Letter 28

I spent the last two years building things from the inside out without knowing exactly what I was doing or where it was all going.

I built a lifestyle brand from the ground up. Conceptualized it, designed it, sourced materials, collaborated on artwork, built the site, went through sampling and production, got it to a ready state to sell. Every hat in the process. Eight or nine months of attention and care on a single project, working alongside the tools around me to push how far I could take what I was able to do. Just to see what it felt like to create something entirely from what excited me.

And when I came out of that, I realized I had been doing things I otherwise never did in my career or in any role I'd previously held. Learning new tools. Going deep into them to produce things I hadn't produced before. Using my words to build a site that is deeply reflective of me. Involved directly and intimately with the UI, the UX, the creative outputs. Doing photoshoot direction for models I created from scratch. Developing aesthetics, programming, figuring out user flows, wiring back ends, choosing tech stacks, designing packaging, branding my own company from the inside. A lot went into that project that extended well beyond my traditional skill set.

That was the moment I realized I needed a container. A playground to start expanding more into the things that felt good. Something to put a little bit of form around everything I was doing. Not to restrict it. To hold it. And once I opened that container, once I named it and gave it shape, something changed. It became a place where imagination and ideas and new thoughts had permission to move around freely, because the space had edges.

From that, the consulting practice came. I started working with founders, sitting with them and asking questions that don't usually get asked in a professional setting. What if we placed people in seats based on what they're passionate about, not what their job description says? What if we made room for how things feel to do rather than just what needs to get done? What if scope was fluid, and the engagement was allowed to change shape as the real problem revealed itself?

That's when I introduced a checkpoint with myself that probably otherwise would not have existed: does this feel good? If the answer was no, instead of just doing the thing I would inherently do without thinking, it gave me a small pause, and I started leading with where that answer took me, even when the practical choice pointed somewhere else.

Across every project, every engagement, every conversation, a handful of questions kept surfacing. About value. About what meaningful contribution looks like when the old ways of doing things are being replaced. About what's distinctly yours when technology can do the rest.

Those questions are the output of all the work I've done over these past few years. And they're moving me toward a thesis that I'm really excited to share.

And I think some conversations are just worth getting started. Sometimes it takes one person to begin, and a small handful of people that it resonates with, to start having the discourse and see how it feels and where it leads. So often we limit our conversation to the topics at hand, the things that are prevalent, what's right in front of us. I think it's important to have these small pockets of space that allow us to come into them with imagination, with freedom from outside noise. Just a place to speak from the heart in a way that is unfiltered. Because from that, something is birthed. Something is created that carries its own energy. It doesn't need definition beyond that. In and of itself, it is enough.

Letter 28 is that pocket of space. The site is a peek into the questions I've been pushing up against, the thinking that's been forming underneath everything else, and an open door for anyone asking similar things.

Phase 1 is live at letter28.com

The thesis is coming.