle that got its own meme cycle, pulled hundreds of millions of views and put him in the rarefied group of creators whose content gets ripped and re-hosted before he can even post it.

The endorsement offers that come with that kind of reach are routine and large. Six figures for a 30-day brand deal is standard. Seven figures for a longer window is not unusual.

He didn't take the flat fee. This week, Price.com announced Ashton Hall as its Global Brand Ambassador AND Investor. The "Investor" word is the whole deal.

This is the shape we have been tracking since Issue 01.

Price.com is not a niche category play. RJ Jain's platform sits on top of more than 40,000 retailers, just launched an AI Shopping product, and its prior Sweatcoin integration reached roughly 190 million users.

Harrison Wang, the former Head of Growth at TikTok, sits on the advisory board. This is a company positioning for consumer-scale distribution, and it is choosing to put a culturally dominant creator on the cap table rather than on a campaign budget.

The fit is specific. Hall's audience is the exact Price.com customer: mobile-first, young, comfortable installing a savings app, and living in the "optimize every part of my day" mindset that his content built. A brand this patient about the match can afford to pay him in ownership, because the ownership compounds against a precise audience fit, not against a vague impression number.

The through-line for founders reading this newsletter: the flat-fee endorsement is still the default offer in the market. Every serious creator who signs one is trading a compounding asset (their audience) for a one-time check. Hall just showed the other path. The brands that win this next cycle will be the ones making room on the cap table before the creator's team asks.

Every week, this newsletter writes about founders putting creators on the cap table.

On May 20 in London, OWM and COLLAB are making five of those deals happen in a room. THE BUILD is a two-week sprint that pairs five London founders with five of London's most influential creators.

Lovable powers the tech stack. Canva powers the brand. Each team has 14 days to ship a real product to a real audience. On pitch night, every team pitches live to a panel of VCs, streamed globally. The winning team walks away with a £25K+ launch stack to run with.

If we're right that audience is the fastest path to distribution, the right founder and the right creator sitting in the same room for two weeks should outrun any lab-built consumer launch this year.

Applications are open through May 3. If you're building something and you know a creator belongs on your cap table, this is the room to be in.

Justin Bieber headlined Coachella 2026 and broke every record on the board. Highest-paid artist in festival history at $10 million. Highest ticket demand ever. Most Googled performance in Coachella history. Fans renamed it Bieberchella. But the biggest number was the one no one expected.

The News:

Vogue Business confirmed this week that Bieber moved $5.04 million of Skylrk merch on weekend one and another $10 million on weekend two.

Total: $15 million across 14 days.

The previous Coachella festival merch record, across all artists and both weekends, was $1.7 million. He beat it by roughly nine times. Bieber officially founded Skylrk in July 2025 and has full creative control of the brand alongside creative director Neima Khaila and designer Finn Rush-Taylor.

Every dollar of that $15 million accrues to a company he owns. Not a licensed merch partner, not a label-owned apparel line, not a tour sponsor. His cap table, his revenue. He also ran two retail footprints on the festival grounds: the standard artist merch tent AND a dedicated Skylrk Shop next to the Skylrk Oasis, a shaded brand activation space open to all attendees.

The Operator Take:

A headliner has always monetized three revenue layers. Ticket, shared with the promoter. Streaming, shared with the label. Merch, historically licensed or split with management.

Bieber just proved the merch layer can be wholly owned by the artist, at a scale that rivals tour-leg grosses. Travis Scott did this first in 2025 under Cactus Jack. Bieber is the second, and the scale jump is what tells you the pattern is real.

If a pop star with a label and a management team and a touring apparatus can reclaim the merch layer, every creator below him on the pyramid can reclaim their own version of it. Stop pitching creators licensing deals. Start pitching them ownership.

Bryan Johnson, the man who turned his own bloodwork into a YouTube franchise, opened Blueprint Biomarkers this week.

Content, to supplements, to diagnostics, to prescriptions. Four vertically integrated layers on top of one audience.

The News:

Per Fitt Insider, Blueprint Labs now offers blood and urine testing for more than 100 biomarkers, plus prescription access through licensed clinicians.

The new product positions Johnson alongside Function Health, Hundred, and Superpower in direct-to-consumer longevity diagnostics, but with one structural difference: he already has the audience. Others are spending customer acquisition dollars to build one.

Johnson is converting his existing readers and viewers into subscribers and patients inside a clinical network he controls.

The Operator Take:

Diagnostics and prescription telehealth are two of the hardest regulated categories to enter without credibility. Johnson just walked in with audience as the moat.

The ceiling on a creator-built brand is no longer "will they grow past the audience?" It is "which regulated vertical can they enter next?" That move will get copied by the next tier of longevity and wellness creators this year. Find them and sign them before they build it themselves.

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➡️ Need 1:1 guidance? Block time with me any Friday here. No pitches, just real talk.