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Creator Incorporated Podcast

While in NYC, I stopped by the Creator Incorporated studio and shared the story behind Habits, my personal journey, and how I stumbled into creating content. An absolute blast of a 30min conversation.

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Post-Trip Chaos, Big Goals, and Running a Startup at Weird Speeds

The Post-Trip Reset

Coming back from a long trip is a weird mix of exhaustion, motivation, and mild existential crisis. You want to dive into work, but your brain is still catching up. I always give myself a couple of days with minimal to no meetings. No distractions, no back-to-back Zoom hell, just slow mornings, a strong coffee, and a chance to actually think instead of react. It’s the only way to avoid the trap of jumping straight back into the chaos without processing what the hell is actually going on.

Setting Scary Goals

New quarter, new OKRs, new chance to stress myself the fuck out. I’ve always believed that if you’re hitting 100% of your goals, they weren’t ambitious enough to begin with. In my eyes, you should fail at 50-60% of them, or else you’re playing it too safe. If you’re too comfortable, you’re just treading water. I want goals that make me a little nervous, give me that pit-in-my-stomach feeling. Because that means we’re pushing. That means we’re actually building something.

Of course, there’s a dark side to ambition. Some quarters, you set the bar so high you barely make it off the ground. You get stretched too thin, pulled in 20 directions, and by the end, you feel like you got nothing done. It’s a balance, and I won’t pretend I’ve mastered it.

Q1 Lessons & The Cold Shoulder Problem

We spent months building a mobile app to eliminate 1:1 calls—because in theory, automation is better, right? More efficient, scalable, all that good shit. But then the Q1 data came in, and surprise, surprise: people actually want more human touchpoints.

Meanwhile, 2,500-3,000 users touched our platform last quarter, and we’ve barely spoken to them. Why? Because we were too busy dealing with other fires. And suddenly, you look up, and there’s a whole village of people who basically got ghosted. Not because we don’t care, but because every day there’s another thing, another meeting, another distraction, and before you know it, months have passed and you’ve left potential customers in the dust.

This is the shit nobody tells you about running a startup. You get so caught up in keeping the ship afloat that you forget to check if the passengers are still on board.

The Time Paradox

Some days, startup life is pure adrenaline. Everything’s urgent, everything’s on fire, you barely have time to eat. And then, out of nowhere, the pace slows down, and that’s almost worse. Because too much time? That shit is dangerous.

Too much time means overthinking, second-guessing, feeling like you should be doing more even when there’s nothing immediate to do. It’s this weird limbo where you know big things are happening in the background—enterprise deals cooking, product updates in the works—but day-to-day, it can feel like you’re just waiting. And waiting is fucking painful.

The best founders? They know how to manage both extremes. They keep the wheels turning when everything’s chaotic, but they also know how to generate momentum when things are slow. Because motivation isn’t just for the team—it’s for me too.

Literally, Veera and I spent 30 minutes on Zoom this week just venting about how exhausting this shit gets. How nobody really gets it unless they’re in it. How we take out the stress on people we love, not because we mean to, but because it builds up, and you don’t realize how much it’s affecting you until you snap at someone over something dumb.

Looking Back & Moving Forward

I look at my calendar this week (photo at the top), and it reminds me of this time last year. Back when I was living in my buddy’s rental, working off a shitty little standing desk, cold-emailing families and financial advisors, begging them to take a call.

Fast forward to now: we’re closing in on $500K ARR, we’ve got enterprise deals that could 4x our revenue overnight, and our advisor pricing has doubled (if not tripled). But the grind doesn’t get easier—it just changes shape.

This quarter? It’s about fixing engagement, tightening workflows, and making sure we’re actually connecting with the people we built this thing for. Because at the end of the day, that’s what matters. Not just the numbers, not just the deals, but the people who trust us to help them figure out their finances.

And if that means going back to 1:1 calls, so be it. The game plan is never set in stone. We adapt, we push forward, and we keep chasing the scary goals. Otherwise, what’s the point?

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What’s Coming Next?

Next newsletter where going to dive into renewals, pricing, churn, pipeline management, and everything inbetween.

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