August 10, 2015 — The Day Everything Fell Apart
August 10, 2015, is etched into my memory. Not as a gentle turning point, but as a gut punch that knocked the wind out of me.
At the time, I was working as a manager & virtual assistant for Zirtual. My husband was deployed. I was three months pregnant. And I was in Hilton Head, finally taking a little break with my family and brand new baby niece. Life felt…steady. Predictable. Safe.
Then, at 8 a.m. on a Monday morning, I tried logging in to my work accounts. Locked out. I thought it was just a glitch. But then an email landed in my inbox from the CEO: Zirtual was shutting down. Effective immediately.
No warning. No severance. No “here’s how we can help you transition.” Just…done.
I remember staring at my laptop, my heart racing, thinking, How am I going to tell my clients? How am I going to pay my bills? My phone started buzzing from clients, teammates, friends — all asking the same question: What happens now?
One of those clients was Daniel Houghton, at the time I was his right hand and remote sidekick. I called him in full-blown, hormonal hysterics; ugly crying, snotty voice, the whole thing. I blurted out that I had no idea what was going to happen next. And instead of panicking, he calmly said, “I’m not going anywhere.”
That moment changed me.
I grabbed my car keys, drove to the closest Best Buy, and bought a laptop with money I really didn’t have to spare. By mid-afternoon, I was on the phone with my other clients one by one, bracing for the worst. But every single one of them said the same thing:
“We’re staying with you.”
Zirtual’s collapse wasn’t a small stumble, it was a total freefall. The company had scaled too fast, spent too much, and when the money ran out, the people were left to pick up the pieces. I was one of those people. Pregnant. Military spouse. Far from family. With a career that just evaporated overnight.
And yet, in that wreckage, something unexpected began. Without even fully realizing it, I started building the systems, values, and relationships that would one day become the basis for Squared Away.
It didn’t happen overnight. It took almost two years post-Zirtual before Squared Away officially took shape. By then, I was thriving as a mom, with my clients, and had a rhythm I had worked hard to create after moving to Hawaii. Then my now-co-founder, Shane Mac, came to me with a challenge: “I need you to help me scale.” That was the push.
In July 2017, we soft-launched Squared Away. Not as a desperate rebound from a collapse, but as a deliberate, people-first business built on everything I had learned since that August morning.
The lessons from 2015 became our foundation:
- Communicate openly, even when the news isn’t pretty.
- Build relationships that can weather any storm.
- Make decisions with people in mind first, profit second.
Fast forward eight years, and that little post-crisis seed has grown into something far bigger than I could have imagined. We’ve employed over 1,600 military spouses, supported clients in every niche and season of life, and paid out over $30 million dollars directly to military families.
And we’ve done it all with integrity, transparency, and taking care of people as our north star.
When I think back to that August day, with all the fear, uncertainty, and countless tears, I can see now that it was the start of something extraordinary. What felt like the end was really the moment the door swung open to a bigger purpose.
Sometimes the worst day of your professional life is the day that sets the stage for the best work you’ll ever do.
