Brand Confessional: Rachel Hirsch, Wellness Growth Ventures
Liquid Death's VC on marketing channels, habits, and the biggest opportunity in wellness
Hey everyone -
Today I’m launching a new series: Brand Confessional, featuring candid conversations with operators and investors behind great brands.
First up is Rachel Hirsch, Founder and General Partner of Wellness Growth Ventures, who has backed some of the most interesting brands in consumer, including Liquid Death, Fishwife, and Tia. She has a rare dual perspective: Wall Street investor turned yoga studio founder turned VC.
Next week I will publish a new Diary of a Brand on a company that has cracked the code on community marketing (with a new framework you can apply to your own brand). Stay tuned. And if someone shared this with you, subscribe here.
Michelle
Tell us about yourself: what do you do, and what’s the unfair advantage you bring to it?
I run a venture fund investing in the future of wellness, and I also own a yoga studio. So I don’t just invest in wellness. I live inside it. I see what people say they want… and what they actually show up for. I see what converts online… and what keeps a room full at 6:30am. That proximity is the advantage. I’m not pattern-matching from the outside. I’m watching behavior form in real time… and then underwriting it.
What’s something you read or watched that changed how you think about business?
Less one specific book, more a realization: Markets don’t move when something is true. They move when something becomes legible to consumers. Gut health didn’t start when probiotics worked. It started when people could say the words “gut health” out loud. Same thing is happening with cortisol right now. The unlock isn’t science. It’s language.
What do most people get wrong about “brand”?
They think brand is how something looks. Brand is actually what people do repeatedly without thinking. It’s behavior, not aesthetics. If your customer comes back weekly, pays full price, brings a friend, and posts about it without being asked…that’s brand. If the identity is beautiful but the behavior isn’t quite there yet, it just means there’s more room to build.
Which company’s marketing are you most jealous of right now, and why?
John Hardy.
I used to think of it as my grandmother’s jewelry. Heavy, ornate, beautiful, but not for me. And then something shifted. Interestingly enough, not the core product, not the craftsmanship. The context.
They tightened the visual world. Changed who was wearing it. Where it showed up. How it was styled. The energy around it went from legacy to edge… without losing the heritage. It started appearing on people I actually follow. In outfits I would actually wear. It felt layered, cool, a little undone - not precious.
And the interesting part is, I already had a connection to it. My Nonnie wore John Hardy and loved it. When she passed, I got one of her pieces. It always meant something to me… but now it means something different. I actually wear it.
Same jewelry. Entirely different signal.
That’s what great marketing does. It doesn’t always create something new. It changes what something means. And if anyone from the John Hardy team is reading this… I’m your new diehard fan and would love to do a collab ;)
If you had to kill every marketing channel but one, what survives?
Community. And not the soft, abstract version of it.
I mean group chats that don’t die. Standing Friday morning classes. Dinners where the same people show up again and again and start to know each other’s lives. The kind of community where if the product disappeared, people would still find a way to gather. That’s not a channel. That’s infrastructure.
Wellness means many things, which means it risks meaning nothing. What does it mean to you?
Wellness, to me, is about feeling at home in your own life. It’s the quiet confidence of knowing what works for you and having systems that support it. It’s waking up with energy. It’s trusting your body. It’s having rituals that anchor your day, not overwhelm it. And increasingly, it’s not about adding more. It’s about removing friction, so the things that are good for you actually happen.
Where is the biggest untapped opportunity in wellness right now?
The space between knowing and doing.
We’ve built an entire ecosystem around insight: wearables, diagnostics, data dashboards. But the last mile, what you actually do differently, is wildly underbuilt. The winners won’t give you more data; they’ll quietly make the decision for you. They’ll turn intention into default. And when something becomes the default, that’s when it scales.
What’s the most underrated thing in a pitch deck, and what’s the most over valued?
Underrated: evidence of repeat behavior.
Show me people coming back, paying again, choosing you without being reminded. Show me that this isn’t just working once, it’s working again.
Overvalued: top-of-funnel growth. Attention is easy to manufacture for a moment. Sustained demand is much harder and much more valuable.
If you’re advising a founder with early traction, what’s the first thing you tell them about scaling?
Don’t confuse momentum with durability. Early traction can be a spike. Scaling requires something much less exciting: consistency, systems, and a model that works when the novelty wears off.
The real question becomes: what happens when this is no longer new?
Do people still come back? Does it still convert without urgency? Does it hold up operationally when volume increases?
Because scaling isn’t about pouring fuel on what’s exciting. It’s about proving what’s working and keeps working.
You went from Tiger Global to yoga studios to running a fund. What does Wall Street get wrong about wellness, and what does wellness get wrong about business?
Wall Street underestimates how emotional and behavioral this category is. You can’t spreadsheet your way into habit change.
Wellness, on the other hand, sometimes underestimates how much discipline it takes to build something enduring. Good intentions don’t fix bad unit economics. The opportunity is in building something people feel deeply, that also runs with precision behind the scenes. Because the brands that win here don’t just inspire you; they show up, consistently, in your life…and in your P&L.
Rachel is the Founder and General Partner at Wellness Growth Ventures. Find her on Substack and Instagram.
Subscribe to Brand Futures for access to brand case studies, interviews, and next week’s Diary of a Brand on a brand that has figured out the key to community marketing.
loved this!!
Love this Michelle!!