A mostly true tale about burnout, overconfidence, and asking for a hand.

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Once upon a fiscal quarter, deep in a forest filled with overpriced coaching programs and suspiciously well-branded mushrooms, lived a Lone Wolf named Lupa.

Lupa had a vision. A big one. She was going to launch “HowlHub,” the first decentralized, socially responsible howl distribution network for forest creatures who were tired of echo chambers (literally).

She was also going to do it all by herself.

No team. No funding. No “Mastermind Circle of Fellow Founders Who All Went to Stanford.”

Just grit, caffeine, and a deeply dysfunctional relationship with her to-do list.

She designed the platform (on bark), wrote the copy (on more bark), set up her email automation using hollow logs, and even tried to build a CRM from twigs and string. It worked. Sort of. Until the raccoons got in it.

Every time she howled for help, something sketchy showed up.

• A snake offering a webinar titled “Funnels That Convert While You Sleep (and You Will Never Wake Up Poor Again).”
• A raccoon claiming he was an AI expert. He wasn’t. He just copy-pasted from ChatFox.
• An owl consultant who said things like, “But what does your inner cub want?” while charging 1,200 acorns an hour.

So Lupa kept building.

And building.

And breaking.

Until one day she woke up face down in moss, emotionally dehydrated, growling at motivational quotes.

That’s when something weird happened.

A gentle knock. Not on her treehouse. On her spirit. (Or possibly her inbox.)

It was her cousin. The squirrel who once ran a moderately successful acorn trading post. “Need a sanity check?” he asked.

Then an old fox from her first job sent a message. “Been watching you. You’re doing too much. Let’s talk.”

A rabbit offered to coach her on pacing. A beaver shared his project tracker. Even the owl came back — this time with a discount code and a snack. She sure loved that owl and all her fine-furry friends.

She didn’t hire a team. She didn’t raise a round. But she built something better.

A circle. An unofficial board. A real freakin’ village.

People who didn’t want a thing except her to succeed.

And with a deeply grateful heart, she exhaled.

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Moral of the story?

You can build it alone, sure. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to be alone while you do it.

Even the fiercest founders need someone to say, “Umm, you might want to rethink that.”

Also? Maybe a snack.

Fran, KB, Lori, Susie, and Sr. Paul — thank you for being magical. 1000%.

Every founder needs a few unicorns. Not the mythical creatures with glitter and VC funding, but folks who believe in you when your bark-built CRM crashes and your courage wobbles.

Mine just happen to show up wearing different fur.

#FlyAboveSoarBeyond