The Year I Stepped Into a New Identity
(And How Hard and Rewarding It’s Been)
This wasn’t my first reinvention.
I’ve built and exited companies across finance, real estate, hospitality, and education. Selling, transitioning, taking setbacks, and coming back stronger are familiar territory for me.
But this year was different.
This year wasn’t about rebuilding something broken, it was about navigating an unknown path and rediscovering who I am without the pressure to immediately produce.
For the first time in 25 years, I slowed down on purpose.
After my last exit, I gave myself permission to reflect. Not just on what I’d achieved, but on what it actually took to get there. I started writing about my own journey. Then about other people’s accomplishments. I spent time networking in person, listening more than talking, trying to understand how different industries were evolving, what people were worried about, and what they were quietly excited about.
I hired a career coach, not because I needed a job, but because I wanted to understand myself better and learn how to articulate my value in a changing world. I became more present on LinkedIn, something I never felt the real need for before. I took real estate courses with top people in the field, not to prove anything, but to refresh, recalibrate, and stay sharp.
And in April, I started a newsletter without fully knowing where it would lead.
At first, it was simply a place to think in public. I wrote about my own experiences. my real estate projects: office-to-apartment conversions, renovating blighted properties, a hotel turnaround, how I became a developer by accident among other articles. Then I started studying other companies more deeply. I wrote case studies on founders and businesses I admired, trying to understand what they did right, what they got wrong, and what patterns kept showing up beneath the surface.
The newsletter quietly became a lab.
As I wrote, the audience grew. Subscribers expanded well beyond the original group I brought in from past ventures. Engagement deepened. More importantly, the writing forced clarity. It made me confront a question I could no longer avoid: Who exactly am I trying to help? What is their pain point? What can I provide to help them where my talent, knowledge, skills, resources and connections make a difference?
What I didn’t anticipate was how hard answering these questions is.
After working across so many contexts, with so many people, in so many industries, narrowing down felt unnatural. I’ve always seen myself as the sum of five or six skills. A connector. A translator. A change management coach. Someone whose value came from helping others see what’s possible.
Choosing a lane forced me to confront that.
It challenged the part of me that believed breadth was the value.
It forced me to fight my ego.
To sit with the discomfort of not knowing.
To accept that the only way forward was to listen, observe, test assumptions, and learn in public again.
There was a quiet moment this year when a thought kept looping in my head:
What if I’m just too much of a generalist for this new AI-driven world?
That fear didn’t disappear overnight. But my perspective started to shift.
I began to see AI not as a threat, but as a reset.
A leveling of the playing field.
Yes, others had been deep in their niches for years. But many lacked a general view of business, the ability to translate across domains, or the skill of bringing people together around shared understanding. That’s where my experience mattered. My background wasn’t something to abandon. It was something to integrate.
Over time, a new niche started to form.
Not AI as hype, but AI as infrastructure.
Helping individuals and companies understand where to start.
Interpreting trends in automation.
Shaping strategic actions and narratives that actually make sense.
Building tools, prompts and workflows for personal and business clarity.
Connecting with others who are also bridging worlds.
As I paid closer attention, a pattern started to emerge.
The people leaning in weren’t beginners chasing shortcuts. They were experienced professionals who felt the ground shifting beneath them. People with real skills and real track records, but growing uncertainty about relevance, direction, and leverage in a changing world.
Some were professionals wondering how to translate years of experience into something more resilient. Others were solopreneurs trying to build income streams that didn’t depend on a single client, role, or platform. Many were founders and operators under pressure to make smarter decisions as AI reshaped how work gets done.
What they shared wasn’t a lack of ambition, it was uncertainty about direction and focus.
That’s when it clicked.
My work wasn’t about teaching AI.
It was about helping people think clearly, decide deliberately, and build systems that compound as the landscape shifts.
Slowly, the work began to line up.
My consulting offering sharpened.
My network evolved.
My confidence shifted from loud to grounded.
The metrics followed.
Ending the year with 4325 subscribers from a base of 1743 and 7321 followers. Open Rate averaging 33% coming from 26% in September and click through rate at 5.3%. coming from 2.3% in September. This is signal. The value is there and is building momentum.
As the year closes, I have some metrics for next year, but in broad terms, here is the way I am operating and also what’s coming:
Doubling down on what’s working.
Staying an observer and a listener.
Testing assumptions before launching new initiatives.
Putting myself back into discomfort through live conversations and podcasts.
Building educational modules, cohorts, and advisory work in lockstep.
Growing alongside a small, trusted group of supporters.
Many years ago, I had a simple dream: to do meaningful work, remotely, on something I could spend hours on with genuine excitement.
The foundation is finally there.
Most of my work now is for professionals and founders navigating uncertainty, trying to build leverage, clarity, and resilience in an AI-shifting world.
I write weekly, sharing my thinking openly and through a structured Blueprint edition focused on key trends, practical systems, and decision-making pillars that help people grow smarter and stay ahead.
By focusing on work I care about and building momentum around it, the paths to monetization are becoming clearer, and I trust the rest will unfold in time.
None of this happens alone. I’m deeply grateful to the readers, collaborators, and quiet supporters who’ve challenged my thinking, shared their perspectives, and helped shape this work along the way.
I know I’ve come a long way.
I also know I’m still early.
Thank you for supporting my work.
Juan Salas-Romer
To visit my newsletter:
To visit my coaching page:
To subscribe or sign up for the founder’s membership, which includes two hours of coaching at a 30% discount and access to my full library of prompts and tools
A few popular articles:
How I Scaled My Business Without Hiring: Building My First AI Agents for $0
AI Is Here. Let’s Get Your Business in the Game.
The Science of Execution: Why Most Founders Stay Stuck (and How to Break Through in 90 Days)
How to Build Assets That Compound (Even When Life Forces You to Pivot)
Everyone’s Rushing to AI. Few See the Ceiling Ahead.
Scaling Smart: 5 Systems Every Solopreneur Needs to Grow Without Burning Out
Built to Blaze: How Ooni Turned Backyard Pizza into a $200M Global Movement
Juan, thank you for sharing your journey over this past year, and your honest assessment of all you learned in the process. Your story resonated with me as I too took the long winding road to learn more about myself, and those I am looking to serve. People remember lessons learned through stories, better than advice on its own. Keep up the good work and have a happy and healthy New Year!