Today we’d like to introduce you to Mikey Ahdoot.
Mikey, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
A few weeks after graduating from USC, I met with one of my best friends (hi Alex!) as we were both depressed and pretty damn pissed off at how our lives were going. We spent that entire day doing something that to this day has changed my life (and in a lot of ways set up the entire foundation for Habit Nest).
We wrote out:
1. If we were living an absolutely incredible life that was PERFECT, what would it look like? What would every element of it look like?
2. What could we do on a daily basis to make every one of these happen?
We walked out of that meeting SO driven. Ridiculously driven. It’s when I made the first move of shifting my 11:30 am wake-up habit to 9:30 am every day. This was the BEGINNING of life mastery. Yeah, waking up at 9:30 am was my HUGE win 🙂 (to start).
One of my favorite moments ever is one day after making this pledge, I flew to Las Vegas for a family trip. No matter what I promised myself to stay consistent with my habits. It was literally my sole focus in life. But… I WAS IN VEGAS!
So I enjoyed Vegas, but I also chose to get my habits done on that trip. It was insanely hard, but it was one of the greatest wins I’ve had. I’ll never forget reading How to Win Friends & Influence People after going clubbing in my room at 5:30 am while everybody else was sleeping.
This led to one of the best periods of my life. It started a fireball of momentum that hasn’t simmered one bit. I climbed on this habit mastery track more and more. I set a limit of gaming from being ridiculously hooked and obsessed to 1 hour a day at maximum.
I made a Facebook status saying I would pay anybody I was late seeing $10. This curbed my lateness habit REAL quick (for a total cost of $40). I went on to read ten pages every single day. This led to a snowballing of new habits that were recommended in books – from outsourcing things in Virtual Freedom to brainstorming ten ideas a day from Choose Yourself to redoing how I process all my tasks to maximize productivity from GTD & Eat That Frog.
I went on to test my discipline by taking cold showers for a week, then a month, then close to one year. I treated every one of these habits as basically my only life goal. I literally would wake up every day with ONE single goal, which was to complete these habits. As I knew great daily habits would set up a foundation that would attract true happiness, fulfillment, and success in all areas of my life.
I bought whiteboard paint and painted all of my room’s walls with it, then created a giant habit tracking calendar to track up to 18 different habits at one point.
You can see it here: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1585/6091/files/IMG_9101.jpg?v=1548309260.
Putting ALL of my energy into habits and staying consistent with them changed my life. And it will change yours. Nowadays, I’m working on Habit Nest fulltime, trying to win new mental battles with life every day, and occasionally making YouTube videos too. Watch me get hit by a slipper in the face here: https://youtu.be/dryXvTot6ac.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc. – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It’s been an incredible road. Doing what I love on a daily basis is amazing. That’s not to say we don’t have (many) challenges come up consistently, but none of them affect my peace-of-mind and emotionally base as I know no matter what I’m going to achieve my long-term goal of living a happy, fulfilled life. Even being able to participate in this game of entrepreneurship feels like a blessing enough.
Our biggest challenges have been scaling as a bootstrapped company and prioritizing tasks/projects. We have a clear vision of growth with about 100 options to get there, so how does someone choose what to do? We use our best judgment and go all-in with no judgment of how it turns out, only a vision for growth).
Another big challenge we faced is launching products that people don’t want (mainly The Greatest Gift, which is still one of my favorite products we have to date: https://habitnest.com/products/the-greatest-gift). Putting so much time into one product is a risky move that’s high-risk high-reward, and in this case, the risk overtook the reward.
Lastly, balancing inventory is hard! There’s never a right answer, there are swings of orders based on seasonality and how quickly we’re able to scale. So it’s always a guessing game.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Habit Nest story. Tell us more about the business.
Habit Nest creates products that hold people accountable to building better habits. A big differentiator we have is how much of a behavioral base is infused with all our products.
Right now we only offer paper printed journals, and instead of only giving blank lines to fill in, we give content every single day to help people really work through the challenges that come up and help guide their mindset along the way… it’s almost a mix between a book and a journal in one, with a high emphasis on taking action.
I’m most proud of the work ethic my cofounders bring to the table. They’ve shown me how to sit and work for 10-12 hours straight, multiple days a week, without being drawn to other distractions. This mixed with the right mindsets and strategy are going to grow us to be the largest self-help company on the planet.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
I don’t believe in luck directly, I believe in doing everything we can to put ourselves in positions where luck and serendipity can happen as often as possible.
Pricing:
- Morning Sidekick Journal: $28.90
- Weightlifting Gym Buddy Journal: $36.90
- Meditation Sidekick Journal: $28.90
- Nutrition Sidekick Journal: $28.90
- Badass Body Goals Journal: $39.90
Contact Info:
- Website: https://habitnest.com
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/habitnest/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/habitnest/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/habitnest
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
