2025 musings

Update from the life of an entrepreneur…

This week looked less like glossy planning and more like walking… through town, through ideas, through the slow build of something new.

I spent the day moving between Spanish lessons, notes, and conversations with strangers - the kind that only happen in small towns when you’re willing to say hello first. It’s how you know a business is still in its earliest, most hopeful phase: you are visible, a little exposed, and deeply optimistic.

Prescott, in late December, decided to cooperate in a way that felt almost unfair. Blue sky. Mild air. The kind of day that invites lingering. It’s hard not to believe the universe is conspiring when the weather makes everything feel possible.

I wandered downtown near the Square and Goodwin/Gurley Street and ducked into a bookstore where every book was five dollars or the multiple pawn shops, which feels like a moral stance as much as a business model. A tiny dog greeted me with unearned confidence. Entirely by chance - or by whatever laws govern small towns - conversation turned into connection, and connection turned into possibility. Language, after all, is just another doorway.

Since splitting time between Prescott and Ashland, the biggest challenge hasn’t been logistics - it’s movement.  Since leaving the school districts, You have to choose motion. You have to choose engagement.

Teaching Spanish, building Bravo Español, sharing what I know - this has become my version of foraging. Walking, talking, explaining, listening. Repetition with intention.

Along the way, advice arrives from everywhere - friends, neighbors, Facebook threads, chance encounters. Some of it sticks. Some of it doesn’t. But all of it reminds me that you don’t build anything meaningful in isolation.

Opportunities appear like small maps handed over quietly. A conversation here. A yes there. Not perfect, not polished - just enough to keep going.

Mistakes are inevitable. They’re also necessary.The alternative is waiting until you feel ready, which usually means never.

So you try. You practice. You learn - sometimes by doing, sometimes by underpricing your energy, sometimes by wincing afterward.

And then you adjust.