How did you start Passion Planner?

“What the heck am I doing with my life?” This was the question I asked myself in 2012 when I graduated from UCLA. I thought I had done everything right, but I still felt lost. After slipping into post-grad depression for 9 months I decided I needed to action and pull myself out of that rut.

I took out a piece of paper and asked myself “What do I want to be, do, and have?” I wanted to help people. I thought about what helped me the most when during the busiest yet most fulfilling times of my life. It was my planner. But, I was dissatisfied with the planners on the market. They helped you plan your daily life, but they didn’t ask you what you wanted out of life. I wanted to change that. That’s how Passion Planner was born. (read more)

I launched the first version of Passion Planner in 2013 on Kickstarter and messaged everyone I knew on Facebook about my dream. Some ignored me, but others believed. In 30 days I had raised $48,000 from friends and complete strangers on the internet. The dream became a reality. I rented half of my parent’s garage as our first headquarters. I was so happy to help my parents with their mortgage and have a real business.

A year later the #PashFam asked for a smaller version of the planner, so we launched that on Kickstarter too. It went viral and was shared 500,000+ times on Facebook alone. It raised $650,000 in 30 days. But the virality didn’t end there, we sold $1,200,000 on the website that same holiday season. I had become an accidental community-made millionaire in the span of 3 months.

Since 2013, we’ve grown Passion Planner from a single-person operation in my parent's garage to a 7 figure a year business with a die-hard following, earning the title of one of the fastest-growing businesses in the US. We have sold more than 2.8 million planners worldwide.

Accessibility is at the heart of everything we do. We have donated 650,000+ planners and $600,000 to non-profits and schools globally. Since the beginning, we’ve given away all of our PDFs for free to download and print for anyone that can’t afford a planner. We are on a mission to help everyone take action on their dreams.

I have been interviewed and featured on NPR, The Washington Post, Refinery29, and more. Passion Planner has been featured in Forbes, CNN, Good Morning America, and more.

Since then, I’ve given a TED talk, climbed Base Camp Mt. Everest, and still manage to keep most of my houseplants alive.