Achieve Goals Faster with this Daily Tool with Allen Brouwer and Cathryn Lavery

Founders of BestSelf.co – Allen Brouwer and Cathryn Lavery

Allen Brouwer and Cathryn Lavery are founders of BestSelf.co. They started BestSelf.co as a project to create a life that they loved, through building their respective businesses and being able to quit their day jobs. Through books, interviews and attending conferences with some of the most successful high-performing people, they began to put together the ingredients to success and what they needed to do to level up. Currently, they have crafted 13 products that empower people to crush inspiring goals, boost productivity and create a life that matches their potential. They’ve sold over 100,000 products in 86 countries. Their goal is to impact 5 million people by 2020.

Things you will learn from Allen and Cathryn:

• The incredible story of starting from scratch to winning the Shopify challenge
• Productivity hacks that will help you achieve your goals faster
• How to grow your list in a short period of time

Allen and Cathryn’s Website:

BestSelf.co

Transcript: Download

Video Transcription provided by GMR Transcription Services.

Jaime:	Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I am Jaime Masters, and today on the show I am SO excited to have Cathryn and Allen of Bestself.co. It is the journal that I have been using forever, even before I knew who the heck they were. Thankfully, they are amazing, awesome people I consider friends now. Thank you so much for coming on the show today. 

Cathryn:	It's great to be here, Jaime, finally.

Allen:	Yeah. 

Jaime:	Finally, finally! Now, the funny thing is that I, seriously, probably have six different friends that do their own journal-type thing. I have been sent so many journals. It's crazy! I did not know you. I found- I even got one given to me at an event and I was like, nah. I didn't even look at it, which was apparently silly. Then I ended up being a HUGE convert and buying a bazillion of them for clients and everybody else. So, please describe to everybody why I love it so much. No, please describe to everybody what it is and what it does and I'll go into details and gush over it later. 

Cathryn:	So, the SELF Journal is a three-month day planner where we show you how to set a goal, break down how to get there. I give you the daily framework so that you're not reinventing the wheel every day of morning gratitude and time-blocking everything else. It's just everything in one place so that you know exactly what to do. 

Jaime:	So, I like yours better because of the setup and the layout in the way that my brain thinks. Did you guys know that going in? Are you smart with UI and that's why yours is better in this subset or just you made it up as you went?

Cathryn: Well, our customer Avatar was Jaime. 

Jaime:	Yeah, exactly.

Cathryn:	Well, we both kind of had a framework. We both had the framework of what we liked to do and then it was just like the design of making it look good, which is kind of what I love to do. 

Allen:	Yeah, so it actually started out as a blank moleskin that Kathryn and I would write in every day and we iterate the framework over time and we'd find little things that we would like and what to add and tweak. I think it just sort of naturally evolved to, oh, hey, we like using it this way and other people might like this too because it works for us. 

Cathryn:	Yeah, we are writing in it every day.  

Jaime:	Yeah, tell us the actual well, exactly. You must have had to write it out every single day because I was doing something very similar. So, we made pieces of paper and just printed a whole bunch of them and stuck in my little moleskin thing. 

Cathryn:	Yeah, exactly.

Jaime:	So, you guys just got sick of it? Okay. So, tell us about the actual business inception. So, it's one thing to make a journal for yourself, because it's cool. It's another thing to be like, "I'm going to go promote the heck of this and create a business out it.?" Allen, I'm going to ask you. 

Allen:	We're so polite. We're so polite that we don't - 

Jaime:	No, I know. I'm going to make sure that I POINT and say, Allen, that one is for you. He's like, I forgot the question now. 

Allen:	No, no. This actually didn't even START as a business. So, Cathryn and I had a joint venture together before Best Self came around and we were using a day planner to hold ourselves accountable to ourselves and also make sure that we weren't wasting time in the day because we were also running our own businesses at the same time. So, now we were solo entrepreneurs running two businesses and our time was extremely limited. So, we said, all right, let's stop writing in this blank moleskin every day and we went to a couple of friends and said, "Hey, if we print a small batch of this, would you be interested?" We're thinking maybe buy 10. If we're lucky, cross our fingers, 20, right? Because we didn't want to pay for a batch for ourselves. 

	The response was like, "Oh, my gosh, how quickly can you get this to us? I feel like I NEED this in my life." We're like, "oh, wait, really?" So, then we decided to go to Kickstarter and we said, all right, let's launch this as a product. So, we launched this as a product on Kickstarter. We're still running our joint venture together and the business inception sort of came about by having so much fun at the Kickstarter. We were dealing with the customers that we loved. We loved working on the product. It was helping people and it sort of just came about naturally that way. 
Jaime:	You're so busy you need a planner to deal with it, so you started another business because then you need four. But did it feel like this one just took off easier than the other ones or you just LIKED it better this round? We'll get to you in a second, Cathryn. 

Allen:	Did we like it- one, it felt effortless because we were having fun, because we were serving customers that we liked. Now, the business that we had before was an Amazon business that we were white-labeling products that you could pick up off the shelf from Amazon rebranding them and then reselling them. There is no passion or brand or really any sort of drive for us to keep going except make more money, right? But what we found was that we truly just wanted to help people and people really found support in what they needed in what we had to offer. I'll let Cathryn tell the story of the Sunday after Kickstarter. 

Jaime:	Ooh. 

Cathryn:	Yeah, so I think I had always heard, you know, follow your passion or build something with passion and then the money will come but I never really believed it and then this happened. I was like, oh, wait a minute. Yeah, but right after Kickstarter, you know, everything that you talk about productivity-wise you have to throw out the window during a crowd-funding campaign because you're totally reactive to everything. You wake up first thing in the morning to see where you're at. So, our public-funded goal was $15,000.00 but Allen and I had a personal internal goal but it was $200,000.00 and we didn't tell many people that because anyone we did tell looked at us like, yeah, right, like it's a notebook. What are you talking about? 

Jaime:	Yeah, making a journal? $200,000.00 for a journal? I mean, geez, people, yeah, uh-huh.

Cathryn:	Yeah, but the day we hit that, it was like, oh, my God! Then we went on to do $323,000.00 in 34 days, so it was just like completely insane. Your adrenaline is just crazy. Allen and I actually both got sick right after the Kickstarter. We were basically hungover. I think it was like an adrenaline hangover and between, I think it ended like a Tuesday night at 10:00 p.m. I remember on the Sunday. We set up a preorder page afterwards, so as soon as the copying ended you could buy it on this random rinky-dink site that we set up in about 45 minutes. 

We realized, oh, my God, we have to set up a preorder site before the campaign ends. So, we set it up and then on the Sunday I was looking at the sales of about five days and we weren't running marketing to it. It was just like anyone that happened to come to the Kickstarter after and missed it would just click off and maybe buy it. So, I was looking at the sales I realized that we had done more in that five days than we had in a month on Amazon. I was just thinking, like, where all my time and all our time had been focused on the Kickstarter, the thought of splitting our focus and going back to this Amazon thing that we didn't care about. Really, it was just like, I would shrink up in myself thinking about it. 

So, I decided to talk to Allen about this and see if we could just quit the Amazon thing. So, I called him and it was a Sunday and I was outside of my apartment pacing the pavement acting like a crazy person in New York. So, I'm saying, Allen, what if we just didn't do the Amazon? What if we quit Amazon? I think that solved the potential to do something bigger and I'm really excited about working with it; whereas, the Amazon thing I was kind of not excited about it. I thought he was going to be, like, you are insane. We put so much effort into this, but he was, like, yeah, I think that's a good idea. I'm like, okay, great. 

We can quit Amazon. He was like, we should sell the Amazon business though. I'm like, that's a much better idea. 

Jaime:	It's way easier to decide to quit a business when you have $323,000.00 from Kickstarter. I'd be like, oh, you know, 

Allen:	Yeah. 

Jaime:	What was it? What marketing tactic? Because, No. 1, how many years ago was this? Everybody talks about Kickstarter and stuff like that but MOST people don't even come close to their $15,000.00 goal, let alone blow past their $200,000.00 goal, which seems crazy. What was the sweet spot in marketing and what year was it, so people can sort of set their sights on how marketing was back then? 

Cathryn:	I mean, it was August 2015 that we launched it, mid-August, and for the three months prior. We were very intentional about how we set it up. So, we actually used the SELF Journal to create the goal for the $200,000.00, which is the funny thing. We were like, okay, this is how many email subscribers that we need, you know, finalizing the prototype, what we needed for the Kickstarter campaign. So, we were very, like, we need this many subscribers. We need this many people to back us within the first 48 hours to get that Kickstarter algorithm kicking in. So, we were very intentional with how we set it up. We weren't just like, oh, let's throw this thing on Kickstarter and hope for the best. 

Jaime:	That's awesome. So, you did a ton of research on Kickstarter. Because you hadn't actually launched a Kickstarter before? Or had you? 

Cathryn:	I actually had launched a Kickstarter with a prior company, a prior project that wasn't anywhere near the size of this. But I had been successful with those so I just needed to take what worked here and then do it much bigger for Best Self. Then, also, because I had Allen and we were both great working together because we could do the things that, you know, we have complimentary skills. So, the stuff that I really dislike doing, Allen was great at and vice versa. So, it really worked well. 

Jaime:	What ARE your roles? Cathryn, what's yours?

Cathryn:	I handle all product-related and Allen is marketing. 

Jaime:	Ooh, I love it. So, you actually stay away? not stay away, but you guys have separate roles because especially when there's partners, you can get a little like this, so you know that you're really good at product and you're really good at marketing and you DON'T cross? Or DO you cross quite a bit?  

Allen:	No, we cross and I think that's what makes it great. We cross because we both value each other's opinions and we also like, Cathryn has great ideas for new marketing stuff, like, oh, hey, I just saw this. We should be doing something like that. I'm like, yes, great idea! It just works out really well because if you're a solo entrepreneur trying to do both there's not enough hours in the day really. So, it just helps spread out the bandwidth and, also, I don't have the design eye. I'm a little, let's get sloppy. Let's put something up and get it going. Cathyrn is, like, but wait, let's tweak this right here, really detail-oriented. So, it's great. 

Jaime:	That's what I was going to ask. 

Cathryn:	Yeah, I think it's an implementation thing. So, I'll throw in marketing ideas and then run for the hills. I'm like this could do with a lead page but I don't want to go anywhere near that and Allen will be like, oh, this would be cool. I will be like, oh, I could totally design this, so I think it's more that we can both step into each other's and give each other ideas but, as far as the implementation, I could give him an idea and Allen knows just how to implement what I jumped into and said and run away from.

Jaime:	See, that's the best of both worlds. That's a great distinction then too, because then you can go, okay, great and I know what my role instead of trying to do the lead page too, right? Or your own page because you're really detail-oriented and then you get stuck over there. I see that happen a lot with businesses where people cross-contaminate. You've got to leave that person alone to let them do their own thing. What do you think the actual USP is for yours? Because there's so journals; it's crazy. I was an art kid, art major, way before all this, so I love the layout of it. Do you think it's just the layout or is it just more? 

Allen:	It's a combination of a few things. So, one, it's the content that we provide. We don't just give you a journal. We give you a framework on how to take your dreams and your goals and sort of mash it into this. Then we teach you how to break that dream and goal down into a daily action plan. So, now it's not like, oh, I want to start this business or double my business or I want to go on this vacation or I want to run this marathon. It's, oh, all I have to do is this today and that tomorrow. Next thing I know I am making my dreams a reality. 

There's that and then we also built a HUGE tribe, a HUGE community of people, so people come in for the journal because they think it's going to improve their lives, which it does and it has. But what they stay for is this community of advocates who just love supporting one another and what we find is that people will team up with similar goals. Like, oh, you have a health goal; I have a health goal. Let's team up together. Oh, you're working on your business too? I'm working on my business too; let's team up together. It's really, really great. 

Cathryn:	Yes.

Jaime:	Okay, so wait, tell me about the tribe then because I know it says you have 249,000 subscribers on your email list it says on your site. But how do THEY interact with each other? Do you have community? 

Cathryn:	We have a Facebook community called Best Self Alliance and that is, I think we just hit 30,000 the other day of people in there that have got the journal and then will find each other in there. Then it's just become a bunch of people interested in becoming their best self, which is kind of rare. It's not like you sit, I mean, WE do probably, but we are like, oh, what's your morning routine look like? But we're kind of weirdos, whereas, most people in normal day-to-day life have a goal, or whatever, but sometimes it's not cool to talk about what you want to get done. Or a lot of people don't discuss that openly with friends. So, I think the community provides accountability in a lot of ways and just sharing, oh, this person lives really close to me. 

	People have set up meetups with people that live close to them. Or you have someone in real life that you met on the internet that has either a similar goal or something they're working towards and I just feel like that's not talked about as much as we'd like, so it's been kind of starting that whole idea of sharing. 

Jaime:	Okay. So, I want to talk about the marketing side and then I want to get, I know you guys have amazing productivity hacks that everyone needs to hear. So, before we get into that though, 250,000 is a LOT, so I'm assuming, Allen, you had previous marketing experience? How did you grow your list in so short a time? 2015 to 2018 now is pretty quick for 250,000 people. 

Allen:	We need to update the site because I think there's more. 

Jaime:	I know. 

Cathryn: We're really bad at that. 

Jaime:	I love that you said that. 

Allen:	Yes. I did have past marketing experience but how did we go about building this list? What we ended up doing was and we did this with our Kickstarter right off the bat. The first thing that we did was, let's give the SELF Journal away for free in a pdf download. So, now someone can literally download exactly what they're about to purchase and see it for themselves. They can print it out. They can use it immediately if they wanted to and they can get a real feel for if it's right for them or not. Also, it reduces the uncertainty that they'll have in what they're going to receive because a lot of times people will read reviews on Amazon for six of the same product but they don't know which one to pick. 
	So, then they get overwhelmed and they're like, "oh, man, is this the right one? I don't know. I don't want to make the bad decision." This just alleviates all of that. So, that' one way that we built our list extremely fast was through giving away the SELF Journal for free. People called us CRAZY in the beginning. 

Jaime:	Really?

Allen:	I remember people coming up and saying competitors are going to rip you off, no one is going to purchase because they're going to get it or free. What's the sense? Why are you doing this? It's been completely reversed. People love us because we do it. We now are building a better community and, also, we don't want to hinder anybody from NOT purchasing from us. We want to give this to lots of people just because we believe in it. 

Jaime:	I've bought so many planners where I will try it for two days and be like, no, this sucks. If I just saw what it looked like before I actually bought the thing I wouldn't have done it, right. So, I think it's an amazing thing.  It's hilarious that they said competitors because they could just buy one and rip you off too, just saying. Anyway, go ahead, Cathryn. 

Cathryn: Don't give them ideas. I think another thing was during the Kickstarter we had people using it and then they would give us feedback on how they used it and we actually made a product better. So, just sort of product development and then they felt more ownership of the product because they helped craft the endpoint. It's very small tweaks but for them to feel like they made a difference with it and, yeah, I think just people being able to download it. There's been people that have come in and were like, "I couldn't afford to buy it at first." I set a goal with the printed-out version of it, which they showed us and then they hit the goal and actually went and bought one. So, that was pretty cool. 

Jaime:	That's so amazing.  And you can help the people that can't actually buy it right then? That's amazing. So, how did you actually get in front of the audiences in order to build this though too? I get the lead magnet part but where did you go? Did you go on podcast? Did you do a lot of paid advertising? What was the pieces that worked really well for you or is working? 

Allen:	I think it's evolved over time. So, what would you like to hear? How we started or what we're doing currently?

Jaime:	What you're doing currently, yes. Thank you. 

Allen:	All right. So, what we're doing currently is a little bit of everything. So, we have a full? , what we're doing currently is completely changed because Cathryn and I just did an organizational chart yesterday. 

Jaime:	Nice!

Allen:	It's scary. When it just started out the two of us, it's like, oh, my gosh! 

Jaime:	How many people do you have on your team now? 

Cathryn: 14. 

Jaime:	How many of them are? 

Cathryn: Yeah, they just keep growing. It's like an organism that just keeps going. 

Jaime:	That's awesome. 

Cathryn: When we first started? I don't know if people listening or how many? if they have a team or if it's just the two of them, but I think Allen and I when we first started were like, okay, our list when we went to Kickstarter was 3,500 or something very small but that was over three months. We built that from literally nothing and one of the things we did, which made a big difference is we did a giveaway prior to launching the Kickstarter, which was for productivity tools or bullet-proof coffee, or favorite apps on books.  So, it was like a productivity bundle we called it and I think it was $1,000.00. 

We put that in so that we could ? the only people that were going to be interested in these products would be interested in the SELF Journal when we launched it. So, it was important to align whatever the giveaway is with whatever it is you?re planning to launch. If we wanted the most email subscribers we could have put a MacBook Pro but then it wouldn?t have been very targeted. So, that was one of the things we did that got us a ton of email subscribers. We also created custom content and then we posted it on Medium, so I'd write the content, we'd create a content upgrade, which is just the pdf that we would give away for free and Allen would promote it. What did you call it? You would? 
Allen:	Syndicate. I would syndicate it. 

Cathryn:	Syndicate it. 

Allen:	So, Cathryn would? I don't have the time or patience. I think I have ADD when it comes to writing blogposts but Cathryn is really articulate with how she writes. So, it's perfect. Cathryn would write this really comprehensive blogpost with a content upgrade and then I would go out and I'd be promoting the heck out of this thing on all these different platforms. So, we'd use reddit and subreddits. We'd go into Facebook groups and do custom posts inside each group of why that audience would be interested in this article or this blog. Then we would use? actually, at the time, Medium had just started in 2015 or maybe 2014. 

It was brand new. Not many people were on it and we saw a ton of great traffic from Medium when we were just starting out. 

Cathryn:	Yeah, we basically would like ? that was our hack. We had posted on Medium so that we could get the most likes and then we would get onto Personal Development where they have, you know, maybe 100,000 subscribers to that, publication in there and once you got popular there you would be on the Top 5. Then I think the day our Kickstarter launched, like, Arianna Huffington tweeted out an article of ours not knowing that we had just launched. 

Jaime:	Oh, wow!

Cathryn:	But it was just like ? because it was on the top of Medium because we had put a lot of focus on it and that had a content upgrade with it. Then I think it was the content upgrade to our Kickstarter launch and then it was a link to our Kickstarter at the bottom of it. So, that was very hacky, how we got started with starting the list and now, you know, thank God, I don't have to go in there that much to look at the email list. 

Jaime:	I love that because it's not your sweet spot, apparently. You can actually have the role that you really like and that you want. So, do you do a lot of? is it mostly content stuff and getting that out there that really pulls in everybody? Because what's so interesting is it's a physical product. It's not like you're selling digital ? I mean, you are selling? I think there is one digital course in there. But it's physical products that you're selling, so content is working. 

Allen:	Content is working and I don't think that it's going to go anywhere, so really, it's providing value, providing information to people who are interested in that info. Regardless of what you're selling or whether it's a product or whether it's a service or whether it's a digital course, if you're providing value and someone can get what they need from it and if you can do that a couple of times, you'll be top of mind. Then it's like, oh, remember? you know what? I DO need to take control of my day. What's that company again? Oh, yeah. Oh, right, it's right in my inbox. 

Jaime:	Yeah, and I think, yeah, go ahead. 

Cathryn:	Another thing is we realize that we could sell a ton of journals to one person but our key was to create the content and create what would make them successful with it, which would make them come back and get more and buy it for other people. So, we put a big ownership on, you know, how do we make sure that they're successful with it rather than so we can sell to 1,000 people 20 times rather than 1,000 people once. 

Jaime:	I haven't bought any other journals. Like, I haven't bought more than one of any other journal EVER. 

Cathryn:	Yes!

Jaime:	You know what I mean? I'm picky. I'm super picky when it comes to this stuff. So, it was really interesting that I didn't even know you when you guys hooked me. I wasn't even reading your content. Right? I bought it for everybody. I bought it for tons of my clients. So, I'm looking at the sweet spot between, yes, you need to have marketing, but the product is the people that like it, I think, really, REALLY like it. You must have- do you have numbers on how many people reorder and are you always looking at that metric or are you just trying to get new ones? What are you doing as far as the metrics side go? 

Allen:	Yeah, we look at that pretty extensively. So, two years ago, Cathryn and I were invited to Tony Robbins business mastery and one of their things was, you know, look at how many customers you're bringing in, look at how many times they're repurchasing, and then look at the volume that they're purchasing, like, the average order value. And if you can increase each of those by just an incremental percentage, look at the trajectory of your business. So, two years ago, we learned that and we look at that consistently. 
Jaime:	I love that. You were invited though, right? Because didn't you do a video with Tony Robbins? It wasn't like you just went there. 

Allen:	Yeah. I used the term invited. So, AFTER the Kickstarter, Cathryn and I entered the Shopify Build A Business Competition and we sent up our Shopify store and launched it on January 1st of 2016. The Build a Business Competition is for any new business that enters, whoever has the highest percentage growth, or the most customers, or the most sales they do a bunch of different metrics and in a bunch of different categories, they win. They win this grand prize of going on this trip and ringing the New York Stock Exchange (the bell) and we ended up winning actually the first year that we were in business.

Jaime:	Which is insane, by the way? insane. That?s how I heard about you and stuff like that though. It was the fact that you won that and I think Tim Ferriss posted or something like that. So, your name was EVERYWHERE. It was everywhere for a while, which is really impressive for a first year in business, by the way. That rarely, rarely happens. 

Allen:	Yes.

Jaime:	So, when we're looking at the content you're creating and the geekiness of the productivity, because I'm as efficient and effective as humanly possible but I still like paper, hence the reason why I have this, right. Give us some tips of winning the day. I know you have a Chrome extension now about winning your day and stuff too. Give me what that terminology is and some tips for that. 

Cathryn:	So, a couple of principles that we base the SELF Journal around was, first of all, setting what goal it is you're working towards so you always know it and you're always aware of seeing opportunities as it relates to your goals. So, if it was to be an eventual millionaire, what would that look like? Then the three priorities for the day and then time-blocking your day. So, a lot of times, you know, I used to set these epic to-do lists of, okay it's like I'm setting myself up for failure where I would write these epic to-do lists of I'm going to get all this stuff done today. But, of course, everything would have to go beyond perfectly and I still wouldn't be able to get it done. 

	So, I'd end the day working and I'm just looking at this list thinking, oh, my God, I'm just feeling bad about myself because I wasn't realistic with where my day was going to go. So, we teach like, okay, estimating, like, what are the three things you want to get done? Let's actually plan them into your day so you're not just dreaming of getting them done. Then just the general sense of being more conscious with where your time goes so that you're not, you know, looking at your phone on Facebook. We're not saying work all day. We're more of just being more mindful of where our time is going. 

Jaime:	Yeah, the time-blocking thing so, I was trying to pull up like, I care about drawing my little time day thing. Even today, I did it today and then I do it the next couple of days so I can pre-plan what I've got coming up, just so you know, because I want a week. You don't have a week schedule in here but I want one of those. But I have you guys and then I have to pick up the kids, so I do my business stuff priorities at top and then I do my personal down bottom and you gave me space to do it. As an art kid, I was like, just give me the space and I?ll sort of make pieces myself because I have this on the Asana to-do list, which has WAY more than I can get done. 

And I try and organize those pieces but then I pull them here and when I get my top three priorities done I am all set. So, like, the way that you guys structured that is just so easy to know what I need to be focused on instead of looking at Asana and going, okay, my to-do list is never ending and it will never be ending, right, until I?m dead most likely, for productivity people. 

Cathryn:	Yeah. 

Jaime:	So, I love that about it. Anyway, continue. 

Cathryn:	Well, the new one, actually well, it's not new. It's been out for a bit but you might have bulk-bought. 

Jaime:	I bulk-bought. 

Cathryn:	It has the week in it, so you can see kind of an overview. 

Jaime:	It does? Thank you for listening to me. I didn't know that you did that. I put it in the universe and you must have heard it. Okay, good. 

Cathryn:	Well, we actually always update the versions with each run we do, so we'll get customer feedback and we'll see what makes sense. You can't make everyone happy but we try to improve it every time, so that was something that we heard. Then just tracking and reflecting on your day at the end of the day, so if things go like, what did you actually accomplish? Again, I'd feel bad at the end of the day of everything I didn't accomplish, even though I would get stuff done. So, just the changing of this negative behavior. I took a more positive behavior and writing down the good things and writing down your lessons learned. I think that just bookending your day with some intentional planning saves you a ton of time during the day. 

Jaime:	A million times. 

Allen:	Yeah, it also helps you be more mindful, so going back to winning the day. Being a high achiever, you're always focused on, okay, what's next? What's next? You don't pause and reflect back on, like, oh, yeah, you know what? This good thing DID happen today. Oh, I DID get that client. Oh, I DID launch that product or, oh, this good thing happened. You're always like, okay, that happened. Now what? Now what? Now what? This just gives you a just doing that in general? just pivoting, looking backwards, will definitely give you more to be proud of. 

Jaime:	What's the momentum, right? I mean, even with my clients, mastermind groups, everything, it's a series of small wins that actually is what gives you the success and we don't really look at that. We go, oh, we're on Tony Robbins. We're amazing and it's like, well, look at all the other things that you had to do in order to even get there as an option. 

Cathryn:	Yeah.

Jaime:	As entrepreneurs, if it's not big, it's like, oh, and you don't think of it or you negate it completely instead of seeing them for what they are. So, having the grateful things, I write every day all those little things that definitely add up long-term and doing it daily instead of what I was doing before, which was weekly on my Mastermind, has been really awesome also. But that feeling creates the momentum, which makes me want to do more anyway, which is a wonderful thing. 

Cathryn:	Yeah.

Jaime:	Okay, tell me 

Cathryn:	Yeah, I think it's just the unsexy stuff of doing something every day. 

Jaime:	Right. You're like, I know, but I wanted to hack. That made it ten times faster and easier and better. You're like, just do the work, people. Just do the work. Write the gosh darn blogpost until you don't have to write them anymore because you have other people to do it. Okay?

Cathryn:	Yeah. It's funny how many people, when we won the Build a Business Award, were like, oh, you're so lucky. 

Jaime:	I know. 

Cathryn:	I'm like, really?  I think when I'm on the phone at 2:00 a.m. to Allen dealing with my shipping containers and we're just trying to juggle all this stuff, it didn't really feel lucky. It just felt like a lot of work. 

Allen:	Yeah. 

Jaime:	Thank you for saying that. I think some people that are listening right now need to hear that again and again, right? It's more of the more effort? not effort. You guys said you feel like you really, really enjoyed it. The more ping-pong balls that you're hitting across, the more you're actually going to get in the long-run. So, what is the Chrome extension though? I'm very curious. How did you: a) figure out to make it; and, b) how does it help you win your day?  

Allen:	So, a lot of customers asked us, oh, can you create a digital? Are you going to create an app? Are you going to do this with the SELF Journal? It's like it just doesn't feel right and we just didn't want to create it for the sake of creating it, so Cathryn and I sat down and we were, like, well, what makes sense? If we were to create a digital product, would do we like using? What's out there Or what can we make better or what do we wish we have? And it organically came about the Win the Day App, which is a Chrome extension that is really concise. 

Every time you open up a new tab, rather than being distracted with Facebook or other social media or news or whatever your vice is, what happens is you have your goal staring you in the face and the days left that you had put to reach that goal with the three tasks that you need to do that day. It's just really simple, straightforward but makes you really intentional with your time, which is what it's all about. 

Jaime:	As you are saying that, I'm going oh, ow, ow. I feel like, right, having the goal and seeing it and having it top of mind, I would do if this, then that, and I would have it text me my goal every morning. After a little while, I got preconditioned. I'd be like, yep, there's that text again, which was not good. I wanted to NOT be like that, so do you input the actions that you have to put daily or how does that work? 

Cathryn:	You input the tasks, then you can do it so like tomorrow you could put tomorrow's tasks in today if you wanted. It's just so that then you can score them off whenever they're done and then we have a focus mode in there so that if you want to block off distracting sites, God forbid you would go to those, you can set, okay, this is what I'm going to work on for the next 45 minutes and just focus for however long it will take you to get done. 

Jaime:	Okay, I love that. We usually recommend other apps for that too. Now, I can just recommend yours because I know you guys and yours must be better because of that reason. No, but that focus is?

Cathryn:	It's really pretty. 

Jaime:	Oh, see! I DO like it better. The focus thing though is huge and everybody knows this and doing it is another thing but getting in that focus mode and getting into flow I don't know if you guys read Stealing Fire or The Flow Genome project stuff but having that focus is a big, huge piece of it and it's simplistic to do in physical form. Like, yes, you just click a button to do focus mode. This is not rocket science but we have a hard time doing it. What advice do you have for people to make sure that they are consistently doing it instead of just, oh, I got that Chrome extension, did it for three days, and then, eh. 

Cathryn:	So, I think the fact that every time you open a new tab and you're seeing this goal will, hopefully, keep you and you've picked a goal that you're actually committed to. A lot of people will choose a goal that they are not they haven't figured out, okay, how is this actually going to change my life or why am I excited about it? Like, oh, I want to make this much money but it's like so, actually, in the SELF Journal we want people to commit to what their goal is and why it's going to matter. Why will this make a difference in your life? Because if it's not going to make a difference, then you're not going to be passionate about actually doing it. So, if you've chosen a goal that really fires you up, hopefully, seeing that every day, you will get there. Then we also talk about this 20-mile march type of thing where it's like what can you do every single day? It doesn't have to be big. It could be like 30 minutes of focused work, but if it IS focused work on whatever the goal is then you're going to get there if you do it consistently every day. Again, it's not a big deal. It's a domino effect of 30 minutes every day. 

Allen:	Yeah. If you have a goal to be a millionaire or be a multimillionaire, why is that important to you? Like, really get down deep into it and figure out WHY because when things come up and challenges stand in your way and you're really frustrated and you don't think you can go any further, the million dollars, or multimillion dollars that you're aiming for isn't what's going to push you to get over, around, or through that obstacle. It's going to be the deeper-rooted reason WHY and that's what's really going to push you because guess what? Challenges will come up. They will stand in your way. There's going to be roadblocks. There's going to be challenges totally. So, really figuring out why. 

Jaime:	It's not sunshine and roses? Wow, I thought that's how I got into the game. 

Allen:	Yeah.

Jaime:	It's interesting because there's different levels of those challenges too, right? Some people are like, oh, I thought it would get easier as I got no, there is ALWAYS something, right? There's new. There's unknown. There's always going to be something and knowing the background will actually keep you from giving up completely.

Cathryn:	Like Whac-A-Mole. 

Jaime:	It?s like Whac-A-Mole. 

Cathryn:	It's like one thing you get down and then the other one pops up. But I think the level, if you keep going like, there was things that Allen and I dealt with in the first year that we were like, oh, my God, that was so difficult to handle but if we faced it now we'd be able to handle. It's just like expanding that circle of comfort with what you can deal with, but some of the issues we're facing now, if we had faced them in the first few months I would have been like, oh, I don't know what to do here and just like game over almost. 

Jaime:	See, one of my favorite quotes is, don't wish it were easier. wish it were better. I feel like business and entrepreneurship makes you better. It makes you a better human, more evolved and better to deal with WHATEVER life throws at you. Right? 

Allen:	Entrepreneurship is probably the No. 1 personal developing tool. 

Jaime:	There are pains sometimes too. Yay! 

Cathryn:	Yep. 

Jaime:	Good times; it brings it. But that's why we need to focus on the small wins because if we're NOT focusing on those and you're just dealing with a bunch of pain, you're not going to want to stay in it for too long because it's definitely worth it; it just sometimes hurts a little bit. But, thankfully, people like you: a) you're helping us; but, b) you can see the connection between you two and how you really complement each other and it looks like you actually have fun. So, in business and having and really focusing the pieces that ARE fun and hang out with people that you like and having a team that you actually enjoy being with is one of the reasons why we're doing this too. 

	I love this. I know we're going to have to start wrapping up soon, so I'm going to ask one last question. I don't know if one of you wants to take it or both of you but what's ONE action? ONE, besides buying the SELF Journal, which I will say later, but what's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million? No one? I love it. 

Cathryn:	For me, I would say figuring out getting a measurement of where you are currently, so that you have a baseline of how you need to improve to get to a million. Because I feel like whether you want to lose weight or do anything, if you don't know where you're at currently, then you're not going to know how far you're going to get. Because once you know where the baseline is, then you know what you need to make up to get to where you want to go. Then that's going to be easier to break down and actually know, okay, if I hit this in the next month, then I'm this much closer to my goal. If you don't know that baseline, then you don't even know what you're dealing with. 

Jaime:	Genius! And people avoid that because they don't want to look at it a lot of times. I loved Allen's face though before you answered that question. He was waiting for you. Go ahead.

Allen:	I'll take a stab. What's the one thing that someone can do this week to improve their chances? Or what's the question? I don't want to botch it. 

Jaime:	I put him on the spot. What action this week to help move them forward towards their goal of a million? 

Allen:	One action this week is to going back to what Cathryn said about the 20-Mile March is blocking off 30 minutes of your day every day this week. In that 30 minutes, you turn your phone off, God forbid, you don't work on Facebook, you don't do anything. You just focus on your one key thing that you've been putting off for last week, last month, last year, and you just focus on that one thing. Because most time we always put off the one thing that's going to get us that much closer. So, if you just spend 30 minutes for the next week, every day, doing the one thing that you've been putting off last week and the month before and the month prior, chances are the week following that, you're going to be pleasantly surprised. 

Jaime:	So simplistic and so gosh darn true. As a coach, I think one of the reasons why I have a job is I'm like go do this thing. That one thing that you're avoiding, go do that. I just sent an email last week, I told them three times and he still didn't email this one person. He finally did. It changed everything. I'm like, oh, yeah, you've got to be told three times sometimes. But you guys do it yourself. Everybody that's listening, make sure that you take the time to actually do it and go to Bestself.co to get the journals. Now I have to go get new ones too. I think I only have five left anyway but I have to go get new ones because they have the week-by-week. 

What else do you have on the site as far as content? I know you have tons of other products and stuff like that. Tell me more about that. 

Cathryn:	So, we have other products that are out there. Another big product that people love is the weekly action pad, which is a framework that I have been doing for years, basically, of downloading my brain onto one thing like organizing and prioritizing it and then figuring out, okay, this is a draining task or this is an energizing task. So, if I was doing anything marketing-related and as far as like, today I could set up a lead page, God forbid, that would be draining task for me. Then there is another energizing task so depending on, like, first thing in the morning is the highest priority, most draining task because that's when I have the most energy. Then maybe after lunch I'll do something energizing for me personally. So, it's all about, you know, you start your day with a full bag of coins. How do we end the day with a full bag of coins but also get you done? 

Jaime:	I love that and I'm going to go check that out too. I didn't even know you had that. Awesome! Thank you, guys, so much for coming on the show today and finally coming on so I could gush about the SELF Journal. I really, really appreciate it. 

Allen:	Thank you, Jaime. 

Cathryn:	Thanks, Jaime. It's awesome to be here. 

Allen:	Yes.

Tags: Allen Brouwer, best self journal, Business Owner, Cathryn Lavery, entrepreneur podcast, eventual millionaire, how to grow your list, jaime masters, millionaire entrepreneurs, podcast, productivity hacks, start-ups / startups, startup entrepreneur, top entrepreneurs

Categories: All, Featured Millionaire Interview, Journaling, List Building, Millionaire Interviews, Physical Products, Productivity

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