How many priorities do you have?

Hello!!

Two newsletters in one week? Who is this guy?

Ironically, I’ve spent this week feverishly consuming content to find inspiration for this newsletter. One of my 2024 lessons was about balancing consumption and creation. My goal for 2025 is to write for 15 minutes daily—about ideas I’ve heard, prompts I want to explore, or random thoughts. I won’t send all those snippets, but by the time I sit down to write this newsletter, I’ll already have written six times more than I normally would.

With that said, I do have an idea I want to explore today: Who are you?

Before you blurt out an answer, the real question is: Who are you, and how do you know?

I think most people have heard of Atomic Habits by now. In the book, James Clear suggests that your habits reveal more about who you are than anything else.

When I was in business school, a professor shared this gem: If you want to know what a business cares about, don’t ask their CEO—look at their P&L. Businesses care about what they spend their money on.

And finally, I’m currently listening to Essentialism by Greg McKeown (because Chris Williamson had him on his podcast). Early in the book, McKeown explains that the word priority originally had no plural form—you could only have one priority.

Let’s put these ideas together into a framework for answering the question: Who are you, and how do you know?

If your actions reveal who you are, and your resource allocation shows what you care about, do these align with your singular priority?

Your priority isn’t your identity, but it’s hard to argue that your identity doesn’t shine through your priority.

The Hero’s Journal

Last week, we left our heroes coming off their biggest sales month ever and feeling on top of the world. Morale was high, and we were dreaming big.

But there was a problem. Remember when all our time went to shipping and juggling day jobs instead of building the business? It was happening again. We thought we’d hit our growth hockey stick and that things would just keep climbing. So we made a big decision: we partnered with a Third-Party Logistics provider (3PL).

I’ll be honest—I liked packing the journals. It was tangible work, and it felt meaningful to know we were personally shipping our product to our heroes. But we made the choice we thought would help us scale.

Unfortunately, the 3PL overpromised and underdelivered. Instead of gaining time, I was spending more of it handling customer service emails about shipping issues.

Using the framework from above: I thought I was an entrepreneur building a journal empire. In reality, I was a customer service rep managing a costly shipping operation.

There was misalignment.

Undoing that system was hard and unglamorous, but it set the stage for one of the most interesting chapters in our story. More on that soon.

Atypical

With the holidays, Trey and I haven’t had too many deep conversations about the business. But one thing about Trey is that he naturally leans into work, so things are always moving.

Right now, we’re preparing for his next merch drop, which already feels miles ahead of the first one. That doesn’t mean it isn’t hard—it is—but it’s getting better.

I was listening to a conversation between Alex Hormozi and Chris Williamson about how difficult things feel. The gist? Hard things remain hard, but the more you do them, the better equipped you are to navigate them.

Creating products, marketing them, shipping them—these are tough tasks. But each time you do them, you get better at extracting positive outcomes from challenging situations.

Coffee

Not much new here—I’m working through old beans right now.

I’m thinking of treating myself to one or two fancy bags of beans each month so this section can get more exciting.

Summary

My brain has felt manic this week—scattered and hard to focus. But pushing through that and trying to produce something cohesive has been good practice.

Next week’s newsletter will be a banger. Lock in.

Kyle