On my birthday last year, I decided to make a choice.
I chose, once again, to start my own business. After 7 years as an employee, I felt ready to go back and build something from scratch.
Throughout those 7 years, even at good companies and in good roles, I kept hearing a call toward independence. I always dared to listen to it, to ask myself the hard questions and figure out: is this an escape, or a choice? In Hebrew, the two words — bricha and bchira — are made of the same letters, with just two of them swapped. A tiny change that makes a world of difference.
My answer was usually: escape. So I decided to keep investing in the path I was on — going deeper into management and gaining experience at a few companies, whether by building a team from scratch or by joining a strong existing team and helping it grow and develop.
That interested me more and more, and I was sure I was on a long-term track in that direction.
I loved my teams, and I think they loved me too.
But when I made another move, into a management role at a fast-growing startup — to grow along with it and dive into a lively, high-speed startup environment — I stopped for a moment.
I thought it was a natural continuation, a step forward, even a case of listening to myself. Within a few months I realized that I had listened — just not all the way.
I really was looking for more aliveness. I really was looking for a certain atmosphere and a certain challenge. But I missed something.
I missed the voice telling me that this time I was more ready to go back to building a business, for the second time (after a few good years way back around 2017, before a million global and local crises began).
It kept calling me every now and then, as it always had. Sometimes directly, sometimes triggered by certain situations.
I kept talking to it, and after a while I realized that this time it was a choice. This time I was ready for this step. Again.
It was late October 2025, close to my birthday on October 27, and I decided — symbolically — to make the decision on that date. I'm not saying I was reborn, okay? That would be a bit much. But I felt whole and ready to try again. I missed being independent, and the entrepreneurship that comes with it.
Unlike past transitions, I allowed myself a month or two to take my time and breathe, instead of the few days off I usually took between chapters. What can I say? I don't know how to rest.
And in January 2026, symbolically again, I officially registered my business. Even though I was still working out the direction — running lots of experiments in the field, writing, talking to dozens of people — I knew that declaring the business open, rather than waiting for the first day of revenue, was the approach that works for me. Committing myself to showing up. Everyone has their own style.
Over the years I've learned that I do my best work when I put myself in a situation with my back against the wall.
Healthy? No. But it wakes up something that lives inside me, something that sometimes acts like a fireball: it clears the way and creates a lot, but it can also leave destruction behind, in the form of burnout or scorched earth.
Within a few weeks, and then months, revenue started coming in from the experiments I'd run.
At first I focused on coaching managers only. I created workshops and tried to sell them. Some of them I did sell, and it took a lot of hustle and legwork. Not something that's easy to replicate as a model, but it worked. The fireball did its thing.
In February, more significant revenue started coming in, and that's when I opened a parallel track that I expected to be 50-50 with the manager coaching: working with organizations to use AI in ways that help them reach their strategic goals. From the organizational level all the way down to individual teams, each of which works differently and needs something different.
I worked in parallel with several kinds of companies — different cultures, different sizes, completely different industries. Here too, I wanted to find out where I bring the most value, what's right for the business, and what actually interests me.
I worked with a low-tech company (literally a factory that didn't know what AI was and wanted to start streamlining its processes).
I worked (and still work) with a European company that was using AI in a very basic way and faced significant business and organizational challenges — challenges that the right, effective use of AI could improve dramatically.
I worked (and still work) with a large, well-known, highly technological company to drive broad, deep AI adoption that makes a real impact on their day-to-day. Each time going deep and hands-on with a few teams.
Over time, I also started running one-off workshops and talks for companies, or joining a company's offsite to bring value in a specific area they cared about.
I also started teaching at universities, in new AI Transformation courses I helped build — for managers in organizations, for employees in organizations, and a wonderful project with an amazing group from the IDF Disabled Veterans Organization and Tel Aviv University.
Sounds like a lot?
True.
Sounds exhausting?
True.
Sounds fun and fulfilling?
Very true.
This is where the damage of fireball mode comes in. It runs, thinks fast, isn't afraid to try things and crash into walls — and sometimes even break right through them. And sometimes it succeeds.
But it leaves scorched earth behind. Energy depletion. Work taking over weekends and holidays. Starting very, very early in the morning and going late into the night. Giving up on — or not having the energy to invest in — friends, family, exercise, personal needs.
I know this because, over time, I've learned that it's a pattern I repeat. It doesn't matter whether I'm an employee, a freelancer, or a founder. It's a pattern that comes back in every one of those options, sometimes disguised as something else.
But this time, when I set out to build the business, I decided on one more thing.
I decided to also invest in myself on a personal level.
In understanding myself better — my patterns, my struggles, my unhealthy ways of operating. The ones I keep repeating because they pay off in the short term, but aren't necessarily right.
I didn't always manage to invest in that either. Sometimes I took on so many commitments that I had neither the energy nor the time left for the personal side, and I did what I do best: I pushed it down. I buried myself in the work and hustled with a knife between my teeth. Pure survival mode.
My birthday is coming up again — October 27, 2026 (wait... why does that date sound so familiar?!)
That means almost a year has passed since the decision I made. The choice.
It means almost a year has passed since I officially started the business and began running.
And it also means it's time to lift my head above water, to step a little out of the survival mode that — in the middle of a war with Iran, and a war with myself — tried to build this business and make it about delivering real value to clients, on both the AI side and the management side.
It's almost time to move into the business's second year — a year in which I hope, and am actively working, to also be something other than a fireball. To think more and go deeper. To learn to stop and breathe more. To bring back exercise, friends, and family beyond the improvised versions I managed during parts of this year, and to get on a more mature track.
All of this alongside a business that will grow, mature, and sharpen its focus while I sharpen mine.
The picture I created on my actual birthday, almost a year ago, captures a moment when I tried to break down the core values that guide me. I wonder if I'd see them the same way today, after this past year.
