I got tired of watching smart founders fight their own systems.
So I built something different. We Thrive Collective exists because your business deserves structure that actually fits the way your brain works.
The quick version.
Nicole Phommanorat is the founder of We Thrive Collective, creator of Soleila.io, and the person behind the Functioning & Feral™ philosophy. She’s spent 15+ years in people operations, business systems, and ethical tech, working with companies in growth mode who needed things to actually run.
She’s also neurodivergent. Which means she’s built and abandoned more productivity systems than she can count. Every framework that promised structure came with a catch: it assumed your brain works the same way every day. Hers doesn’t. Neither does yours, probably.
We Thrive Collective came out of that gap. Not as another tool, but as an ecosystem where the systems flex when your capacity shifts instead of punishing you for it.
How this started.
Before We Thrive Collective existed, Nicole spent over a decade inside corporate operations. She ran staffing for 200+ new store openings. She led employer branding initiatives that grew engagement by 57% in under a year. She saved one company $275K in agency spend in 90 days by redesigning their recruiting systems. She reduced time-to-apply by 88% through human-first hiring processes.
What she’s always been good at is stripping out the nonsense. Finding the path that actually works for the end user while still aligning with what the business needs. Building systems that take the path of least resistance without cutting corners.
When she went out on her own, she tried to do the same thing for herself. Build a business with smart systems, clear structure, and no wasted energy. The problem was she couldn’t find tools that matched her values. She didn’t fit in with the business bros or the hustle-harder crowd. The platforms were clunky. The courses were poorly made. The coaching was performative, built for a fantasy land where life doesn’t happen and nothing ever goes sideways.
Nothing was built for a brain like hers. Or a life like hers. She wanted a system built for a human with real responsibilities and people to care for. She wasn’t living to work. She was living to celebrate life, and she needed a business that could keep up with that without falling apart.
So she built it herself. First for her own business. Then for the founders who kept showing up in her life saying, “I know what I need to do. I just can’t make any of these tools work without sacrificing my mental health.” And the ones who said, quieter: “I don’t have the discipline.” (They did. They just didn’t have the right structure.)
She built them to iterate. That became Soleila.io. That became the Functioning & Feral™ philosophy. That became We Thrive Collective.
Nicole still consults at the enterprise level. She selectively partners with organizations and franchises that align with her values, helping them build people-first operations, hiring systems, and scalable structure. It’s a different side of her work, but the thread is the same: strip out the nonsense, design for humans, build something that holds up under real conditions.
What this is (and what it isn’t).
We Thrive Collective is not a course company. It’s not a coaching program. And it’s not just another tech platform with a logo slapped on it.
It’s an ecosystem. Strategy, structure, and support designed around one belief: your capacity matters, so let’s design for it.
Soleila.io is the full system. One platform, branded to you, built to replace the six to ten tools you’re currently duct-taping together. CRM, funnels, scheduling, automations, content tools, client portals, and AI assistants. All in one login.
Functioning & Feral™ is the scaffolding. A monthly membership for founders who want strategy, AI tools, and community without switching platforms. Monthly labs, weekly coworking, 18 custom AI assistants, and a space that welcomes you back when life pulls you away.
Both paths lead to the same place: a business that runs with less friction and less guilt about how you got there.
Functioning & Feral™ is the ethos behind everything here.
Functioning means clear structure, operational integrity, and systems that actually hold up when life gets complicated.
Feral means autonomy, self-trust, and the refusal to be domesticated by someone else’s version of productivity.
Together, they’re the design philosophy behind everything that comes out of We Thrive Collective. The tools, the labs, the AI assistants, the strategy. All of it.
Nobody here is going to tell you to wake up earlier or try harder. The whole point is that you shouldn’t have to white-knuckle your way through running a business.
“Your systems aren’t failing because of you. They’re failing because they don’t fit you.”
Non-business life.
Nicole lives in Dallas, TX with her blended family, her two daughters, and her bulldogs. She’s a girl mom who homeschools both kids and writes about neurodivergent parenting, homeschool life, and the messy-beautiful parts of raising a family on her own terms atnicolephom.com..
She lives for the soft rebellion. The kind where you opt out of systems that weren’t built for your family and build something that actually works instead. That philosophy shows up in her business and in her kitchen and in the way she parents.
When she’s not building systems or nerding out over AI tools, she’s probably cooking, adventuring with her kids, doing a puzzle, or chillin with her plants. She loves really good coffee. She eats a lot of pho and kimchi. She’s covered in tattoos and almost always wearing red lipstick and cat eye glasses.
She wrote a book called The B.E.S.T. Hiring Strategy. She believes everything is figure-out-able, that messy action beats polished paralysis, and that calm is a strategy.
READY TO SEE WHAT FITS?
Your next step doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be yours.
If you’re curious about Soleila, start there. If you want strategy and support without switching platforms, Functioning & Feral™ is the door. And if you just want to talk it through, book a Tech Stack Chat. Fifteen minutes, no pitch, just clarity.