The Character Era
Why Hannah Bronfman is exactly who we need to be paying attention to right now.
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There are certain people who have “it”. That thing that’s impossible to miss. Accomplished, polished, and somehow at the same time…. fun?!
I must have been living under a rock, because I just discovered Hannah Bronfman. And surprisingly not on Instagram despite her 1.5 million followers.. Instead it was here, on Substack.
Which, if you’ve read my article on the shift from following to knowing, makes sense. Substack has introduced something Instagram never quite could: the ability to actually know someone, rather than just ‘scroll past them’. A grid tells you what someone wants you to see. Surface level. A newsletter tells you how they think.
And Hannah’s List on wellness, business, and the life of a founder, with tens of thousands of subscribers signals something simple: there is real intellectual depth there. Which is what makes her even more interesting.
Why relatability is winning culturally.
The thing that pulled me in most recently wasn’t a brand deal or a panel clip. It was the Mother’s Day reel her husband Brendan posted. Their toddlers talking about what they love about her, what her job is, how she makes them feel. My three year old did the same thing for me on a piece of paper at preschool. Turns out I am five years old and my job is “cleaning things and work.” Incredible.
But watching Hannah’s version it had everything to do with the realness and relatability. And for a woman with over a million people watching her, I can imagine that’s not always easy to do.
We are in a course correction from aspirational perfection to perceived realness.
Not because people stopped caring about success. But because they stopped trusting polish.
Relatability isn’t just a vibe right now. It’s winning. Culturally, commercially, everything. We are in a full-blown correction from the era of aspirational perfection. The curated grid, the flawless flat lay, the highlight reel that made everyone feel quietly worse about themselves. That aesthetic is losing its grip. People aren’t just tired of polish anymore, they’re borderline suspicious of it.
And the data backs this up too. Winning brands are intentionally moving away from overly polished content and embracing imperfections, natural pacing, even the occasional stumble signal authenticity in a way that high production simply can’t anymore. As AI content goes up we’re only going to continue to crave content that feels human. Cue relatability. We are swimming in content that looks perfect and means nothing. So when something feels real, it stops us.
Which brings me back to Hannah. A Mother’s Day reel posted by her husband and their kids being kids. Just like my kid. There was no brand attached and no strategy visible. Just a woman being seen clearly by the people who actually know her and choosing to share that with a million strangers anyway. That’s character more than it is content. And right now, character is the rarest thing on the internet.
Community will outperform virality.
Success on social is being defined less by reach and more by relationship depth. The follows don’t matter as much as the feeling someone gives you. Do you trust them? Do you feel like you actually know them? Would you sit across from them at dinner and feel like the conversation was real?
Hannah passes that test. Easily.
I went down the rabbit hole… and the resume is extensive.
Angel investor in over 70 companies including Topicals and Sienna Naturals. Founder of the wellness platform HBFIT, which ran for eight years. In late 2024 she founded Conteur Capital, an investment firm focused on healthcare and wellness innovations with a focus on women and Black-owned startups. She’s also one of the stars of Amazon Prime Video’s new docu-series The CEO Club alongside Serena Williams. DJ. Author. Wife. Mom. Fund manager. Content creator.
The list goes on.
And while all of that is impressive, it’s not necessarily what makes her interesting to me.
What makes her interesting is the staying power.
The fact that she’s been doing this for fifteen years and still sounds like herself. In an era where everyone is pivoting their personality every six months to stay relevant, Hannah has stayed remarkably.. consistent.
She’s also been honest about failure in a way that feels genuinely rare and refreshing. HBFIT closed after eight years and she spoke openly about what she learned. Including how to handle co-founder fallouts, which is what led to the closing. She didn’t disappear quietly. She showed up at AfroTech, talked about it on stage, and moved into something bigger.
She’s unapologetically herself in the middle of 1.5 million people watching her.
From what I can tell, her family is in the content not because of some strategy. But because she’s not separating parts of her life to perform them differently. The business is personal not because she’s performing founder life, but because it actually is her life.
She’s writing about identity and motherhood the same week she’s raising a fund and filming a documentary. And she’s not writing it as separate chapters, but as one continuous story.
And by doing this, she’s a walking example of what modern ambition actually looks like: a woman building in public without splitting herself in two.
This is so unbelievably kind. Thank you so much!!!!