Today I turn 41.
What building something real costs — and why I’d still choose it
I’m older, without question. Wiser in ways that don’t show up on a résumé. I still listen to punk rock. I still play soccer three times a week. I still like video games. I still haven’t learned to play the piano. And I carry more responsibility than I did at 31 or even 36, whether I want to admit it or not.
I went quiet for almost two weeks. Not by design. Reality simply caught up. Like a lot of entrepreneurs, I have a habit of trying to do too much at once, convinced that momentum is something you earn by never stopping. I’m working on a few pieces, but today feels like the right moment to be honest instead.
Meat N’ Bone has been a rollercoaster. A beautiful one, but a demanding one. It’s a company that makes sense on paper and in practice, yet the learning curve has been steep.
We run Meat N’ Bone like a Fortune 500 on cocaine. Not recklessly, but at speed. Everything is urgent because everything is connected. We are constantly balancing tomorrow with a year from now. Shipments, boutiques, inventory, customer experience, hiring, capital, brand. The ship moves fast. The results can move fast too. And when they don’t, it doesn’t just disappoint you. It punches you.
That speed changes who thrives here.
Corporate hires are smart, polished, and genuinely brilliant. Many of them are trained to drive cruise ships. Stable course. Clean handoffs. Predictable waters. We don’t always have that luxury. Sometimes the weather changes mid-sentence. Sometimes the engine room is on fire. Sometimes the map is being drawn while we’re already sailing.
So we build with doers. People who may look less perfect on paper but are built for motion. Scrappy. Loyal. Fierce. The kind of people who don’t panic when the plan changes because they are already solving the new problem.
Some days it feels less like running a company and more like leading a ragtag crew. Like we’re more likely to be characters in One Piece than executives in a boardroom.
But when the ocean gets rough, you don’t need more passengers. You need sailors.
There’s a personal sacrifice to this too, and it doesn’t show up on a cap table.
Work and life stop being separate when you’re an entrepreneur. They become the same thing. Your wife becomes your rock and your therapist, often at the same time. Your co-founder is usually the only person who truly understands what you’re carrying. Family and friends keep you grounded, remind you who you were before the chaos.
And yet, you still feel the weight of the time you’re not spending with them.
Before this chapter, my career revolved around scale.
An old boss used to joke that I was like a pirate. When something broke, you just threw Luis at it because I enjoyed the crazy. And I did.
But “crazy” in corporate America usually means bigger projects and tighter deadlines. Building systems. Infrastructure. Guardrails. It’s intense, but it’s not personal. It’s not your money. Failure is inconvenient, not catastrophic.
I knew how to make companies bigger.
What I had never done was bootstrap something this exposed, this personal. For the first time, money wasn’t just a variable. It was the constraint.
Founders are taught to seek advice, to listen, to stay focused, to pick battles carefully. What no one tells you is that sometimes the battles pick you. Your vision outruns your runway, and suddenly you’re making decisions with incomplete information and very real consequences.
When the fire hit, we had just opened four new boutiques and were preparing to open a new restaurant. Everything moved forward, but not the way we planned. Without a fulfillment center, boutiques underperformed. The restaurant became a fulfillment center because it had to. Growth plans stalled. We were capable of growing 30–40–50% in 2025. Instead, we barely grew, and we knew exactly why.
At that point, the decision wasn’t theoretical. Do you cut deep and retreat to survive? Or do you push through and protect the team, the culture, the long-term thesis?
We pushed through.
Today, we’re on the verge of closing our second financing round. Fundraising is exhausting in a way that doesn’t show up on spreadsheets. There are moments where it feels tempting to trade ownership for oxygen. But experience teaches you something valuable. Not all capital is equal. Not all shortcuts are worth taking.
But here’s the truth too.
This is what I chose, and I love it.
Life as an entrepreneur is certainly not boring. One day I’m in the warehouse helping my team ship orders because Christmas is tomorrow. The next day I’m catering high-end bites for Calvin Harris. Then I’m dressed up pitching to capital providers. After that, I’m on Zoom calls, back-to-back, talking through details that nobody sees but everything depends on.
Somewhere in between, I still find the time to write Flavor & Founders (usually). I’m even embarking on another entrepreneurial project, more on that later.
All while juggling a loan we can barely afford as we close this round. Reviewing conversion rate optimization in the morning. Closing the books in the afternoon. Pitching pre-dinner. Then watching my team cater steaks and spirits to 50 Cent in Miami.
Meanwhile, the managers running our F&B operations, who do a kick-ass job day in and day out, are blowing up my phone. Not because they don’t know what to do. They do. Sometimes they just want to run it by you. Sometimes leadership is simply being available, even when you’re already stretched thin.
That’s the job.
It’s stressful. It’s messy. It’s not always glamorous. And it’s definitely not balanced.
But it’s alive.
2025 aged me faster than the calendar ever could. It was a dog year. I feel ten years older mentally, and strangely more grounded because of it.
At the same time, I feel younger.
I love my wife more than ever. I love my dad, my family, my friends. I’ve learned to value people, time, and presence in a way I probably couldn’t have without the pressure. When everything feels fragile, you get very clear on what actually matters.
And if Meat N’ Bone doesn’t work? I’ll be able to write about it honestly.
If it does work?
That’s probably just the next level of crazy.
Happy birthday to me.
May my journey from 41 to 42 be a little less chaotic, but just as enlightening.