Michael and I were just on a podcast with Christina Enneking, a leadership coach we've been getting to know. It was a great conversation.

The episode is live on Spotify, iTunes, and all major platforms.

But honestly, it was just one of many conversations happening right now. And that's the real story of this update.

I'm writing less and less code and scheduling more and more meetings and conversations with all kinds of people. For an introverted engineer, that felt scary at first. My whole career, the work was the code. Now the work is the people. Slowly, I'm starting to feel how it benefits me, and I'm starting to enjoy it.

When I left corporate life to build JourneyLoop, nobody told me how quiet it would get. I've been working in isolation for a long time. You leave a building full of coworkers, and suddenly it's just you, a laptop, and your own thoughts. For months. There's no one to bounce ideas off at lunch. No hallway conversations. No casual "hey, what do you think about this?" moments.

Here's the thing I didn't expect: the coaches we work with feel the same way. Coaching can be a very lonely profession. Coaches work in isolation and are looking for community. They spend their days helping other people grow, but they often do it alone, without peers to learn from or lean on. That pattern kept showing up in every conversation Michael and I had with coaches this past year. Connection is the missing piece - for them and for me.

Over the past few months, a belief has crystallized for me. AI will be most effective when viewed as a collaborator, not as a tool. We've recently started thinking of JourneyLoop as a coaching companion, not a platform. The difference matters. A platform is something you log into. A companion is something that works alongside you.

The vision is simple: instead of being afraid that AI replaces you, you'll be living in a world where AI becomes your sidekick in everything you do. You'll give it access to the things you work with - email, calendar, virtual meetings - and it will be able to work alongside you, taking care of tedious tasks so you can focus on what matters. Or just get some rest.

But here's the irony. Thinking deeply about AI's role led me straight back to people. The more I understood what a good AI companion looks like, the more I realized that the human side - the trust, the community, the shared experience - is what makes any of it work. Technology without connection is just a clever tool sitting in a drawer.

We're now creating cohorts of coaches to collaborate with us. Getting together as humans, using AI as our companions. On Monday, February 2nd, I will start our first accelerator program. I'm nervous and excited.

Even though the day-to-day is hard work, building a community feels fulfilling and brings me joy. Being able to work with all of these amazing individuals brings me joy. That's something solo building never gave me.

2026 is about connection. For JourneyLoop, for the coaches we work with, and for me personally. If you want to follow along, I'll be sharing more here as the year unfolds.