Last week I was wandering around Plaka with Tom and the boys. We were exhausted and overstuffed, and I didn’t even want to browse. But I looked up and saw a pair of oversized wide-leg trousers hanging from the ceiling, swaying in the breeze of an open doorway. The scene had pull.

I walked in, ungreeted. Nobody was up front, just some ceramics, well spaced out on floor-to-ceiling shelves. I felt the intrigue, so I roamed, rec-less. I followed a narrow hallway that opened up to a jaw-dropping room, an enormous rack at its center. All emerging brands: slow fashion, funky cuts, strong sexy fem.

The shop is called Mouki Mou. When I got home I looked it up on IG. The bio: “A boutique of discovery. Curating clothing, jewelry, and objects with a story to tell.” I found exactly what I wasn’t even looking for. Bravo!

That is ultimate craftsmanship. The dance of picking up what a shop owner, a chef, an artist, a curator is puttin’ down. And the best part: letting a business rise to the assignment of building allure. Sink or swim, you put in the effort or you get passed by.

I’ll admit I’m getting kinda preachy about this. Everything is lists and recommendations these days, sent straight to our overflowing inboxes. Money earned telling us how to shop and what to buy. If you like this, you’ll like that. But if we’re living off everyone else’s recommendations, how do we learn the nuances of our own evolving palates?

And it’s a two-way street. One of the saddest deaths is when creatives become irrelevant to a community. AI and social media have made us so horny for cheap thrills, we stop noticing who put in the effort. If we don’t hold space for curiosity, how can the creative geniuses of our time court us at all?

Curiosity. That’s the human muscle I’m toning, through daily reps of Rec-less Roaming.

Hats off,
xo Sofi

Hats Off is that same ethos, expanded. Beyond product, beyond makers, into spaces, hospitality teams, and experiences. This is my ongoing body of work studying the people, places, and teams who build human connection and experiences worth sharing. I’ve been doing this work on TV in Boston, profiling local spots, chefs, artists and more. It’s my life’s mission, and it’s what I think about in my sleep.

Okay, enough of me fluffing me, now you know, and here we go.

Hats Off: to Philos

This is the first of the Hats Off series, and it begins with the first restaurant in Athens that I fell in love with.

I’d heard of Philos before I ever walked in. “It’s Beautiful, everyone said. Clearly…

But I’m a skeptical millennial who’s been around one too many “beautiful” blocks. I’m sick of a pretty place with little depth. The last few years of branding and design have been so trend-oriented, swaying from beige Kardashian living room aesthetic to bodega typography that cusps right up on cultural appropriation. It’s gotten to the point where I won’t even go into a spot if it looks anything like the headliner brands flooding our feeds.

Athens is showing my skeptical little American ass a whole new, old world. What a relief to be in a place that isn’t designed to look old. It is old and has been preserved to evolve with the blessing of passing time.

When I walked up to Philos, the first thing I saw was the weathered door met with thick restored glass. I imagine this is what it feels like to put in contacts for the first time. Clear, yet soft.

Philos exists inside a fucking gorgeous 1937 neoclassical mansion in Kolonaki, built for Evripidis Koutlidis, who was one of Greece’s most notable art collectors.

When he died in 1974, he left his entire collection, over 1,400 paintings, drawings, and sculptures, to Greece’s National Gallery. After him, the building was empty for two decades before the Philos team found it.

In 2014 two young Athenians, Marilena Emmanouil and Sotiris Tsaglis, found the mansion decaying and rose to the challenge. When you step in, you can feel that you’re entering the space of a seasoned traveler, a philosopher, a collector. Clearly someone who actually reads the paper and has insightful discourse after. (I swear you can actually feel that). The original patterned floor tiles are still there. The beams are still exposed. The antique light switches still work. How? I have no idea, but the Greeks do. There’s intelligence in the design, and more captivating than anything, in what they left undesigned. The name comes from “philoi,” the Greek word for friends. They described wanting guests to feel the same thing you feel at a home-cooked meal shared among people you love. That’s the whole concept. Friendship-style hospitality.

I was able to go back into the old kitchen, where a marble sink and a wood stove remain. The food was phenomenal. Unpredictable pairings, a Greek salad reworked with pickled onions and za’atar. I ordered the shakshuka, not something you find on most Greek menus. It was sweet and cooked slow, a reminder that if they have the time, so do I.

Upstairs, a tiny concept store that was sadly closed. But even through the window, it evoked my curiosity. What would a place like Philos curate for such an intentional space? How satisfying to wonder and be held in a moment intrigue. Maybe that alone is the concept. Game respects game.

This was the first restaurant Tom and I went to on our own, without the kids, since we became residents in Greece. It must have been an intuitive choice, because the calm maturity of a hundred years of inherited design did exactly what it was supposed to do: hold up, and hold us.

So with that, Hats Off: to Philos. A place of firsts for me, newly an official resident of Athens, and the first place here that felt like home.

I’m sitting at Mosaiko, a café in Glyfada that I refer to as “my spot”. It’s a two-floor, narrow little espresso and cocktail bar, with a DJ at night. They make a great freddo espresso served with a slice of delightfully bland cake. In the evening, the best Negroni I’ve had here, with a handsome oversized ice block and a side of salty chips.

I call Mosaiko “my spot” when telling Tom where I’m heading off to. I know one day I’ll be meeting a friend here to plan our first brand dinner in Athens. But I’m a month in, and I have yet to make that friend.

We all know the value of friendship, and I’m here to report that being abroad makes the value go up.

What I notice being here, above all, are the amount of friendships being nourished. All ages, all hours of the day, connection takes priority. Paired off in twos, in unhurried huddles, Greeks live right up to the stereotype of being a relationship culture. They aren’t rushing, they’re in it. And safe to say, nobody’s out here looking for a random third to pull up.

English is widely spoken here, so it’s not like I can’t connect with other people, I have no legit excuse. But what would that even look like for me here? When I ran OG, my shop in Boston, my regulars weren’t the people who came in the most often. But it was the people who would naturally catch the rhythm of the room, and the call of the moment. Like winging it in a conversation with another customer in the space, or responding honestly to "How are you?", rather than “Good, you?”.

I don't have any of that goin on for me, yet.

So then why here, several times a week? It’s because this place sends intentional signals that bust through my projected insecurities of where I’m lacking. The servers and their edgy, punk style. The music I’m constantly Shazamming. The bizarre choice in light fixtures. All of it is understood when I understand very little. Mosaiko subtly reminds me that it’s okay. Come in and chill the fuck out.

This is where I go to feel the osmosis of other peoples joy, as it becomes my own.

Hats off, xo Sofi

It’s the sentence I’m using out in the world while I fumble the basics.

When I was a teenager and struggling in school, my mom used to tell me that it didn’t matter what grades I got, but I had to sit in the front row. And I had to stay after whenever my teachers had office hours.

I’ve been using that strategy my whole life. I am still using it, now at the grocery store, abroad.

I go to the market a few times a week, and most trips are more about what I learn than what I come home with. I feel like this should be easy for me. I’ve spent my career designing retail and hospitality experiences. You’d think I’d know how a store flows, no matter where on the map. And yet.

It’s our first month living in Glyfada and the grocery store is my classroom. There’s a whole foreign sequence I’m still working out and I must look so squirrelly to locals. But at my local market you don’t just put your produce in the basket, you go to a whole other line to get fruits and veg weighed first. Sometimes there’s not even a person at that station, so you have to go ask for help. Some days I just put the fruit back.

Once your produce is weighed and the brown bag is barcoded, you go into the regular line for your next challenge.

As your items are being scanned they ask how many bags you want.

How many bags, now?! Shit.

I remember in 4th grade I was very good at guessing the number of jelly beans in the glass jar. It seems it was all leading up to this.

I say “Three,” surrendering to English, while I watch the woman half-smile and nod her chin in a way that doesn’t lift back up.

She hands me three bags, and by the time I am done packing, what do ya know… I needed four. Micro fail, clocked.

Nobody is quizzing me, but I keep looking for a place in my day where it feels adorable to be a beginner.

So I figured out the only phrase I want to lead with: “Geia sas! Prospathó”. In choppy Greek.

Hi, I am trying.

It is not a phrase that will bypass my daily hurdles. But it’s a reminder to myself that I’m not tapping out, that I didn’t come this far for things to be easy. And perhaps above all, it conveys to the locals that despite everything that happens in the produce section, I’m not a lazy American. I am here, in the front row, taking notes.

The store is the same every week, and I’m the emotional variable. Some days I walk in excited and often I walk out deflated. What I can hold on to is the commitment to showing up, using my new phrase, and meaning it.

Geia sas! Prospathó.

hats off
Sofi

After another evening of my boys being not so into my new-found Mediterranean cooking, I decided to not make a thing of it, and let them go play instead. Within 20 minutes my 4 year old started listing food he actually wanted.

“Yogurt pouch?” We don’t have any.

“A smoothie?” No, we don’t have a blender yet.

“A meat stick?!” Sorry babe. I don’t think they have those here (Not true, turns out I just haven’t found them).

You’d think I had stepped on his stuffy.

The sobbing began: I want a meat stick! I WANT A MEAT STICK! I WANT A MEAT STICK!

Tears streaming, the plea repeated with a bottomless ache. I rocked him in my arms back and forth the way I did when he was a baby. His warm tears ran down my chest and I felt the certainty of his sadness - he missed home. He missed his routine, his bed, our boxy American refrigerator, and regularly-in-rotation Whole Foods snacks.

He missed when things were easy, easy like a meat stick.

Later that night I wondered what I was quietly losing my shit over, too.

Was it missing my friends? My family? Small talk with a stranger? Flushing toilet paper?

Ah. I missed our Brita.

For the last few weeks we’ve been lugging large plastic water bottles around and buying water (νερό, pronounced neró) at restaurants. The sound of the crinkling bottle in our hands has been a daily reminder that we’re unsettled and unprepared. And weighing which is worse, microplastics from the bottle or drinking suspicious tap water, is a lose-lose. Tom’s family (all born and raised in Greece) say they never drink the tap water in Athens. They don’t trust it and say they can taste the difference. You only have to tell me once.

It took me and Tom three weeks and 6 stores to find a solo boxed Brita at a grocery store, high up on a shelf in the back. I almost cried with relief because it meant our apartment was becoming a home. Tomorrow we can open the fridge and find the same pitcher, chillin’. That first cold glass tasted like nothing, and after weeks of plastic bottles warmed by the sun, was everything.

I’ll always remember The Meat Stick Meltdown because it opened me up to what is sure to be a year of big random cravings, each one as urgent as our longing to feel home.

The medicine is in the challenge.

hats off, Sofi

A few quick notes

• My husband Tom was born in Athens and lived here until he was 3 years old, and has dual citizenship (hence why this move is possible).

• His father, referred to as Pappou, lives in Athens in an apt with his wife, and Tom’s aunts, uncles, and cousins living above and below in the same building.

• Tom spent summers visiting his dad in Athens and Crete, and this will be his first extended stay in Greece.

• We are both self-employed and can work remotely. Our creative and professional ambitions play a part in this move.

• We are (two-time) pandemic parents and have been desperately want to experience raising our two boys at a different pace than we have. Something closer to days where kids are given freedom to explore, exposure to other cultures and languages, and a bit more of the village we grew up hearing about. Not to mention, we know the clock is ticking before sports and friendships start running the show.

So, earlier this year we got an attorney to guide us through the murky process of moving abroad. What began as a frequent date night “what if”, became a mapped out plan we were paying someone to hold us accountable for.

Our first two week strategy

Knowing the way late August heat in Greece has previously brought us to our knees (tears and yelling, from us not our kids), our plan this time was to go somewhere that didn’t require a ferry or a lengthy drive, (and a place with crisp ass AC). If this were a two week family vacation we’d plan differently, but we were emotionally adjusting for a year of unexpected, relentless, and guaranteed challenges that come with moving to a new country.

Our Day 1 logistics took us a while to nail down. My heart wanted to drive to a picturesque village in Southern Peloponnese, but Soft Landing was our decided theme, and that meant dumbing our intro down. The reality is after you land and get through customs, you still need to get all your bags, pick up your rental car (the step that takes 45 minutes at a min. in Greece). Shit is hot, you’re post-plane dehydrated, and if you’re like me, your compression socks are still tight gripping your swollen calves. All this to say, we headed straight to the Athenian Riviera, specifically Vouliagmeni.

The Athenian Riviera is by no means a secret, it’s home to the Four Seasons, One & Only, 91 Athens Riviera and plenty of other gorgeous well-loved places. Our plan was to take advantage of their amenities during the day, as most of them offer daybed rentals. But there was no way in hell were we going to kick off a year long move with us all jet lagged, crammed into a hotel room, two beds for four people, and a year’s worth of luggage.

A few months ago I found a modest apartment to rent for a few days in Vouliagmeni within walking distance to the sea and plenty of gorgeous restaurants. It’s also two blocks from Sofi’s Eatery, (add to your list).

The apt worked perfectly for us, only thirty minutes from Tom’s family in the city center, so the boys could see their cousins (Josephine 6 and Pavlos 8). It had a simple kitchen with all that mattered: a fridge with two chilled glass pitchers of water. There was a dirt themed backyard home to sun torched fruit trees and no less than 6 napping cats that kept our kids busy counting. Above all, the door-blinds and curtains blocked out every ounce of light, which was essential for getting us on Greek time.

A word on The Athenian Riviera beach clubs

Astir Beach Club is fun to experience especially when you’re in a first day travel fog and don’t mind spending a lot on a breathtaking scene with overpriced, basic resort shops that are only intriguing after a few beach cocktails. I remember loving Astir on my first visit to Athens, but heads up it’s more glitz than charm. Give it a go because the setting itself is hard to argue with, but you’ll likely be surrounded by other Americans and you didn’t come this far…

On the other hand, Krabo Beach Club, run by the Margi Hospitality group, is my favorite in Athenian Riviera. It’s kind of got that “the place to be” vibe, while still feeling intimate and service-oriented. There was a DJ perched up in a little tree setup, attentive, warm hospitality, and it felt like an escape from the never ending crowds. We’d get there by 11 when it was still just us and the locals, and by the time we’d head out around 7pm the energetic, young, sexy Europeans were rolling in for what looked like another long night ahead. *Worth mentioning, Tom doesn’t love this beach. There are some rocks and it requires more parenting in the water. Fair point, but the intimacy and setting still won me over.

Then there’s Lake Vouliagmeni, which is surrounded by limestone cliffs. It’s incredible, and unlike any other swimming experience I’ve seen.

Taverna 37 at The Four Seasons gets a mention here in the event that you’re looking for an aesthetic dinner. The gorgeous view will take your breath away, but the food was so mid it made me a bit embarrassed to be there. Like I cut the line of authenticity and got what I deserved, a tourist trap.

All these fancy emotional support accommodations that we built into our first few weeks got me excited to wrap up with this jet lagged chapter and settle into our actual home. Because that’s the real point of this year: finding home in the unknown. I don’t want to discover Greece on Condé Nast’s Top Ten, or from someone else’s detailed itinerary. I want us on foot, wandering, meandering, taking recommendations from our sons’ teachers, the lady at the pharmacy, the husband and wife who live below us. Our first few weeks were intentionally about a soft landing: amenities, convenience, little to no driving, and recovering from the self-imposed grief of leaving all that we love behind.

Our New Home

First off, our kids keep calling our new place “our hotel”.

“After this can we go back to our hotel?”

I pull out my sweetest mom voice to gently remind them that it’s actually our home now. I study their faces to assess the damage.

They don’t call it a hotel because it’s fancy, they say it because we’ve uprooted them from their lives since early August.

The medicine is in the challenge.

We moved into our fully-furnished apartment in Glyfada a few days ago. To me it’s like a small city, but according to Athenians it’s a suburb. So far, our location works well, (I’m so prepared to be wrong at any point). Tom’s family came over the other night and it felt nice to see what hosting will be like once we have our shit together.

When we walk out of our home we’re just a few palm tree lined streets away from Greek pharmacies (top tier), and outdoor restaurants and cafes that are busy morning til night. We have playgrounds that don’t get busy until 7pm, cool boutiques, and then plenty of generic American brands too. I’ve started challenging myself to hit the grocery store solo despite not knowing how to say much aside from “ευχαριστώ” (which I obviously had to google in Greek), pronounced ef-ha-ree-STOH, it means Thank You.

So that’s the run through our first ~two weeks living in Greece. I’ll be sharing here on a regular basis now that my kids are in school and we have the first glimmer of our bearings. We have a meeting with our Greek attorney next week to get my Greek Residency card. I desperately need to exercise, drink more water than ever, Facetime my mama, and have a long shower cry.

We did it.

hats off, sofi

This first audio reflects on a difficult trip made lighter with a visit to the stunning Pocketbook Hudson.

First, another school shooting, this time at Brown University, and with it, the same sickening question we’ve been asking since Sandy Hook: how many shattered families does it take for America to ban assault riffles.

Then the brutal attacks on the Jewish community in Australia on the first night of Hanukkah. A holiday meant to bring light to a community already carrying so much. Instead, families were thrust into another violent scene, a reminder that the threat is ongoing.

And before we could process either, the news broke about the Reiners, a story so dark it leaves the mind nowhere to go.

Three tragedies in one weekend. So much, so dark, so fast.

What collapses first is our sense of safety. Going out feels scary. Staying home feels safer. And togetherness itself seems unnecessary, especially around holidays, schools, celebrations. Not worth the energy or the risk.

I notice it in myself, the instinct to cancel plans, lay-low, disappear into my phone as soon as my kids fall asleep. Not because I don’t care, but because I don’t know where to put the pain. Fight-or-flight turns into freeze. And freeze looks a lot like scrolling.

And that sure as hell doesn’t help.
We go from breaking news, to a sponsored post, to a Diddy update, to a recipe, and back to brutal breaking news. No human can process that sequence without shutting something off. Our brains start to mimic the pace of the feed, flipping from horror to inspo, then back to bloodshed.

I realized this when Tom and I were talking about the Brown shooting in the car on Sunday. A few seconds into a quiet pause, he brought up something completely unrelated. I asked, “How are you even talking about that right now?” He said, “There are just so many school shootings.” Not cold. Adapted. And we both went quiet.

Is this really part of our human evolution, to lose our sensitivity to mass devastation? Fuck.

Yesterday, I pushed myself to go out to a big gala hosted by Boston Common Magazine at the ever-gorgeous Newbury Hotel. Before the event I could feel myself retreating, so on my way there I promised to be fully, honestly present when talking to people. By the time I got to the doors, the valet team welcomed me with that unmistakable East Coast, funny-as-hell, charming warmth. All night I gave real (Sofi-style tight) hugs, and let conversations wander freely into depth with my new, already-best girlfriend, Xana. I realized I wasn’t bracing anymore.

Ironically, there’s a kind of safety that only proximity gives you.
A room where someone looks up when you walk in. Safe.
A restaurant where the owner remembers your face. Safe again.
Familiar places don’t erase grief but they interrupt our fear long enough to humanize us again.

Gathering like this won’t fix gun reform or undo antisemitic violence. But isolation won’t protect us either. In weeks like this, leaning back into one another isn’t avoidant; it’s necessary. Not because community solves everything, but because it brings us back to our humanity in the presence of one another.

Because nothing restores us faster than a room full of people choosing connection over fear.

Sending you love.

Hats Off - Sofi

That’s the Best-Kept Secret Complex, the belief that a shop, bar, hole in the wall music venue, supper club, etc. has to stay “undiscovered” to stay good. It’s rooted in a deeper cynicism: we don’t trust anything to withstand attention anymore. We assume that the moment other people know about it, it’s ruined. But independent businesses don’t run on mystique, they run on circulation. The vibe we’re trying to preserve is the very thing we’re choking out.

Last week I profiled Bobby’s From Boston, a vintage shop I’ve been buying from for over 15 years. The reel hit over 130k views. One viewer wished it hit zero.

First: I’m not a clout-chasing influencer. I’m a diehard, just like him.
Second: that comment misses the point entirely.

Even performative support pays the bills.

I know this because I ran a shop in Boston for over a decade. Word-of-mouth wasn’t “marketing”, it was rent money. Every post, every tag, every review was met with gratitude. I wasn’t above kind words or foot traffic from anyone.

Because real hospitality doesn’t run on scarcity. As soon as the self-appointed “originals” start guarding the door, the vibe begins to fade. Not from who walked in, but from the entitlement that got there first. And entitlement is the opposite of hospitality.

Don’t get me wrong, I want essence preserved, too. I want phones away, the atmosphere intact, the staff unbothered. I’m real quick to get annoyed when people throw off a well-layered experience. I understand the impulse to protect quality.

But luckily we don’t have to become friends with the norm-core crowds that find out about coffee shops on TikTok. We don’t have to pet their yappy dogs or love how they bring new friends in. We do, however, have to acknowledge that their presence helps keep doors open, and baristas paid.

Because that’s what good customers do. We collectively divvy up the expenses that are only a fraction of “the cost of doing business.”

Fran Lebowitz, patron saint of the lovingly grouchy New Yorker, predicted this panic decades ago. She’s the archetype of the early adopter who resents a crowd on principle. If Fran walked into Bobby’s and found a line, she’d turn around and declare the neighborhood ruined. But even she would admit: if we’re triggered the moment someone else discovers our spot, we’re working with a flimsy foundation to begin with.

Our craving for exclusivity is something we have to confront internally. A small business cannot be responsible for upholding our sense of personal distinction.

Good operators know how to protect the quality of our experiences, while simultaneously adapting to an increased demand. What they can’t withstand is being kept secret out of our own toxic fandom. Independent spaces don’t need us to guard them, they need us to back them. The cool we’re trying so hard to protect didn’t come from silence, it was built from entrepreneurs who were brave enough to risk it all and create out loud.

If we really love these people, the coolest thing we can do is let other people love them, too.

Hats Off,
Sofi

The more I watch the culture shift, the clearer one thing becomes:

We’re living in a moment where the most meaningful human connection is happening inside small, independently run spaces.

When you walk into the right shop, (the good kind, the intentional kind), you can feel your nervous system drop three floors. It’s not about the products, it’s the atmosphere and the unspoken permission to exist without performing. That kind of presence is rare.

We need places like that to remind us that we’re living, breathing humans not built to scroll all day. Places with a pulse that aren’t manufactured.

Scroll culture keeps telling us that “community” is a brand strategy, a god damn sales funnel. But the real thing is analog. It’s sensory. It smells like coffee or something cooking in the back, or cold air from a door held open. It’s eye contact. It’s pace set by the right playlist. It’s context. It’s the opposite of chasing for personal gain . You can’t monetize real community with a boosted ad.

I know this because I watched it unfold in real time for a decade.
My shop wasn’t famous. It definitely wasn’t flashy. But it became a landing spot for people who needed somewhere to be human again.

I heard more than once that the shop “cured hangovers,” a high compliment in a dense college city. First dates used it to cut the tension and deflate awkward silence. Parents came to catch their breath. Founders came to hype themselves up or say the things only the self-employed understand. Lonely people came to stand near other humans without needing to contribute a single word.

A well-run retail space isn’t just a shop, a well-lit bar isn’t just a place for a drink. They are micro-sanctuaries. Tiny glitches in the matrix where the world slows down long enough for something human in you to recalibrate.

One of the clearest examples of a human-centered space is in Baltimore. Quentin Vennie, who runs Equitea, stood on the counter of his café last April, and paused the entire place. With a quivering voice he told a room full of strangers that they were the only reason he got out of bed that day. That day was the two-year anniversary of his 17-year-old son’s accidental death. (Watch his video, and go show some love)

His café isn’t just a business; it’s his anchor, a place plugged directly into his existence. Community as purpose. Purpose as survival. That’s the reach the person behind the counter can have. The ability to see you, and let you see them.

And the people holding that line of connection?
They’re not the influencers chasing trends. Definitely not the people programming our dopamine loops.

It’s the shop owners.
The makers.
The Quentin’s and the local bartenders.
The boutique hotels and hospitality teams.
The founders building spaces with taste and curating an atmosphere rather than chasing virality.

These are the people keeping our communities textured and unflattened by the algorithm.

They are the custodians of culture.
They’re doing it consistently, and often without agenda or enough recognition.

So support them.
Buy the thing.
Talk to the human.
Break your algorithmic trance.

Because if we don’t, the only thing left shaping culture will be the platforms that profit from our disconnection.

Hats Off -Sofi

I’m here because I need a place to park the things worth sharing: the founders, products, ideas, and the half‑formed read of the room. The good stuff I text my friends and save in Notes.

First‑day‑of‑Substack, let me introduce myself. I’m Sofi. I live on the ocean in a little New England town with my husband and our two young boys. I built a retail business in my twenties that ran my life for over a decade. At one point I had two shops, a right-place/right-time e‑commerce business, and ran corporate partnerships with Nike, Apple, Google, all the bigs boys. No investors, just a growing business running on the energy of my youth.

It was pretty dope. But by the time I hit the 10 year mark I was ready to peeeace the f out and find out what a weekend was. More than anything I was done with the speed of what I’d built. I loved every single day of running OG (and all of you who were part of it!), but my body and my spirit craved a new language.

The best thing I did was gift myself a year‑long sabbatical. Enough time to get lost in the postpartum fog, and forget what month it was.

When I slowly re‑emerged, people kept asking, “So what are you up to these days?” and my ego, (still welded to who I was in my twenties and thirties), had no idea how to react. (We’ll talk about that another time, because re‑identifying after over‑identifying? Whole club of us. We deserve the mic.)

Anyway, during that time, I got to see what would grow back on its own.

Some things didn’t change: I’m still devoted to building a business around human connection. I still get grouchy if I’m at a computer too long. My work still has to be chained to my values like keys I can’t to lose.

I’m still working with female founders. Some are just launching, but most of my clients run 7-8 figure businesses, asking, “When do I get my life back?”

Feel you. Hear you.

Women carry a lot. We always have. And now many of us have stacked building a business on top of it all.

It’s a lot.

It’s incredible.

And it’s why I’m building Hats Off (The Ritual Before the Role™).

Think of Hat’s Off as a Modern Wellbeing OS. It’s not a growth hack, it’s grounding. A way to pour into yourself before you give to everyone else. A reminder to enjoy the ride before you look up and realize you missed something you can’t get back. (Not me missing the first half my son’s 1st birthday because of a custom order due to an airline? One‑way flight to mom-guilt.)

And this time I’m not building my business in silence or only showing the cute parts. I’m bored of staged journeys and half‑truth/flexes. Nobody learns from that, and nobody evolves from it either.

Being a founder is an invitation to look in the mirror and hold yourself to a higher standard of integrity. You get to design your life with intention, make mistakes and regroup, fall short and apologize to your team. I’ve been a rookie, (I’ve been the boss who couldn’t take criticism), I’m still learning and unlearning. But the rooms I’ve been in, the clients I work with, the insight I’ve gained? That’s not staying in my pocket. Everything I’m learning, gaining, observing, I want to give. The resources that land on my desk, the founders doing it differently, the stuff worth paying attention to..

We’re dishin’.

Okay, yeah you guys we’re right, I’m into Substack. Thanks for reading, see you soon.

Hats Off

Sofi