Built on meaning.

No iconic brand has ever been built on A/B testing.

No iconic brand ever hacked their way into history.

And no iconic brand was ever built on a Shopify template, fueled by paid media arbitrage and a loyalty plugin.

But you wouldn’t know that from looking at the hype. Every agency, platform, and self-anointed “growth expert” is pushing the same seductive pitch: you’re just one funnel away, one retargeting campaign away, one email flow away from success.

“Just hire us,” they say. “We’ve cracked it.”

No, they haven’t. What they’ve cracked is the psychology of a founder on the brink—burning cash, chasing better CACs, and drowning in dashboards. They’re selling comfort disguised as capability.

Here’s the truth: Performance marketing isn’t performance. It’s distribution. And distribution without desire is just noise.

The real performance—the kind that builds a brand worth remembering—doesn’t show up in Meta Ads Manager. It shows up when people seek you out, talk about you when you’re not in the room, and come back without being bribed. That’s what this is actually about: being pursued.

And pursuit is not something you can delegate. You don’t hand that over to a junior strategist at a DTC agency and pray they write a clever hook.

If you're building a brand people want to chase, you need gravity. Pull. Meaning. You need to create something that isn’t just sold well—but lived in, loved, and shared. You need to be the signal in someone’s identity—not the noise in their inbox.

Look back: Apple didn’t become Apple because of Chiat\Day. Nike wasn’t built by a brainstorming session at an agency. Patagonia didn’t become a movement because of retargeting. They built something that transcended tactics. They all built a following, conviction—a center of gravity.

That’s not to say media doesn’t matter. It does. But it only works when there’s something worth amplifying. Agencies can optimize, scale, extend. They cannot resurrect. They cannot invent your “why.” They cannot breathe life into something that never had it.

And that’s the trap so many brand leaders fall into: they think hiring the right agency with a winning tactic is the means to success. But if the engine isn’t built right—if you haven’t made something people can believe in—no amount of ad spend will save you. You don’t need better marketing or advertising. You need a brand people want to join.

The ecom graveyard is full of Shopify stores that looked “successful.” Slick flows. Smart creatives. Beautiful CAC-to-LTV ratios. And no heartbeat. Because they mistook motion for meaning. Velocity for value. Attention for attachment.

That’s the real dilemma: the system rewards tactics, but the market only remembers substance, truth.

Make your brand something people want in their lives—something people will chase.