2026 Q1 Unfiltered- Founder’s Journal:
Fair warning before you read this: this article is a little all over the place. It jumps between business wins and personal chaos, between lessons learned and new ideas half-formed. I thought about organizing it more neatly, and then I realized that would actually be dishonest. Because Q1 of 2026 was all over the place. I was running more initiatives simultaneously than I probably should have been, living through one of the most intense personal seasons of my life, and building a company at the same time. So if this reads a little scattered- good. That’s exactly what it felt like.
This is Q1 2026, unfiltered.
January: The Most Extreme Month of My Life
Let me start with January, because without understanding what January actually was, nothing else in this quarter makes sense.
In a single month, I listed a house, staged it, repaired it, painted it, sold it, sold my car, bought a new car, sold 80% of my furniture and belongings, packed everything I owned, moved, and started over… all while simultaneously trying to build a company from scratch, attending conferences and trying to hold it all together. I had a goal to partner with more companies the month of Jan. I didn’t hit it.
And I had to make peace with that. Not in a resignation kind of way- but in a genuine, I-gave-everything-I-had way. Because I did. Some seasons ask more of you personally than professionally, and you have to let them. You can’t sprint through grief and logistics and expect your pipeline not to feel it, especially as a solo founder.
Up until about halfway through this quarter, I honestly don’t know how I was surviving. But I was. And somehow, in the middle of the lowest personal lows of my life- I was also having some of the highest business highs. That duality is something I’m still sitting with.
One more thing January gave me, though: the habit of moving fast without pausing. I was playing catch-up, and that urgency bled into decisions I should have slowed down for. More on that later.
50 Companies. 1 Slide Deck. No Website Yet.
Despite all of it, by the end of Jan I had met with 50 companies. Armed with one slide deck and until March 6th, no website to point anyone to. Some people would call that underprepared. I call it building before you have permission to.
Here’s something I’ve been embarrassed to say out loud: my Spaces Uncovered podcast that I was side hustling for 4 years, meanwhile working a full-time job at Herman Miller and COI…. it only had ~150 newsletter subscribers and 93 YouTube subscribers. That’s it. I only really created about 1 episode a quarter because it was a lot of work to produce, script, edit, publish.. remember-this was before AI existed. I never really talked about the numbers publicly because they felt small. But here’s what this quarter proved: A loving community matters more than a big audience every single time. Almost every meeting I booked to get my business going came from that list. 150+ people who actually care will open doors that 10,000 passive followers never would. That’s why I realized that in this day in age, building an audience before you build a product is the way to go.
I also had a $500/month coffee budget to get going. LOL because lunches were breaking my little startup bank. After years of tapping away on a corporate card, that was a humbling recalibration. But every single coffee was worth it- because the fortune, as they say, is in the follow-up. And the follow-up starts with showing up in person.
ICSC: This Time, As Myself
Somewhere between the chaos of January and the grind of February, I went to ICSC. I’ve been four times — once with DIALOG, once with Herman Miller, twice with Contemporary Office Interiors. This was the first time I walked in as myself. As my own company.
I genuinely cannot describe what that feeling is until you’re standing in a room full of people, shaking hands, and the thing you’re talking about is something you built from nothing. (even if it was only 1 month ago that you built it LOL!) I was an explosion of excitement. But I wasn’t walking in unprepared.
I practiced my elevator pitch in front of a mirror. I role-played with my dad- who’s in sales- and we drilled through every objection I could think of. He threw a few new ones at me too. I made business cards in four different colours, one per target audience, each colour matching the corresponding service page on my website so the path from card to conversion was intentional and consistent.
I left with 12 meetings… and then the real work started. I used AI to customize my slide decks per audience, Calendly so people could book directly into my calendar, and LinkedIn to stay warm in between. One follow-up is never enough. Familiarity takes time, and I’m playing the long game.
Three Revisions and a Refusal to Blend In
Running parallel to all of this- all of the December holidays, January and February, was the website build. I finally launched it March 6th.
Building a website from scratch, I’ve decided, is exactly like designing a space. You don’t always nail the concept on the first try. The first version wasn’t there. Neither was the second. I was hard on myself for not having it ready before ICSC, but looking back, I genuinely don’t think a single person at that conference noticed or cared.
What I did care about: I refused to launch something generic. Something that just blended in. Three full revisions later, we landed on something I’m proud of. Sometimes the only way to get to something worth putting your name on is to keep pushing yourself and your team until it gets there. I’m so proud of my team!
The Cost of Moving Too Fast
Here’s where I circle back to January and what that urgency actually cost me.
When you’re behind and you know it, the instinct is to sprint. I sprinted. And some of the decisions I made while sprinting were ones I should have slowed down for, on the website, on automations, on CRM choices. Decisions made quickly ended up costing me more money than they needed to, because they involved rework.
The specific ones I’ll own: I paid for a full year of Calendly, then onboarded HubSpot and realized it already came with a scheduling tool. We integrated FluentCRM’s free version for customer segmentation..fully coded it in, then discovered it was missing the lead status and lifecycle stage tracking I actually needed to manage my pipeline and forecast deals. Had to pay to remove it and switch to HubSpot paid. Both were avoidable with a bit more research upfront. Neither was insanely costly, but for a startup, it all adds up. Those are just two small examples.
The biggest difference between making mistakes with a corporate card and making mistakes with your own money? The second kind sticks a lot more.
Slowing down to analyze has always been my weakest muscle. This quarter, it cost me enough that it’s now a Q2 priority. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is pause.
The 33 Grand Adventures
Now for the part that has nothing and everything to do with work.
In February, somehow, in the middle of all of that- I was at a friend’s 50th birthday and met an inspiring man who completely reframed something for me. He’d spent his whole life building wealth. A plane, an island, the works. Then he turned 50 and realized he had very few core memories. So he built something he called The 50 Grand Adventures: 50 bucket-list experiences to complete before he turned 75, shared with the people he loves. When we met, he was about to leave for safari grand adventure #17. I LOVED THIS.
I decided to one-up him. I’m 33 (yes, I just told you my age- I hate doing this because people underestimate me, but fine). My version: 33 grand adventures before I turn 50. Why wait until 50 to have that realization? I’d rather learn from his story now.
SO… at the end of Q1, I went on adventure #1. I got invited to ski the Italian backcountry in Monterosa for a week with some very advanced skiiers. I’ve been skiing for exactly one year. I said yes anyway… because it’s my year of yes. Two weeks after the invite, I closed the lap top, flew halfway across the globe by myself and joined them for the adventure. I planned nothing at all, and got surprised with a heli drop down matterhorn at 4,092m. Terrified was an understatement as I tightened my harness and traversed alongside a glacier, ensuring I didn’t fall down into the crevasse. (A few people had fell down and died a few weeks prior)
I love what I do. I genuinely adore this company and the life I’ve shaped around it- one with space for creative work, for freedom, for the people I love. None of it happened by accident. But I also refuse to be defined only by my work. I want to be defined by the experiences I’ve lived, the wisdom I carry, the stories I have to tell. And that doesn’t come from more hours logged. It comes from people you meet from different cultures, places you travel to, stories you actually stop and listen to.
Guess what… this trip.. I hit 32 ski mountains ridden around the world. I was at 27 before leaving on this trip. And boy, did I come back with a lot of epic stories and exhausted legs after 10 days of skiing back to back, skinning up insane peaks and traversing through valleys across Austria, Switzerland and Italy. Even my Italian slightly improved, I had been practicing for a while on Duolingo. 🙂
What I’m most thankful for though is that my body managed to survive this trip. Many founders can get sucked into burn out, working 80 hour weeks, living an unhealthy life and letting their fitness slide. I’m trying really hard not to be one of those founders. I want to be successful but not at the expense of my health. Prior to this trip, I was working out 6-7 times per week, trail running 4-10km most days. This lifestyle allowed me to say ‘yes’ to a last minute trip of a lifetime like this without thinking twice and requiring no training to prepare for it. Thanks to maintaining my fitness, I made it down 3,000 verticals on skis in one day, at major altitudes in the backcountry- without collapsing. For that, I am so proud.
Solo Founders in Motion
The last thing I want to talk about- and maybe the one I’m most excited about- is something that started with a 30-minute coffee and a new connection.
I made my first vision board in October 2025. It lives on my iPhone background. One image on it represents something I’ve been quietly craving: a small, tight-knit community of good vibe, ambitious business owners that are all up to something innovative. Not a big one. A real one. The kind my former manager at DIALOG, Michele Sigurdson, always described when she’d say: you don’t need 100 surface-level connections. You just need 10 really good ones. Those 10 will compound into a larger network, as long as you invest in giving, not taking.
Mid-quarter, I was introduced to Candice from CLVR. (Thanks Pierce Fabian for the intro 😊) It was thirty minutes of coffee. In that single conversation, we founded Solo Founders in Motion: a community built specifically for solo founders who are doing this without a business partner…and who are ‘in motion’ AKA have revenue and have pushed past the ‘idea stage.’ Because yes, running solo can be a lonely road. We’re building it slowly and intentionally, recruiting other solo founders who fit the profile: people who are building something real, who want to change something, who want to support each other without the performance of it and mostly have GREAT vibes.
Vision Board Photo:
Real life!!! (Maybe we should’ve turned around though lol.. close enough!!)
We don’t know exactly what it will become yet. But the energy is already something I haven’t felt in a long time.
More to come as Q2 starts. But this is where I am right now — still building, still learning, still figuring out how to move fast without losing the thread. Still very much in motion. If you haven’t read my 2025 Q4 article, go check it out so you can tune in on the journey its been!