Hi friends, Just sharing an update from recent travels in Sri Lanka and my hometown, Colombo. I was there for a contemporary art festival (www.colomboscope.lk), where I exhibited my work. I was also invited to take part in a group exhibition at a local gallery. Both were well received, and the festival was a major networking event. But it went much further, deepening connections and friendships locally and regionally. One of the Super Whos I was meant to reach out to as part of Q4’s 10-Week Challenge is now my friend. While I’m still starstruck, I think we’re both benefiting from the relationship, which is pretty cool. This is her website; she’s an artist: https://sehershah.net/ During the festival, I also decided to host a charity art sale to support Cyclone Ditwah relief. For those of you interested in art market pricing, I’ve attached a pdf with a price list from my time working with a gallery in Colombo. Happy to chat further about it and share more, as it’s likely unfamiliar territory. I managed to raise $3,748.55 from seven artworks over five days. The sale was 50% off, and all proceeds went to charity. It was a good sale and an interesting test to see which collectors were willing to purchase. One of the main takeaways is that I’m ready to take on a more empowered leadership role to build a robust and resilient arts infrastructure in Sri Lanka. This would involve reaching out to friends and their families who run business empires there and asking them to contribute towards this larger goal. I will also be approaching my family (we have a family business there, too). I’m well placed to be in this position as an art advisor because people know and trust me personally and professionally. That’s the hometown network. Another identity shift is that I feel ready to pursue academic study at a university again. It’s been 12 years since I graduated from college, and I never felt ready. But now many things have fallen into place, which is quite exciting.

A few weeks back, @Toby Thomas shared the idea of choosing a word to define your year. That stuck with me, and I chose FOCUS. It’s been a lens for everything. Today, @Dwayne Van Harberden and I had a deep dive conversation about what that really means, not just in strategy, but in practice, how we stay focused in the chaos of daily life. We talked about: - Managing attention with intention - Saying no to distractions - The discipline of being fully present with the task at hand - How your whole life supports your ability to focus — nutrition, rest, energy And Dwayne dropped a line I’m definitely stealing: “My day starts when I go to bed.” 💥 That’s it. No more treating rest as optional. This all ties directly to the “impossible” Q1 goals I’ve committed to at our MedTech startup, and how I plan to make them inevitable through focused execution: 1. Raise $2M in funding 2. Build and implement our quality management system 3. Complete our feasibility study So thank you again, @Toby Thomas , for planting the seed with that word-of-the-year idea. And thank you @Dwayne Van Harberden for sharing your insights! Would love to hear from others: What’s helped you protect your focus lately? How do you keep your mind in “builder mode”?

Hi all, hope everyone's having a happy start to the new year! On that note, here's an interesting podcast from Kate Northrup (I love her work). She talks about how January 1st is more linked to a linear conception of time than organic, biological, and cyclical rhythms. This is why most New Year's resolutions fail, and she explores why the new year actually begins, from an energetic perspective, towards the end of January. Also love the idea of seasonality here: if you use the appropriate time to rest and recover, then when you do emerge and take action, that action will be all the better for it because it would be the season for its growth. https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/plenty-with-kate-northrup/id1160960959?i=1000743934279 All the best! 🌟

For this RTMG group it’s going to be Identity. What’s your Word for the Year? It’s hard to commit if you don’t know who you are or who you want to be. All actions should follow your commitment.

I'm starting Year 10 with a different question: Who am I becoming? Because here's what 9 years in business taught me...success isn't about what you can build. It's about WHO you're becoming while you build it. The 1% rule still applies. James Clear nailed it in Atomic Habits: improve just 1% each day, and you're 37x better in a year. But here's the shift most people miss: That 1% isn't about doing more. It's about becoming more of who you already are. Not grinding harder from your finite strength. Not chasing who you SHOULD be. Discovering who you actually ARE—and operating from that. This year, I'm not focused on new tactics. I'm focused on deeper revelation. ❌ Not performance. ✅ Identity. Because every time I tried to be who I should be, I repelled people. The moment I became who I actually am? The right people started finding me. That's the difference between "have to" and "get to." And that's what I'm walking into in 2026.