Five years ago, hertelier didn’t begin with a business plan: Who Knew!

It began the way many of the things that end up mattering most in my life begin…with a conversation, a hunch, and no small amount of “well…let’s see what happens.”

Emily Goldfischer had an idea. Clear. Instinctive. Deeply personal. Her passion for hospitality runs deep. And she cared deeply about gender parity long before it became a talking point. She wasn’t trying to “fix” the industry. She simply wanted women in it to be seen fully…for their thinking, their leadership, their creativity, and their ambition.

Nancy Mendelson and Emily Goldfischer, hertelier co-founders

She asked me to help her shape it. She wanted to call it HotelieHer... I suggested Hertelier.  And so it began!

What drew me in was that while our paths were different, our values were aligned. I’ve always been someone who loves building things…ideas, brands, platforms, momentum. I’m drawn to growth. To possibility. And like Emily, gender parity has never felt like a trend to me, it’s felt like unfinished business.

What we didn’t have is just as important as what we did:

No investors.

No launch budget.

No paid growth strategy.

No monetization roadmap.

Which sounds scrappy and romantic (and sometimes it was) but it also meant we were building on something far less predictable than capital: trust. And trust, I’ve learned, is both incredibly powerful and incredibly delicate. You don’t get to misuse it without consequence.

What we did have was mutual respect, complementary strengths, and a shared belief that if we spoke with our audience instead of at them, an honest connection might grow. Slowly.Organically.Intentionally (and occasionally with crossed fingers.)

And it did.

hertelier became a brand built not on scale, rather on conversations that didn’t chase trends; on stories that weren’t optimized for clicks; on a readership that didn’t just read, but wrote back…engaged, reflected, and pushed us to think more deeply.

The Round Up grew the same way. Week after week, it landed in inboxes without asking for anything in return. No paywall. No pressure. Just care, consistency, and curation rooted in respect.

That still matters to me and Em. Probably more than ever.

So, as we gear up to celebrate our 5^th anniversary and talk about what comes next, it’s not because we’re trying to reinvent ourselves. It’s because we’re trying to protect what made this work in the first place.

When you build without financial investment, you build with relationship. And relationships, real ones, require intention when they evolve. You don’t rush them. You don’t take shortcuts. And you don’t pretend they’re transactional when they’re not.

This next chapter for hertelier isn’t about monetizing loyalty. It’s about honoring it. And yes, that’s a nuanced distinction, but it’s one we care deeply about.

It’s about sustainability, not as a buzzword, but as the ability to keep showing up with depth, independence, and editorial freedom without losing ourselves in the process.

Because what we’ve built together--Emily, myself, our contributors, and you--was never just content. It’s a relationship. And relationships, when they matter, deserve to be tended to thoughtfully.

As we celebrate five years of hertelier, I keep coming back to a simple truth I’ve learned the long way around: The most valuable things in my life weren’t the ones I funded:  they were the ones I committed to…the ones that felt right.

This is simply our way of continuing to do that…carefully, consciously, and together.