…and made the Inc. 5000 list the same year. Make it make sense, right? Most people hear “we lost $1M” and assume the business is falling apart. But for us, that was the year the real business was finally being built. Because every revenue level teaches you something— and if you don’t learn the lesson, you stay stuck at that level. Here’s what the journey actually looked like: Under $50K: You’re testing your offers. The market—not your opinions—decides what works. Your only job: sell every day until the data tells you where to focus. $50K–$100K: You can make money, but not consistently. One-off work keeps you busy, not free. Lesson: Build one offer you can resell, not recreate. $100K–$500K: Your swings are caused by lack of structure. Retainers and licensed trainings gave us stability. Lesson: Predictable revenue matters more than impressive months. $500K–$1MM: Split focus is sabotage. I was half law firm, half speaker—too many lanes, no real direction. Lesson: Choose the lane your future depends on, not the one your past is comfortable in. $1MM–$3.5MM: Your identity becomes the ceiling. You can’t outwork your way into the next level—you must out-lead it. We built a team (including my mom), created systems, and stopped being the engine. And then came 2024: A year where revenue dropped by over $1 million… and every gap was exposed. The blessing is we dint have to layoff a single team never and in fact hired. Even though top line revenue dropped our profit was the highest it’d ever been. I tell CEOs grow as soon as you can so you can afford to weather some losses. But instead of crumbling, we cleaned it up. We tightened focus. We rebuilt foundations. We became a company that could grow on purpose. And that’s the year we made the Inc. 5000 list. Because identity shifts often show up as financial dips before they show up as financial jumps. And now? This year we’re already up more than $1 million in one of the most uncertain markets I’ve ever seen.

I thought I would never be a mother. I remember standing in my old law firm’s hallway late at night… exhausted… hungry… trying to impress the partners… and walking past a woman partner’s cracked door. She was in her office crying while her kids cursed her out on speakerphone. Not once. Not twice. I had seen this happen enough times that I silently promised myself: “Oh no… I’m not doing that. I’m not having kids. I’m giving my ALL to my career. My husband. My ambition. That’s it.” And y’all… I meant it. I couldn’t see how motherhood fit into the life I was building. I didn’t think I had room for it. I didn’t think I had capacity for it. And I definitely didn’t want my future kids mad because I couldn’t be around. Fast forward. May 5, 2020. I had my daughter, Christelle (Christ+Elle) Kirkwood. 10 lbs. 9 oz. of pure light, fire, joy, and God’s reminder that He writes better stories than I do. And now, in just a few weeks, I’m taking 30 days off to travel the WORLD with my family — Dubai, Thailand, Bangkok, the Philippines, Nigeria, Ghana… and more. Not to work. Not to hustle. Not to keep up. To rest. To hear from God. To be with my family. To live the life I built to the fullest. Because I didn’t build a cage. I built a business. And that business gave me freedom the moment I stopped trying to do it the “corporate way.” When I think about that younger version of me… that girl in the hallway… that girl who thought motherhood would smother her ambition… I just want to hug her. She had NO IDEA how much possibility she carried. She had NO IDEA that ambition and motherhood could coexist. She had NO IDEA that building big things models freedom for your children — it doesn’t take it from them. My dad was an entrepreneur. And the greatest gift he gave me wasn’t money. It was proximity to purpose. Watching him work. Watching him dream. Watching him build. And watching him never miss a big moment of my life in the process. He never made me a scapegoat for his vision.

I got busy today. 1. Set up our holding company. 2. Opened our DAF so we can intentionally give, not emotionally donate. 3. Read up on LLC structures so we scale with sense—not vibes. 4. Met with my bookkeeper and saw our best profit year to date. 5. Found an oil & gas investment to reduce our tax liability. 6. Booked meetings with a tax strategy firm. 7. Read a book on advanced tax strategy. 8. Gave myself a salary raise like a real CEO. 9. Met with a new potential tenant for our rental property. 10. Debriefed Chris and built out our next steps. 11. Setup an automated webinar and ran ads to it. It took me ONE high tax bill to decide I would never be caught slipping again. You get me once. Because what I’m not going to do is keep feeding a system that has no interest in helping me build wealth. After going down this rabbit hole, here’s what I learned: This stuff is complicated, but it ain’t so complicated that you can blindly trust accountants and hope for the best. You can learn. You can read. You can ask better questions. You can become a student of your own money. And once you do that? You stop leaving thousands—sometimes hundreds of thousands—on the table just because “nobody told you.” We’re building wealth for years to come. On purpose. With strategy. And with our eyes open. Now the only reason I have to do all this is because we had a great year. To God be the glory. And this time next year I want YOU planning how bid of a donation you’re giving to your church and how much in bonuses you can give your team. So come to our Land Big Clients Challenge this year! Its our LAST event of the year: https://www.landbigclients.com/register

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