A Vision of 39

We were in serious debt. My solution was to reduce our living expenses drastically by moving into an Airstream.

It sounded simple.

Our food truck was eating more money than it sent to our accounts. Luca's Dinner With Luca events were really what kept us going at all. We had two kids under the age of two that we both believed needed their mom full time. So I bought an Airstream, only to find it needed to be completely renovated. Ripped of flooring, rewired, completely gutted to get rid of the hidden water damage, mold, mice nests, and rusted frame. We were in debt, in a renovation, and out of energy.

It was after I had gotten the rotten subfloor removed that the hardest part came: the huge rusted screws that had held the floor, frame, and shell together. They were too rusted to just unscrew, and too thick to seem like I could do anything else. I couldn't get them out.

I spent days with different tools. I tried the Sawzall with different blades. It wasn't working for me. I was tired of balancing on a few inches of steel frame, trying not to fall while holding a saw and trying to remove these screws that were hard to get to in the first place.

I went home defeated. Tired. And I asked Luca, who was by no means a handyman, if he could give it a try. He did. He was gone an entire day, morning to evening. He came home.

"I couldn't do it. Can we just sell it?"

It had become a mountain of a project. But guess what? Without a floor holding the frame and the shell together, you can't even drive the thing anywhere without a good chance the shell will blow right off. So no, we couldn't sell it.

We had to keep going.

Was it that night that 39 visited us? I'm not positive. There was one other night it could have been.

There was the night that Luca came home from the food truck and told me he was going to close it. He was done. We had given it a year. We were out of gas. Out of money. Out of hope. And I said ok.

Many times before I had pushed him to keep going. The food was great. The reviews were great. It HAD to work. This time I had no more to push.

We had finally found a spot to park it, a place that would remove all of the bills from how many times the thing broke down, or when the brakes caught on fire, or paying all of the fees for all of the places to park it inconsistently. And it still wasn't busy enough to pay for the labor and food costs. We were trying to serve elevated street food when the majority of people who visited the food truck park wanted reheated frozen burgers and mozzarella sticks.

It was one of those nights. I do not remember which, as both were in the same time frame and defining conversations for us. And we decided to pray after we talked. Luca was exhausted. After we prayed together he laid down on the couch and closed his eyes. A few seconds later he said, "Why am I seeing 39 39 39?"

I didn't know what he meant.

"It's like it is flashing in front of my eyes. 39 39 39."

Me: "I don't know...but it sounds like you might be having a vision."

I texted my sister, just so someone would hear the story in case it did turn out to be anything. I didn't know what three 39s meant. I still don't for sure. But I know this:

When Luca was 39, we went from a negative to a positive net worth. That same year we bought our first house, which also had a cottage that we could rent out, which made it our first investment property as well.

2025 is when I turned 39. I didn't know what it would hold. But it held a lot.

• Luca opened his first brick and mortar business, and his first full time venture after the food truck.

• I met Sara Blakely. That is another story, but it was a pivotal moment for me. She came up and said, "I just had to meet you!" It was at a female founders conference, and her story is one that inspires me to keep going big. We always have, Luca and I. But hearing a female founder who has been there and succeeded past her wildest expectations, and then getting a chance to meet her, amazing part of year 39.

• I was baptized, and when I was baptized, two women prayed over me. One said she was seeing chains of connection, that I would be a connector of people. The other said she saw me in a fireman suit, and I wasn't going to have to keep wearing it. That the season of fighting the fires was over.

• A friend of mine was talking to me about a project I wanted to start, one to help connect people and purposes. I didn't know what to call it. He told me that he never had good names for his companies and listed a couple, both of which had sold for millions.

"Just pick some letters or something, girl.

And it came to me:

39 Brands.

My birthday was this week. I turned 40. The day before I got a text: "It's your last day of 39!!!"

My answer?

"Nope. 39 is sticking with me forever. I bought the URL."

So here we are. Almost a decade, a ton of 39s later, and 39 Brands in the making.

Thanks for being here at the start.