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Losing Your Identity

In theme of today’s blog post, I found this LinkedIn post to be a good one to share. At the moment (Monday evening), it has over 100k impressions, and led to over 1,000 new visitors to the Habits LinkedIn page.

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This Is the Sprint

Let me cut to the chase.

We’ve got six months of conservative runway. That’s assuming revenue doesn’t land, enterprise deals don’t close, and unexpected costs keep sneaking in. It’s not doomsday, but it’s pressure. And pressure either crushes you or brings out that back against the wall mindset.

August kicks off the most important four-month stretch in company history. This is our sprint. We’re going heads down. I’ll be taking 75 meetings with strategic partners, VCs, corporate development teams, and literally anyone who is relevant to this next phase. Because now we have leverage. We have traction. But the clock is ticking.

A year ago, we were fighting just to stay alive and prove our thesis . Now? We’re fighting to win.

And winning looks like this: We’re onboarding enterprise-level firms. We’re closing channel partners that will flood our platform with millions of eyes and hundreds of new families/individuals per day. But even as we push forward, the punches don’t stop.

We’ve got companies poaching our team. A product that sometimes fights back harder than it helps. Advisors demanding more, faster. Families and individuals loving their experience, while dozens each day slip through the cracks. And me? I’m answering 25 Jira tickets, emailing every advisor on the platform, taking calls with total strangers (users), cold calling channel partners, and spending my weekends knocking out anything that’ll free up time during the week.

We’re not coasting. We’re crawling uphill with a jet engine strapped to our backs.

This is the moment every startup hits…when the vision is clear, the team is ready, but you have two choices (1) continue to be a well kept secret or (2) level up your game and shoot for the stars. I think you know our choice :)

What You Didn’t See

This time last year? We had just raised our first $100k after two (brutal) years of bootstrapping.

And guess what…we had $100K in the bank (LOL). I wasn’t paying myself. And yeah, I posted from planes and coffee shops, but let me tell you where I really was: back at home. I had secretly moved in with my parents for a few months. Home was my base for shipping mail and storing inventory and just existing without collapsing financially.

Nobody knew. Because I didn’t let them.

Every dollar we earned went back into the business. I was waking up to 5am Slack messages, working 100 hours a week, and running sales calls while sitting in the corner of my childhood bedroom. We had 15K TikTok followers, maybe 10 families joining each week, and a couple dozen firms playing around on the platform.

And then the momentum hit. We got another $75K check from a local VC. Then some angels followed. Then we had four funds circling us, each planning to write half-a-million-dollar checks… and all four told us no in the same week.

I quit a $250k/yr job for this. I had employees asking questions. People online had no idea who we were. And those who did were just trolling us for trying. The only thing keeping us going was that every user praised their experience. But inside? I was exhausted. And once again, I got kicked in the teeth.

The crazy part? That wasn’t even the lowest point. Two Augusts ago, that’s when I hit rock bottom. Burned out. Exhausted. And I still showed up.

Because you don’t quit at inflection points. You double down.

Last year, if someone paid us late, we couldn’t make payroll. Today, we track millions of data points, but we still carry that same hungry energy into every day.

Nobody Cares → And That’s the Point

Let’s get one thing straight.

Nobody gives a flying f**k about your business. Nobody’s losing sleep over your roadmap. Your friends care about your mental health. Your users care about outcomes. Investors care about returns. That’s it. All the rest — “we love your team,” “this mission is so important” — that’s window dressing.

It’s not cynical. It’s reality.

Results are what drive this thing forward. Execution is what builds trust. Not vibes. Not potential. Execution.

We’ve got a ton to brag about. But nobody cares. And they shouldn’t. That’s the truth of this game. You can’t build a company expecting anyone else to hand you a f**king medal. It’s just not how it works.

And candidly? That’s what makes it beautiful. When it’s just you, your team, and the insane belief that you can beat the odds. That belief needs to turn into action. Into sprints. Into meetings. Into cold emails and new features and painful, slow progress.

People jump on momentum. They don't create it for you.

So here’s our reality: the product is getting better. The traction is growing. We’re getting meetings we could never have expected. But still…every single day we have to earn it. From the user who didn’t verify, to the advisor who hasn’t booked a meeting in weeks, to the stakeholder who’s not mad, but dissapointed.

We can’t blame them. Because they’re just doing what the market always does, responding to momentum. And we have to create that.

The moment you think people care about your vision more than your results…is the moment you start losing.

So What Happens Now?

Now, the question isn’t “can we survive?” The question is: can we execute?

We’ve already proven we can scrape by. We've survived founder burnout, ghosted deals, bad advisors, flaky users, messy infrastructure, shitty CRM hacks, and everything else that breaks when you're building the plane mid-flight.

But now, we’ve got real momentum.

Over 300 firms are trying to get on the platform. We reach a million people a week. We’ve hired, fired, rebuilt, and iterated at every step. Our dashboard empowers customer success, sales, and engineering. Our workflows are humming. Our data is actionable. We know who’s clicking, what they’re doing, and where they drop off.

We’re inches away from two game-changing integrations with platforms that have over 5 million active users. This fall, our revenue and usage will spike. The partners are lined up. The pieces are in place.

But here's the real talk: I don’t know if we’ll survive the winter. Not because of money or traction — but because of momentum.

Every day we face something new: a broken feature, a frustrated advisor, a missed conversion, a user who didn’t verify, a deal that fizzles. We’re running the two-minute drill, and the team needs leadership, clarity, and one thing every day to say: yes, we’re still on track.

Being a founder isn't about being the smartest. It’s about absorbing punches, delivering confidence, and hitting your own version of a “PR” when the rest of the team is losing faith.

Like the second leg of a 4x400 relay running their guts out to keep the dream alive. Like a bench player dropping 30pts in March Madness. Like a quarterback completing a 2min drill before halftime…

That's what this role demands. Not just belief, but the kind of execution that turns belief into momentum. And momentum into undeniable results.

This is our inflection point. The next four months decide everything.

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What’s Coming Next?

Next week I’ll dive into how I approach fundraising, building a data room, how I source funds, angel investors, and carve the emails to make it all happen.

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