Hey friend,

I realized that my business hit $45 million in cumulative sales by the end of 2022 🥳

If you told me in 2015 I could create that amount of revenue from a simple idea I'd have thought you were crazy. And I don't share the revenue number to brag, but to inspire you to follow those small kernel of inspirations and ideas of your own.

I never thought of the first BestSelf product as a real "business" until we pre-sold over 10,000 units on Kickstarter. It was only then that I thought "hmm maybe I'm onto something". That's when I made the decision to go full-time into the business.

Over the next six years I never raised money or took outside investment. We were funded solely through customer sales and occasionally credit cards (ecommerce is very cash intensive💀).

In 2020 I even took on some personal debt to buy out my business partner. That was scary at the time with how the world was looking. But if you have to make a bet, bet on yourself.

Then in 2022, we got acquired 🎉.

(Our acquisition partner has not been announced but stay tuned 😉)

It sounds cliché but a lot of my success has come down to my 5-step goal-setting system, I’ve set some huge goals – but more importantly, actually achieved them.

Learn the same process I’ve used to grow my company and make even the most lofty goals realistic.

Crush it in 2023 🍾

P.S. Let me know what you think.

Build your daily system

Once you've set your goals you want to figure out the things you need to do every day to make your goals inevitable.

Control the inputs so the output (your goals) happen by default.

By inputs I mean habits. Many of us choose big goals that we don't have control of, however if we focus on completing the right inputs (that we have full control of) then we will reach the goal.

I've been tracking my habits for years.

I use both a habit roadmap, and also a spreadsheet so I can stay on track and zoom out on the year. I decided to make this tool available to you Reader so you can crush it in 2023.

It'll take less than 10 minutes to setup and less than 1 minute a day to update. Simple beats complex for this type of thing trust me!

​Here is the habit tracker.

I also filmed a quick 2-min video to show you how it works too.

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Book recommendation: Empire of Pain about the rise of the Sackler family and what became Purdue pharma. There's some interesting takeaways of the grandfather and his rise to wealth from a poor immigrant. (in the pre-OxyContin days)

Podcast recommendation: Danny Miranda Podcast. Been binging this as we're preparing for a move, Danny is a great interviewer and really enjoyed episode with Morgan Housel and Ben Wilson.

Have a great weekend!

Best,
Cathryn

P.S. If you decide to use the habit tracker, I'd love to see what type of daily habits you have on yours so reply back to this email and let me know!