Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Nicole Rourke. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Nicole , thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
Sex on the Beach was born from a deeply personal place in my life.
About five years ago, I experienced a miscarriage at 20 weeks pregnant — one of the most painful and emotionally transformative experiences I had ever gone through. At the time, I was struggling not only with grief, but also with reconnecting to my body, my femininity, my confidence, and my relationship in a completely new way.
I was living in Manhattan Beach and found myself thinking constantly about how disconnected so many women feel from their bodies, sensuality, emotional wellness, and even pleasure — especially after trauma, motherhood, heartbreak, loss, or major life transitions. Conversations around sexual wellness and body positivity still felt very clinical, taboo, or overly commercialized at the time. There wasn’t really a space that felt beautiful, elevated, emotionally safe, culturally relevant, and community-driven all at once.
One day I had this thought:
“What if I curated an experience centered around sexual wellness, body positivity, beauty, connection, and empowerment… and called it Sex on the Beach?”
The name was playful and provocative, but the intention underneath it was actually very emotional and deeply human.
What excited me most was the opportunity to create something that made people feel:
seen
confident
connected
emotionally open
empowered in their bodies again
I didn’t want it to feel like a traditional wellness event. I wanted it to feel immersive, stylish, culturally relevant, experiential, and emotionally resonant — something that blended beauty, wellness, intimacy, conversation, art, founders, creators, and community together in a way that felt modern and alive.
At the time, very few events were approaching sexual wellness through the lens of luxury experiential marketing, beauty culture, emotional storytelling, and female empowerment simultaneously. That intersection felt very unique and exciting to me.
What started as something deeply personal unexpectedly turned into a viral event series and cultural community. Over the past five years, SOTB has partnered with brands including Free People, Converse,Higher Dose, Playground, Hummingway, Beauty Independent and profound wellness founders, independent creators, and many others, while building a highly engaged audience around body positivity, confidence, intimacy, wellness, and modern femininity.
This year we are celebrating our 5th anniversary, which feels incredibly meaningful because what began as a way to heal and reconnect with myself ultimately became something that helped create connection, conversation, and impact for so many other people too.
At its core, SOTB has always been about transforming pain into connection, beauty, confidence, and community.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?
’m the founder and creative director behind Ethereal, a creative agency and experiential platform focused on beauty, wellness, luxury lifestyle, and culturally driven brand experiences. My work sits at the intersection of storytelling, community, emotional connection, partnerships, and immersive experiences.
I originally got into this industry through beauty, influencer marketing, and brand partnerships, but over time my work evolved far beyond traditional marketing. I became deeply interested in how brands make people feel emotionally — how experiences, visuals, storytelling, wellness, intimacy, and culture all shape connection and identity.
A large part of what I do now involves helping brands and founders create emotionally resonant worlds and experiences that feel immersive, elevated, human, and culturally relevant rather than transactional or overly commercial.
Through Ethereal, I work across:
brand partnerships
influencer strategy
experiential events
creative direction
luxury wellness activations
storytelling and positioning
community building
founder and talent development
cultural marketing strategy
One of the projects I’m best known for is Sex on the Beach (SOTB), a viral event series I created five years ago centered around sexual wellness, body positivity, beauty, confidence, and connection. What began as a deeply personal healing experience after pregnancy loss evolved into a large-scale community-driven platform that has brought together founders, creators, wellness brands, beauty companies, artists, and culturally influential voices around conversations that often felt taboo or underserved.
What makes my approach different is that I don’t look at brands or experiences purely through a sales lens. I think deeply about emotional connection, energy, identity, aesthetics, storytelling, and how people want to feel. I’m very drawn to building worlds, not just campaigns.
I believe modern consumers are craving: authenticity emotional resonance intimacy beauty belonging experience
meaning.
Especially within beauty and wellness, people want to feel part of something larger than a product purchase.
A lot of my work focuses on helping brands become more emotionally intelligent, culturally aware, visually elevated, and community-centered.
I’m also incredibly passionate about women’s empowerment, visibility, reinvention, and helping women feel more connected to themselves, their bodies, their confidence, and their creativity at every stage of life.
Something I’m especially proud of is building experiences and communities that make people feel safe, inspired, emotionally seen, and genuinely connected. Whether through events, partnerships, storytelling, or content, my goal has always been to create things that feel beautiful but also meaningful.
Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with beauty, wellness, fashion, and lifestyle brands including Free People, wellness founders, creators, luxury brands, and emerging companies across experiential marketing, influencer campaigns, and strategic partnerships.
Right now I’m especially excited about continuing to expand Ethereal, evolving SOTB into larger immersive experiences, and building Ephemera Blooms — a luxury experiential floral concept blending botanical body art, ritual, beauty, and immersive storytelling.
At the core of everything I create is the belief that beauty, wellness, storytelling, and human connection have the power to transform people emotionally — and that the most impactful brands and experiences are the ones that make people feel something real.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
One of the most defining moments of resilience in my life was experiencing a miscarriage at 20 weeks pregnant.
At the time, it completely changed me emotionally, physically, and spiritually. I think loss like that forces you to confront not only grief, but also identity, femininity, relationships, self-worth, and your relationship with your own body in a very deep way.
There was a period afterward where I felt incredibly disconnected from myself. I was trying to rebuild emotionally while still showing up for life, motherhood, work, and the people around me. It was one of the hardest seasons I’ve ever gone through.
Living in Manhattan Beach, and being near the ocean became incredibly healing for me. I started thinking deeply about how many women silently carry shame, grief, insecurity, disconnection, or trauma around their bodies, intimacy, confidence, and emotional well-being. Conversations around sexual wellness and body positivity still felt very limited or transactional. There weren’t many spaces that felt emotionally safe, beautiful, elevated, community-driven, and culturally relevant all at once.
That’s what inspired me to create Sex on the Beach (SOTB).
I remember having this thought:
“What if I created an experience centered around sexual wellness, confidence, body positivity, beauty, and connection — and called it Sex on the Beach?”
What started as a personal attempt to reconnect with myself and transform pain into something healing eventually grew into a viral event series and community centered around wellness, confidence, intimacy, beauty, body positivity, and human connection.
Looking back now, resilience for me was not about pretending everything was okay. It was about continuing to create, connect, rebuild, and remain emotionally open even after experiencing deep pain.
I think one of the most powerful things we can do as humans is transform our hardest experiences into something that helps other people feel less alone.
That experience taught me that healing and reinvention are possible — and sometimes the most beautiful things we create come from the most painful chapters of our lives.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
One of the biggest lessons I’ve had to unlearn is the belief that my worth was tied to how much I could endure, sacrifice, or hold together for everyone else.
For a long time, I operated from survival mode — constantly pushing through difficult situations, overextending myself emotionally, carrying responsibility for other people, and believing resilience meant handling everything alone without slowing down or asking for support.
I think a lot of women are conditioned to believe that strength looks like self-sacrifice. Especially as mothers, partners, caregivers, or ambitious women trying to build something, we often learn to suppress our own needs while continuing to perform, produce, nurture, and survive.
A major turning point for me came after experiencing pregnancy loss and several deeply difficult personal transitions around the same period of my life. I realized I had spent years trying to earn love, stability, validation, or belonging through overgiving, overworking, emotional endurance, and constantly proving myself.
At some point I understood:
survival is not the same thing as self-worth.
I had to unlearn the idea that being strong meant abandoning myself emotionally.
That realization changed not only how I approached relationships, but also how I approached business, creativity, motherhood, boundaries, wellness, and even the types of experiences and communities I wanted to create through my work.
A lot of what I build now — whether through Ethereal, SOTB, or Ephemera Blooms — is rooted in creating spaces that feel emotionally connected, empowering, beautiful, safe, expressive, and human rather than performative.
I think true resilience is not just about surviving difficult experiences. It’s about remaining open, soft, creative, hopeful, and connected to yourself afterward.
That has probably been one of the most transformative lessons of my life.
Image Credits
Photo Credit:
Victor Arriola/BFA.com
Contact Info
Website: https://www.ethereal-agency.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/theetherealagency/