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 LicaI 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.