This is a really interesting frame, and it’s something I noticed in myself long before I actually made any meaningful change. My growth journey probably started around 2019, but honestly I just had to cook for a long time before anything really shifted. Growing up, I would always introduce myself as, “Hey, I’m Brannon, I’m adopted.” It was automatic. Not even a second thought. I thought it was cool, like a bit of shock factor, but looking back, I was really just fishing for engagement. It was like real-life engagement farming—but not toward anything productive. It was just a way to get validation from the outside because I didn’t have that internal sense of self or self-worth yet. And once I saw it in myself, I started seeing it everywhere. One of my best friends in college had cancer as a child, and she would literally introduce herself the same way—“Hey, I’m so-and-so, I had cancer.” We were in our twenties at that point. That was the first thing she led with. And not just with me—with a lot of people. You see it all the time. People latch onto the most significant or painful thing that’s happened to them and make it part of their identity. “I have this.” “I went through that.” “I am this.” It’s not that those things aren’t real or important—they absolutely are part of the story. But a lot of the time, it feels like people are anchoring their identity to it because of the response it gets. That dopamine hit from external validation. And I think for me, the shift came when I started building actual self-esteem. Not from what happened to me, but from what I was doing and who I was becoming. So instead of leading with the thing, it became more about the direction. That’s why I like this frame—because it’s not about ignoring your past, it’s about not letting it be the headline of who you are.

Today’s main goal is continuing to refine the funnel, the offer within it, and how that offer evolves as the community grows. Made some big adjustments over the past couple days and it’s starting to feel like it’s turning into something really cool. Right now it’s a lot of those moments where I’ll step away and then come back with a new idea, test it, refine it, and it just keeps getting better. So the focus today is finalizing it, tightening everything up, and mapping out the timeline—getting really clear on trigger points and expectations so I have something solid to anchor to. Short horizons, clear targets. DPO—duration, pathway, outcome. That’s the focus.

@Damini Yogini Ooh, bike shopping—I’ve actually been on the hunt for one too. Went out looking yesterday, so we’ll see how that goes. And two payments landing from coaching clients… that’s such a good feeling. Amazing, congrats. Sounds like a really productive day all around.

@Hope Cross I’ve got a lot of goals, but right now I’m really focused on four for the Skool group. First is covering ad spend—just getting to the point where customer acquisition cost is dialed in and we’re break-even. Same in, same out. Second is breaking even on operating expenses. Third is breaking even on personal expenses. And then fourth is getting into profitability on the personal side—actually being in the black and having money for savings. They’re very stepwise, very intentional, and that’s what we’re optimizing for right now. I feel really good about the plan we’ve got laid out. I think it’s going to be pretty cool.

@Hope Cross So true! 🙌

For me, my core values right now are family, connection, and love. I think those really just reflect what my spirit actually craves at the deepest level. Like when I zoom out and think about what’s genuinely fulfilling, it always comes back to people, relationships, and that sense of closeness and meaning. On the principles side, the ones that stand out most to me are autonomy, consistency, simplicity, and responsibility/ownership. That’s more so how I choose to operate. Autonomy is probably the big one, and the others support it—showing up consistently, not overcomplicating things, and taking full ownership of outcomes. And this stuff definitely impacts how I see the world and make decisions. I talk about this a lot, but I kind of run everything through a filter: is this in line with my principles, is it in line with my values, and is it in line with my goals? If it doesn’t pass those, it’s usually a no. So it’s not just abstract—it’s literally how I evaluate situations, opportunities, and even people. It’s always, does this match who I am and who I’m trying to become?

@Hope Cross Really great break down. I may use that 😂

Hello, I am Brannon—B-R-A-N-N-O-N—and I’m excited to be here. Super excited. This picture is from a long time ago—2016. I was 21, in Costa Rica, and it was one of the first times as an adult where I felt completely… genuine. I mentioned in another post that “genuine” is my word right now, and that’s really the direction I’m heading—peeling back the layers, getting rid of the shell, and rediscovering who I actually am. What’s interesting is, at that time in my life, I was probably in a worse place overall mentally than I am now. But that trip was an outlier. Being in a completely different environment, different language, different everything—it stripped a lot away. And for whatever reason, it brought out something real. So this picture represents that for me. There’s a lot of missing context, but it was a really meaningful experience. At the end of the day, I’m just trying to get back to being myself. Just Brannon. “Baby Brannon,” really. And that’s actually where our company name came from—the idea that the dreams you have when you’re young are probably the closest to your genuine self. So that’s the direction. Just getting back to that.

@Hope Cross Yes!!! 🙌