Dear Prospective Heroic Founding Partner:
This is Brian. 👋
I’m the creator of Optimize and the Founder + CEΦ of Heroic. I appreciate you taking the time to learn more about our Heroic Founding Partner initiative.
I know you’re busy so we’ll start with the short story and, for when you have the time/interest, you can check out the longer story if you feel so inspired.
The Short Story
Earlier this year, Heroic made history as the first company to ever raise $5M via the new crowdfunding regulations as part of our $11M Seed round—with the support of 2,500 Founding Investors from 75 countries around the world. We plan to make history *again* as one of the all-time fastest growing startups.
As part of that, we’re creating Heroic partnerships with some very cool people including friends like Cal Newport, Mark Divine, Susan Peirce Thompson, Hal Elrod and more.
We’d love to invite YOU to join us as well!
You can learn more and sign up to join our Heroic Partnership program here.
Note: We will be offering our Founding Heroic Partners an exclusive 90% (!) commission on our launch initiatives through the end of this year.
The Longer Story
On election night last year I founded a business called Heroic.
Then a couple days later I learned about the fact that the limits on equity crowdfunding (known as Reg CF) were changing from a max of $1M to a max of $5M.
It was one of those moments in which I didn’t *think* about it, I just *knew* we’d be the first company in history to ever raise $5M via the new regulations.
Fast forward several weeks. We filed with the SEC. I send out a long letter to our Optimize community letting them know about our vision for Heroic Public Benefit Corporation and how we plan to train a virtuous army of heroes to go out and change the world.
And…
We had over $5M in commitments within hours. I still get goosebumps feeling into the power of our community’s commitment and every morning I reread a page of their 1,500+ notes on WHY they invested after recommitting to my Sacred Vow to them.
With the support of 2,500 investors from 75 countries around the world, in March we wound up making history as the first company to raise $5M via the new crowdfunding as part of an $11M Seed round.
Then I hired MetaLab to build our app. MetaLab is the best product company in the world—they built Slack and Uber Eats and the app for Elon Musk’s new business Neuralink.
We’re launching our Heroic Training Platform on April 9th, 2022.
It’ll be kinda like a Calm meets MasterClass meets world-class habit tracking for Heroes with ONE goal in mind: Helping people move from Theory to Practice (to Mastery!) TODAY!!
You can learn more about the app in this video I just recorded in our new Heroic studio.
Note: Sign up now as a Founding Member of Heroic and you’ll get the first year for only $35 (50% off) AND… You’ll get a free ticket to Livestream our Heroic launch party featuring my new favorite band The Score whose song we licensed for this segment of our pitch video! 🤓
Check out this little snippet. It’s from our investor pitch video but the same invitation applies to our discussion about becoming Heroic Partners!
Another important note: I got our logo tattooed on my body 24 hours after we finalized it last month. Here that is.
Then, a couple weeks later I went back to get our moonshot Heroic Mission tattooed next to it.
Our mission is simple: We are fiercely committed to helping create a world in which 51% of the world’s population is flourishing by the year 2051.
Note: I tell the longer origin story about that target in this email we sent to Investors and in our PhilosophersNote on Happy Together—tracing the origin all the way back to a question my friend James Pawelski posed to the founding members of the Positive Psychology movement 20 years ago.)
As I like to joke: In her great (!) book Everything Is Figureoutable, Marie Forleo tells us about some research that establishes the fact that writing down your goals makes it over 42% more likely that you’ll achieve them.
Now… Some people write their important goals down and tape them up on your bathroom mirror or put them in their wallet.
I decided to write my most important goal on my body. Here it is…
Yes, I’m all in.
Which leads me to the invitation. And yes I know that got long and bless you for sticking around.
My new business Heroic acquired my old business Optimize.
Optimize has a core wisdom premium membership that tens of thousands of people have paid $100 a year for.
>> Learn more here: https://www.optimize.me/
This features 600 PhilosophersNotes and 50 Optimal Living 101 classes and 1,000+ Optimize +1s on over 30 categories including:
Ancient Wisdom, Modern Science, Mental Toughness, Habits, Sleep, Stoicism, Buddhism, Purpose, Leadership,Focus, Goal Setting, Productivity, Energy, Peak Performance, Meditation, Nutrition, Weight Loss, Fitness, Breathing, Prosperity, Creativity,Learning, Self-Image, Willpower, Sports, Business, Relationships, Parenting, Public Speaking, Conquer Cancer, Conquer Anxiety, Conquer Depression, Conquer Perfectionism, Conquer Procrastination, and Conquer Digital Addiction.
Optimize also has a Coach certification program that has been scientifically proven (by my friend Sonja Lyubomirsky’s lab!) to change lives.
>> Learn more here: https://www.optimize.me/coach
3,500 people from 95 countries have paid $1,000 for it.
The first thing we did when the acquisition was official? We decided to give Optimize away for free.
And…
Nearly 50,000 people signed up in the first 25 days before we really did anything.
Now…
We’re going to make our next Optimize Coach (Class VIII) cohort that starts January 3rd available for only $300–while also letting people who sign up bring a friend!
And…
We’re partnering with some of my friends and giving them 90% of that revenue.
Why?
Because we want to help create a world in which 51% of the population is flourishing by the year 2051 and we believe “Unlocking Optimize” will help “Catalyze Heroic.”
In the process, we think we have a good shot at making history for the second time as one of the all-time fastest growing startups.
So, yep. That’s the basic idea.
Which brings us back to where we started:
I appreciate you taking the time to learn more about what we’re up to and I’m excited about the possibilities of creating a more noble, virtuous world together.
With Love + Wisdom + Self-Mastery + Courage I say…
Heroes Unite!!
-bri
P.S. As I mentioned, we’ve been blessed to have nearly 50,000 new Optimizers sign up in the 25 days since we Unlocked Optimize.
It's been incredibly inspiring to see so many new people join from all around the world and we deeply appreciate all of the support we’ve received from our community in sharing Optimize with their friends and families and students and colleagues and communities!
This note (below) from my dear friend Michael Magaraci touched me deeply.
Mags is a long-time Optimizer who was also the Navy’s highest enlisted SEAL—known as the Force Master Chief.
It is one of the greatest honors of my life to support him and the men and women he trains as the Director of Mentorship for Naval Special Warfare.
When we unlocked Optimize he sent this email (which he has given me permission to share) to hundreds of the top leaders in not just the NSW/SEAL community but leaders in ALL the special forces for the US military (Marines, Air Force, Rangers, Delta Force, etc.)…
btw: I talk about how Mags and I met and how my son and I got a tour of the facilities where the SEALs go through their BUD/s training in Optimize +1 #1,139 called In Case of Extreme Challenges: Break Glass!
Here’s the email…
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Subject: Optimize Your Life
From: Mags
Leaders, Mentors, Proctors & Optimal Performance SMEs,
The role of the Naval Special Warfare Director of Mentorship is to: “To produce competent, high-character/high-caliber Teammates, Operators, Leaders & Human beings, who perform their best, when it matters the most!”
Wish I could claim my own wisdom/experiences for the content I provide the folks on this valuable distro. The reality is that I have been very fortunate to meet some amazing world-class human beings in the execution of my job. One of these world-class individuals who has been instrumental in my development for the past 10+ years is a fella named Brian Johnson. I have been tapping into Brian’s wisdom on leadership, mental toughness, resiliency and optimal performance for over a decade now. Brian is on a mission to save the world one person at a time by helping us all to be the best possible versions of ourselves that we are truly capable of being. Brian has recently made his life changing “Optimize” program available for no-charge to our country’s greatest military. Brian cares deeply about our mission and our future success as humans and as America’s force-of-choice for Maritime SOF operations! Brian’s wisdom has been my go-to weapon of choice to become better than I ever thought possible. I hope Brian has the same powerful impact with all of you!!
Once again, the end state of this Mentor Distro is to share best practices with folks at the top-of-their game in their chosen area of expertise to make us all better today than we were yesterday!
Optimize Program address: https://optimize.me/
With tremendous respect,
Mags
Michael Magaraci
Naval Special Warfare Director of Mentorship
