I just want to pause for a second and say something I probably haven’t said clearly enough: what we’re doing isn’t normal. It’s not normal to have a team of more than twenty people—all brilliant, all working full-time jobs—also giving up their nights, weekends, and brainpower to something that, on paper, hasn’t “made it” yet.
It’s not normal to have a chemist who works for Estée Lauder by day and still sends me formulations at midnight. It’s not normal to have advertising pros come to me and ask to work for equity—because they see where this is headed. It’s not normal for fragrance vendors to send us product for free after hearing what happened. (We were in a car accident. It was bad. I haven’t even told that story yet. USAA still hasn’t paid. That’s another blog entirely—because trust me, the insurance industry is next. Just like healthcare, it’s a rigged system pretending to serve us. But I digress.)
Let’s come back to what I’m building. It’s not just a bath brand. It’s not just a nonprofit. It’s not just a mission. It’s a frequency. A force. A system rewrite. And somehow—even while recovering from that accident, even while managing fallout after fallout, even while broke, bruised, and so tired I didn’t know which way was up—people showed up. They keep showing up. And they’re still here.
I didn’t beg them. I didn’t promise money I didn’t have. They felt it. They felt me. I’m not saying that to brag. I’m saying that because when people talk about betting on founders, they need to understand what a real bet looks like.
It’s easy to look impressive when you’ve raised millions—when you can hire, pay, and scale fast. But what does it say when a founder builds this much traction with no war chest? When twenty people give up their nights and weekends—for a year—because they believe in what’s being built? That’s not marketing. That’s not luck. That’s signal.
And that’s what I’m leading with now. Because it’s time. The friends and family round kicks off soon. I’ve got the contacts. I’ve got the tailwind. And honestly? I’ve got a hunch I’ll never have to sit across from an institution. Wouldn’t that be something?
Because this isn’t a story about convincing people. This is a story about alignment. I didn’t choose this idea. It chose me. And now I’m just doing what I do best: building the damn thing anyway.
So I’ll ask you what I’ve been asking myself lately:
If you had the chance to bet on someone, would you bet on the founder with the bank account—or the one with the movement?
Because one of those runs out.
And the other… doesn’t.
