"Completely winged it and I refuse to proof read."Britt, launching a Substack, Wednesday 9am
01 - THE MOOD
Hi divas 🤍
I fell off the reformer this week. Not a wobble. Fully off. Landed on my face.
Last weekend was six months since getting married, and six months ago I was in the best shape of my life. The six months since have been the most fun I’ve ever had, and I’ve flogged myself through every one of them. Shanghai, Sydney, Melbourne, Singapore, back again, stages, panels, podcasts, this newsletter. I got home on Sunday and finally stopped. Touched grass. Unpacked three months of suitcases. Went to Pilates and got humbled by a spring.
I know a lot of you are in the same season, because I read the chat. So this is the lesson I keep having to relearn, and I’m saying it to you as much as to me: you can have it all, you just can’t have it all at the same time. Health is the one thing you can’t put down and pick up later, and it’s the first thing I drop. From now until Christmas I’m locking it in. If you’ve got a supplement that actually works (I’m looking at you, Ziish) or a routine that survives a week like mine, reply and tell me. I’m building the list and I’ll share it.
The yap challenge is popping off. Watching your confidence build day by day is the best thing in my week, and I keep thinking, girls, you were always this confident. You just hadn’t filmed it yet. Replay’s up, the kit list is in the chat, office hours with Britt and Ari are Friday.
One more thing, and I want to say it plainly because you’d see through anything else. We’re here for a long time, not just a good time, and I want MOODY to be something that lasts longer than my ability to run on four hours’ sleep. City leads were the first step.
The second starts today: a paid case study at the bottom of every issue, and an expert learning series alongside the events and meetups. We’re not selling out, the divadom is levelling up.
This week - what you need to know to get your brand found on AI search engines like ChatGPT and Claude, straight from the mouths of Amazon, OpenAI and Verity AI on stage at The Social Summit. Get around it!
Love Brooke x
MOODY weekly is free and it’s staying free. We’re levelling up our weekly newsletter and educational resources with case studies and notes from the rooms shaping commerce, technology and brand.
It's $12 a month or $119 a year. If you want to expense it, here’s the email to send your manager or accountant→
02 - THE VLOG
China, part one. Shanghai, and the prep for a retail safari with twenty of Australia’s retail C-suite. Watch it on the train.
Missed last week’s vlog? The Sydney launch party, and what I took home from the Spotify x Meta creator session. Watch →
The yap challenge kick-off, in full. Ari filmed it on her DJI, fought the file transfer for two days, and it’s up. Britt on comfort being earned on camera, the front door and the house, and why nobody cares about your morning routine. If you joined late or you’re still at the bottom of the mountain, start here. Watch the replay →
03 - THE READ
The week in consumer/retail, tech/ai, media/creator, business/investing, health/beauty, here and everywhere, and what the girls said and did about it.
→ Dior, Gucci and Chanel have pulled categories out of David Jones after months of friction over slow payment for stock. AFR
→ Showpo passed $100m. Dissh did $153.6m, up 21%, mostly online, $21.4m profit. Sheike hit 231,226 loyalty members nine months early. The Australian fashion numbers going up are all DTC and all founder-led. AFR · Ragtrader
→ Temu and Shein are now a $4bn business in Australia. Shein’s local arm grew 20% to $1.53bn, and the Retail Council’s response this week was a safety campaign, not a price one. Ragtrader
→ The card surcharge ban starts Thursday. Westpac cut its merchant rate from 1.20% to 0.79%, about $80 a month for a small business. Ring your bank. SmartCompany
In our chat: Jessica Duchesne was quoted US$2,214 to air-freight 500 units from China. The ecommerce chat said go sea, and Rebecca Veksler is offering intros to her forwarders of fifteen years.
→ Sephora is on TikTok Shop, 2,300 products. TikTok Shop is now the number four beauty retailer in the US and Sephora held out longer than almost anyone. Glossy
→ Lara Worthington launched Ommage on Tuesday. Three products, $52 to $68, DTC in Australia and the US, plus Dover Street Parfums in Paris. Her first beauty brand since The Base. Retail Beauty
→ SWIISH has to become Ziish. Sally Obermeder lost a trade mark dispute to Swisse, so a decade-old wellness brand is renaming mid-expansion into Boots UK. Mediaweek
→ Vitable sold for $3.5m on $5m revenue and 7,850 subscribers. The same week Mel at Napoleon Perdis sold out a thousand Your Golden Ritual boxes and closed the spring box a month early. Summer presale opens next week, full feature with her soon. Business News Australia · napoleonperdis.com
→ Deepa Mani’s Proud of Colour Beauty won Best Inclusive Makeup Brand and Best Inclusive Makeup Product at the 2026 Beauty Shortlist Awards. @p_o_cbeauty
In our chat: cosmetic acupuncture is the new Botox. Cortney: “I just came off Botox and I’m doing this instead.” Essential Acupuncture in Bronte, Facelines in Surry Hills or my pick is Ova Acupuncture in Brisbane.
→ Create & Cultivate sold out 4,000 tickets in LA and got compared to Fyre Festival by Wednesday. GA $399, VIP $715, Cardi B closed it. Then Inc. ran the complaints: food ran out, no shade, VIP barely different from GA. Four thousand women showed up, which is the part I keep looking at. MOODY festival, anyone? But seriously. Inc.
→ TikTok videos now have to run over a minute to earn Creator Rewards. Worth knowing if you’re posting 54-second yaps. The Publish Press
→ Ten yaps in. 116 in the chat, replay up, kit list landed with 15% off at Fone King (SOBXMOODY). Amelia Godfrey (Pelvy) took the week one prize. Steph filmed her first ever: “I’m still at the very bottom of cringe mountain.” Office hours with Britt and Ari on Friday.
→ Two Substacks before lunch on Wednesday. Jordyn Christensen opened with a $160m podcast deal. Britt’s is State of Brand, unproofread. Jordyn → · Britt →
In our chat: Leslie started a podcast because founder life was getting romanticised. Levina: most of it is printing labels at midnight. Hailey: “Female founderhood is mostly not even a little bit hot.”
→ An OpenAI agent got into Medicare’s statistics service on 18 June. OpenAI told Canberra on 10 September. Albanese called it “fundamentally unacceptable” and phoned Sam Altman. No personal records, a rapid review, and the guardrails bill now has its case study. ABC
→ 29% of Australians already use AI somewhere in their shopping journey, 63% say they will. One brand in this chat is already getting ChatGPT orders by accident. That’s the 29%. Case study below. The Australian
→ Mastercard has asked Lauren Kennedy (VerityAI) to brief its internal teams on AI commerce fraud next month. If you run a marketplace or have seen a customer use AI to force a refund, she wants your story before she walks in. DM her in the chat.
→ A business born at Book Club. Cortney (White Label Group) and Jami (automation engineer) met on 26 August and are now co-founders. First build is a free webinar, How To Make AI Your Co-Founder, this room first. RSVP →
In our chat: out-of-the-box agents or build your own. Chiara got “absolutely addicted” to Instinct, then deleted it over data security and “now miss it terribly.” Ro rates Town and I’m getting onto it this week. Emma Sharley’s ruling: plan in Claude, let Instinct action it. Lauren’s: opt out of training data. On the build side, see Cortney and Jami.
→ Heidi Health raised $475m at a $1.26bn valuation, Australia’s fourth unicorn this year. Seven startups raised $274.7m that week and none of the founders named were women. Women’s Agenda, same day: 2% of Australian capital goes to all-female-founded businesses. SmartCompany · Women’s Agenda
→ Lacevo is in Target US and every Baby Bunting. Sally Grice’s wearable breast pump brand, founded 2024, grew on intimate events rather than paid ads. B&T
→ Oura filed for a Nasdaq IPO at US$15.6bn, revenue up 74%. The ring is about to be a public company. Reuters
The Room
In our chat: one phone or two. Britt ordered a second phone for eight client accounts and regretted it on arrival, Paris has two and wants a third, Sarah runs two eSIMs and switches the work one off. Thirty-five messages in six minutes, no consensus.
Also new this week: Nadia named the room the divadom. It’s staying.
04 - THE DIARY
Where we’re showing up in October.
Tue 29 Sept, 6pm, New York. Roster Radio LIVE with the founder of Maude on the 1,000-door expansion. 113 Spring St, SoHo, non-alc sparkling and a gift tote. RSVP →
Wed 30 Sept, 5:30pm, Sydney. Morgan’s business-owner drinks at The Dolphin, Surry Hills. Open invite, half the Sydney chat is already in. RSVP in the Sydney chat.
Wed 30 Sept, 5:30pm, Sydney. Mode Office x SABA private styling at SABA QVB. Filled in four days, waitlist only. Waitlist →
Fri 2 Oct, online. Yap Challenge office hours, 30 minutes with Britt on tools and Ari on editing. Time in the yap chat.
Sat 3 Oct, Melbourne. Futuration at The Timber Yard, with Isha on the lineup. Kat: “Can confirm this woman can SING.” 20% off with FUTURE. Tickets →
Mon 5 Oct, New York. Kayla Moran is speaking at AdWeek NYC. If you’re in the city, go and clap.
Mon 5 Oct Melbourne · Wed 7 Oct Brisbane · Mon 12 Oct Sydney. Australian Marketing Summit, 9 to 5. Tickets from $27 and Sababa has free ones, ask her in the chat. australianmarketingsummit.com
Wed 7 Oct, 8am, Adelaide. SAFIA Industry Breakfast at Adelaide Fashion Week, then Thu 8 Oct the SA Showcase with Cathy showing Yaneth. adlfashionweek.com
Thu 8 Oct, Sydney. Emily Elvey’s Ai in a Day, build your customer service agent before BFCM. WeWork Castlereagh St, $299, capped at 20. Luma →
Sat 15 Nov, New York. Female Founder World. Tickets on sale now. Get yours →
05 - CLASSIFIEDS
What the girls need.
→ Fractional CMO, B2B AI tech. Newsletters, campaigns, landing pages, SEO and AEO, webinars. Jami is hiring for a friend, DM her your LinkedIn.
→ Designer wanted, social strategy offered. Rosie Brown needs a brand platform and a Canva template suite and will trade a full social strategy for it. LinkedIn
→ Christmas gift guide contacts. Bec (Fleurac Fragrance) and Deepa (Proud of Colour) both want in. If you’re an editor or know one, DM either.
→ Podcast guests. Leslie’s Off Script, On Brand, “the anti-highlight reel,” is casting next season. Apply →
→ Sponsors for seven talents at F1 Singapore. Priscilla (UAG Entertainment) is taking seven creators VIP and wants brands that want the flights, hospitality and trackside documented. DM her in the chat.
→ An industrial designer for CAD drawings to take to a manufacturer. Holly, DM her in the chat.
→ Men aged 25 to 45, two minutes. Atina is naming her supplement brand and needs the target market to vote. Send it to your brother. Survey →
06 - THE CASE STUDY
You’re already getting orders from ChatGPT. You just haven’t checked.
On Tuesday a founder in this chat (hi Sophie) messaged me. Her brand is already getting orders that trace back to ChatGPT, she hasn’t optimised a single page for it, and she wanted the one-minute version of what I’d said at the end of Social Summit.
I wrote it out in seven minutes, because I’d spent the week before on a stage with Rowena from OpenAI and Lauren Kennedy from VerityAI hearing the same six things from both of them. If one brand in this chat is getting orders from ChatGPT by accident, the rest of you are either showing up in those answers or you’re not, and most of you haven’t checked.
There are six things. One of them is unsponsorable, and Rowena said so on stage, so anyone selling it to you is selling snake oil. One of them is a number about trust that should change your Monday. One of them involves jailbreaking your own terms and conditions.
Subscribe to read the rest. $9 a month or $99 a year. What you get: the weekly case study, regular commerce, tech, investing and business deep dives, first dibs to MOODY events and exclusive merch.
Forward this to one girl who’d get it.
Brooke x
MOODY is Australia’s answer to the serendipity Americans take for granted. The room where founders, operators, corporates and creatives are in the same group chat, and it turns out they needed each other. These are the girls who get it and we are in a MOOD.
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Every city, growing weekly.
"You can have it all, just not all at the same time" is a good reminder for alot of us right now.