How to Build a DTC Brand That Actually Lasts with Brooke Yoakam

Most marketing decisions aren't driven by strategy. They're driven by ego.

That's the honest (and slightly uncomfortable) truth that Brooke Yoakam, founder of AvidAI and the brand analyst behind @thebrandblueprint_, dropped on this week's Unfinished Business. And she's not wrong.

Brooke has been an entrepreneur since she was 13. She built GiftPocket, a customer acquisition platform with 300+ brand partnerships (including Chipotle, ASOS, and Nasty Gal). She then founded AvidAI, an AI-powered platform that helps Shopify brands unlock retention insights and streamline acquisition. She went through Techstars Boulder in 2022. And somewhere along the way, she started an Instagram account @thebrandblueprint_ just as a creative outlet. Now she has 100,000+ followers who tune in to watch her break down the why behind every brand move.

In this episode, Brooke gives Alex and Lee a masterclass in how to think about brand building from the inside out, the ego-driven marketing decisions that quietly kill brands, the real meaning of ROI (and why most people get the timing wrong), and the framework she uses to help brands stop guessing and start measuring.

We covered:

→ Making your product habitual: How to position your product as a need, not a want, and use data to time your retargeting perfectly (hint: if you're hitting someone at the 30-day mark and they still have half a bottle, you're just burning money)

→ The "why" behind great brand decisions: What the BEIS car wash pop-up actually revealed about crisis management and brand narrative control

→ Super Bowl ads & opportunity cost: Why a $10M Super Bowl commercial might be your worst $10M investment, and what you could do instead

→ ROI needs time: The Ole Henriksen/Sunni Lee story, Nello at Coachella, and why the brands that pull the plug too early never see the return

→ Collabs done right (and very wrong): Why "Target collabs is where brands go to die," and how to find the right brand partner without diluting your equity

→ Data-driven content: The 30-day/30-idea testing framework, A-B hook testing, and how to use ManyChat UTM links to actually track sales back to specific posts

→ Going viral ≠ making sales: The brand that got 40M views and zero sales, and what went wrong

→ What actually makes a brand premium: Hint: it's not the price tag. It's whether your customers pay full price every time.

→ TikTok Shop: Why it works for some brands and quietly damages others (and what Hulken should think about before jumping in)

→ Live shopping, packaging, guerrilla marketing: Brooke's live consultation on what she'd do for Hulken if she were on the team

This is one of those episodes you're going to want to send to your whole team if you want to learn the best tactics and strategies for brand building in 2026.