Hey, it's Bernie!

On June 1st, Power of Smol became a real, incorporated business. Something I'd been circling in my head for years, finally on paper.

It didn't feel like a finish line. It felt like standing in front of a door I'd been staring at for months, pushing it open, and finding nothing but blackness on the other side. No hallway lit up waiting for me. Just the decision to step forward anyway.

I stepped forward anyway.

Why now, and why me

I've spent 25 years moving through tech and business, at places like AWS and Salesforce, before that building websites out of a Silicon Valley agency back in 2002, and along the way, running actual workshops and training rooms. None of it clicked into a single business until I asked myself a simpler question: what do I actually want to hand people?

Not more software to learn. Their power and time back.

That's Power of Smol. I help women solopreneurs organise the business systems quietly eating their week, so they can go back to running the business instead of babysitting it.

The unglamorous part nobody tells you about

Incorporating is the easy bit. The weeks after are where the real work starts, and most of it is invisible from the outside.

• Talking to actual solopreneurs about where their week disappears, not guessing at it from behind a laptop.
• Realising the pain isn't “I need a Notion template.” It's “I don't know what I don't know, and I'm too tired to go find out.”
• Structuring a product around that. Not one giant system to overwhelm someone on day one, but a foundation they can actually finish, plus pieces they grow into.
• Learning that outreach isn't a pitch. It's showing someone the exact thing costing them three hours a week and letting that speak for itself.
• Looking for the training partners and communities already talking to this audience, instead of trying to build one from zero.

I actually built the first version of this system years ago, for my own online store, before I knew I'd ever turn it into a product for anyone else. Four years of running my own operations turned out to be the real R&D.

Where things stand right now

The Smol OS, the foundation product, is live. It's out in the world, which is a strange feeling after building it mostly for myself.

I've started having real conversations with potential partners about bringing this to their audiences. New territory for me. I'm used to building things, not pitching them.

And I'm deep in building out workshop content, because I've learned people don't want to read a manual. They want someone to walk them through it.

What I haven't figured out yet

Having a product live doesn't mean people are finding it. That's the honest gap right now. Not more infrastructure, not more polish. Visibility.

Which brings me back to that door. A few weeks in, I can tell you the hallway doesn't light up all at once. You just keep walking, and pieces of it light up behind you, proof you were actually moving and not just standing at the threshold congratulating yourself for opening it.

I'm still walking. Still building. Genuinely still a little scared some days, which I think means I'm doing it right.

What's the thing you're building that still scares you a little, even after you've already committed to it?