However, orders did come in, all by themselves. And every time I got the notification email confirming so, my heart sang. I've been desperately eager to get the whole thing going proper. Now, following several months of belt-tightening, saving, and readjusting some family matters, I'm entering 2026 almost fully unblocked to go all-in on Bidet New York.
So what actually got done? The foundation, mostly. I moved to New York (so long, Woodstock), got our sales tax license, and built out the platform—Netlify for the site, Airtable for operations, Stripe for payments, Brevo for emails. I locked down our social handles, bound a policy with an insurance carrier, and even opened an Amazon Business account. Then I deleted the Amazon Business account. Some lessons you learn by doing.
The real wins: five actual installations, completed and paid for. And somewhere along the way, I assembled what I'm calling the "pro kit"—a collection of parts and tools that'll solve almost any installation hiccup on the spot. That kit is still evolving, but it's real.
What I didn't do is just as telling. I didn't post on social media once—not a single post, comment, follow, or like. I didn't hand out a flyer. I didn't run an ad. I didn't attend a single event. I didn't hire anyone or set up a merch store. The entire marketing and growth side of the business sat completely untouched. That's the gap I'm walking into 2026 to close.
Our Goals for 2026
2026 is the year we stop waiting and start doing.
On social media, we're committing to daily engagement—posting, commenting, following, liking. The goal isn't to go viral; it's to become a familiar face in the New York home improvement and sustainability conversations. Consistency compounds. Here on Substack, we'll publish twice a week: one high-level check-in, one more boots-on-the-ground. Though, a little virality wouldn't hurt.
The big initiative is building the street team. We're calling it the "street funnel"—people on the ground talking to New Yorkers, collecting survey data, turning conversations into social follows and email signups, and eventually turning warm leads into booked installations. It's how we scale word-of-mouth without waiting for it to happen organically.
Beyond that, we want to hire our first employee, whether that's a part-time installer, a street team lead, or an operations person. We want a merch store off the ground—t-shirts, hats, stickers. We're still thinking through referral programs, partnerships with plumbers and property managers, collecting reviews from our existing customers, and whether to go deep in one neighborhood or spread across the city.
That's the plan. It's ambitious, maybe naive, but it's real. If you're subscribed, you'll get to watch us either execute on this or publicly fumble through the adjustments. Either way, you'll know how it's going.
What 2025 Actually Felt Like
The section above is the business story. This one is the human story underneath it—the part you don't usually see in a company update.
Sitting here now, I remember the year fondly, but that's only because things worked out. Memory is kind that way. It flattens the lows once you've cleared them.
I want to talk about the lows before I forget them entirely.
I won't go into every detail, but I almost bottomed out financially. I almost watched my brother die. I saw relationships end—some I was certain would last decades when I entered them. And I was reminded just how brutal the American arrangement can be. This country is a superhighway for economic mobility, but if your tank is empty, or you're not at least in the passenger seat of someone who's driving, you don't belong here. That's the deal. I felt the edges of it this year.
Your life isn't an objective thing. It's a narrative—a story you tell yourself to reconcile everything you encounter and process the impossible amount of data uploading to your meat sensors constantly. This year, my narrative kept telling me to resent people. It made me notice things I didn't like. Someone close to me called one day while I was mid-crisis, and I started venting. She immediately tried to get off the phone—she needed to "guard her peace."
I want to criticize people for their apathy. I do, loudly, in my head. But I also know how this story ends: an unexpected life vest from my mom. A well-timed referral from an old colleague. Distant family wandering back into my life at exactly the right moment. And that same friend—the one guarding her peace—showing up on many other calls, actually engaging, actually listening. I don't deserve even a fraction of the credit for getting through this year. Other people carried me.
But here's the strange thing: even with all that help, I'm not sure anyone fully understood how bad it was. How close my shave with the bottom really was. You don't talk about it when you're in it—it's not smart to, especially if you're the one others are looking to. And by the time you're through it, the memory has already started to soften, and the urgency to explain fades. So the knowledge just sits with you, quietly.
I think a lot of people are walking around with that. Years that nearly broke them, carried by others who may not even know what they carried, holding private knowledge of just how close it got. We don't talk about it because it's not strategic. But it's there.
I felt it. I'm happy to be on the other side again (for now). And if Bidet New York makes it, this year will be part of the origin story—the part that rarely gets told.
Thanks for being here.