I've been reflecting a lot the last few days, and I feel like I didn't live the twenties a lot of people do. Instead of slowly figuring life out, I chose to take on building a company from 0. Nobody pushed me into it…I walked in with my eyes open, and that choice forced me to grow up fast, learn on the fly, and make hard decisions long before I felt ready for them. There were a lot of lonely nights in there and a lot of moments I wasn't sure I'd make it that I didn't tell anyone about.
When I look back, I see how much it all overlaps. A hard day never stayed at work, it came home and sat at dinner with me. Who I was becoming under pressure was who I became everywhere else too, for better and for worse. The lessons from building a company and the lessons from just growing up turned out to be the same lessons. It was never two lives.
So heading into 29, I wanted to write down a few of the things I've learned, in case any of them help someone else.
In no particular order…
Take the risk. Almost everything good in my life sits on the far side of a decision that scared me. Starting the company, telling someone how I really felt, walking away from the safe thing everyone told me to hold onto. The fear never fully goes away, you just learn to move while it's there. Worst case, the risk you took doesn't work and you learn something you could never have learned from the sidelines. Best case, it changes your whole fucking life. Those are really the only two outcomes, and both of them beat wondering. You will regret the chances you didn't take far more than the ones that didn't work out.
How you treat people when they can't do anything for you is who you actually are. Your reputation isn't built in the big, obvious moments. It's the sum of a hundred small ones you never thought anyone would remember. The way you treat the person waiting the table, the junior person in the room, the stranger who can't move you an inch forward. I used to think character showed up when the stakes were high, but it doesn't. It shows up when there's nothing in it for you. People forget what you said, and they forget what you did, but they never forget how you made them feel. Be the same person to everyone.
Take care of your health. You can't be your best if you don't feel your best. For a long time I treated my body like something to spend on everything else. Sleep was optional, food was whatever I grabbed in between things, and exercise was the first thing to go the second life got busy. You cannot outrun your own body, and it keeps a running tab on everything you think you're powering through. The times I did my best work were the ones I was sleeping, training, and actually present at home. Don't wait until your body makes the decision for you.
Being a leader doesn't mean being in charge. It means taking care of the people in your charge. For a long time I thought leadership was about being the one with the answers, the one calling the shots, but it isn't. Real leadership is an act of service. It's putting the people around you first, having their back when things get hard, and taking the hit yourself so they don't have to. The best feeling I've had building anything isn't my own wins, it's watching the people around me become more than they thought they could be. When someone you lead rises, when a person you believed in grows into everything they were capable of, that's the whole reward right there. Lead by lifting people up, take care of the ones in your charge, and they'll take care of everything else.
Call your mom. That's it, that's the lesson. The people who love you the longest are the easiest ones to take for granted, because you assume they'll always be there. Nothing you build will ever matter more than this. Pick up the phone, not because you need something…just to hear her voice. You will never regret the call. One day you'll wish you'd made more of them.
Who you choose as your partner is everything. No decision will shape your life more. Find someone who makes you better, who makes you want to be more just by being who they are, but who also shows you that life isn't always so serious. Someone who can pull you out of your own head on your heaviest days and make you laugh when you'd forgotten how. I used to think the point was finding someone to build a life with, but it turns out what I really needed was someone who reminds me why it's worth building.
You will never make everyone happy, so stop trying to. For years I believed that if I just worked harder, showed up more, and gave a little more of myself, I could eventually win everyone over. All it earned me was exhaustion and a quiet resentment I couldn't explain. Some people, some rooms, and some opportunities will take far more from you than they ever give back, and no amount of effort on your end changes that. Learning to walk away from those things without guilt, and without needing an apology first, was one of the hardest and most freeing things I've done (Something I am still working to do). What you let into your life is a choice. Choose fewer things, and better ones.
A few loyal people are worth more than any network. Building a company put a lot of people in my life, and I'm grateful for the network I've built, but somewhere along the way I realized how few of those people I could actually call at my lowest. A few people who genuinely want the best for me, and who I want the best for, are worth more than every contact in my phone combined. There is a distinct difference between a network and real friendship. One is useful, the other is the thing that actually holds you up. And you find out which is which the moment things go wrong. Anyone will stand next to you when the lights are on and things are winning, but the ones who matter are the people still there when it all goes quiet, when you have nothing to hand them and nothing to offer back. I've stopped measuring people by what they say when it's easy and started watching what they do when it's hard. Find those few, hold them close, and never take that kind of loyalty for granted.
Everything is built on trust. The longer I do this, the more I realize trust is the whole game. Every relationship, every partnership, every deal, every hire that actually lasts is sitting on top of it. You can be talented, driven, and right about everything and still lose it all the second people stop believing your word means something. It takes years to build and seconds to burn, and once it's gone you rarely get it back. So do what you say you'll do, tell the truth even when it costs you…especially when it costs you. Everything you're trying to build is only as solid as the trust underneath it.
Resilience is the most powerful quality a person can have. "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." My grandpa used to say that to me. He's gone now, but I still hear his voice every time I get knocked down. If building a company has taught me one thing, it's that resilience beats everything. Not talent, not luck, not being the smartest person in the room. Just the refusal to stay down. Nobody handed me a manual for any of this. I'm still learning it every single day, one mess-up after another. What carried me through the stretches that nearly broke me wasn't a grand plan, it was continuing to push through regardless of how hard things got. Everything I'm proud of sits on the other side of a moment I wanted to quit and didn't. So if you're in a hard season right now, I won't pretend it isn't hard…I'll just remind you that getting back up is a choice you make every single time.
Twenty-nine, here we go
I'm not writing this from the finish line…I'm still in it, still getting things wrong, still learning most of what's above the hard way, sometimes more than once. If anything, that's the whole point. Nobody has it all figured out. We're all just paying attention and trying to do a little better than we did the year before.
Building something asked more of me than I knew I had, and it gave me back more than I expected, mostly in the form of who I had to become to keep going. I lost some things along the way and I'm still grateful for almost all of it.
So going into the last year of my twenties, this is what I'm holding onto. Take care of your people, take care of your mind, take care of your body, tell the truth, bet on yourself, and always get back up.
Hopefully this helps someone on their journey.
Onward.