Everyone's posting their 2016 photos this week. Apparently we all want to go back to simpler times when the world made sense.
I've been staring at my own 2016 posts. Forty amazing things for my 40th birthday year. Incredible trips. Award wins. Career highs. The compilation video I posted on December 31st looked like a highlight reel of someone living their absolute best life.
2016 was also the year that almost killed my business.
The Instagram vs. Reality Gap
While I was posting about adventures and achievements, my business was bleeding out.
Key staff - people I trusted completely - walked out and took my biggest clients with them. Contracts I thought were rock solid vanished overnight. People who'd benefited from years of great work suddenly couldn't remember where it came from.
By October 2016, I had a choice: shut down or start over.
Multiple advisors told me to shut down. "It's over," they said. "Cut your losses." These were people who'd never built a business from nothing, never faced this kind of devastation, never had to choose between survival and surrender. Never sacrificed everything for nine years of chasing a dream.
I fired them on the spot in the board meeting where they gave me this "confident" advice.
The Thing About Rock Bottom
Here's what those advisors didn't understand: Rock bottom isn't the end. It's foundation.
Could I have prevented 2016? Absolutely. Better contracts. Different hiring. Tighter client relationships. Clearer expectations. A dozen decisions that would've changed everything.
But I didn't know what I didn't know. And that's the brutal beauty of business - we make decisions based on what we think is right with the information we have.
Does that make us bad at business? Or does it make us entrepreneurs?
The Comeback Nobody Saw Coming
Ten years later, we're stronger, smarter, more profitable, and international. The business those advisors said was "done" now operates on two continents and serves clients globally.
Not despite 2016. Because of it.
That year taught me things no MBA could: how to spot loyalty vs. opportunism, how to structure unbreakable partnerships, how to build systems that survive betrayal, how to trust again without being naive.
Most importantly, it taught me that surviving the unsurvivable is a superpower most people never discover they have.
The Scar That Guides Me
Do I still carry scars from 2016? Absolutely. I'm more careful now. More protective. More strategic about who gets close to the core of what we do.
But those scars aren't weaknesses. They're navigation tools. They help me spot dangers other people can't see, ask questions other people don't think to ask, build protections other people don't know they need.
And here's the unexpected gift: Those scars made us the best advisory business on people performance, engagement, and culture architecture that exists. We're no longer HR consultants trying to understand business. We're entrepreneurs who speak entrepreneur.
When a client calls panicking about a key person leaving, we don't give them textbook advice. We give them battle-tested strategy from someone who survived key people walking out. When they're struggling with their own founder behavior or team dynamics, we don't theorize. We share what actually works from the trenches.
We can provide the most invaluable support and advice to our clients because we were there. In the fire. Making the mistakes. Surviving the disasters. Learning what actually matters vs. what sounds good in a conference room.
What 2016 Really Taught Me
Business isn't about being right all the time. It's about being resilient when you're wrong.
It's not about avoiding disaster. It's about surviving it and becoming stronger.
It's not about having all the answers. It's about refusing to quit when you don't.
Everyone wants to go back to 2016 because it felt simpler. But I wouldn't trade the lessons of that devastating year for all the simplicity in the world.
Because the version of me that posted those 40 amazing things? She didn't know what she didn't know.
The version of me writing this? She knows exactly what she's built and why it can't be broken.
Your 2016
We all have a year that tried to destroy us. The year that showed us what we were really made of.
Maybe it's happening to you right now. Maybe you're getting advice to quit, cut losses, walk away.
Maybe those advisors are wrong too.
Because sometimes the thing that looks like an ending is actually just a very expensive education in how to begin again.
Better.
