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The world is waking up again. Three hundred years after the first Enlightenment taught us how to think, we’re entering another one that’s teaching us how to feel—and measure it.
This time the revolution isn’t industrial or digital; it’s energetic. Hidden knowledge is becoming common sense, and the things once labeled “woo” are showing up in neuroscience, leadership, and design.
What began as intuition is becoming evidence. I call this the Second Enlightenment: a shift from reason to resonance.
Below is the full essay, originally published on my Substack.
The first Age of Enlightenment wasn’t just about science; it was about people waking up to new ways of seeing the world.
In the 1600s and 1700s, the Western world shifted from mystery to method. Alchemists became chemists, philosophers turned into scientists, and ideas that were once mystical started getting tested in labs. The big realization: the universe runs on patterns and laws humans can understand.
Fast forward three hundred years, and it’s happening again.
The printing press once spread secret knowledge across Europe. Today, the internet is doing the same, but with spiritual and energetic wisdom. What used to be called “occult” or “woo-woo” is now intersecting with neuroscience and physics. Emotion, intention, and focus measurably change outcomes.
Occult doesn’t mean dark. It means hidden. And hidden things are being revealed.
| First Enlightenment (1600s–1700s) | Second Enlightenment (Now) |
|---|---|
| Alchemy becomes chemistry | Emotional energy meets measurable science |
| Newton studies light and mysticism | Neuroscience explores consciousness and emotion |
| Printing press spreads knowledge | Internet spreads energy practices |
| Reason replaces rigid dogma | Resonance replaces burnout and disconnection |
| Machines transform labor | Energy awareness transforms meaning |
| Empires collapse, nations rise | Institutions wobble; communities rise |
This time, we’re not just asking how things work; we’re asking why. The old Enlightenment explained the mechanics of the universe. This one explores the mechanics of consciousness.
We’re learning that energy, emotion, and intention shape how we feel, what we create, and how we connect.
This new enlightenment isn’t a return to mysticism; it’s a reminder that science and spirit were never separate. They’re two languages for how energy becomes form.
Let the record show: I called it first. The Second Enlightenment is here, running not on electricity, but on human energy. Not the kind you plug in, but the kind you project.
We’re the generation remembering that light and consciousness are kin. The next revolution isn’t industrial or digital. It’s energetic.
Share this post: If this resonates, send it to someone who’s felt the shift but couldn’t name it.
The Day I Broke Up With Venture Capital
Spoiler: It wasn’t me, it was them.
Yesterday, I was standing in a crowded trade show aisle eating what may have been the best ice cream sandwich of my life; creamy, clean, made by a woman who’d flown in from the West Coast just to scoop samples with her own hands.
We got to talking. She told me she once had a $1.5 million investment lined up - the dream. Then she spent eight thousand dollars on legal fees only to realize the deal was a trap. Predatory terms. Control disguised as capital. When she walked away, the investors got angry and asked, “Is that coming from you, or your lawyer?”
Classic Play: Divide and conquer. These guys definitely know all the tactics used to close deals, that is for sure.
She knew better, thank god. And that was the moment something in me snapped, actually, it finally clicked.
The Illusion of the “Smart Money”
I’ve spent months ranting about venture capital. My Twitter feed looks like a breakup diary: eighty percent complaints, twenty percent disbelief. Why do these middlemen, these professional gatekeepers of someone else’s cash, hold the keys to what’s “fundable”?
I fell for the hype. I convinced myself I needed a VC check because that’s what “serious” founders do. Even when my lawyer told me, “You don’t want VC money.” Even when my fundraising expert said the same. I thought they were just being kind, trying to cushion me from rejection.
And if you know me, rejection is rocket fuel. Tell me no, and I’ll build an empire just to prove you wrong.
But Then the Numbers Spoke
Yesterday, my broker told me our category is down and my company is up 129 percent.
Let me repeat that:
The market’s contracting, and we’re growing triple digits.
That’s when I realized: I’m an entrepreneur, not an employee of other people’s expectations. I don’t need validation from a room full of men; I need more raw materials, more hands, more hours in the day.
The Revelation
I used to think an investor was the shortcut to scale.
Now I see they were the detour.
The real shortcut is alignment — putting energy where it already wants to move. My customers, my category, my community — they’re all saying yes in real time. Meanwhile, I’ve been wasting precious bandwidth trying to convince people who were never listening.
So this is me, saying it officially: I’m done talking about VC.
They can keep their pitch decks and power plays. I’ll take my boots, my straps, and my attitude, and go build in the sandbox with people who actually want to play.
Because Here’s the Thing
VCs aren’t villains. They’re just employees.
Entrepreneurs? We’re the ecosystem. We don’t wait for permission. We make markets move.If you’re building right now, learn from me: Don’t waste a single heartbeat trying to impress the wrong audience. You don’t need a “partner” to tell you your idea has potential. You need a small group of believers that look like customers, friends, early supporters who see you, buy from you, cheer for you, and tell ten more people.
That’s your capital. That’s your community. Protect it. Nurture it. Build from there. Because the people who truly want to see you win won’t ask for your cap table, they’ll ask for your link.
So no, I’m not anti-investment (in fact, I raised almost a million dollars in 3 weeks from private investors). I’m pro-alignment.
And if one day I do find that elusive altruistic investor, great.
If not, I’ll just become her.
Are We Over the AI Hype Yet?
Because honestly - unless you’re a data scientist who understands human behavior and complex workflow design, you’re not “creating AI.” You’re just remixing what already exists.
And if you’re an investor throwing money at the next chatbot or productivity app? Unless there’s a distribution contract or proprietary data moat already in place, you’re betting on a fad, not a frontier.
The truth is: the world doesn’t need another AI wrapper. It needs system re-builders.
We are standing at the edge of another industrial revolution — but this one won’t be driven by code. It’ll be driven by clarity.
The Real Opportunity
The next wave of billion-dollar companies won’t come from artificial intelligence. They’ll come from organizational intelligence — founders who can see how broken the current systems are and rebuild them to serve people again. Healthcare, education, supply chains, philanthropy, finance — every one of these is bloated with middlemen, extraction points, and inefficiencies disguised as sophistication.
We don’t need smarter machines. We need cleaner systems.
The founders who win the next decade will be the ones who take a machete to the overgrown vines of bureaucracy and greed that have been strangling innovation for decades.
My Proof Point
I’ve seen this movie before. In 2000, when I worked at AutoTrader.com, we were cold-calling car dealers trying to convince them to advertise online. Half of them told us “the internet’s a fad.” The other half said “it’s for the devil.”
And then, overnight, everything changed.
I see the same pattern now, only this time the hype is around algorithms instead of URLs. Everyone’s chasing AI like it’s oxygen, but the real oxygen is trust.
Where I’m Betting
That’s why I’m building MOAB and Mom Bomb.
A for-profit and a nonprofit — structurally separate, operationally unified — that prove you can build scalable, regenerative systems without selling out your soul.
We operate as one ecosystem:
Shared marketing.
Shared leadership awareness.
Shared mission.
It’s business and charity functioning as a single family — not because it’s trendy, but because integration is the only way forward.
Meanwhile, every “10% of proceeds donated” label in the supermarket is just a relic of the old world. A half-step toward meaning that never quite delivers impact.
We’re done with partial credit.
The Shift That’s Coming
AI will change plenty, sure. But the deeper revolution is philosophical — not technological. It’s about removing the layers of manipulation that separate people from truth, purpose, and profit. It’s about dismantling systems that treat greed as a given. It’s about rebuilding the bridge between money and meaning so that commerce and conscience finally move as one.
That’s the industrial revolution no one’s talking about.
The Call
So where are the investors funding that? Where are the founders building new systems, not new shortcuts?
Where are the people who see this moment for what it really is — the collapse of complexity, not the rise of machines?
If that’s you, I’m looking for you.
Because AI may be the noise, but clarity — and courage — are still the signal.
I’ve noticed something strange lately. It’s not political, it’s not generational; it’s behavioral.
We’ve all been given access to artificial intelligence, and instead of using it to learn more, a lot of people are using it to confirm what they already believe. It’s like handing someone the Library of Alexandria and watching them go straight to the self-help aisle to find a quote that validates their opinion on oat milk.
We live in a world that feels like awareness: scrolling headlines, listening to podcasts, watching “breaking news.” But most of it isn’t awareness at all. It’s reinforcement.
Your feeds are trained to know you better than you know yourself. Your credit card activity, your search history, even the shows you fall asleep to (those data points become your digital DNA). And then? The algorithm uses that DNA to curate your entire reality.
So if you buy a certain brand of protein powder or start Googling “gut health,” the universe of your phone will quietly decide that you’re the “wellness” type. Next thing you know, every ad, every influencer, every recommendation (from your TV to your kid’s iPad) will echo that back to you. It’s The Truman Show, except this time, you asked for it.
If you want to know how deep your bubble goes, here’s an easy test: Flip to the opposite news channel from whatever you usually watch.
If you’re a CNN person, watch Fox for an hour. If you’re a Fox person, turn on MSNBC. If you don’t watch TV at all, congratulations, you’ve already broken the first layer of programming.
Then don’t react. Observe. Listen to the tone, the framing, the emotional hooks. Notice what’s emphasized and what’s conveniently left out. It’s like walking into a funhouse mirror maze of the same story told twenty different ways.
Because here’s the scary part: AI is now powerful enough to do the same thing, but faster, cleaner, and without you even noticing. You can literally ask it to tell you why your side is right, and it will politely oblige. Over and over again, until curiosity dies.
We’re creating perfect, frictionless worlds where we never have to be wrong again. And that’s how awareness dies, not with censorship, but with comfort.
So try this: Next time you use AI, open your phone, or read the news, ask it a question that threatens your worldview. Ask it to explain the other side. Ask it to make you uncomfortable.
You don’t have to agree with what you find. You just have to be curious enough to look.
Because that, my friends, is the only kind of intelligence still worth having.
Here’s the bottom line.
I take extreme umbrage—almost embarrassment—in calling myself a “founder.”
Not because I don’t love building. Not because I’ve lost faith in innovation. But because somewhere along the way, the word founder got hijacked.
We became a category—a demographic to be marketed to, monetized, and managed. There’s an entire industry built around us now: accelerators, pitch competitions, communities, consultants, and capital “ecosystems” that promise to help but often exist to extract.
It’s not always malicious. Some of it’s genuinely good—hell, I just came back from CVS’s Supplier Diversity program, which was one of the most meaningful corporate experiences I’ve ever had. But that’s the exception.
Most of what’s out there? It’s founders as fuel.
We’re the energy source everyone else plugs into—the panel fodder, the pipeline, the portfolio, the PR. The ones putting our life savings on the line while others monetize the illusion of supporting us.
The power dynamic is upside down. Until a founder reaches real traction, everyone else gets a piece of the dream—mentors, consultants, micro-funds, PR platforms, “founder collectives.” And by the time you’ve finally made it, the narrative’s already been rewritten:
“Early investor saw the potential.”
Please.
The only ones who see it are the ones who build it.
Everyone else? They’re teachers—and I say that with love. I was married to one. I have friends who are. But in this world, it’s still true: those who can’t, teach.
The system bets on your inexperience. It bets that you’ll think their guardrails are gospel. That you’ll confuse their validation for vision. That you’ll stay small enough to be “helped,” because once you’re not, you’re no longer useful to them.
I’ve been in this ecosystem long enough to understand it now.
And I’m not angry—I’m awake.
I’ll build my business my way. I’ll partner with those who lead with integrity (and yes, they do exist). But I’ll never again let my worth be determined by the institutions that profit from my potential.
So call me a founder if you must.
Just know I’m not one of those founders anymore.
When we ring that bell—because we will—I’ll still buy them a drink.
But it won’t be to say thanks.
It’ll be to toast the ones who built without permission.
Not every investment offer is an opportunity. I learned that when an “investor” bragged about making his fortune through pain management clinics — code for pill mills. It taught me something I’ll never forget: money holds the imprint of its maker. If it was built on depletion, it keeps depleting. If it was created with integrity, it expands creation.
Every leader eventually learns this: you can’t control the lens people see you through. You can only keep your light steady. This is a story about learning to hold both truth and timing, both light and shadow, and still move forward with honest intent.
Every time I think I understand people, life throws me another human mirror. Lately I’ve been thinking about how two people can experience the same version of me and walk away telling opposite stories. To one, I’m inspiring. To another, I’m intimidating. To one, I’m generous. To another, I’m calculating. Same woman. Same intention. Different lens.
How you view me is about the lens you meet me through. I used to take that personally, like I could fix the reflection if I just explained myself better. If I were clearer, softer, brighter.
But the longer I lead, the more I realize: everyone meets you through their own frequency. Their own history. Their own ache. The light in me hits the prism of them, and refracts. This is true for you, too. Think about it.
Learning This the Hard Way
This isn’t theory. I’ve watched it happen in real time. I once had someone on the team who talked a big game but never quite found their footing. I kept trying to “help” - to hold up the mirror and show what wasn’t working. But truth, I’ve learned, is also like light: the wrong wattage blinds instead of illuminates. So this time, I didn’t push. I let them keep their version of the story and I quietly chose peace.
And it worked. The business kept its rhythm. My energy stayed clean. But later that night, I sat with the guilt. Was that kindness or cowardice? Did I choose grace or avoidance?
The Realization
I think the answer is: both. Every choice has a light and a shadow. Every leader carries both. I can look at the same decision and see two true stories:
I protected the integrity of the company.
I avoided an uncomfortable truth.
And both are right. That’s the maddening part of being self-aware, you can see all the angles and still have to pick one.
The Practice I’m Learning
Now, before I move, I ask three questions:
Is my intent clean?
Will this create more harmony or more distortion?
Can I live with how it might be misread?
If yes, I move forward and let people see what they see. Because they will anyway.
What I Know for Sure
People who are aligned will feel me in their light. People who are threatened will feel me in their shadow. The only constant I control is the frequency, my intention. So it makes me think that ultimately the work isn’t about proving I’m good. It’s more about knowing that I am, while understanding that someone else may always see it differently. That’s the paradox of leadership. You can’t control the lens. You can only keep your light steady.
If you’re building something big and human: Don’t waste your energy chasing perception. Hold your light steady. Let people meet you through whatever lens they need. The ones meant to stay will see you clearly in time.
If this resonates, subscribe to Beyond the Bubble Bath — my field notes on leadership, intention, and building a billion-dollar company the world can feel.
I feel like I’m standing on the table waving my arms, shouting, “Hey, I’m right here!”
But the venture capital world keeps looking right past me. They stare at the wall behind me, the deck next to me, the guy beside me with the Patagonia vest and the Stanford ring.
I’ve been doing this for years. I’ve built, scaled, hired, shipped, and survived. I’ve done everything founders are told to do—hit the metrics, check the boxes, live in the trenches.
And yet, to them, I’m invisible.
So are thousands of founders like me—brilliant, battle-tested, obsessed with making something real—and somehow unseen.
Why? Because we didn’t go to the right school? Because we don’t speak the insider dialect of venture? Because no one’s willing to “warm-intro” us into the club?
The truth is, the entire concept of a warm intro has become the aristocracy of venture capital.
A centuries-old inbreeding ritual disguised as due diligence.
The industry has become the Habsburg dynasty of innovation—a closed loop of wealth and ego, muttering about disruption while producing weaker, smaller, more recessive ideas with each generation.
Venture capital claims to fund disruption, but it’s addicted to pattern recognition.
And patterns don’t disrupt anything. Patterns repeat themselves.
You can’t find what’s next if you’re only looking for what already worked.
But that’s what most funds are built to do: find the next version of the last thing that made someone rich.
The result? An industry obsessed with talking about innovation that hasn’t funded a truly new idea in years.
When you filter for familiarity, you get copycats. When you fund only what feels safe, you get sameness.
You think you’re optimizing for risk, but you’re just protecting your own reflection.
It’s not just venture capital. The same decay pattern is showing up everywhere.
Consumer products. Finance. Media. Politics.
Every system eventually becomes its own Habsburg line—so inbred by pattern recognition and fear of deviation that it mistakes replication for progress.
What begins as innovation devolves into imitation.
The institutions built to find the new start defending the old.
In consumer goods, founders with fresh ideas are pushed back into formulas designed by conglomerates masquerading as innovators.
In venture, investors who once chased risk now fund only what looks like their last success.
Everywhere you look, ingenuity collapses under the weight of familiarity.
When everything goes wrong—and it always does—it’s not the cap table that saves a company.
It’s the founder’s energy.
The way they think, move, adapt, and refuse to die.
That’s the force that creates disruption, not the spreadsheet measuring “founder-market fit.”
You can’t quantify that. You can only feel it.
But you’ll never feel it if you keep demanding warm intros, because warmth kills truth.
It keeps you comfortable. It keeps you blind. It ensures you’ll never meet the person crazy enough, smart enough, and relentless enough to actually change something.
You want to meet the next founder who rewires an industry?
Step outside your loop. Stop relying on the same intros from the same funds who recycle the same ten names.
The next big thing isn’t in your inbox.
It’s in your blind spot.
Go looking for the outliers. The misfits. The ones you didn’t expect to find.
The ones who make you uncomfortable—because they should.
There’s a difference between what it takes to build something that’s a success
and what it takes to build something that’s a moonshot.
One follows a playbook. The other writes one.
One scales what exists. The other builds what doesn’t.
One fits the model. The other breaks it.
If you keep searching for what’s familiar, you’ll keep funding the former—
while the real moonshots walk right past you, invisible, waving.
My mother tells a story about me from preschool. The class had practiced a spring play for weeks. When the big day came, all the parents were waiting outside and the kids froze. No one wanted to go on stage. Everyone stood there, scared, silent.
Except me.
I walked out and did the entire play alone. I have no memory of it, but it tracks. I can just imagine what I was thinking, even at 4 years old. “People, we’ve practiced this. What are you nervous about? Let’s go!”
I’ve been “going first” ever since.
Why I Always Go First
Most people build their lives one careful step at a time. They move forward only when the path is clear. I live backwards. I start from the ending I can already feel, the billion-dollar company, the cultural shift, the future conversation and then I trace my way back to now. I leave proof so that one day, when someone asks how, I can point and say, see, it was all right here. It’s not control; it’s faith. It’s trusting what I’ve always known, that the future is already written, and my job is to walk it out loud.
Why I Publish the Messy Parts, Including the Embarrassments
Because the day will come when people say, “She was an overnight success.” And I’ll smile and point to this era; the late nights, the small sales, the building years. That’s why I wrote The Physics of Manifestation now, when it earned me fifty-seven cents. I’m not writing for applause. I’m leaving field notes for whoever comes next. If my own embarrassment or failure becomes someone else’s permission slip, then it’s worth it.
The Freedom of Going First
What I’ve learned since that preschool play is this: when you go first, people exhale. They don’t have to be the brave one. You already cracked the silence open for them. And in that crack, everyone gets a little freer. That’s what I want more than anything, for everyone to get to feel the freedom I’ve felt. To realize they are the architects of their own timelines. To see that the gap between “someday” and “today” closes the moment you act as if the future is already true.
An Invitation for You to Start Going First
So yes, I’m building a company. But really, I’m building a map. A record for the ones who will come after, so they won’t have to wait for permission, or proof, or perfect timing. If you’ve been waiting for a sign, maybe this is it. Maybe your story, like mine, starts with a leap before the crowd catches up.
Go first. The rest will follow. Promise.
P.S. This piece is the heartbeat behind Signal First, the system I’m documenting as I build. It’s about broadcasting a future so clearly that the present has to rearrange around it. Every essay here is a field note from that experiment: leadership, faith, and freedom in real time.
Mom Bomb founder Heather Roberts shares what two days inside CVS taught her about entrepreneurship, community, and the surprising power of supplier diversity.
Maybe it’s because I’m over 50. Maybe it’s because I’ve lived long enough to stop caring what people think. But here’s what I know: I don’t back down to bullies. Not online, not in business, not anywhere.
Yesterday, I got a front-row seat to the same tired tactic I’ve seen play out for decades, the one designed to silence truth-tellers.
The VC “Sh*t List” Nobody Talks About
I’ve been working with fundraising expert Helena Fogarty, who runs a podcast interviewing founders and VCs. Recently, she surfaced a truth most people whisper about but rarely say publicly: the VC “sh*t list.” Every founder has one. It’s the investors they’d never take money from again — the ones who burned them, bullied them, or exploited their desperation. But here’s the problem: almost nobody says those names out loud. Founders are afraid of being blacklisted or cast out of the ecosystem. Helena posted about it on LinkedIn. I was the first to comment: the only way you protect others is by naming names.
And Then It Got Interesting
Another woman, Linda Sugarman, jumped in. And she did what most people are too scared to do: she named a name. She said she’d been warning people about this individual for twenty years. And then, like clockwork, he appeared in the comments.
First, he claimed he didn’t know her. Then, he said she was stalking him. Then, he accused her of antisemitism. Finally, he pivoted to me, flexing credentials as a “former law enforcement officer,” and told me to “Google him.” It was textbook misdirection.
My Response
I told Linda what I tell anyone brave enough to name names: it takes courage. If what she said wasn’t true, he could sue for defamation. The fact that she was willing to risk that told me everything I needed to know. I believed her. That was enough to make him spiral. He bragged about law enforcement ties, his supposed millions of followers, and when I shared a link raising questions about how he represents himself, his comeback was: “I’ll be sure to tell everyone you’re anti-cop.” My reply was simple: “That’s the playbook. Keep it up. We see you 👀.”
Why This Matters
Because this isn’t just about one exchange on LinkedIn. It’s about the pattern that repeats everywhere — in business, in politics, in cults, in corporations.
Here’s how it works:
Authority flex - lead with credentials, titles, clout.
Attack the accuser - call them unstable, malicious, or untrustworthy.
Claim victimhood - cry harassment, discrimination, or persecution.
Ignore the substance - never answer the actual accusation.
You’ve seen it before. You’ll see it again. And once you recognize it, you can’t unsee it.
The Bottom Line
You don’t have to fight every bully. But you do have to call out the pattern. Because once you name it, it loses its power. For me, truth has always been non-negotiable. And here’s what I know with every cell in my body:
👉 The truth always comes to light. Maybe not in the moment. Maybe not on our preferred timeline. But eventually. Always.
That’s why I never back down.
Sometimes it feels like nothing is working. Your plans stall, your energy dips, and you start questioning yourself. That doesn’t mean you’ve failed. It means you’ve hit what I call the wobble—a moment when your system needs a reset.
The Wobble Is Normal
Every mom knows this feeling. One minute you’re holding it all together, the next minute you’re running on fumes. The truth is: no one can stay “on” all the time. Even the best musicians drift off-key. What matters is not whether you wobble, but how you respond to it.
Five Ways to Reset When You’re in the Wobble:
Remember why you started. Ask yourself: What was my purest reason for doing this? Strip away expectations and return to that one sentence.
Simplify your goals. If the big picture feels overwhelming, shrink it down. Maybe today it’s just: “I want one sign that I’m supported.”
Cut the noise. Turn off notifications, close the extra tabs, and pick one thing to finish. Peace returns when focus narrows.
Catch yourself faster. Don’t let days pass in the spiral. Stand up, stretch, drink water, call a friend. Micro-resets help you bounce back quickly.
Check your energy. If you’re drained, stop pushing. Rest first, then come back with one action fueled by energy—not exhaustion.
Quick Reset Ritual:
Move your body: shake it out, take a walk, stretch.
Reduce one input: silence social media, email, or news for an hour.
Find proof you’re supported: a kind word, a text, a small win.
At Mom Bomb, we believe in supporting moms through both the highs and the wobbles. A warm bath can be more than relaxation—it can be a reset for your nervous system. Next time you feel the wobble, drop a bath bomb, breathe, and let yourself recharge.
