What the Last 12 Months Taught Me About Transformation

This past year stretched me in ways I hadn't experienced before. At the same time, I made some of the biggest investments of my life in business, in health, and in personal growth. As I've reflected, I realized all the lessons that I've learned tie back to one central theme. It's the difference between short-game investments and long-game investments. Some lessons came directly out of that theme, and others surfaced in different ways, but they still connect. Altogether, I'm going to share 8 lessons with you today. So, let's dive in.

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We all want a quick return when we invest our time, our energy, and our money. And sometimes you do get that lightning bolt shift that changes everything in a single moment. But those moments almost always happen inside of the container of a longer-game investment. And that's the paradox. You don't make a long-game investment for the quick hit, but the long game, the repetition, the trust, the steady deposits, it's what sets the stage for breakthroughs to happen. And I don't just mean money when I say investments. I'm really talking about all of our resources: time, energy, focus, attention.

Long-game investments don't give you a tactic or a fix. They change you. They change how you think, how you operate, how you show up. And that kind of change is what creates strength. It creates lasting results.

And that growth compounds over time. And this wasn't just theoretical for me. This theme came out of what we actually walked through over the last 12 months. I'll give you a quick rundown of the hard stuff, and it probably goes without saying, but alongside these challenges, there were plenty of beautiful moments too. So this isn't to harp on the what of the year that was difficult, but it's to provide context. So here are some of those markers in our life in the past year.

First, we invested in IVF, and it wasn't just money, though there was a lot of that. It was a large financial commitment, but it also demanded huge amounts of time, of energy, of focus, and in the end, for us, it was unsuccessful. This spanned from early summer 2024 through March 2025.

Next, leading up to the holidays, I faced some of the hardest conversations and decisions around family dynamics that I've had. And those moments set an entirely new trajectory for me in terms of boundaries.

In January, Derek, my husband, tore his Achilles tendon, developed a blood clot, which changed everything about his treatment plan and his recovery. And this happened right as round 2 of IVF was ramping up. For those of you familiar, that's when daily injections, daily doctor appointments, etc. And so I'm dealing in my silo with my stuff. He's dealing in his silo with his stuff.

In February, still in the middle of IVF and of Derek's recovery, we learned through lab testing that our son had mycotoxins off the charts in a lab test. So that was pointing to an environment of mold. So that has been its own ongoing journey.

In March, right after IVF had wrapped, though my body still had a lot of adjusting to do to get back to normal, my health completely crashed with an Epstein-Barr virus reactivation. I hadn't even known about an EBV, that's what they call it, an EBV, in the first place, and it left me drained and confused. It took me a while to figure out what was going on.

And now, when I mention Epstein-Barr virus or EBV, I think it's important to pause and explain. If I have the opportunity, especially for women around my age, Epstein-Barr virus is a part of the herpes virus family. Once you contract it, you've got it. It never leaves your body. And for many people, it just stays dormant. This is similar to other herpes viruses. Herpes virus type 1 can stay quiet for long stretches and then reactivate as cold sores. Herpes virus type 3 causes chickenpox first, and then it reactivates later in life as shingles. Epstein-Barr virus is herpes type 4, and it behaves in the same way. For many people, it stays dormant, but under stress, it can reactivate. And when it does, it can completely wipe you out.

For me, that reactivation left me drained. It wasn't just feeling tired. It was an exhaustion at a deep level, like my body was fighting something it couldn't win against. I had swelling in my glands, my face. I had waves of fatigue that would let me function for an hour or two, and then I'd crash. Literally crash. I'd literally have to lay down.

So if you've ever felt that kind of extreme depletion that doesn't make sense to you, it's worth looking into. It's more common than people realize. And for women, what I've learned from doctors, women in their 40s and 50s, it can show up in pretty disruptive ways.

Now, I don't want to belabor each of these. And this, again, this wasn't the whole picture of my year. There were plenty of beautiful, joy-filled moments too. But this list is what brought me to my knees. I'm sharing it as context so you can see why this past year transformed me and why it forced me to think differently about short game versus long game investments. And not just in business. I had already been thinking in that way in business, but in all areas of life. If we ever meet in person, I'd be happy to talk about any of these pieces in more detail. For now, what matters most is that they formed the backdrop for the lessons that I'm going to be sharing today.

Lesson 1. The lesson is this. Breakthroughs may feel sudden, but they are almost always the product of steady deposits made over time. The long game creates the conditions where those breakthroughs can finally happen. The breakthroughs that change everything rarely come on day one. They come after you've made consistent deposits, enough of them that the next insight can actually take root.

From the outside, a breakthrough looks instant. From the inside, it's the result of work you've been doing for a long time. And while you can't force a breakthrough, you can raise the odds. Repetition, reflection, honest feedback, rest. It can all increase your capacity for breakthroughs. It doesn't guarantee it, but those things create the conditions that make breakthroughs almost inevitable. And that's why the long game matters so much. It sets the stage for breakthroughs that reflect real transformation.

Lesson 2. Short-game investments give relief, but long-game investments change who you are. Transactions solve a moment. Transformations change your path. And short-game investments are like transactions. You trade money or time for relief, data, or momentum. It's useful but shallow. And for me, a quick tool or even reactively taking a moment to reset when things are feeling very off gave me a short-term boost. Those moves were well-intended, but they are too surface-level to get underneath what I was really facing. Helpful in the moment, but not transformational.

Coaching, on the other hand, has been transformational. This was not a small investment. It's almost like I knew I needed to go into a wormhole to go on a journey that would change me from the inside out. I had struggled to do this on my own, and I wanted guidance to come out the other side with the results that I really wanted. I was looking for a deep shift, and I knew that having someone on my side for the changes I needed to make would be very important.

Part of this came from what was happening with my health. I had gained weight over the last year, so not to mention all the other health stuff I was going through. I had gained weight and not 1 pound of it budged despite my healthy choices, increasing my activity. And we're talking months. So it was another sign. On top of the other physical challenges I was facing, I needed a long-game process for my body, my mind, and my heart.

I was willing to take 100% responsibility for the results that I wanted to create. But it's not on anyone else but me, but I knew that the road would be long, and that's why I decided to hire a coach for accountability and support and to increase my odds of success. And oh, has it increased my odds of success. We'll get into that more in the coming weeks as I have conversations with him here on camera for you.

Another example, when we found out our son had high levels of mycotoxins, I could have hired one of the cheaper mold inspection companies. And instead, I researched, and I chose the woman I knew I wanted. She was more expensive than the rest, and we would have to wait months for her to become available. That was a long-game decision. It's not about speed or cost, but about accuracy and trust to put us on the right path for real. And the truth is, I wasn't going to get away without transformation in key areas of my life. The surface-level fixes weren't enough anymore. And if I only buy relief, I rent my results. And when I change who I am, I own the results.

Lesson 3. Consistency may feel boring in the moment, but it's steady deposits that create results that look miraculous later. Compounding doesn't feel brilliant while you're doing it. It only looks brilliant in hindsight. And we all understand this idea, consistency. There's nothing flashy about it in the moment, but over time, the build-up creates results that can almost look miraculous.

With my coach, I decided on the little things I was going to do, and there were a bunch of them that if done daily would stack in a meaningful way. And there were plenty of days I did not feel like doing what I said that I would do, and that's why having a coach was key. The accountability kept me from slipping back into old patterns. I also had support from my therapist, from my functional medicine practitioners. I have a great physical therapist that was really helpful throughout this process as well. And having those people in my corner made a huge difference in staying consistent.

Compounding looks boring, and it feels unexciting until it looks brilliant. I focused on what I could control each day. The results are showing up on their own timeline, and I can't depend on quick hits of dopamine to keep me going. I have to set the goal and know what I'm aiming for, but my real commitment has to be to the process that will get me there.

This isn't any different from business. It's exactly what we've been talking about in the last three episodes of this podcast. It's also what Velocity Work is designed to help clients with, setting goals and then honoring the process that makes those goals possible.

And yet, even though I understood this so deeply, I built a whole company on it, and I've helped countless clients apply it in their firms. It was still really hard for me to live it when it came to personal transformation. I was hard on myself because it seemed like I should have been able to simply apply what I already understood to what I was going through. I kept thinking, I do this so well professionally. I should be able to master it here too, but I was floundering. And it was humbling. Getting the support to dig deeper and figure out what I actually needed to do was key. But equally important was the accountability to follow through daily on what I had committed to. And that combination was the turning point.

Lesson 4. Short-game moves live at the level of tactics. Long-game work reshapes your identity. And when your identity shifts, new behavior feels natural instead of forced. The real return on your long-game investment is the identity shift it creates. And here's what happens when identity shifts. First, your standards rise. What used to feel good enough no longer fits. Second, your desires evolve. You want different things because you've become someone different. Third, your perspective widens. You can see the bigger picture more clearly and make decisions differently because of it. And fourth, your capacity expands. You can carry more, you can lead more, you can withstand more without it turning into unhealthy stress or anxiety or depression. Your mental and physical state don't take the same hit that they once did. I've seen this firsthand.

After investing in our beautiful retreat suite, where we host clients, everything up-leveled. That investment shifted not just everything for me, but also for my team. And it raised our standards, the way that we show up for clients. As a second example, I can already see and feel this shift in myself since making the long-game investment of hiring a coach, and we're just getting started. The identity change is already underway. And that's the power of the long game. It doesn't just hand you new results. It creates a new you, someone who can sustain and expand those results over time. When who you are changes, what you do stops being a struggle.

Lesson 5. Short fixes are fragile. Under stress, they break. Long-game investments build strength that holds under pressure. That's been true for me this past year. Setting clear boundaries in my family dynamics greatly reduced my anxiety. Nearly all of my daily non-negotiables that I have now that I have a coach are centered around my restoration and my recovery. And the container my coach provides continues to catch me when I'm wobbling. You don't want your focus to be creating results that vanish under pressure. You want to build results that hold under pressure. And that's the reward of the long game. It's durability.

Lesson 6. Short-game investments aren't the villain, but they need their limits. Their role is to provide relief, data, or a bridge. They should support the long game, not replace it. Now there are times it makes sense to use the short game, like when you need urgent relief in order to just stay functional, when you are conducting small experiments that give you information. The short game can bridge or be the bridge that stabilizes while the long-game bets mature. Also, short game can boost momentum when your belief is low. So the guardrails then, you want to always make sure that you cap the budget and the time. You don't just let these things drift on where they become your long game. And second, you want to decide ahead of time when you're going to stop. And third, always bring the learning back into the long game. Short game has a job. It's relief, it's data, it can be a bridge, and you can use the short-term moves to support the plan, but not to avoid the deeper strategic work.

Lesson 7. Not every long-game investment gives you the result you had pictured, but every long-game investment will change you. The growth and transformation aren't ever wasted, even when the outcome looks different than what you were hoping for.

Tying this back to last year, for me, what I think of is IVF is the main example. We not only invested a large sum of money, but almost a year of time, energy, focus. When I say time, energy, focus, I just really want you to understand that I mean time, energy, and focus. Like all three of those, it feels too little to say out loud, but it was a lot.

And the outcome we hoped for didn't happen. But even though IVF didn't give us a second child, it changed me. It changed Derek. And it certainly changed us together. I gained resilience. I gained a deeper compassion for myself and a new strength that really only comes from walking through that kind of disappointment. And for us, as a couple, that entire process built unity and commitment at a level we hadn't experienced before. And what we'd always known in theory, but this year deeply taught us, is that partnership isn't about everything going right. It's about staying connected when everything goes wrong. And the outcome wasn't what we'd hoped, but the transformation was real.

Lesson number 8. Transformation doesn't happen in isolation. The long game requires partners. This year drove that home for me. I've always considered myself someone who's self-reliant and taken pride in that. But this year, as I say, the people that surrounded me made all the difference: my coach, my therapist, my functional medicine practitioners, my physical therapist, of course, my husband and my team in many instances. These partners didn't walk the road for me, but they walked it with me, and that made all the difference.

I think sometimes we expect ourselves to muscle through and to prove we can carry it all on our own, but that's not how transformation works. Long-game change is too deep. It's too demanding to do solo. Partners don't just give you tools. They help you stay consistent when you'd otherwise slip. They help you see blind spots that you can't see yourself. They hold you to the vision that you have committed to. And the truth is, every long-game strategy needs allies. The right people on your side don't just help you get the results, they help you become the kind of person who can sustain those results.

Before I close, I want to acknowledge something. These lessons didn't come to me on a merry little road. They came to me through pain and suffering. And honestly, I don't think I would have lived them if life hadn't brought me to my knees this past year. My hope is that sharing them helps you reset your own thinking before you have to walk through the kind of season that forced me into them. But I also know sometimes we don't internalize lessons until we're face-to-face with the struggle.

So, either way, here's the bottom line for me. I don't want to play the short game anymore unless it's strategic in the bigger picture of the long game. I don't fear the long-game investments anymore, the money, the time, the energy, because if I want a result, going all in is imperative. And the real risk, what I've learned, isn't in making the investment. It's in not making it.

Sometimes I will supplement the long-game path with a short-game move. Other times, I may create a bridge that gets me to be able to make the long-game investment that I need or that I want to make, but it's always about the long game. And I don't expect myself to do it all alone. Partners are a core part of a successful long-game strategy.

So here's my invitation. Stop treating long-game investments like transactions and start treating them like transformations. Play your game with that in mind. It will serve you.

Hey, you may not know this, but there's a free guide for a process I teach called Monday Map Friday Wrap. If you go to velocitywork.com, it's all yours. It's about how to plan your time and honor your plans so that week over week, more work that moves the needle is getting done in less time. Go to velocitywork.com to get your free copy.

Thank you for listening to The Law Firm Owner Podcast. If you're ready to get clearer on your vision, data, and mindset, then head over to VelocityWork.com where you can plug in to quarterly Strategic Planning, with accountability and coaching in between. This is the work that creates Velocity.