@GapWell, it takes a village...
- skessler81
- 11 minutes ago
- 4 min read
2025 was a very successful year for GapWell.
We pushed the team hard in an effort to achieve key milestones that we knew would be well worth the effort. The dogged determination in 2025 is exactly what was required to set 2026 to be even bigger in terms of changing the narrative around what success looks like for young adults navigating this challenging period of time.
We attribute our success to three important themes:
THEME ONE: The need for our services is very, very real.
When we first launched GapWell in 2023, we had a number of key working assumptions. As parents of young adults, we felt there must be a better way for our sons and daughters to navigate the period of time from high school to career.
One of our earliest informal advisors insisted that you can't argue with data so we should go get some data to make our point. He was right and our 2024 GapWell college survey results were overwhelmingly clear:
82% of college students said they experienced "a lot" of stress their first year
75% wished they received more advice their first year
61% seriously considered transferring their first year
93% prefer to solicit advice from wiser, older students
Those results became the blueprint for our very first product, the GapWell Guide. Those first 25 wiser, older students from universities across the country were determined to help younger students navigate the same challenges they faced and learn from their mistakes. The results were powerful.
Over the last two years, our college preparedness and career-readiness product and service offerings have grown tremendously. Most of our best new ideas come from the front lines of our business -- young adults and their families asking smart questions with no obvious answers in sight. Necessity is a fantastic innovation driver.
"a beautiful example of mentoring done right"
The marketplace amplified our journey early and often across national publications like TOWN & COUNTRY Magazine, origin story podcasts like Unlost Cause, and even multi-generational family conversations that focused on GapWell's "genuine desire to help people" before, during and after college.
THEME TWO: Word-of-mouth is powerful when you do excellent work.
The first 9-to-12 months of GapWell's journey was focused on convincing potential customers of what we were capable of. We aimed high and the results spoke for themselves.
GapWell Guide subscribers spoke of immediate value from our wiser, older students who candidly shared about the mistakes they made while navigating their own first year of college.
Our career readiness clients realized there is way more to do than having an error-free resume and an updated LinkedIn profile. It's about teaching our clients how to creatively stand out in a crowded marketplace where college coursework is hardly a differentiator.
I'm grateful for all of your support securing not one, but two internships.
When an introverted college student overcomes their fears and learns how to successfully network their way to an internship or full-time employment, they have a lot to be proud of. In fact, we find that GapWell clients tell a lot of people about their success.
AI or a challenging economy have become the go-to excuses for young people unwilling to put the work in or those who thought they would be rewarded for simply showing up. Not in 2025.
Referrals -- to friends, siblings, classmates, cousins, college counselors, neighbors -- remains our single largest source of new business. Inbound leads have become so plentiful that we have had to double down on the criteria we consider when assessing client fit. This is a good problem to have.
THEME THREE: The GapWell extended family is our secret weapon.
2025 was the year where it became clear that who we surrounded ourselves with had a multiplier effect.
For example:
When we hire an impressive student contributor for the GapWell Guide or College Crash Course, we typically benefit from the mother who shares the GapWell story with an entirely different, but equally as important audience of influential parents.
When we co-create an intentional growth experience with a teen that pushes him outside his comfort zone better equipping him for college after his "gap" year, that mother passes her son's story along to many other parents of teenagers across their community.
When a college student stops making excuses for falling short of expectations and builds muscle memory around the habits that will serve him well not just in college, but in life, that proud father will share their experience with anyone who will listen.
Our family continues to support us generously on this journey. For that we are so thankful.
Our GapWell "extended" family then expands our reach and allows us to do even more remarkable things as you will soon see as we launch the next chapter of GapWell.
Oh the places we're going to go in 2026 and beyond....
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