What's up guys? Welcome back to build. And today we're going to do a little bit of a different

episode. We are going to do my top five lessons from 2025. So making this episode, I've made,

I think I've made an episode every year for the last three years on my top lessons from the year.

This is actually something that my husband, Alex, and I do. We both look back at our years and we share with each other, like, what did we learn?

And I think it just helped crystallize a lot of the lessons.

So selfishly, it helps me learn it better.

I also think it gives you guys a recap of everything that's happened,

both professionally and personally and my

takeaways. So hopefully you can learn from the things I learned this year. As I started writing

these down, a lot of the times I do like 10 or 20 lessons and I was like, you know, this year

had a lot of big themes and I really wanted to crystallize them into just five because I think

that's more digestible. You are more likely to take action off of it. And I think it's ultimately more helpful.

And so I wanted to start by kind of rewinding and I'll be honest, like going back to think about

the lessons that I learned this year was hard because this last year, if I think about how last year started, it was honestly like the worst adult year of my life for the first six months.

It was very difficult for me and it was hard to think about and write about it's not something that I like going into great detail of because it was just a time where

I felt very helpless and I didn't know what to do and I was also incredibly stressed.

Now coming out of that, for those who don't know, last January, I got sick and then I got sick

and put on antibiotics and more antibiotics and more and more and more and all these things.

And it led to just a ton of health challenges. And I ultimately had to have surgery, which required at least a month that I was really not able to work much at all. I haven't talked a lot about it because it was confusing and I don't feel like having medical opinions put at me on social media. So I have decided not to share in great detail what occurred.

It was really scary and I didn't know what was going on.

I had a lot of days where I was in so much pain, I thought I was going to die.

And looking back at that time, it was also when my business was exploding the most.

...