Why I deleted a whole website (and what it has to do with tearing down buildings and Crohn-Zone)
There's one small, quiet moment right before a big decision. For me it happened in front of my computer screen, at an unreasonable hour of the night, while I was looking at my old website. It was perfectly fine. Really. It was beautiful, professional, and I'd poured my soul into it for a long time. But when I looked at it that night, I realized something that pinched my heart: it wasn't me anymore.
In recent years, a lot of my focus (and the website's) was on living with Crohn's, on the community, on healing. That was an inseparable part of me, and it still is. But lately I felt my energy shifting. The focus came back, hard, to the business world. To strategy, to technology, to the fascinating connection between AI and soul. The old website simply didn't carry this new frequency. It was full of "what was", not "what is now".
The fear of letting go of the familiar The logical thing to do was to "renovate". Change some text, move some blocks around, swap the cover photo. And I tried. I swear I tried. I wasted precious hours on small edits, on pixel fixes, on trying to force the old template to fit the new me. And it just didn't work. It felt like putting a band-aid on a broken bone. It didn't hold, and mostly it drained a lot of energy out of me.
I always say I don't believe in propping up an old building. I believe in tearing it down and building again. There's no point reinforcing shaky foundations, or adding a balcony to an old building that no longer fits your needs. Sometimes the right thing is to bring in the bulldozer, clear the lot, and start building again from zero. Clean.
I knew that for the new energy to really come in, I had to make room for it. Physically and digitally. I have to admit my hand was shaking when I realized I was about to delete everything. Delete a whole website? All that content? All that work? It feels like taking years of creating and throwing them in the trash. The fear whispered: "Who's going to take you seriously now?"
But then I took a deep breath. I remembered all the times in my life I had to start over (and God knows I've had a few, in health and in business). I remembered that always, and I mean always, after the clearing comes a better build, more precise and stronger. And I made a decision. I started from zero. A blank page.
The magic of precision: bringing all the pieces home It didn't happen in one night. Building the new website, the one you're browsing right now, took me close to a month. It was a month of distilling. Of asking myself again and again: "What really matters now?", "How do I want a client to feel when they come in here?"
And then the big question came up: what do I do with "Crohn-Zone"? Do I split it off and build it a separate website? After all, what does a bowel disease have to do with business strategy and AI? But the answer came very quickly: you don't split. This website is my digital home. And like in a real home, I can't leave parts of myself outside. I'm a businesswoman, a strategist, a tech person, and I'm also a woman living with Crohn's. It's all me.
The decision to keep "Crohn-Zone" inside the website (but with a clear, respectful separation in the menu) is a statement. It says: this is my home, and it includes every part of me. And yes, a certain business client might come in, see it, and say "this isn't for me". And that's perfectly fine. Have a nice day. I believe the clients who are right for me are the ones who see the whole picture, who value authenticity, and who understand that the resilience built by facing health challenges is exactly the same resilience I bring into business.
The lesson I learned This process taught me a huge lesson: sometimes the thing that holds us back most is the fear of letting go of what we've already built. We hold on to the familiar, even when it no longer serves us, just because "we've invested so much in it". It's called "sunk cost", and it's the biggest trap for founders who want to grow.
Real courage isn't building an empire. Real courage is looking at what you built, understanding that it's not "it" anymore, and saying: "Thank you, you were good for your time, and now I'm moving on." Starting over isn't failure. It's the cleanest version of growth. It's telling yourself: I trust my ability to create something new, better and more precise, at any given moment.
The bottom line: if you feel your business, your branding, or even just the way you work doesn't feel like "home" anymore, don't be afraid to make a real change. Don't settle for a cosmetic renovation that just drains your energy. If you need to, bring in the bulldozer. Clear the lot. Start from zero. The world won't collapse. Quite the opposite. It will be waiting for you on the other side, happy to meet the most up-to-date, sharp and authentic version of you.
