One year ago today I launched InstinctTweaks.
A launch announcement, a 50% off discount, sent to a server where maybe 6 people actually cared.
Our first month we had 10 customers.
Today we're past 1200.
But that number doesn't show you what it cost. The 12 hour days. The 6 hour days that turned into 12. The constant stream of things breaking, things that needed fixing, things that weren't good enough yet and had to be torn down and rebuilt. Months of pouring everything into something that barely made money, telling myself to keep going when every reasonable part of me said stop.
There were so many points where quitting would've been the easy thing. Nobody would've blamed me. Nobody would've even noticed. The whole thing was being decided in the quiet part, no traction, no one watching, no reason to keep going except that I said I would.
I didn't quit. And somewhere in that year it stopped being just me. We built a team. Real people who believe in this, who show up and build it with me. That's not something I take lightly.
The new version I've been building makes that first one look like a rough sketch. Everything is better, the quality, the depth, the experience. A year of relentless work poured into it.
If I could go back and tell the version of me who sent that first post what we'd have a year later, he would've teared up. I think he always knew it deep down that if we just didn't give up, we'd end up ahead.
But knowing it and living it are two different things.
This isn't a "we made it" post. We didn't make it. We came far to go further.
Year two starts now.