One of the clearest memories I have from this year truly reflects a mental challenge I face often. That memory was on September 27th, 2025. My birthday. Three months after fully commiting to this idea. I was sitting in a Holiday Inn hotel room in New York all by myself wondering if I was slowly building something meaningful or just becoming really good at convincing myself I was. That hotel room certainly didn’t feel like success. It was probably the worst one I’d stayed in all year. I had flown to New York alone to film a client because that’s what the business required at the time.
Thankfully, I have the greatest sister and best friend who surprised me by flying out to New York. They turned what could have been one of the loneliest birthdays of my life into one I’ll remember forever. Looking back, I don’t remember the hotel room nearly as much as I remember what it represented. It represented the idea of doing what I thought was necessary to bring the vision to life before there was any real proof that it deserved to exist. This was the first time I asked myself the question "will this be worth it?"
I think that’s one of the strange realities of building something from nothing. People eventually see the milestones, the office, the team, the clients, the travel, and naturally assume that’s what the journey felt like. To me, most of the year was made up of waking up every single day on the same mission, learning what it feels like to carry around a vision that only exists in my own head. There isn’t much external evidence that you’re building something worthwhile in the beginning. There are no guarantees, no certainty, and very little validation. There’s only my own belief that if I keep moving forward long enough, one day reality will begin to resemble the picture I've been carrying around in my mind. Or so I hope.
The funny thing is, I never started KHMedia because I wanted to own a media company. I started it because I wanted to build something that could completely change my life and, hopefully, the lives of the people who decided to build it alongside me.
I knew I had a skill somewhere at the intersection of marketing, branding, and storytelling. I’ve always been fascinated by why certain brands become unforgettable, why some people naturally command trust while others with just as much talent seem to be irrelevant, and how a great story can completely change the way someone is perceived. Those questions interested me far more than cameras ever did. I loved creating, but I was becoming increasingly fascinated by the thinking behind the work just as much as the work itself.
That’s why it’s a little ironic that filming became the business.
Standing behind a camera was never where I believed I brought the most value. I enjoyed it, and I genuinely loved creating, but what excited me most was sitting with someone, understanding how they thought, uncovering the story that already existed inside them, and then building a brand that felt like an honest reflection of who they were. Filming simply happened to be the vehicle that made those conversations possible.
I’ve thought about that a lot this year because opportunity rarely arrives through the thing you think you’ll spend the rest of your life doing. More often than not, it arrives disguised as something adjacent. It asks you to become exceptional at one thing before earning the opportunity to contribute in another. Looking back now, I think that’s exactly what the camera was for me.
A year later, life looks just a bit different. We have an incredible team of four full-time employees who are now some of my closest friends, I move from the desk in my room to our garage that we built out into an office that I genuinely love walking into every morning, and we get to work alongside founders, artists, athletes, and some of the most creative people in the world. I couldn't be more greatful for the people who have joined me on this mission and the relationship we've built together inside and outside the work.
Now that I’m here, though, I realize something I couldn’t have understood back then.
The business that has got us to where we are isn’t automatically the business that will get us to that next level.
That realization has changed the way I think about almost everything. Instead of asking how we can simply do more, I’ve found myself asking how we can build something better. Somewhere along the way I realized that scaling isn’t about adding more clients, more employees, or more work. It’s about becoming more intentional. It’s about asking better questions, building better systems, hiring people who are better than you in the areas you never should’ve been holding onto in the first place, and accepting that every new level requires letting go of an older version of yourself.
As the business has grown, I’ve realized that the lessons I’ve taken away this year have had far less to do with marketing or content than I expected. The real lessons have been about leadership, vision, and learning how to think in the way of a business owner. I needed this first year to become the person that runs a company.
The main thing that has stayed with me all year is the importance of vision. When people ask what has mattered most, I don’t think about sales, branding, or operations. I think about vision. Not because vision solves problems, but because it gives every problem context. If the destination is clear enough, you’ll almost always find another route.
People have told me more than once that what we’re building isn’t scalable. I’ve never found that criticism particularly useful. Of course the first version isn’t scalable. It isn’t supposed to be. The first version exists to teach you how to build the second, then the third, then the fourth. The vision stays remarkably consistent. The strategy constatnly changes.
As much as I’ve loved building this company, those negative thoughts happen in my own brain too. There have been plenty of moments where I’ve questioned whether I was capable of building what I could so clearly picture in my head. There are days where I doubt myself, lose sight of the vision, and wonder whether I'm pouring my life into the right thing. I’ve felt incompetent. I’ve felt like I was letting the people who believe in me down. I’ve questioned whether I was the right person to lead the company I wanted to build.
The only thing I’ve found that consistently quiets those thoughts is movement.
Every meaningful opportunity we’ve had came because we were already moving. Every client, every relationship, every lesson, and every unexpected opportunity appeared while we were in motion. You don’t stumble into the next chapter by standing still.
I’ve started to believe that optimism is less about expecting everything to work out and more about believing you’ll become the kind of person capable of handling whatever comes next. That’s a subtle distinction, but it has changed the way I approach almost every challenge.
When I look back on this first year, I don’t feel like we’ve accomplished what we set out to accomplish. Not even close. There’s still an incredible amount of work ahead of us, new directions to explore, and a much bigger vision that we’re only beginning to build.
That’s the part that excites me most.
Now, we come back to the hotel room. I was sitting alone wondering whether any of this was going to work. The only thing that let pushed me through those hard times, doubtful thoughts, and negative feedback was the vision. Today, I still don’t have all the answers, but I have something better than certainty. I have confidence that if we continue showing up, keep learning, and keep moving toward the vision, we’ll eventually build something far greater than I could’ve imagined when this all started. There will still be days that you ask yourself "is this all worth it?" no matter how successfull we get. I think that is just an inevitable part of this journey we're all on.