Your Relationships Matter.

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I’ve been in four of the most beautiful cities in the world in the past few weeks - London, Paris, Montreal, and now Rome.

And in each, I’ve noticed the same thing:

It’s easy to mistake motion for connection.

In London, I walked through Hyde Park with my partner, trading stories we hadn’t slowed down enough to tell in months.

In Paris, I shared coffee and war stories with one of my closest friends—a founder who’s built and sold, burned out and bounced back.

In Montreal, at One Canada as part of the Entrepreneur’s Organization, I connected with my fellow business owners (50% of which were between 1.3m and 2m in revenue) and engaged in education, real talk, and challenging our own closely held beliefs.

Now, in Rome, we’ve been finding rhythm: morning runs (past the ancient ruins of the Roman Forum, the Colosseo, Circus Maximus, and then back again along the Tiber around St. Peter’s Basilica and Castel Saint Angelo and finally returning to the apartment that overlooks the architectural marvel of the Pantheon), long dinners, deeper conversations, and some awkward seat-dancing at a concert.

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These trips were planned as a break, but it’s turned into something more foundational. It’s a recommitment to how I think about relationships - personally and professionally.

Because here’s the truth I keep circling back to:

Every opportunity I’ve ever had in business was born out of a relationship.

And every real failure I’ve seen - mine and others’ - started when relationships were neglected, misaligned, or taken for granted.

The time away has allowed me to consider deeply the value I’m bringing to our clients and our participants in our programs. It’s reenergized me to double down on our mission to make the world a better place one organization at a time.

This next chapter of Levership is focused on systems that scale. But systems only work when relationships are strong.

If you’ve been in business long enough, you’ve felt this too.

You build the org chart. You get the SOPs in place. You build dashboards and hire leaders. But if your relationships aren’t healthy - if trust is low, expectations are unclear, or alignment is off - the system will break under the weight of silence.

I see it with clients all the time:

• A founder avoids giving real feedback to a direct report and six months later, they’re paying severance and rebuilding culture from scratch.

  
  

• A business partner defers one too many hard conversations and now they’re sitting in mediation.

  
  

• A team is technically “performing” but everyone feels stuck, because no one knows how to bring up what actually needs to change.

  
  

Relationships are the infrastructure underneath your infrastructure.

So this summer, I’m coming back to a question that’s simple—but not easy:

Am I in good relationship with the people who matter most?

That includes my partner. My closest friends. My team. My clients. My peers.

And, just as critically, myself.

Because here’s the part we forget as founders:

You can’t be in strong relationship with anyone else if you’re in a constant state of depletion. If you’re reacting instead of relating. If you’re showing up as a scattered and overcommitted version of yourself, who’s just trying to get through the day.

And after the last 6 months. One in which I lost my mentor and my best friend - my Dad. I needed the space to get clear.

This month, I’m not launching anything.

I’m not stacking meetings back to back.

I’m focused on rhythm.

I want to wake up each morning with enough space to check in with myself before checking email.

I want to spend real time with the people who make me better not just because they’re brilliant, but because they’re honest, generous, and grounded.

And I want to keep reminding the entrepreneurs in my orbit, maybe that’s you—that relationships are not the soft stuff. It’s the hard edge of sustainable business.

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