The Single Highest Leverage Hire a Brand Can Make

Why You Should Hire a Creative Visionary on Day 1

I built Lusso in reverse.

There was no product, inventory, or launch plan. There was only a point of view and the discipline to publish my curated finds every day on X. That was enough to bring 180,000 people into the world before I had anything to sell them.

The world came first. The business plan I saw for that world was already a huge funnel.

I have watched startups and consumer brands with extraordinary product talent treat creative direction as an afterthought. They build something impressive and wait until launch to decide how it should look, sound, and move through the world.

At that point, the brand already feels like an afterthought.

The question nobody seems to be asking

Most early hires are there to answer questions about how.

How do we build it? How do we ship it? How do we keep everything running?

The earliest days hold a more important question: why should this matter at all?

That responsibility belongs to a creative visionary working in lockstep with the product from the beginning.

Every ambitious company begins as a picture in someone’s mind. The product makes that picture tangible. Creative direction gives it meaning, coherence, and emotional weight. One cannot fully succeed without the other.

The best companies develop product and creative direction in parallel. Each sharpens the other in real time.

The right creative visionary sees how the company should enter the world before it exists in it. They understand what it should make people feel, what it should stand for, and which details must remain sacred as it scales. They translate ambition into atmosphere and direction into something people can actually sense.

That is founder level work.

That vision should evolve while the company is still uncertain, shaping the future alongside the product itself.

What I learned from Lusso

Lusso began and still runs without a product attached to it.

Over time, I started tracing specific ideas back to their origins. Who made them, what movements they belonged to, and what decisions shaped them. A design language, if you will. The common theme was that certain objects kept resurfacing across decades because of very specific choices in proportion, material, and intent.

That research gave Lusso an internal dialogue. It turned my taste into something I could articulate and publish. A brand.

People began to notice and bond with the eye behind the work.

Lusso has grown to 180,000 followers on X and 17,000 on Instagram. More than 2,000 people subscribed to the Substack in its first two months.

The following I built was made up of like minded people who recognized the pull of the design language I was speaking. They learned what belonged inside that world and began trusting that the next discovery would belong there too.

The Lusso brand was established with no product anywhere in sight.

The advantage of a point of view

Markets change quickly. Products lose relevance. What was once a niche becomes a crowded industry.

A recognizable design language gives a company somewhere to go next. A space to evolve.

When people understand the taste and story behind a brand, new ideas arrive with a sense of belonging. The audience already recognizes the judgment connecting each decision. That familiarity creates room to explore new products, formats, and categories without having to introduce the company again.

The identity becomes larger than any single offering.

That freedom is one of the most valuable assets a company can build. It gives the team a clear standard while giving the business room to evolve.

Creative vision creates continuity.

Make the future visible

A brand or startup’s visual identity is built from day one.

People become invested through repeated evidence. They learn the values you project. They see what you hold sacred and what you care enough to let them be part of. Each decision reveals another piece of the world you are building.

My mission is to become the most trusted tastemaker on X. I rarely need to announce it because the work makes the claim every day.

Every post is a small piece of the same world.

Over time, the work becomes proof. The audience begins trusting your judgment before they know what you will make next.

The strongest brands start earning that trust long before they need it.

Founders spend years bringing something new into the world. The company deserves a vision capable of carrying it.

The work

This is what I do as a creative director.

I aim to help startup founders and consumer brands define the idea that makes everything else cohere. I build the positioning, visual direction, reference system, and publishing rhythm around it.

I built Lusso by giving people a world to enter before there was anything to buy. I want to help founders do the same.

If you’re building something ambitious and want to explore working together, my email is hellolussoarchive@gmail.com.