The Create & Cultivate founder sold a majority stake in her company for $22 million, but the start-up queen is just getting started.

By Lindzi Scharf

Create & Cultivate founder Jaclyn Johnson sold her media company for $22 million in 2020, but the marketing guru turned angel investor had more humble aspirations as a teenager. “I wanted to be a magazine editor,” Johnson says, seated in the living room of her Silver Lake, California home. “I feel like that was the dream we were sold through every movie. Every woman was a magazine editor with a corner office, and so I was like, ‘That’s what I want to do.’”

Things changed when she graduated from college and realized the reality of traditional media. “CondeNast was like, ‘Here’s 23k dollars a year,” she says. “Like, what the fuck am I supposed to do with that? That was the starting the offer, and there was no room for negotiation because they said, ‘There are a thousand girls who want this job,’ like in the ‘Devil Wears Prada.’ They said, ‘You’ll get a lot of free clothes.’ I was like, ‘I can’t eat my clothes.’”

Instead, Johnson chose a more corporate track, which led to jobs in PR and marketing. But unlike her predecessors, Johnson was coming-of-age in corporate America as social media entered the picture and began changing the game.

As the youngest employee everywhere she worked, Johnson became the unofficial social media expert in an era where executives were trying to navigate and understand how to incorporate influencer marketing and events into their brand strategies. This, eventually, led to the launch of Johnson’s own creative agency, (No Subject), which combined her many interests with—what was at the time—a unique skill set.

While working on projects for (No Subject), Johnson realized what was missing in the consumer event space—which led her to launch Create & Cultivate in 2012. 

“I was like, ‘Why isn’t there an event for consumers that’s in the style of an influencer event but giving them information?’” Johnson remembers thinking. “It was me being like, ‘I learned so much building my first business, but here are my questions; here’s what I’m looking for. Is there a community need for this?’ When I went online, nothing spoke to me. So I launched it, and it turns out—there were a lot of women who were looking for resources, community, and events.”

The allure of buzzy names and the chance to mingle with entrepreneurs and celebrities like Jessica Simpson, Eva Mendes, Jessica Alba, Lauren Conrad, and Kim Kardashian proved to be a winning formula.

Johnson reportedly sold her majority stake in Create & Cultivate for the aforementioned $22 million – thanks to the media company’s seven-figure profitability. Johnson remains involved in the company but has since shifted her focus to angel investing through her venture capital fund, New Money Ventures.

“I knew with the Create & Cultivate sale that I wasn’t going to be the acting CEO anymore,” she explains, clad in a green look by American Vintage courtesy of a friend who does the brand’s PR. “I was like, ‘My next thing is that I want to invest in women and put my money where my mouth is and start a fund.’”

In addition to New Money Ventures, Johnson is also following in the footsteps of other serial entrepreneurs (like Girlboss’s Sophia Amoruso and Drybar’s Alli Webb) by offering virtual business courses for those interested in the process of fundraising. “There’s a formula here,” she says, discussing why she launched a Master Class for female founders and aspiring fundraisers. “There’s a reason why underrepresented founders aren’t getting funded because it’s this vicious cycle. Let’s open it up and provide value and access.”

But it’s taken time for Johnson to learn that formula. How did she wind up in the position she is today?

GROWING UP

Johnson grew up in West Palm Beach, Florida with a younger sister. “Both my parents are entrepreneurs and small business owners,” she says. “I was independent and an overachiever. I had two jobs in high school. I was on every sports team. But I was also a bit of a rebel. I wanted to live in a major city. I was always like, ‘I need to move out.’ My parents were trying to convince me otherwise, but I was like, ‘I need to go and do something different.’”

She grew up obsessed with thrift shopping. “I would put together all these crazy outfits,” she says. “I loved all the different stories they would tell [me] about who owned them. I would go to this one shop in Palm Beach where all these old ladies would put their vintage Chanel. I have vintage Oscar de la Renta that I got for five dollars because they didn’t know what they were selling. Now The Church Mouse [in Palm Beach] is famous, and it's thousands of dollars. But at the time, it wasn't a thing.”

Johnson’s interest in fashion led her to study magazine production at New York University in New York City. “I thought being a magazine editor was spotting the trends,” she says, explaining that through internships she began to feel like the editorial departments were more sales driven than she realized. “I interned at Avenue magazine, which is essentially a high society magazine, so [we covered people like] Tinsley Mortimer. I would go on to all these scenes and write about what happened at these soirees. When I got to the magazine, it was this young editor and then there was this woman who was the publisher and then it was me and one other person. But then there were thirty other people there. I was like, ‘Wait, so everyone is on the editorial team?’ They were like, ‘Oh no. that’s the sales team.’ And it hit me, ‘The sales drives the editorial.’”

Her next internship at a small communications firm gave her insight into the world of PR and marketing. “It was an unpaid internship, but I was running accounts and was on client calls,” Johnson says.

She shares a particularly memorable moment from when she was working on a store opening party for a dog clothing company. “I get to the store opening, and the block was shut down,” she remembers. “They were filming ‘Devil Wears Prada.’ I walked up to Adrian Grenier and was like, ‘Come to our opening.’ He came to our opening and got photographed. It got picked up everywhere.”

The moment helped Johnson prove herself as a savvy force to be reckoned with. Her then-boss, Caroline Adoscia, landed a job as Head of Communications at CondeNast Traveler, and she brought Johnson—who was still a college student—to the publication.

Johnson was an editorial assistant for five months, where she blogged and created video content for the publication’s website, but she quickly realized that path wasn’t for her, either. “I was an online editor, but I was like, ‘I don't love any of this, and the pay is horrible,’” she says. “I was about to graduate, and I had this professor who worked at Time Inc., and I was like, ‘I can't afford to be an editorial assistant at Conde[Nast].’ He said, ‘There’s this weird internship, but it’s a paid internship.’”

SOCIAL MEDIA: A NEW ERA

The opportunity took place at Time Inc.’s New York headquarters. “They brought together all these people from different backgrounds to be like, ‘How should Time Inc show up on the internet?’” Johnson says, then pauses. “This makes me sound a hundred years old, but they were like, 'Right now, what’s in the magazine goes on the website, but is that the best way to be showing up? It was me and all these randoms—lawyers, technologists. It was a focus group [discussing], ‘How should we be utilizing the internet?’ So I became this weird expert. I think they were like, ‘Oh, she’s younger and tapped in.’ I also had a little blog called Some Notes on Napkins, where I created these fashion and art collages.”

Shortly after, in 2007, Johnson became a senior account executive with the then-newly launched marketing agency, Attention.

“I saw this job on Craig's List that said, ‘Seeking account executive interested in fashion and the internet,’” she recalls. “It ended up being this company called Attention, which is now a massive agency but at the time, it was two co-founders, one tech dude, and me. I went in, and they were like, ‘We have this client BlueFly.’ It was hot shit at the time. They said, ‘We understand marketing but we know nothing about fashion.’ Through that agency, I got a crash course in how to run an agency, sell new business, build strategy, and build plans. I got a front-row seat to a start-up.”

Johnson was tasked with heading up social media strategy for clients including Bluefly.com, Vimeo, Coty, M.A.C. Cosmetics, Origins, and Gifts.com

“I was running shit I should not have been running,” she says. “I was basically running [Attention] within two years. I hired two of my best friends who are still my best friends to this day.”

As the business world attempted to understand and navigate social media, Johnson was courted by iCrossing, a competing global digital marketing company with clients that included Mazda, CVS, and Hilton.

“I was early to the social media world,” she explains. “I became this expert at social media in a time where there were no experts in social media.”

As a result, she was “poached” by iCrossing’s hiring manager in 2008. “He was like, ‘We are a global agency. We're 500 people. We have offices all over the world, and we want you to build our social media offering,’” Johnson recalls. “I was 21, and he was like, ‘We’re going to offer you $80k a year, which is life-changing money when you're that age. My salary was $43k [at Attention].”

However, her parents questioned her path. “My mom was skeptical,” Johnson says. “She was like, ‘Is there health insurance?’ Because I was making this leap.”

Johnson accepted the job but learned a hard lesson in the process. "[The hiring manager] asked, ‘Is there anyone else at your agency you would take with you?’ I was like, ‘My friend Alisa is so smart.’ They took Alisa, and so I ended up getting sued because I had a non-solicit [contract],” she says. “I didn’t know. I was 21. It ended up being fine. I’m friends with that former boss now, but I was like, ‘God, I had no idea.’ Long story short, they ended up settling the lawsuit for me. I went over and started building out their service lines for social media; how do you sell it; how do you package it; how do you scale it? And I sold them to massive clients. I was flying all over the country for work. It was awesome.”

But admittedly, her friends and family still didn’t understand her profession. “They thought I was a drug dealer,” she jokes. “They were like, ‘How are you making this much money? What is social media?’ And my blog was sort of taking off, so I started getting all this free stuff.”

One of her previous clients was gifts.com, which was owned by IAC, a dot com holding company that counts The Daily Beast, weather.com, and Vimeo among its other properties. Through that connection, in 2008, she landed a job with IAC as the Director of Social Media Marketing, where she worked on Pronto.com with the company's then-CEO John Foley, who is now CEO of Peleton.

“It was 120k dollars a year,” she says. “I was 24, but I had this weird skill set that no one had, so I went to Pronto, which was trying to be an Amazon competitor. I was merchandising stuff, building out their fashion site, and doing partnerships. It was great. I loved that job, and I loved working for John.”

Johnson held the position for ten months. Then Foley called her into his office. “The recession hits, and everyone is getting let go,” she says, setting the scene. “Every start-up is shutting down, and my direct boss was let go. Pronto starts doing layoffs. John calls me into his office and says, ‘Listen, we’re not going to weather storm. We’re probably going to shut down, but I talked to the CEO of CitySearch—it’s the same job, same salary, and they’ll pay for you to move to Los Angeles. I have it lined up for you if you want it. But [Pronto is] going to have to reduce your salary in the next month or so.’”

Johnson had never considered Los Angeles. She recalls thinking, “I don’t know if I’m an L.A. person.” She laughs. “At this point, I had black hair. I was a Goth girl.”

She took a trip to L.A. to feel things out and went with friends to Coachella, a rite of passage for most twenty-something Angelenos. She remembers, “I thought, ‘I can do this.’ My lease was up. I was breaking up with my boyfriend in NY. Everything was a perfect storm to exit.”

THE CROSS-COUNTRY MOVE

Johnson moved to Los Angeles in the summer of 2009 for a job as the marketing manager of CitySearch, where she was tasked with social media-focused event strategies and community building. But she says the cross-country move and new position proved to be a tough adjustment.

“I had a massive culture shock being in L.A.,” she says. “I was fast-paced and aggressive. First one in, last one out. That was the way I worked. Everyone thought I was a genius in New York. I got to L.A., and it was like, ‘Woah, calm down.’ No one was into my style of working. They kept being like, ‘Can you just fill out this spreadsheet with PR contacts for KTLA?’ I’m like, ‘I’m not a PR person.’ I came in hot to CitySearch. Like, ‘Hey executives, we need to go up against Yelp. Do you know what Yelp is? We need to be pushing our editors as influencers. Do you know what influencers are?’ They were like, ‘Nothing's broken. Why are you [trying to fix it]?’ They were not paying attention [to the landscape shift], and I got pushed into this weird PR/intern role, which sucked. They didn’t know what to do with me.”

She was let go after five months.

“I got let go because, ‘I wasn’t a cultural fit;’ that’s literally what they said,” Johnson explains. “Because I actually get stuff done and have ideas? Fine.” She pauses. “I ended up being like, ‘Fuck. This is a nightmare. I live in Los Angeles, and I have zero fucking friends. What am I going to do?’ I remember I [thought], ‘I’m going to become a spin instructor or a yoga teacher.’ I didn’t know what I was going to do. I started applying for jobs, but all the social media jobs were in film, entertainment, and gaming. All my experience was fashion and beauty, which was not a thing in L.A. at the time. I got no calls back. No one wanted to hire me. I emailed my network [looking for job leads], and John Foley was like, ‘What happened? I’m going to get you clients.’”

Foley stayed true to his word and lined up a few companies for Johnson. “I ended up getting a lot of freelance consulting clients,” she says. “But I was blogging at the same time and blogging was becoming a thing at that point. I ended up getting invited to this event as a blogger to do this cool thing [in 2010]. I met this girl who was throwing the event. She said, ‘I’m going on my own with my own event business. Do you want to share office space if you’re on your own?’ In my New York head, I was like, ‘I can’t fucking afford office space. Are you out of your mind?’ Downtown [L.A.] wasn’t a thing yet, but she ended up finding this insane space in downtown L.A. It was a 2000-square-foot loft space with cut-out offices. We ended up getting this other guy, a filmmaker, to come in on it with us. It was 400 dollars a month each. I had this office space and five clients. I was like, ‘I’m doing it. This is my life now.’”

Johnson and her then-office mate eventually decided to go into business together. Johnson says, “Her expertise was events. Mine was social media. She was like, ‘Why don’t we combine services and become an agency?’”

In 2010, she and her then-partner launched (No Subject), a marketing, influencer, social media management, and event production agency, with clients that included Microsoft, ClassPass, Westfield, Levi's, Urban Decay, and Nasty Gal.

“At peak, we were doing $2 million a year,” Johnson says. “It got big fast. We ended up breaking up as business partners, which was a whole thing. Let's just say we had a difference of opinions and went our separate ways. She's successful now. It's funny because the irony is she created a social media agency and a creative studio, and I went into events. We kind of flipped. She taught me everything I know about events, and I taught her about social media. It’s funny in that way. I ended up running No Subject by myself after that. I kept it going for five more years. We had five employees.”

Tasked with overseeing client launch parties, Johnson’s job might have appeared glamorous, but she says appearances can be deceiving.

“One of our clients was G Star, and we did the opening of their Beverly Hills store with Mark Ronson DJing for 200 people,” she says. “I was running around like a psycho sweating making sure everyone could get in. They wanted a denim curtain to drop and this store is 20 feet tall. We've sourced the denim curtain. We had everything ready to go. We had the fire marshal walk-through. He walks up to the curtain and lights it on fire. It goes up [in flames]. He blows it out. He's like, ‘This needs to be a fire retardant curtain.’”

Johnson ran around town looking for someone to coat it with the proper material so it could pass inspection. “They sprayed down this curtain,” she says. “I put it back in my Prius. It was so heavy because of the liquid, so my tires were flat. We had to get a fucking U-Haul to bring this thing back. It was still wet as the doors were opening. It was a nightmare, but it worked out.”

No matter the request, Johnson continually hustled to fulfill client expectations – which not-so-coincidentally is what led to the start of Create & Cultivate.

CREATE & CULTIVATE’S ORIGIN STORY

“Create & Cultivate came about because I had a relationship with the Ace Hotel,” Johnson explains. “They were like, ‘How do we get people to book weekdays? Who can go to Palm Springs on a Tuesday?’ I was like, ‘Freelancers! Let's do a creative freelancers getaway, and we'll call it Create and Cultivate. I’ll program out the weekend.’”

She put together the first Create & Cultivate in 2011. “It sold out,” Johnson says. “Then I brought my blogger friends in, like Geri [Hirsch], which is how we know each other. It took on a life of its own over four years. People were like, 'What's going on with this event? We love it.' It was this side project I did.”

Johnson applied everything she observed through her work with (No Subject) to Create & Cultivate. “With (No Subject), we were primarily doing influencer work and we were throwing these lavish parties,” she says. “My sister, who is a wedding photographer in Florida, was like, ‘I would kill to go to those parties.’”

As a result, Johnson decided to create a consumer event that gave its attendees access to the women they admired. “It was a rocket ship,” she says. “Brands were interested. It was the right timing. We had an avid, rabid audience of cool, millennial women.”

By 2015, Create & Cultivate solidified its status with keynote speakers including Emily Weiss of Glossier, blogger Aimee Song, stylist turned influencer Chriselle Lim, and television personality and actress Julianne Hough. The events took place in a variety of cities including Montauk and Portland, Oregon. “It was getting big,” Johnson says. “I knew we were building something special. It had momentum. I always joke; with (No Subject), I was knocking on everyone’s door, like, ‘Hire me, here’s my agency.’ With Create & Cultivate, it was like everyone was banging down our door to work with us.”

Johnson attributes Create & Cultivate’s success to a seismic shift in consumer habits as well as the fact that internet culture was largely ignored at the time by mainstream media.

"We had a couple of different things going for us,” she says. “We were pre-the-women's movement of 2017, and with more women getting funding—we were already alive and well during that time. We were the first people to be like, ‘Hey, women in business. This is the cool, new millennial way. It’s not a stodgy, old, weird conference.’”

Johnson's make-up artist and close friend Daniele Piersons is within earshot and chimes in, “Jaclyn Johnson started that. She was the first one to do anything like that, and people were on top of it.”

"My publicist," Johnson laughs. 

While working on Create & Cultivate, Johnson continued leading (No Subject), which was eventually acquired by SmallGirls PR in 2016.

“I’ve known the SmallGirls girls forever,” Johnson says. “We built our businesses together. We were friends. We shared the deal flow. They were like, ‘Hey, we have a client in Los Angeles. They require us to have an office within ten miles of them.’ Most big companies, when you're their agency, they require that. At least pre-pandemic they required that kind of stuff. [SmallGirls] was like, ‘We love you. We don’t want to compete with you, but we want to be on the west coast.’ They were thirty people. We were five. They had a lot of HR infrastructure that we didn’t have. So they took over our pipeline, our employees, our office, and bought it out.”

However, because of Create & Cultivate’s momentum, Johnson decided to make it an independent endeavor from her work with (No Subject). She brought on a partner to help oversee its growth.

"We both self-funded it," Johnson explains. "I saw the opportunity. I separated the staff—before the sale [to SmallGirls PR] and I invested some of my own money into it. I was like, ‘I’m just going to see,’ because I had done events. I’d done launch parties.”

After the acquisition, Johnson stayed on with SmallGirls PR for a year, where she oversaw experiential marketing and influencer relations. All the while, she kept running Create & Cultivate. “At that point, I had employees that were separate for Create & Cultivate,” she says. “I was running both for a little bit. I had two different teams, two different staff meetings.”

BUSINESS & PLEASURE

Despite working around the clock, Johnson paid as much attention to her personal life as she did to her profession. She met her husband, David Kaul, in 2015 after they connected on Tinder.

They had their first date at Café Stella in Silver Lake. “But we didn't didn't get to see each other again until my 29th birthday at Mack Sennett Studios,” she says, explaining they reconnected during the party and went out a few more times thereafter. “I think our third date is when we were like, ‘Oh, we like each other.’”

The couple bonded as they explored Los Angeles together. “He was new to L.A., which was fun because we could discover the city together,” Johnson says. “We talked about everything except work, which, for me, was a big deal because everything in my life was about work at that point. That's what bonded us, and now a billion years later, it's crazy. We've been married for almost six years. He’s not on the internet. He’s really funny. He hates having his photo taken. I’m always like, ‘Do a photo shoot with me,’ and he’s like, ‘Nah.’ He’s an artist.”

They met and married during a time of transition for Johnson. “I sold (No Subject), got married, and bought a house all in 2016.” She pauses. “It was a fucking nightmare,” she says. “I was barely sleeping. That year was the craziest. After this deal went through, I worked two jobs full-time. I had two different offices. I had to go back and forth between both offices. We were renovating our house, and we had a wedding planned. It was so intense. It was the worst year of [my husband’s] life. He was like, ‘I fucking hated it.’ It was a nightmare, but we stuck it through.”

BECOMING A $22 MILLION BUSINESS

By 2016, Johnson left SmallGirls PR and turned her attention solely to Create & Cultivate. “It was already its own thing,” she says.

She believes it resonated with consumers because she understood what women were looking for but weren’t finding.

“I was the audience, and the audience was me,” Johnson says. “I think that helped us because I was building my business alongside women who were attending and who were building their businesses. There was this natural thing of, ‘We’re both trying to figure this out together.’ But I had access to these influential people whereas most women don’t. I always wanted to provide access and value. Those were the two things—surrounded by a wrapper of really beautiful, aesthetically pleasing things. That’s how I built the company, and it took off. It became this insanely paced, constantly evolving, always moving thing.”

While one would think burnout and finding a work-life balance would have been a challenge personally, Johnson insists she didn’t struggle on that front for the first five years of Create & Cultivate. “I loved it,” she whispers as if she’s sharing a secret. “I was having fun. I was traveling everywhere.”

She credits her mother Joann Johnson with helping her navigate the business side of establishing the company. “I always call her my unofficial co-founder of all my companies,” she says, “because she was running the payroll; helping with everything. She helped me a lot with accounting. She is a G.”

Despite the company’s track record, Johnson says she struggled to be taken seriously in certain circles. “When you look at it on paper, you would be like, ‘That is an amazing company. They’re running it well. They’re doing $14 million in revenue. They’re killing it,’” says the author of Work Party. “But the moment, you’re like, ‘It’s a woman’s career [conference], everyone was like, ‘Oh, cute.’” She uses a mock baby voice to emphasize her point.

“Every single person, business-wise, never took it seriously,” Johnson continues. “I think it was because it was mostly dudes that were writing the [business] pieces and writing the checks. Even from an editorial perspective, no one wanted to write about us because we didn’t have venture backing. It was the period of the Glossier and Away, and everyone was like, ‘Raise this much.’ I was like, ‘We don’t need to raise because we’re making money.’ So we kept doing our own thing with our heads down.”

By 2021, Create & Cultivate consisted of seventeen employees. The company was reportedly doing seven figures when she sold her majority stake to private equity firm Corridor Capital. 

“It was exciting when we had the exit because people all of a sudden were like, ‘Wow,’” Johnson says, explaining she’s still the company’s founder and remains on its board.

Her mom also continues to lend a hand when needed.

“The new CFO of Create & Cultivate will hop on a call with Joanne, like, ‘Can you walk me through [something]?’ because she ran Create & Cultivate’s fucking payroll,” Johnson says. “She was the one who [told me], ‘You need to know your numbers. Fall in love with the numbers.’ Because I was always the [creator]. I wasn't about the financial [details]. But I ended up – after experiencing [a situation that I won’t go into, but that wound up being very costly] – someone told me, ‘It was a million-dollar lesson for $200,000.’ And I always thought about that. I was like, ‘I need to understand the fundamentals.’”

With more time on her hands after selling her majority stake, Johnson did a deep dive to better understand the world of fundraising. “I always bootstrapped all my companies,” she says. “I had no idea about raising money. I didn't know that was an option. Towards the end of Create & Cultivate, I [understood we could fundraise], but we were already so successful we didn't need it. We were like, ‘Let's hold onto our equity. Let's sell the company versus trying to go and raise money and reduce our equity, then we have to grow and scale faster.’ Create & Cultivate was its own successful business by the time that was an option.”

NEW MONEY VENTURES

As a result of her research and interest in investing, Johnson turned her attention to launching New Money Ventures, a venture capital fund, in 2022.

However, her first investment goes much further back. “My first angel check I wrote was in 2012, and that was to Jen Rubio for Away luggage,” Johnson shares. “It was before she even had a company. She was like, ‘I have this idea. Here's what I'm going to do,’ and I wrote a check. Jen and I were New York buds forever ago, and when she was at Warby Parker we became good friends again. Warby Parker sponsored Create & Cultivate, and we've been friends since then. She’s like, ‘I'm starting this,’ and I was like, ‘I'm going to write a $10k check.’ It's not like I had $10k to spend, but I thought, ‘This feels like a moment, and I feel like I need to take advantage of it. I know Jen will be successful.’ It ended up being a really good investment.”

Since then, Johnson has continued investing in women she believes in. “I’ve been angel investing since 2012,” she says. “I’ve had some good exits, which is nice. Having run Create & Cultivate, the stats that were always talked about at these events was, ‘Only 2.3 percent of funding goes to women.’ Everyone was like, ‘How do we raise money?’ As someone who has never raised money, I started looking into it and I realized only five percent of venture funds are run by women. So that’s how New Money Ventures was born.”

Johnson explains, “Our mandate is women-owned, women-run businesses. Every couple of quarters we change what we're looking for. Initially, we launched in CPG [consumer packaged goods], the food and bev[erage] space, then we went into beauty. Now the creator economy is what we're looking for and healthcare technologies. We change up what we're investing in. We specialize in series A. That’s where we like to sit and our investments are $250k up to $1 million. … We're going to invest in start-ups, build them ourselves, launch them, and then within two years get them acquired.”

Her process for deciding what to invest in is simple—although landing a deal admittedly isn’t. “I've heard a thousand pitches maybe,” she says. “You hear from a ton of companies, then you take a deeper dive, you get into their diligence. Then you see if you like it or not and then you do a deeper dive. It's a time-consuming process, but it's been really fun.”

For this endeavor, Johnson is a one-woman show. “It's just me, and obviously lawyers are part of it,” she says. 

THE MASTER CLASS

Johnson feels strongly we need to peel back the curtain and offer transparency when it comes to building a business and what it takes to fundraise if needed. She wants future female business owners to understand their options, which is why she’s offering a master class in fundraising. "It's a crash course," she says, explaining she learned through trial and error herself. "Through my angel investing, I knew a little bit about it, but now I understand a lot of it and the way it works. I want women to be able to have access to it. It’s the same thing I did with Create & Cultivate. I saw the secret to success. I understood how people were doing it and I wanted to give access and value to those people now that I’m in the fundraising world. I’m super excited about it.”

The virtual series came about as a result of her privately mentoring various founders. “The majority of the calls I have—whether it’s pitches or intro or mentorship—these women have great businesses,” she says. “They’re just like, ‘I don’t know anyone in Silicon Valley, so how am I going to ever get funding? I don’t understand the language. What’s a cap table versus a SAFE versus a convertible note?’” she adds, throwing out various fundraising lingo.

Told she’s speaking in a different tongue, Johnson laughs. “Exactly. For whatever reason, it is its own language, so I want to help break that down,” she says. “You should take this if you’re a founder looking to raise money; if you want to be more fluent in venture capital; or if you’re interested in personally investing. There are a million reasons you should take the course.”

The virtual class is a four-part series that can be taken on one's own time through a combination of video content, course downloads, and live Zooms as well as templates. Johnson explains, "I have a template for how to email investors and a template for how to give your investors updates. I make it foolproof because most business owners aren't financial experts. I wasn't at Create & Cultivate. I could build shit. I could make money, but I YouTubed a lot of it [to learn myself]. Within a year of my new partnership, the new Create & Cultivate, I was a psychopath about understanding everything that was in and everything that was out because I had gotten burned so badly [in the past]. I basically went to business school online. I learned how to do it by doing it."

“There is a science to it," Johnson continues. "I don't think most women start companies to sell them, which is fine. That's just the reality. A lot of men start companies to sell them. It's a different mentality and a different way to build wealth. It's a different way to think about building your business. What I'm trying to do is give people the information and the secret to having to do that. Because the majority of the people who will create wealth from launching businesses are people who either IPO, which means they need a lot of venture, or they sell. That's how you make real money running a business."

She adds, “Most founders do not pay themselves a lot of money, which they’re not supposed to. I never did. It’s normal. It is what it is. But it depends on what you want and what your end game is.”

While it may be a generalization, Johnson says most women start things out of passion whereas men tend to be concerned about the bottom line. "All my friends who have sold successful businesses, we've all talked about that," she says. "It is a dude's game. It's a lot of them doing handshake deals. When I sold Create & Cultivate, [it was crazy] the number of women who run successful companies that reached out to me and were like, 'How did you do that?' because it's not obvious. It is a business. It is a business to sell your business; you know what I mean?"

WHAT’S NOW & NEXT

In addition to Johnson’s master class, venture capital fund, and corporate coaching, she continues to consult companies like Maie Wines, which she helped launch in May 2022 and sold in January 2023 through New Money Ventures.

She is also an investor in a variety of companies including LUSSO CLOUD, Bowlcut, west~bourne, Chillhouse, Crown Affair, and—of course—Away. Additionally, Johnson recently co-founded Invest with Cherub, a double sided marketplace that connects angel investors with founders.

After years spent hustling, Johnson is finding more balance in her day-to-day. “We ended up buying a house in Napa in May of last year," Johnson says. "It's essentially like a mini farm in Napa. It's seven acres. It's an A-frame modern house. It's our dream house, so we go up there quite a bit. We now split our time between Napa and Los Angeles. My new favorite thing is to go to wineries and join wine clubs.”

Johnson says she’s been operating at a slightly slower pace since selling her majority stake in Create & Cultivate. “I kept telling my husband, ‘I’ll chill when the company sells,’” she remembers. “I just wanted to do right by our shareholders and everyone. When the company sold, I became a different person. A hundred percent. I was able to relax more.”

While life may appear fast-paced and glamorous from the outside looking in—thanks to the aesthetically pleasing businesses she’s built—Johnson insists a lot of blood, sweat, and tears have gone into where she is today. “Nothing I’ve ever done is glamorous until now,” she says. “Even now, I don’t know. I never was in it for the glamour—I was always in it for the sweat.”

HOW SHE LIVES…

"It's a special place," Johnson says of her Silver Lake home, which was built in the forties and is within walking distance of coffee shops. "It’s a modern mix with the original Spanish interior.” Because her job requires her to have her finger on the pulse of people, places, and things, Johnson loves discovering female-led, female-owned companies and incorporated quite a few into the space. "With Create & Cultivate, I met a thousand women, and it was important when we were doing the house to bring in as many women-owned brands as possible."

THE BACKYARD

“When I bought this, it was all grass back here,” she says of the backyard. “Then we put in the pool during COVID. It’s a cool space. Being in the heart of Silver Lake, it's hard to find this much space. We host dinner parties and do cocktail hours out here. It’s a good hosting house.”

THE LIVING ROOM

“Part of the reason we bought the house was this window," she says. "I love Spanish-style homes. The archways in this room are reminiscent of older Spanish-style houses.” The lighting fixture is by Lulu and Georgia. “It has that sciencey-feel to it—like molecules; it’s fun,” she says, sharing the Moroccan rug is also from the home goods brand.

THE COUCH

The room features a Mario Bellini couch. “It’s the TikTok couch,” she says, laughing. “All of a sudden everyone has it. But it’s for a reason. It’s super comfortable. We had this pre the TikTok moment. I wanted something low in this room because it connects to the rest of the house. When you have a bigger space like this or a taller couch, it cuts the room off. We wanted something that would flow in and out, so this is a great lower couch. And it’s all in pieces. You can buy and format it however you want. You could do a double all the way. You can make it wider or longer. You can have fun with it. if something happens and you need to replace it, you don’t have to replace the entire couch, you can just replace the pieces, which is nice.” There’s only one snag. She says, “I’m a glutton for punishment because I bought white furniture with a dog. It’s a bit of a work in progress. We started by covering everything and then we were like, ‘You know what? We’ve got to live our lives.’”

HER DOG

“You are cracking me up,” Johnson says to her three-year-old dog Winnie, as she plays catch with him. “She will never get tired of doing this.” She explains that she and her husband got Winnie through his work. “My husband teaches at Cal Poly. He's a professor of design. One of his students had posted that one of their siblings got her and couldn't keep her. He was like, ‘I think we should take her in and foster her,’ and we already had another dog, so I wasn’t sure. They thought she was a Maltipoo, which is hilarious. We took her in and fell in love and then we did a DNA test and found out she's a Chihuahua poodle. She's the sweetest love bug.”

THE BOOK

“This is the Virgil Abloh book,” she says. “My husband and I went to see an exhibit he was doing and we bought it then not knowing he was going to pass away. My husband is a big fan of his work and it has a lot of his sneakers and Adidas collabs and things like that in there, which my husband is super into.”

THE CHAIRS

Her living room includes chairs from Lulu & Georgia. “I love them,” she says. “They’re fun, bouclé, and modern, which is nice because everything else is a mix of modern and homey. It’s a cool way to do it.”

THE CANDLE WARMER

“I got this on Amazon,” she says. “It’s a candle warmer. I’m obsessed with candles. I light them all the time, but they’re expensive. You put a candle under this lamp and it heats it—see how it's all liquid in there, but the wax never goes away. So it doesn't go to waste. So your candle lives forever. Someone posted about it [on social media]. That’s how I found it. I was like, ‘I need that immediately.’ It’s so genius. Because then you can buy expensive candles and they last way longer.”

THE FIREPLACE

“ I wanted a cozy fireplace,” she says. “It's nice being able to gather around the fire."

THE TAPESTRY

“My friend Kelsea [Olivia] is mostly known as a floral designer in Brooklyn, but she’s a creative genius,” Johnson says. “She did all of the florals at Create & Cultivate forever. I had this entryway moment and I wanted to build this crazy fiber art [concept]. I sent her some things on Pinterest and said, 'Do you know anyone who can do this?' She was like, 'I think I can do that.' It was also during the pandemic, and it wasn't like we could go out. So she said, 'What's the vibe? What's the color?' So she bought all of these materials on Amazon. These were sweaters, blankets, pompoms, and all sorts of random things. I’m pretty sure this was a sweater. She crafted it by herself, mailed it to me, and we hung it. It was the craziest thing when I unraveled it. Everyone loves this piece." Not only is it a one-of-a-kind design, but it was also a one-time-only affair for its designer. "She only made this for me, and I think she was like, 'I’m never making another one again. I’m done.’ She was over it. It was a labor of love for her. She said, ‘I get so many inquiries now, but I can’t.’ But it was a good COVID project for her.” A lighting fixture by Kelly Wearstler hangs above the piece. “I’m obsessed with her,” Johnson says. “I have all of her books.”

THE TATTOOS

Asked about her tattoos, she sighs. “Old, old embarrassing tattoos,” she says, pointing to her foot. “I got that tattoo in New York when I was 21, which was a direction pointing to Los Angeles, which [represented that I was] making a move. It’s embarrassing.” She points to another. “And then this I got right when I got to L.A. ‘If you want to be happy, just be.’ And it’s the word be. But it’s so blurry now, so you can kind of not tell. My husband is covered in tattoos. He's way more into it than I am. He has huge traditional tattoos.”

THE BATHROOMS

“All of our bathrooms are by color,” she explains. “We have the pink bathroom, the blue bathroom, and the green bathroom. Our last house was so pink that my husband was like, ‘Please. Just make the other rooms not as girly.’”

THE PINK BATHROOM’S ARTWORK

"This artist is great," she says, referencing a piece by Josh Young. "He's well known for these kinds of portraits where he takes older things and makes them modern. He does amazing work, and he's out of New York." Of the overall space she says, "This is very eighties Florida to me. It's very art deco."

THE ENTERTAINER

“This was a weird space in the house,” she says. “They had a living room here, a TV, a couch, and a table. But I felt weird watching TV here. It didn’t vibe. We were like, ‘What do we make this room?’ We wanted this to be a cocktail, lounge, and hang area near the home bar. We have puzzles and play Rummikub.”

THE BAR

“We have people over a ton,” Johnson says. “It's such a good space for entertaining. I care more about this space than I care about the bedrooms because I'd rather be out here.”

THE WEDDING GIFT

“This is from our wedding,” she says. “Our friend got us this amazing bundle of sage weed. We had a lot more, and then we burned through all of them. This is the last one standing. So that one is special.” Nearby are pieces by Souda. “These are from this Brooklyn metalwork company. I got these right when I moved to Los Angeles, and they've lasted so long. They're cool coasters."

THE GLASSWARE

“Some of our glassware is vintage,” she says, sharing she used to thrift shop much more often on the east coast than she does now. “I don’t have a spot in Los Angeles. I collect from all over. I have a ton of vintage glassware. I thrifted more in New York than I do in Los Angeles. I need to get back into it. Also, L.A. places are tapped. Small towns are where you find the best stuff, and Florida has good thrifting. That's where I got some of these over the years.” A bookshelf is displayed in her kitchen. “I have a lot of the vintage glasses I got in Florida under there and some of the knick-knacks I’ve collected over the years,” she says.

THE KITCHEN

"I'm a big cook, and we have a great kitchen to cook in,” Johnson says. “My grandma owned a restaurant and was a cook. I loved it in my early years, and then later on, when I got way too busy, I never would cook because I didn't have time. When we were home in 2020, I got back into it. So now I'm obsessed, and I cook all the time. This is my favorite kitchen to cook in because there’s so much counter space.”

THE PRODUCTS

“I didn’t invest in all of these, but these are companies that sent me their stuff,” she says. “I have four thousand olive oils. I’m always testing stuff. Obviously, you want to try the product before you invest in it, so it’s cool because I get to try all these different cool products.” She points to another product. “Have you heard of Pineapple Collaborative?” Johnson asks. “I love their packaging so much. This is a woman-owned brand out of Los Angeles, and they do olive oil and a bunch of other condiments—similar to a Westbourne, but olive oil is what they started with. It's cool because it's certified, woman-owned, and made by women.”

THE SHELVES

“There’s a lot of open shelving in this house,” she says. “So it was like, ‘We’ve got to get our style on.’ It was funny because, at first, my husband was using stuff from the shelves, and I was like, 'Oh no, we don't touch that.' He would say, 'This coffee cup? I’ll just grab that.’ I was like, ‘No, no, no. Those are things we don’t use.’ It’s all curated. It’s the funniest thing.”

WEST~BOURNE

“West~bourne is one of my investments,” Johnson says. “Do you know Camilla [Marcus]? I’m an [angel] investor in Westbourne. I’ve known Camilla forever peripherally through friends. Before she had launched Westbourne, we were friendly. Then when she launched, she wanted to bring on a bunch of female angels to help, and I was like, 'Of course.' Her products are amazing.”

HI NOTE

“This is Hi Note, which is Sophia Rossi and Justin Coit’s seasoning line,” Johnson explains. “We invested in this through my fund. They make plant-based ready-to-go seasoning mixes with Roy Choi. This is the one they launched with—it’s Cheezio Pepe.”

BOWLCUT

“Bowlcut is this awesome brand by this female founder,” Johnson says. “I’m an advisor to [its founder Crystal Ung]. She has this incredible chili oil—regular, spicy, and BBQ sauce. She's former CFDA. She grew up in a Chinese restaurant—her family was in that industry. She’s like, ‘I bought my mom's recipe on how to make her homemade chili oil.’ She launched it, and now it's taking off. She's going to be launching even more products. Her pipeline is even more amazing. I'm super stoked to be working with her. We met because she reached out to my fund for an investment. She was too early stage for us, and then we got to chatting. We worked together when she was at the CFDA. Create & Cultivate did something with the CFDA, and she said, 'Now I’m doing this. I’m looking to raise money.’ We ended up chatting, and now I'm advising her."

THE KNICK-KNACKS

“This is our tchotchke area,” Johnson says. “We have a lot of film we've gotten developed over the years. This is my husband, by the way. Then these tiny miniature pots and this terrazzo are from this site called The Nopo. It was a woman-owned company, and they sourced all of these amazing artifacts from Morocco and Mexico. They’re all by artisans. Then this beautiful hand-blown glass is by a local glassmaker called Owiu. I heard about them from Remi [Ishizuka], an influencer. It's her best friend’s company.”

HER HUSBAND’S ARTWORK

“He’s made some of the art in here,” Johnson says, explaining his pieces are scattered throughout their home. “He’s doing a mural today, so he's on-site doing that right now. Most of his work is large-scale mural art. He's done a few gallery shows that have sold out.” He also created a piece that hangs in her office. “I wanted something minimal for in here," she explains. "He painted the canvas and put the plaster over it and shaped the plaster and then painted over the plaster on top, which is cool.”

HER HUSBAND’S STUDIO

“In our garage downstairs, my husband has a little studio—his man cave,” she says. “It’s important for him to have this space. It’s wild. It’s covered in paint. At our last house, he was stapling canvas to the backyard fence, and it was all splattered. I was like, 'We cannot do this again.' So he has that now, which is nice." Before working at Cal Poly, her husband was an art director at an ad agency. "That's what he was doing for the first couple years of us dating," she explains. "But he'd always done paintings [for fun]. I was like, 'I feel like there's a real niche for what you want to do, which is these large-scale murals.' So he's always been painting, and it's craziness. He makes these three dimension skateboards that he puts up all over Silver Lake. He's such a little artist vibe. Some of our wedding photos are on here. It’s cute.”

HER OFFICE

“I spend most of my time in here,” she says. “I have a lot of different jobs now, and now they're all remote. When we bought this house, I went into an office. When the pandemic hit, I realized I needed a full-on office in our house. But it was nice. He worked downstairs in a studio in the garage, and then I worked up here. I feel like I spend all of my life in this room. It feels like a little tree house because of the view.” She points to a footstool. “I got it this at the Rose Bowl Flea Market,” she says, turning her attention to a pink chair that sits nearby. “This is from a Swedish company called Hem. I was so excited to get a pink chair for this space. My husband was like, ‘Can we chill on the pink?’ But anything that’s my room, I’m putting pink in it.”

THE GIFT

“Mamrie [Hart] got this for me,” Johnson says. “We’re obsessed with Dolly Parton. There’s a site where you can get stills from film blown up. This is from ‘9 to 5.’ She got it for my office as a birthday gift, which was fun. I love it. I’ve loved Dolly—forever. We’re dorks about it. She has one in her house too.”

THE PAPER FLOWERS

“This is from the Little Market, which is Lauren Conrad’s company,” Johnson says. “They're these paper florals that are made from a corn husk, and they're hand dyed by the artisans. They're so fun. I love them so much.”

THE BEDROOM

“All of the bedding in here is from the Citizenry,” she says. “They're a cool home goods brand. They do a give-back program with their artisans.”

THE JEWELRY CHEST

“This is my grandma’s,” she says, referencing her father’s mother. “She left it to me when she passed. It’s from the twenties and it’s an old jewelry chest. It’s a really meaningful piece. All of my nice jewelry is in there, but I can pull some out.”

THE JEWELRY

“My grandma left me this piece,” she says. “It’s from the fifties. I love it. I’ve kept it forever. I never wear anything nice because I’m terrified. This is my grandma’s as well, which is a vintage watch. I used to wear a lot more costumey jewelry when I was younger, but I’m allergic now to so much that I’m nervous to wear it.”

GIFTED

“Kelly Wearstler gave me this,” she says. “She launched a jewelry line for a hot minute and she gifted it to me. It’s like a piece of art. I met Kelly when I was blogging in the early days. The manager I had was connected to her. At that time, there were five influencers, and I happened to be one of them, so I ended up going to this dinner at her house, which was incredible, and then she ended up speaking at Create & Cultivate years later.”