Launch Week: She Sold $323k In 28 Days

Hey, capitalists. It is launch week at the Capitalism Incubator, which means a bunch of our students are releasing their first products in alignment with our eight figure exit model. It's been really fun and exciting because there's people who are getting their first sales. My boy Damian in The group had 10 sales on his first day, which was like $700 in sales. Cheryl hit like $9,000 in sales in her first three weeks or something like that. And this is the official launch week. So kind of in honor of that, I wanted to feature one of the pieces of content that we have inside of Cap Inc. And it's a case study with Katherine Lavery where she talks about how her Launch did over $300,000 in her first 30 days. And this was really helpful for our students and I wanted to pass it along to you. If after you listen to this, you feel inspired to come do this, I want you to come join us inside of the Capitalism Incubator. You can find out more@Capitalism.com Inc. This is where we get our hands dirty and we help people build businesses that can scale to seven figures and be sold for an eight figure exit. And our next round starts February 1st. So if you're listening before then, go over to capitalism.com inc. And you can find out more. Enjoy this case study with Kathryn.

Hey Kathryn, welcome back.

Hey Ryan, how's it going?

Good to see you. I respect what you have built so much and you're probably tired of telling the story, but it's one of my favorite things about your story is that at the very beginning how scrappy you were. And so you've spoken on our stage, you've been on our podcast and you have had a certain level of success that is admirable, respectable, enviable. But you started off super scrappy. And I was hoping you could tell me about the launch of Best Self and if you can remember it, how you seeded that and teed it up, because from an outside perspective, it looks like that had a meaningful impact on the momentum of the business. So would you tell me that story?

Yeah, for sure. So it's easy to be scrappy when you have no money. It's kind of a byproduct of it that you just have to figure stuff out. So I, I'd done a couple of Kickstarters with another business and they didn't do nearly as well as myself did, but it was like I would learn a couple of things with each one. And so when it came to launching the Self Journal on Kickstarter, we launched in August 2015. And so it was like brand new product. Didn't have an email list for this business. Like, my other one was like an art store. And then this was completely different. It was just like a topic I was super passionate about. And so basically From I think May 1st until August 19th, our goal was let's get as many email subscribers so that when we launch it, we have people to launch it too. Because when you're crowdfunding, you know, a lot of people are like, oh, just put up a product and people will come and buy it from me. I'm like, your mom probably will. If you were close to your mother, some of your friends might also. But like, you have to have. You're not going to create a business selling to your friends and your mom. So you really have to figure out what it is you're selling. Like, what problem does it solve? And then teasing out the problem before you launch it.

And you had done. I want to hear about those early Kickstarters because you say they weren't much. Do you remember what the numbers were?

Yeah, I think that the first one I did, I asked for like $3,000 and I got 25.

Okay. So that's not bad.

I just basically did it in two weeks. So a friend of mine, I already had this product and I just did like the creator way. I was like, I would print it and then I would hope to sell it. And so I was actually at a conference and my friend Justin was like, oh, you should kickstart this. And I was like, oh, what's that? And so basically I set myself a goal of like, I was going to launch in two weeks. I'm still going to launch in two weeks, but I'm doing it on Kickstarter. And so, Ryan, if you saw the first video I ever did, like, it was. I don't know if I can swear it was so terrible. Like, I was like a robot. And even my little brother was just like, I couldn't even watch the video. It was so bad. So. So, like, I just did everything terrible. I didn't know my numbers enough. So, like, I lost money in international shipping. I actually did a blog post about like, how much money I lost or how much money I didn't make from that amount that I raised. Then I went back and I did one maybe six months later, and I. I hit like 55k on that one. And so that I learned from my mistakes and I kind of learned a little more about, like, engagement and, you know, setting yourself up before but they were just like all little tweaks of basically not just expecting people to come. How do you engage people after? How do you make them give you more after they've backed the company? And how do you have them tell their friends about you? There was just a lot of different stuff. And I came from the idea of like, oh, I'm a product person, I don't like marketing, I don't like selling. And so it was very difficult for me to do it. And so by the time the self journal came along, I knew like, what. What we should do. And then I had a partner, so that made it easier because I could still be the product person and then he could help with the.

Being more markety than me. Yeah, we did a couple of things. There's one. Medium was a pretty new platform. So because we didn't really have an email list at all, I was like, okay, what do the type of people that would buy this product read? And so it was like morning routines of successful people. And so there's like, how to create a morning routine article. But then there was also like a bonus upgrade where I just created these like cool PDFs of specific people. Because a lot of times people are like, okay, but what does Ryan Moran do in the morning? Let me just copy that one. And so we got a lot of emails from me just creating like really good content that people wanted to read and then knowing later they would be interested. And then there's like the law of reciprocity where I felt like if you created enough really good stuff for people, they would come and support you. And actually I wrote a post on Sumo and I think in that year it was like their most popular post is like, how we raised, how we basically launched our Kickstarter and funded in 28 hours. And I really just was like, here are the emails that we sent. Here's like the content we put out. We did this giveaway with like productivity tools where the only people that are going to be interested in this giveaway are people that would buy this product. So it's not like a MacBook Pro or an iPad or something like that where everyone and their mother is going to want it. You want to be like super targeted to the person that would buy it. And so there was a couple of things there so that when you launch your.

Kickstarter that you have people just backing right away and you do that. There's a bunch of different ways to do that, like early bird specials. I think we only needed 200 people to fund our Kickstarter, and we had maybe an email list of 3,000, I think when we launched.

That is so key there because so many people think you need to have an email list of 50,000 people to smash a launch. And in your case, you needed 200.

Yeah, you need 200.

That's right. That's exactly right. So there's. There's a bit of a thread here that I'm trying to find the center of, which is your first launch, 25k in pre sales. Cool. Second one, 55,000. I know best Self did way, way more than all of this, but you mentioned that when you launched Best Self, you didn't have a list. So does. So you had to have seeded those other two launches in some way. So was that accident? Was it. Was it like, tell me, tell me how you seeded those. And I think those were random products, right? Like, they weren't businesses that you ended up keeping or anything.

No, they were like a poster of aircrafts and film. And like, it was so niche that whenever people were like, oh, you had a lean email list and was like, trust me, these were not the same people.

So I think because the product that we were selling, I was personally interested in. And I have, like, been writing on my blog just like, as I got more into personal development stuff that I was learning and so on my. I might have had like a few hundred people that knew that I was interested in this stuff. And then I used that to start building my list. So it was like a very conscious effort of, okay, how do I create more content around this? And I think now it's way more competitive. But you have to just make sure the content is really good because I put it on Medium. And then on the day we launched our Kickstarter, Arianna Huffington just randomly tweeted out an article that I wrote that I don't know Arianna Huffington, she just. It had gotten so many upvotes because it was good content on Medium that she'd seen it and then tweeted it out. And then at the bottom of, as soon as we launched the Kickstarter, I changed the call to action at the end from join our email list to get these bonus. To get like these rituals or whatever to, oh, by the way, the writer has a Kickstarter running right now.

So in your case, Medium was the traffic source to build the email list.

Yeah. And the giveaway.

The giveaway. The giveaway of.

Of a bunch. So, like, productivity books, I see bulletproof coffee, a meditation app subscription, and things like that.

And so, so that captured people were interested in this topic and that that gave you the hot list. It gave you the warm hot list of people who wanted this or something similar.

Yeah, it gave me 3,000 people.

It could have even be like 2,800 people. Something along those lines of people that were interested in these ideas.

Yeah, beautiful. And today you mentioned that it's more competitive medium. But I mean that could be one influencer who does a swipe up campaign with you because you've added a lot of value to them. Or it could be the audience that you've partnered with or it could be a Facebook group for goodness sake. The important thing is that there's engagement with that audience and that's something that, that you mentioned that 200 people who cared, 200 people who were engaged. So being that you didn't have money and that this was your first real business that was launching, how did you stay engaged with them in a way that felt on brand when you went to go launch?

So I think just again there is a lot of noise out there and I think sometimes people are like, I don't know if this is going to work so I'm not going to put too much time into this. So they try to spread themselves across multiple things because they're just like, oh God, what if I put all this time and it doesn't work? And so they put a little more time and they wonder why it doesn't work. They're like, oh, thank God I didn't put too much time into that piece of content because it didn't really work. And you're like, there's a disconnect here. And so I think doing less but just putting out stuff that you really are happy with and you would want to read or consume or do whatever. Like Brian, you put out really good content and it's like actually you probably like, oh, this is. Someone's gonna learn from this or it's beneficial. People know when you put out stuff then you're just like, you're either teasing something and not teaching or you are really just trying to put something out there without actually realizing that it's not very useful. Right.

So what was that for you? Like what was.

I think it was like a very intentional content creation around.

What, what I'm doing. How I trying to think of the, the biggest piece of content. Like I know that the actually here's how we launched our Kickstarter was really a big deal because it was like, here's the emails we use, like this is the giveaway and like there's a chart of like how our email list grew. And so a lot of people don't give away that type of info. And so people were like, oh, well, I should support this project because I just learned so much from it. And so maybe at the start they didn't even think they wanted the product, but there's that law of reciprocity that they knew, like this was a 5,000 word thing and I just gave away all my secrets, which most people don't do. But you'd be surprised how much people love it when you do share that stuff.

Yeah. And it sounds to me like you were truly documenting the process in a way that added value to people, which was you're sharing what worked and what didn't work. So much so that it built the audience enough to become a self fulfilling prophecy.

Other people shared it because it was such good content. Like they sumo they got a ton of visitors on their site and because I had written this very epic post, it was great for them, for traffic. And then that's another way how I built my list. If you can create great stuff, people like to share it and.

Make them look good.

Yeah. What's beautiful about this is you didn't fake anything. Like you're not trying to make content that isn't real content. You're just documenting the process of your own business. And that keeps the customers engaged. And so even with this very small audience at the very beginning, you come out and you smash the launch. And you'll have to forgive me, my knowledge of Kickstarter is minuscule, but I know you had a major launch. Did you have inventory at the time or did you use that to buy the inventory?

Yeah, so that's. Yeah, you don't have inventory at the time unless you're doing it really wrong.

Kickstarter is you're essentially pre selling a product before it exists. And it's like the ultimate validation that people want it. Because, you know, I call Kickstarter like a secret Santa to yourself. Because you buy something you really want and then six months, two years later, something shows up at your door and you're just like, I totally forgot about this.

Yes, I've had that happen too. And what was the lag for you? Like, I didn't realize that. I mean, I have experience where it can be two years as a buyer, but that's got to drive you crazy as the, as the business owner. So what was the time lag between getting the money and shipping out?

Shipping out. We finished our campion like mid September, it was a month long and we had told people we're going to have it to you by Christmas, which we did get it to them by Christmas, but it was so tight. And I always tell people, never promise anything that could be even potentially close because everything and anything will go wrong. And so for us, you know, your funding goal is based, or I tell people to base it on the minimum amount that you need to be able to create this product. So for example, if you have like a thousand widgets and the manufacturer, that's how much they need you to order for them to actually do it, then your funding goal should be based on that. So you need to hit. And that means like, you know, if it's $5, you're saying to buy this thing you want to, you know, obviously you're up charging it. So to actually complete that order of a thousand units, you only need to sell 250. And so I like kind of a formula of Kickstarter is great for launching a product, but you don't want to have to always go back to Kickstarter. You want to create like a cycle of your inventory so that you're constantly being able to pay for new stuff instead of being like, every time you run out of inventory, it's like, ah, Kickstarter, Kickstarter, Kickstarter. Because it's just not going to work out. So for us, our like funding goal was 15,000 and that was based on 1,000 units, I believe. And the great thing is that if you succeed your goal, you're producing way more than you planned, which means your cost per unit is going way down. And so we ended up pre selling 10,000 units and we produced 30,000 with the money from Kickstarter because we, you know, that was how we launched our source. We essentially had like 20,000 units to launch the business with. And those sales enabled us to not have to take money after that.

That's beautiful. So what I hadn't realized about your story specifically was that you, you pre sold them and then ordered. Yeah, I didn't realize that about you specifically. I know people do that, but I didn't realize that you had done that. And so, and it's so freeing to get that there. It's okay if there's a lag, right? If you're, if you're selling on Shopify, if you're selling on Amazon at those, at the very beginning stage, it ain't okay to have a four month lag. And so I didn't realize that you had that big of a Lag. And you did all of this with such a small audience and it really propelled that momentum.

Yeah. And I think a week before the Kickstarter actually ended, we ordered the product.

Because we were on such a tight timescale, so I think we had to put down.

I don't really remember the details because we didn't have money, so I don't know how we would have paid, but maybe we told them, you know, like, this is our Kickstarter. It's going well. We're putting in an order for this many. And then I think we actually had to increase the order at the end just because the last like five days were so crazy.

Was there any profit from the launch? I know you mentioned that you did a post about here's how much money I didn't make from this, but did that. What did the numbers end up shaking out to be?

Yeah, that Kickstarter was profitable because it had to be. Yeah, I kind of learned from previous mistakes, but we, you know, the money that we'd put in to like do the video and, you know, all that probably costs like five grand all in to do a bunch of random stuff like that. And then we got that money back and I think we paid each. Like, we took a little money, but most of it was just went right back into business to, you know, fund extra inventory so that 20,000 units, you know, set up an online store, we set up a warehouse in the uk, so we did a lot of stuff with that money. We're super scrappy. Like, I think for the first few months, we didn't even have our own email addresses. We had aliases and shared an inbox because it was like $5 a month. And.

I love this. I love this so much. So you have done such an amazing job of maintaining brand integrity through the scale of this. And it looks so elegant and effortless from the outside. Your packaging is on point, your team is on point, it seems, anyway, so it looks like things have been very smooth sailing. And I'm curious if that's a true perception and how you have seemingly scaled so elegantly versus most people would just break if they hit. Like, I've seen breaking points at about $2 million in revenue, companies will just break like they don't know how to get out of that trap. And then happens again at 5 and it happens again at 10, and those are like breaking points. And you've just kept going. So what am I missing or what? What. What is the elixir there?

Well, I mean, I think branding and the Outside perception for me is kind of the easiest. Like, the easy part, because I have. I am so picky about that stuff that. Because, you know, of the team, I, like, notice everything. Like, I'm like, that pixel is like two pixels from the right too far. Like, is all I see, which is, I think, really annoying for my team.

And so from the beginning with. Even with our manufacturer, I remember getting one of our first products, actually. The journal, I think was. I don't even know if it was a sample or whatever, but I get it in the mail and I'm just like, what has happened? Like, this ribbon is half an inch longer than I said it should be, or like, so I will notice all of those things. But it's kind of like the.

What's the. Like.

There'S that band that they talk about where they. They go in, and if there's any brown M and Ms. There, they won't play. And the whole point of it is, like, it's not about M and Ms. At all. It's like that their writer is so complex about speaking specifically, like, the lights and everything that has to happen for them not to get hurt. And they have this in their writer. So essentially they don't have to check anything else because it's like, if you can't do this right, then.

We don't trust that you're doing all the complicated stuff. Right. And so for me, I think, because I was so crazy detailed about that stuff with our manufacturers that they would call quality check themselves way more than maybe if we had let them off with some stuff. And so that started with the manufacturer, and then, honestly, with the. I think on the outside branding, again, creating design structures is not that difficult. What was happening behind the scenes is just breaking points operationally and.

Dealing with stuff that I had no idea why, like, we just hired a CFO company this year. And honestly, half my conversations is like, wow, could have been doing that before. And so I've definitely learned some expensive mistakes, a lot of them. But.

I think just being open with when I make mistakes and learning from them and also hiring great people that also make mistakes, but then they also learn from them, and then we, like, regroup.

Would you tell me about that team building aspect? Because whenever I talk to you, you're like hosting a retreat for your team or you're doing something to build camaraderie. And I also know that you're like, you've run into some hurdles with Team two. You've run into some challenges and some bumpy roads with people who are a part of the team. And I'm curious how you have maintained that team integrity without losing your mind.

So is it a hiring thing? Is it a managing thing or something else?

I love that you thought, I haven't lost my mind.

So for me, especially when I started, I didn't like managing, and Danielle wasn't very good at it. I would just be like, oh, I'll just do it. I'll just do it. And I think that part of that comes with, like, I enjoy doing the work. And so I kept doing it. And so when. When it came time to hiring people, the hardest, you know, part was just trusting them to do things. But you can't scale unless you do that. And it got to the point where I was, like, feeling so burnt out. And then also, I think I've had bad bosses before, and I pretty much try to do the opposite of what they did.

So, like, I remember when I was an architect, I remember I didn't know what success looked like sometimes, like, beginning these projects, and there was no instructions. I was right out of school. So they would just be like, dude, you know, this project's due in three months. We've never done anything like this before. That was the. But figure it out. And so I'm just sitting with all these, like, building manuals, like, trying to understand. And I felt, like, so anxious all the time. And I passed one of the buildings, and I was like, oh, I wonder if my team knows what success looks like in their role. Because I remember that anxiety that I felt, which is just like, feeling like I'm, like, constantly fucking up. And so there's.

Like, that part of it of setting clear, like, standards for people. And then we have core values. One of them is, like, assume positive intent. Because I feel like it's so easy to jump to the negative with people, whether they're like, customers, vendors, other. It's easy to screw things up in slot conversations. You know, if something is sarcastic that is not picked up on, well, then there's, you know, drama ensues. And so one of the rules is, like, if you're talking serious, like, pick up the phone or get on a zoom call. And then also, hiring for, like, culture is so important because if you get, like, one.

Bad apple, it can really, like, ruin. And I've had. I've not always hired, like, at the start hiring, like, we didn't set clear. It was like, you're desperate to get someone to take on a role, and then you realize that you didn't give them what they needed to be successful in the role. And so you constantly learn different things of, like, if someone's not doing their job and you first have to ask did I really explain how to do it? And if the answer is no, then you need to do that better. And if it constantly comes up, then it's their problem. But you should first assume that your problem, not theirs.

Yeah, I get it. Now. Tell me about if you're comfortable sharing. You've been publicly open about some bumps in partnerships that have happened. If you were giving advice to yourself a few years ago, how would you explore or approach a partnership? Because you've had, it seems like companies, the companies that you've built couldn't get to this point without some help. But also there was some, some real, some real challenges with those relationships. So what would you have done differently? Or how do you view it now, being at the point where you are.

Yeah.

So I think partnerships can be great. I think at the beginning of a partnership. So I'd never had a partner before. I also was very insecure about what I could do and assumed positive intent when maybe that's fine, but you should probably have a legal structure to make that fall through. And so one thing is, when you're first starting, especially if you've done business before, chances are you've seen a lot more. But if you're, if you're, if you're just new, like, there's a lot of stuff you don't know that you don't know. And so it's hard to set up a structure when there's literally like, so many possibilities. And so I would say I would never do 5050 partnership again. There should always be, either you have a, like a person with one point extra between the two of you, or you have an outside person that you both trust that would be that decider. Because 5050 is not a business decision. It's like a settlement.

That is absolutely true. Yes.

You just are taking what you think is the easy way to decide something because you're like, oh, straight down the middle seems fair. And at the beginning, maybe you are equal partners. But I have not seen much evidence of as time continues. And if someone's just slightly should have more at the beginning, but then over time it just gets worse. And so something. If I could do one thing differently with a partnership, it would be the vesting idea. So I didn't even know what vesting was in 2015. But essentially it means.

You don't get all your equity upfront. So it's usually like A year, Cliff. So say what? Say you did 50, 50 year one, you get 15% and then each year it just adds. And so with my ex business partner.

We'Re just over two years in and he sort of stepped away, but we'd gotten all of our equity up front and so we didn't have any structure of like what the roles are, what the responsibilities were. It was invested and so you're basically hamstrung in every decision. So like vesting is, if I could do anything differently, that's what I would do. And then also, like a really good operating agreement would have saved me so much time and energy. Literally every lawyer, it was really annoying. I would send it to another one thinking I'd get a different answer, and they were like, oh, this is terrible. I'm like, I know, it is. Like, what can you do for me?

So I definitely learned the hard way as a lot of times at the start you don't have much money, so you don't want to spend all. You know, I wasn't even spending $5 on an email, so like thousands on a lawyer was like, oh, you know, we're reasonable people, we'll figure it out.

Turns out that that was not a smart decision.

I understand. So we do a similar structure with influencers where we'll reserve up to 15% of a company to partner with a good face and audience of the brand. But that vests over four years. So they're getting you 2 to 4% per year over four years. And that way, if this just ain't working, if this ain't a fit, hold the plug and let's get out of here. And yes, I gave up 2% of my company on a bad hire. Right. But I'm also adding provisions of I can, we have, we can buy you out at a certain valuation and it might be a high valuation, but I can get my two points back. Yeah, so. So nothing is certain. Not like there's no relationship. If, if, if every relationship was certain, there would be no divorce.

Right? Well, like we know what 50, 50% of businesses end it or 50% of marriages end in divorce. It's like 100% of businesses. Partnerships will end at one point or another.

Right? That's right.

So, and actually, so there was a lot of like turmoil with the business partner. But then this year through the buyout process, we negotiating, like it's just like a two year ordeal. And then we finally were like negotiating, but then he's going through a divorce, a very contentious divorce, which was just like Terrible for me because now it's not really up to the two of us. It's up to the two of us finally negotiating and then the ex wife approving it. And, you know, I'm in, I'm kind of like in the middle of the situation because, you know, the. We finally negotiate a deal, they're not getting on. So like, why would she want this deal to go through? Like, it was basically so contentious that it took, you know, after we finally negotiated a number, it took six or seven weeks for her side just to approve it. And then we're dealing with business lawyers, personal lawyers, divorce lawyers, divorce lawyers that have no real need to hurry up on anything. So I'm just like sitting here, you know, I'm like, well, I can't really grow the business and I'll pay more, but I also want to maintain my team. So it's this tightrope of like, how do I, how do I manage this?

Yeah, so that's a lot. So there's that.

So it's during a pandemic.

Right. But it's. What's the ironic part of it is at the beginning you were able to move really quickly and because of moving really quickly, you were not able to move quickly later. And so there's kind of this interesting tension there that what you're saying is you're kind of thankful you're able to move so quickly. You just wish there had been a little bit more thought to that structure to set you, set both of you up to be able to move really quickly. I'm curious about, you know, in those beginning stages when you're really ramping up in those first couple years, you're. You're not selling a super premium product. Like you're selling, you're selling a journal. And it might be a premium journal, but it's not, you're not selling $500 units here. So the profit margins on that need to be maintained very carefully. And I'm curious how you were able to ramp up so quickly without breaking the bank. Because you grew very quickly after your Kickstarter launch and other people started picking up and sharing it. You built a loyal following.

Yeah.

How did you maintain the financial health of the company?

Well, for the first, probably from like 20.

We launched our storage January 1, 2016, 2016, 2017.

Everything was great. You know, ads were cheaper. We were kind of like the first to market with this type of product, which was like a goal based journal. And if you've been on Facebook, everybody's got one now. Yeah. So like.

That was part of it. And actually, you know, the Journal or some version of it with additional stuff was like 90% of our revenue, which, you know, my goal in 2018 was to drop that to 60% with other products, like grow the revenue, but, like, drop the percentage of the total being to one product, like a single point of failure. And then 2019, we kind of did a rebrand and came up with basically, like.

Diversified our product line to not just like type A goal setters like me was like, oh, actually. And that was sort of a personal journey that I'd been on of like, you know, 2016, 2017, hitting all these big business milestones. And then personally, I just. I was in a relationship that wasn't great, or actually, it was fine, right? It was fine. But I was like, well, I'm a high achiever in all these other areas. Why am I settling for, like, something fine? And then when you do personal development, you can fix every part. But then when you're going home after hitting a goal and you're like, this is the one thing that I've been avoiding doing anything about. And so with Best Self, it sort of changed to be like, oh, actually, you can hit all these business milestones, but if you don't take care of, like, your relationships and like, personal, like, you're romantic and otherwise, then like, what? Like, there's not really any point. So it's these, like, empty successes. But it took me, like, being in that to really understand it. And so that's when we sort of expanded our product line. And it's good that we did because, you know, like I said, so much more competitors coming in because they saw how successful we were with it then, you know, did the same thing.

So you were able to diversify that product line at which part? At which, which point in the process?

The end of 2017, I basically was, like, burned out. I went to Thailand. I did, like.

Actually, it was right after Capitalism conference. I, like, was going to Thailand four days later, I was so tired.

And that was kind of the change for me where it was like, I got back, the business partner kind of stepped out in March, April of that year. And then by the end of 2018, we had diver. It was basically like, that was the year we were doing a lot of that stuff. And then when we first were testing a couple of products, it's funny that you say our brand's always perfect because these were ones that we did in the US and we were just testing if people would like them. They're the first versions of the decks, and they were like, not. They were like, mvp, which I wasn't happy putting on it, but we had to test it. And so once we realized, oh, this is actually something people love, then in the next year, we, like, you know, upgraded the quality a ton. And what was crazy is that because we printed, like, locally in the US and every two weeks would, like, pay way more for these units that look way.

Shittier than what we have now. And then that's when the sort of turning point became like, okay, being your best self is about all of these different areas and how do we help people with each thing that makes.

So the shift there is you went from being a product to focusing on a person.

Yeah.

And you were focused on one goal, and then in your own journey, saw that you were the person.

Yeah.

You developed the first product for yourself, and now you're on a new journey. You started a different adventure of addressing a different area of your life, and that opens up new product ideas for you to tackle. And it sounds like that is what made the company a little bit more balanced and whole. Yeah.

Because we're all selling to people, not, you know, we fall in love with the product. I also. People don't love carrying a journal around. I mean, most people, they want their. They want to hit the goal or they want to get the end result. And so it's a mixture of not falling in love with the idea of your product, falling in love with the customer, and they can create with it.

And I always go back to, like, the whole blockbuster Netflix thing is they. They're like, oh, people love coming to our store. They could have bought Netflix for 50 million. And they said no. And then they. They didn't realize that people wanted a selection of movies. However that worked. And they just were, like, so in love with their idea of, like, people want to come to the store and do it, which seems so. Damn. And so for me, it's like, are people gonna have journals all the time? No, they just basically want to hit their goals. And so right now I'm, like, thinking of, like, what's the next iteration of, like, what it is that we're doing? Because it's gonna be very different to what it is right now.

I love that when you. When you marry the person and you're just there to serve the person, your product doesn't matter.

Right.

And so, so many people get overly romantic about their product. When customer doesn't really care about your product. They care about the journey that they're on. And your Job is to free up them to go on that journey. Sometimes that's a journal, sometimes that's other things. Yeah, it's that person. I remember the. One of the first conversations we had early on, which was conversation of like, are you a journal company or are you, like, a personal empowerment?

Yeah.

And I remember that flip. And you have continued to grow from that point.

It just annoyed me if you're like, oh, the journal company. And I'm like, no, we're gonna be more than that.

Yeah.

Wait. But, yeah, it's been a process. And I also think the shifting to another side of what it is people are looking for. Because if you think about, we go to school, we go to college, and we're all very focused on work, like business goals. And so that's where I started because that was like, what was driving me at the time. And what we all grow up and are taught that that's the most important thing. But then you get there and you're like, oh, wait a minute. I thought someone. I was gonna be happy when I got to this point, and I'm still like, what's going on? And so I think there's a whole generation of people that are hitting that same thing of like, they go for the thing that they've been told their whole life would make the difference, and all the other pieces are missing. And so it's like, well, whatnot. And that's what I faced. And that's kind of. It was kind of easy because I'm selling to myself of like, oh, what would I like differently?

Yeah. So my observation is you became conscious of the fact that you were the person.

And so many entrepreneurs like, the number one question, the number one conversation I have with entrepreneurs is on the difference between product and person, because they get myopic about that product. And you didn't have a person knowingly, but it was you the entire journey. And then something happened that made you aware of those other things. So knowing that you're the person, how did you keep the customer list and the audience interested in and engaged? I understand that at the beginning, you're just documenting the journey, and that gave you the seed audience to grow. But a lot of people have discovered you since then, so how have you kept them interested and engaged?

I think part of it has been, like, telling stories around the product or also sharing how other people have used it to do something. So it started as like, oh, this is something that I've done. I didn't have anyone else. And then it became more of showing other Case studies and telling stories around it. And also the idea of the allowing people to kind of create their own version of their, their best self. Because you know, for a while, like when we grow up, we might have one version of what that looks like, but then we realize actually that's not who I want to be. And then there, there's actually a lot of room in the space where people aren't focused because it's easy if you're like, make more money online, you know, buy this product, hit your goals. Like that is almost something that people have grown up with their whole life. And then when they, they hit it and they realize it's not what they needed, they. They're looking for more and they're looking for more products or stories or things that give them more meaning. And I think that especially now more than ever, you need to be able to share that with them. It's like, you know, back in our parents age, like you could just buy a towel and it didn't have to mean anything else. Now you have to buy a towel and it feeds another towel to someone else. And your money somehow needs to stretch so much further because we don't have the same, like we're hanging out with a village of people. We're like so disconnected because we're all online that we're looking for way more meaning in the things that used to not even need to be anything. And so I think giving people that through like stories and through product and through like just kind of giving as much value as we can without expecting anything back. So like one of our emails we send out is like Motivation Monday and we don't sell any products in there at all. But we always. That's one of our highest email grossing even though we literally have no products in there. It's just like either blog posts or stories or a case study of someone that's doing well or they've hit a goal or whatever it is. And it's just funny because that's the stuff that people actually care about.

So in that case, you're really celebrating the progress and the results of your customers.

Yeah, you're making your customers the hero in the story and not the product. Because again, nobody cares.

What is so beautiful about this is once again, you're not faking any content. You're not like five new ways to use your journal. Right. Which is what most people do with content it. In this case you're just showcasing the customers on their journey and which is bringing more people in to start their own.

Yeah.

And you get to get out of the way in that case, which is.

Much easier than someone who was like, oh, I'm using the journal for, like, trading. I was like, oh, tell me more about that. And so then you're just telling a story of how someone else uses it, which gives people their ideas. And sometimes also people need, I don't know if the words permission or just like, they kind of imagine using it differently and then they see another way it's used. They're like, oh, wait, I actually could use it for this thing. And so giving people examples of how to use it differently because it's pretty flexible. But a lot of times people are like, well, it's a blank page. I don't know what to do with it. And then you show them. They're like, oh, I can totally do this.

Beautiful. Well, Kathryn, you've done a beautiful job. A wonderful job. You're one of my favorite entrepreneurial case studies and stories and one of my favorite human beings.

Thank you.

So thank you for sharing with us.

I appreciate being on here again. I always get good feedback from your audience.

Is there anything that I haven't asked you that I should have?

Probably, but I can't think of.

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