10 Lessons on Building a Brand in the Age of AI
What Joyasol founder Christina Bullock took away from two days at Create & Cultivate, from AI and entrepreneurship to human connection, craftsmanship and building a purpose driven brand.
This past weekend, I spent two days at Create & Cultivate in Los Angeles with founders, creatives and women building all kinds of businesses.
I came home with pages of notes. Seriously, pages.
Some were practical. Things like content, conversion, creators, PR and growing a product business. Others made me think a little more deeply about leadership, creativity, AI and what it means to build a brand right now.
But looking back through everything I wrote down, I kept coming back to one thing:
The more automated our world becomes, the more important it is to stay human.
As someone building a shoe brand, that really hit home.
Joyasol shoes are made in Portugal by skilled craftspeople, with so much of the process still done by hand. And at the end of that process is another human being. A woman who is going to put those shoes on and actually live her life in them.
That connection between people is something I never want us to lose.
There are so many incredible tools available to small businesses now. I use them too. But behind Joyasol, there are still real people. There’s me designing the shoes and making a million little decisions. There are people helping our customers. There are craftspeople making the shoes. There are people checking them, packing them and shipping them.
And then there’s you.
Almost five years into building Joyasol, I’m still learning, experimenting and figuring things out as I go.
Here are the 10 ideas from Create & Cultivate that I keep thinking about.
1. AI is a tool, not the strategy
Of course, AI came up a lot.
One of my favorite reminders was that using AI is not the same thing as having a strategy.
It can help us brainstorm, organize ideas, analyze information and move faster. But we still have to think. We still have to question things. We still have to decide what feels right.
And when everyone has access to similar tools, I think our own point of view becomes even more important.
For a creative brand like Joyasol, that matters. Technology can help us run the business, but it can’t tell me exactly what a beautiful shoe should feel like, which tiny detail makes something special or what our customer will want to reach for over and over again.
Use the tools. But keep your own point of view.
2. There are real people behind every brand
This was probably the biggest takeaway for me.
Send the personal email. Ask your customers questions and actually read their answers. Check in after someone makes a purchase. Meet people in person. Create experiences where people can connect.
We talk so much about customers, followers, engagement and conversion that sometimes we forget we’re really just talking about people.
And it goes both ways.
I never want our customers to forget that there are real people on the other side of Joyasol too.
There’s me, still obsessing over tiny design details almost five years in. There are people answering questions and helping when something goes wrong. There are craftspeople in Portugal making our shoes. There are people checking them, packing them and getting them out the door.
There are a lot of human hands involved before a pair of Joyasol shoes reaches yours.
Technology can make all of that faster and more efficient, which is great. But I don’t want efficiency to come at the expense of humanity.
I want Joyasol to feel like there are people here.
Because there are.
3. At the end of the day, the product has to be really good
One speaker put it simply: Product is king.
You can have beautiful marketing, great PR and an amazing social presence, but none of that makes up for a product people don’t actually want.
Joyasol started because I couldn’t find the shoes I was looking for.
I wanted something beautiful and special that I could actually live my life in. I also wanted to know more about where my shoes came from, who made them and how they were being made.
That original idea still guides so much of what we do.
Our shoes are ethically made in Portugal in smaller quantities, with an emphasis on craftsmanship, quality and more responsible production. We aren’t interested in making more just for the sake of making more.
But at the end of the day, none of those things matter if you don’t love wearing the shoes.
The product has to come first.
There was LOTS of walking, so comfort was key! Wearing our Elise woven flats and they did not disappoint.
4. You have to be willing to get things wrong
I liked this reminder because building a business can make every decision feel enormous.
Sometimes it is. But sometimes you just have to make the best decision you can with the information you have and go.
I’ve made plenty of decisions with Joyasol that I would do differently now. Products that didn’t work the way I thought they would. Ideas that changed. Plans that had to be completely reworked.
That’s part of it.
Almost five years in, I’m still figuring things out. I actually think admitting that is kind of freeing.
Getting something wrong doesn’t necessarily mean you failed. Sometimes it means you learned something you couldn’t have learned any other way.
5. Don’t let someone else’s fear become your truth
I wrote this one straight into my notes:
Don’t listen to other people’s fear. That’s not your truth.
I loved that.
It doesn’t mean ignoring advice. I’ve learned so much from other people while building Joyasol, and I think being open to feedback is incredibly important.
But there’s a difference between listening to someone and letting their fear make your decisions for you.
There will always be reasons not to do something.
The category is too crowded. Someone has already done it. It’s too risky. It’s too early. It’s too late.
One of the conversations at Create & Cultivate challenged the idea that a crowded category is necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes a crowded category simply means people want the product.
You don’t always have to invent something the world has never seen before. Sometimes you need to take something familiar and bring your own perspective to it.
Listen. Learn. Then trust yourself enough to make your own call.
6. Show the messy parts too
This is something I want to do more of with Joyasol.
Show the behind the scenes. Show the process. Show the people. Show the things that don’t work.
Some of my favorite parts of this business happen long before you ever see a finished shoe.
There are sketches and leather swatches spread across tables. Trips to our factory in Portugal. Materials to choose. Samples that come back completely wrong. Samples that come back and make me ridiculously excited. Tiny changes that probably no one else would ever notice.
And there are the people who take an idea and actually turn it into a shoe.
When we talk about our shoes being made in Portugal, ethical production or sustainability, I don’t want those to just be buzzwords on our website.
There are actual people, materials, decisions and relationships behind them.
A finished shoe tells one part of the story. How it got there tells another.
I want to show you more of that.
7. Social media is your storefront, but it isn’t your community
I loved hearing social media described as the front of the store.
When someone lands on our Instagram, can they quickly understand who we are? What we make? What we care about?
But followers aren’t necessarily a community.
Community is something deeper.
It’s conversations. Emails. Events. Meeting people in person. Remembering customers. Sharing experiences. Giving people a reason to come back even when they aren’t shopping.
It made me think less about:
How do we get more followers?
And more about:
How do we take better care of the people who are already here?
For a small brand, I think that’s one of our advantages.
We might not be able to outspend a huge footwear company. But we can listen. We can answer. We can connect.
We can care.
8. Bigger isn’t always better
This came up when talking about creators and influencers.
Instead of automatically looking for the biggest following, find people who actually feel like your customers.
I loved the idea of asking how creative you could get with just one or two creators who genuinely understand your brand.
Could you build something together? Could you develop a relationship over time? Could you introduce the brand to a smaller community that is actually the right community?
And not everything has to result in an immediate sale.
Sometimes the goal is conversion. Sometimes it’s awareness. Sometimes it’s content, credibility or simply introducing Joyasol to someone who might remember us six months from now.
Know what you’re trying to accomplish before deciding whether it worked.
9. Be generous and remember your impact
One of the simplest ideas from the weekend was also one of my favorites.
Give your team permission to make someone’s day.
Send the unexpected gift. Surprise a customer. Do a little more than someone expects. Find small ways to be generous.
That idea really connects to why I wanted Joyasol to be a purpose driven brand from the beginning.
We’re a member of 1% for the Planet. We work with Soles4Souls to give shoes a second life. We think about sustainability, responsible production and how we can make better choices as we grow.
But impact doesn’t always need to be a formal program.
Sometimes it’s how you treat a customer. How you work with a partner. How you treat the people making your product. Or simply choosing to do something kind when you don’t have to.
Being a purpose-driven brand doesn’t mean being perfect. We certainly aren’t.
For me, it means continuing to ask how we can do things a little better and remembering that the business we build can have an impact beyond what we sell.
10. Build more of what computers can’t make
This is the one I can’t stop thinking about.
More art. More craftsmanship. More travel. More culture. More conversations around a table. More things made by human hands. More experiences that happen in real life.
One speaker talked about creating a more cultured life and filling it with things that aren’t made by computers.
I loved that.
Because when I really thought about it, it brought me right back to Joyasol.
Our shoes are made in Portugal by craftspeople who have spent years learning their trade, passed on through generations. Our factories are owned by 3rd and 4th generation shoemakers. There are human hands cutting, stitching, shaping, checking and finishing the shoes we design.
Then there are more hands packing them and sending them on their way.
And eventually, they reach yours.
That’s where the next part of the story starts.
Because we aren’t making shoes to sit perfectly on a shelf or exist in a pretty Instagram photo.
We’re making them to be worn.
To get a little scuffed.
To walk through airports and down cobblestone streets. To go to work and school drop off. To dinner with friends. To travel somewhere you’ve never been. To dance. To celebrate. To have an ordinary Tuesday.
To live in.
I’ve always thought there is something especially personal about shoes.
They’re an expression of who we are and our personal style. But they’re also incredibly physical. They are literally what connects us to the ground beneath our feet as we move through the world.
They go where we go. They carry the marks of where we’ve been. And over time, they become part of our stories.
Maybe that’s why making shoes by hand feels even more meaningful to me right now.
In a world where so much of our lives happens on screens and so much can be generated instantly, we’re making something tangible. Something touched by human hands, passed from person to person and eventually worn by another human being out in the real world.
There are people at every step.
The person designing it. The person sourcing the materials. The person making it. The person checking it. The person answering your question about sizing. The person packing the box.
And finally, the woman putting it on her feet.
That’s the part I never want Joyasol to lose.
Technology will keep changing, and Joyasol will change with it. We’ll use new tools. We’ll experiment. We’ll work smarter.
But I keep coming back to why we’re here in the first place.
To make beautiful, thoughtfully made shoes, crafted by human hands for women to live real lives in.
Shoes with a story before they reach you, and hopefully many more stories after.
Maybe the future isn’t about choosing between technology and humanity at all.
Maybe it’s about using technology to make more room for the things that make us human.
More creativity. More connection. More craftsmanship. More purpose.
And hopefully, a little more time to get out there and actually live.
Come meet us in real life
Speaking of getting out there and connecting in real life, we’re hoping to do more Joyasol brand activations and events throughout Southern California in the coming months.
From pop-ups and creative events to wellness, fashion, and community gatherings, we’d love more opportunities to meet you beyond the screen.
Subscribe to our email list here to be the first to know where we’ll be next.
And if you’re interested in bringing Joyasol to your event, company or community, I’d love to hear from you. Reach out anytime at christina@joyasolshoes.com.
Hope to see you out there!