The Wind Up

Hi, We're Emily and Tony!

You can read the super condensed version of what is to follow on our About page, but we thought that the long version deserved some air time, too.

As we said there, we’re certainly not here to tell anyone else what should matter, but we hope that someone, somewhere, may find our journey interesting, inspiring, or helpful.

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We're high school sweethearts, now in our early 30s.

We met in Phoenix in 2010, one hot summer night between Sophomore and Junior year. Texting each other until 3 a.m. turned into spending every possible moment together, and culminated in a very official party-sized chocolate chip cookie cake with "Be my girlfriend?" written in blue and white frosting.

We've been inseparable ever since.

T - I'm not sure how or why she has continued to put up with me, but I credit that cookie cake with at least some of it.

We adopted our dog, Turbo, when we moved in together in college at the University of Arizona. For a decade, he was everything to us. We brought him everywhere we could—to friends' houses when he wasn't even invited, on airplanes, and eventually halfway across the country as we started our careers in Columbus, Ohio.

We lived in Columbus for four years, where Tony was in medical school, racking up nearly a quarter million dollars in student debt along the way. Meanwhile, Emily worked her way up from an entry-level career out of school to a director-level position in the same amount of time.

And so began another four-year marathon.

Next up was Cincinnati for another four years in Ohio, where Tony matched into emergency medicine residency, complete with 70+ hour weeks rotating through day and night shifts at several local hospitals. This period was full of growth, hardship, highs and lows. We bought and sold a house. Emily founded a business that was extremely successful out of the gate and quickly scaled (revenue and complexity). We formed incredible friendships that will last a lifetime. And, of course, Covid struck right at the beginning of all this, layering a dark season of death and suffering on top of an already difficult journey.

E - When I started my company, the timing in the market was perfect. The business was immediately profitable, and we doubled our revenue year-over-year, which led me to scale quickly. More on that later.

Our four years in Cincinnati were equal parts grueling and formative. They battered us, hardened us, but didn't break us. We did our best to stay human, remaining connected to each other and to the things that brought us joy. We were fortunate to have supportive family and friends scattered throughout the country, and our residency group who immediately became our "chosen" family and welcomed us and Turbo with open arms. When the demands of our daily lives in Cincinnati weighed heavily on us, we sought escape in travel and food.

Fortunately, about two years before the world turned upside down and the residency grind tried its best break us, our honeymoon to Vietnam in 2018 exposed us to how incredible travel truly could be. Journeying through a country we did not understand, glistening with sweat as we slurped spicy noodles on tiny plastic stools, and connecting with people and a culture so different from our own opened our minds in ways that we hadn't foreseen. We knew we had to continue to see the world.

We started saving money in a little glass jar.

Eventually, we set up a small, recurring monthly transfer from our paychecks into a travel savings account to fund our two-week vacations. Over the past 10 years, we have traveled not only to Vietnam, but also to Aruba, Japan, Spain, French Polynesia, Mexico, the Bahamas, and Indonesia. Each time, we saw more of the world and formed deeper connections with each other. With each of these one-or-two-week blitzes, our desire to continue exploring the world has grown more insatiable.

If we try to trace it back, we think it was 2021 or 2022 when this tiny little seed started to grow into something more. We had seen the default way of doing things, and we wanted to change the narrative for ourselves. Influenced partly by seeing those around us achieve traditional success in their careers (and imagining what ours could look like), and partly by our exposure to the happiness and different perspectives of people we met and cultures we experienced around the world, we knew we had to do things differently.

Steeped in achievement and hustle culture, we naturally made career moves first. Tony re-evaluated his flexibility as an up-and-coming emergency physician, and started to build a niche in telemedicine because that was different and offered what he calls "macro flexibility" and more creativity for his career and future. Emily took the opportunity to build her business and scale it, growing it ever more "successful" while scaling the complexity and responsibility required to achieve each next growth milestone.

In the summer of 2024, a lot of our plans had come together in just the way we had designed. We moved to Philadelphia for Tony to pursue a fellowship, ironically doubling down on the "traditional" way of doing things. Fortunately, we absolutely loved Philly, the people, the food, and the culture. It resonated with us - no bullshit, gritty, unpretentious, and secretly warm and welcoming underneath the surface.

Through all of this, Turbo was reliably by our sides. Until, one day, he wasn't.

Have you ever watched a movie where there is an astronaut on a spacewalk, going through their routine, and then suddenly WHAM! they are sent spinning into the abyss of space by the impact of an object they never saw coming? There they are, clawing for a handhold, reaching for any sense of comfort or security, the stability and safety of the space station vanishing into the distance. Panic and fear in their eyes, they find nothing but emptiness.

That's what it felt like to lose Turbo.

Around this time, Tony's fellowship was about halfway over. Our lease was ending in a few months. Emily's client contracts were aligned to conclude all around the same time. Presentations and conferences we had committed to were lining up and on track for completion. On the Gantt chart of our lives, our most substantial projects were all coming to their natural close within a few months of each other. It felt like the end of an era.

Looking at our lives from a new perspective and seeing this alignment of endings, we knew we had the opportunity to create a new beginning of our choosing. Despite the grief and pain, it became clear to us that we were no longer tethered.

Every aspect of our lives simultaneously begged the question, "What's next?"

For the first time in our 15 years together, instead of jumping, we paused.