How a DUI, a Baby, and Squarespace Changed My Life
I was sitting in a holding cell, wondering how I'd gotten here.
Married. About to be a dad. And I'd just gotten a DUI that meant I couldn't drive to my engineering job anymore.
Most people would see this as rock bottom. I saw it as the pressure I needed to finally become who I was meant to be.
Finding out I was becoming a dad in the midst of chaos became my chance to be reborn. If there was a new life coming into the world, I had to create something new too. I had to become the person I wanted my son to see.
That pressure led me to ask myself one question:
What's the one thing I can do right now that I love, that I'm good at, and that people would pay for?
The answer was Squarespace.
But the path from that answer to building SQSP Themes wasn't straightforward. I quit twice. I struggled with pricing. I took on projects I couldn't complete. I tutored on Saturday mornings just to keep the lights on.
I recently sat down with the Squarespace Circle team to share the full story—the chaos, the pivots, the framework that eventually saved me, and what keeps me going today.
This conversation covers everything from that low point to the Digital Alchemy framework I use today: turning problems into content and solutions into products.
If you've ever felt like you're at your own rock bottom, or you're struggling to figure out what your "one thing" is—this one's for you.
The story I was living then became the story I'm telling now in my memoir, "The Corporate Dropout."
