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Founder Story

Why I Built SOLIS

Laken Deckard - Founder Jul 7, 2026 6:56:17 PM

I was told to work as if I had no children and parent as if I had no work. SOLIS is what I built instead.

There is a particular kind of tired that doesn’t come from doing too little. It comes from doing everything, all at once, all the time — and still being told it isn’t enough.


I know that tired well. I am a mother of four — three of them under the age of five, and one who is seventeen. I am also a C-suite executive across several companies. For a long time, my days had no seams. I was expected to work like I didn’t have children, and to parent like I didn’t have work. Both, fully, at the same time, with no version of me left over for myself.


The vacation that wasn’t one


The moment it became undeniable was on a vacation. Everyone around me was laughing, resting, present. And I was watching them from the edge of it — cooking, cleaning up, folding laundry, answering emails. I was in the beautiful place, but I was not in the moment. I was managing it.


Even with my own children, the ones I would give anything for, I couldn’t sink into the time we had together. A voice in my head was always counting — what still needed doing, how fast I could do it, what would be waiting the second I stopped. I was present in body and absent in every other way. That is the cost nobody puts on a calendar.


Hustle culture sold us a lie


We’ve been taught that this is what ambition looks like — that draining yourself dry is the price of building something that matters, and that if you’re exhausted enough, you must be doing it right. I lived inside that belief for years. I met unrealistic expectations by emptying myself against them, day after day, and the finish line only ever moved.


Here is what I finally understood: constant hustle is not a strategy. It is a slow trade of your presence, your health, and your relationships for the feeling of never falling behind — a feeling that never actually arrives. Doing more, faster, is not the same as building a life. Often it is the thing standing directly in the way of one.


What I chose instead


So, I stopped asking how to do more, and started asking a different question: what would a life designed around alignment — rather than around everyone else’s expectations — actually look like?


That question is the foundation of SOLIS. My belief is simple: environment shapes performance. The spaces we move through, the pace we keep, the way our days are designed — these are not background details. They quietly decide whether we get to be present or whether we spend our lives managing the edges of our own moments.


SOLIS exists to build environments and experiences for people who are done confusing exhaustion with achievement. People who are deeply ambitious and refuse to accept that the price of that ambition is never being able to enjoy the life it’s supposed to create. It is for the executive who wants to be at dinner and actually be there. For the parent who wants a vacation to feel like one. For anyone who suspects there is a more intentional way to live and perform and wants permission to go find it.


This is where I’m starting from


I won’t pretend I have fully figured this out. I’m still in it — still catching myself reaching for my phone at the dinner table, still unlearning the reflex that rest must be earned. But I’m no longer building my life around expectations that were never sustainable to begin with. I’m building it around alignment. And that shift has changed everything about how the work, and the days, actually feel.


That is why SOLIS exists. Not to help you say no to chaos, but to help you design a life that feels like your own — one where performing at your best and living well are finally the same thing.


If any of this sounds familiar, you’re exactly who I built SOLIS for.


Subscribe to SOLIS Field Notes to follow what I’m learning as I build a more intentional life — and a company designed around it.

Laken Deckard - Founder
Founder / SOLIS Air
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