12/31/2025
2025 sure was a journey & this is certainly not how I thought it would end.
In early January, when I analyzed the 2024 numbers, they were the best I had ever seen. We moved into a new office. Our pipeline was full. Our hopes were high. But by the end of the month, something was shifting in the market. Tariffs hit our industry, and government layoffs & funding cuts hit our city hard. (Cuts in the billions, I’d later learn.) It was a sign to make a move toward what had been on my heart for some time. Within ninety days, I went from a company of twelve, back to a solo practice of one. I’d unwound everything.
I built an exceptional, big business, and spent the better part of a decade creating something really beautiful. We all felt it. But…it took a toll on me. I understand now, with so many fewer notifications and tasks in my days, just how big that toll was. Demoing a decade of company infrastructure was impossibly hard. And, as I tell my children when they make it to the other side of hard things, I lived to tell the tale.
Sometimes really hard things happen to make space for the next chapter of our story.
New dreams, and new babies (not mine!!), and new art, and new projects, and new space to…breathe.
I still have a thriving company, but it looks different now. I’m not crafting Instagram captions on the sidelines of the lax field. I’m not sending proposals from my car. I’m not chronically in my head about managing all the balls in the air and relentlessly checking off tasks in Asana. It’s all become manageable at a smaller scale. I have more capacity to be creative, and focused. Turns out, working hands on with clients is really what I love. Running a company took me too far away from the messy middle.
I’ll forever miss the creative design energy in our magical studio—collaborating, problem solving, and creating the exceptional spaces we used to design. I’ll miss the zest of the incredible women I shared time and space with, watching their talents come to life. It was something special.
But so too, is this new season.
Cheers to a New Year. 🥂 May you reflect upon what success means to you, and shift life as needed, to find your way there. 🤍
