How Halo Beauty went from Notion doc to live business in 9 days

When Yasmine El-Sayed messaged us, she had three things: a domain name, a Notion doc full of ideas, and a soft launch date 14 days out. By day 9, Halo Beauty Co. was live, taking bookings, and running its first Meta ad campaign.

Here is exactly what shipped, in what order, and what we’d do differently.

Day 1–2: The brief

We started where we always start — a 30-minute discovery call. The brief that came out of it was one page: who Halo serves (women in Cairo aged 25–45 looking for clean beauty products), the wedge offer (a 4-product starter kit at AED 199), and the launch criterion (“we go live the day the first ad is approved, not before, not after”).

That single page killed three weeks of scope creep before it could start.

Day 3–4: Brand identity

The brand brief asked for “luxe but approachable, warm but not feminine-cliche.” We delivered:

• Logo system: primary lockup + monogram + favicon
• Palette: warm sand #F5E6D3, deep mahogany #3A1E1E, accent gold #D4A056
• Typography: Cormorant Garamond (headlines) + Inter (body)
• Brand guidelines PDF (6 pages)

We shipped the kit on a Loom walkthrough. Yasmine approved within 90 minutes.

Day 5–6: Website

5 pages, mobile-first, on WordPress + Elementor: Home, Shop (4 products via WooCommerce), About, Journal, Contact. SEO baked in. Lighthouse came in at 94/96/100/92.

Day 7–8: Social + ads

Three platforms set up: Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest. Branded profiles, bios written, link-in-bio configured. 15 starter posts queued in Buffer.

Three Meta ad creatives shipped: a product shot, a founder talking-head, and a UGC-style testimonial mockup. Audience targeting: Cairo, 25–45, interested in clean beauty + sustainability.

Day 9: Automation + handoff

HubSpot Free wired up. Lead capture on the homepage and product pages. Email automation: welcome series (3 emails), abandoned cart (2 emails), post-purchase (1 email + review request). WhatsApp Business connected.

The result

• Launch ad approved at 11:42 AM on day 9
• First sale at 2:17 PM the same day (a friend, but still — the system worked end-to-end)
• First non-friend sale day 11
• First 30 days: 47 orders, AED 9,400 revenue, 312 email subscribers

What we’d do differently

1. Test payment flow on day 6, not day 8. We caught a Stripe webhook misconfig too close to launch.
2. Pre-write 30 days of content, not 15. By day 20 Yasmine was scrambling.