In August 2024, a few months before Hurricane Helene came through Asheville, I tried to launch a yoga streetwear brand with a $65K personal loan.
I went through the storm. Walked away with what felt like nothing but regret and resentment for a dream drowned before it even had a chance to swim.
Yet while the lights were still on, I’d been using AI to build a small SMS app for a mural we used to pull people into the storefront. The mural worked beautifully. The tech didn’t deliver the way I’d hoped — but it left a mark. AI was a tool I was meant to use for something special. I just hadn’t found the something yet.
HOLY SH!T HQ — South Lexington Ave — Downtown Asheville
After we shut down the brand I started DoorDashing to cover my costs and have space to think.
No lie… I was figuring out my next move while delivering takeout. I tried to get a job. Couldn’t. My life experiences can’t fit on a resume — and even when they did, resumes were smoke and mirrors. Now AI writes them for everyone.
300 deliveries in 30 days to get that bonus.
My cousin Steven called me on a DoorDash break.
He was upset. Told me I had all this potential to be great and I was using it to deliver food. Told me to remember who I was. Where I come from and what I am capable of.
Then he said “sort yourself out” and hung up.
Life had me back in Milwaukee a few weeks later. I didn’t know it yet — that was the trip where I’d remember who the fux I am.
Day 1’s. Real Ones.
I stayed with Steven and his family. His son Myles was seven. I’d been collecting Myles’ art since he was a toddler — kids see things adults explain away. I asked him to show me what he was working on.
While I was flipping through, I saw it: a panda with a bird whistling on its head.
Logo by Myles. Age 7 at time of drawing.
I felt like the bird. Always singing the song of ideas, people, and brands I loved. The panda was the brand — waiting for the right voice to sing it alive.
We digitized it for Myles in case he wanted to start his own “just a panda” brand someday. He said I could use it for mine.
Me and Myles. He’s been part of this since before there was a “this.”
Same trip, Steven’s telling me what wrecks him. He runs tech for a staffing agency. He used to walk the floor as a brand ambassador. He’s seen the same five pains from both sides, year after year.
What it is Cousin?!
The data entry. The no-shows. The late ones. The ones who can’t follow a brief. The ones who look perfect on paper and show up empty.
Paper never told him a thing.
The resume was useless to everyone, on both sides.
Two pains, same problem. The way you find out if someone can do this work isn’t a piece of paper. It’s seeing them. Hearing them. Watching them follow a simple instruction in real time.
That’s an audition. Not an application.
One night, waiting for DoorDash to arrive, in my underwear, I started coding.
Not in a co-working space. Not with co-founders. In my closet. Literally — the closet in my bedroom.
Just me, my laptop and i guess an idea whose time has come?!
I called it BRANDA. Used Myles’ drawing as the icon.
Day after day after day. Family kept me fed. Friends kept me sane. A credit card at 14% interest funded the build.
Here’s the thing.
That same Steven — the cousin who told me to sort myself out on a DoorDash break — is our first brand.
The first OPP that ever drops through BRANDA will be his.
The wake-up call and the proof are the same person. I didn’t plan that. It just is.
BRANDA is a bet that when the audition is the application, the right people will sing themselves into the right roles, right on time.
If you got this far, thank you. The people who read founder stories are usually the people who’ll build the next one. So go. Sort yourself out. Build some HOLY SH!T. Catch up. Pun intended.
JU$T B - U - DUH.
