From $18 to $36 MRR in 4 Days: What I'm Learning From My First Paying Customers

From $18 to $36 MRR in 4 Days: What I'm Learning From My First Paying Customers

Just four days ago, I celebrated my first three Founding Members and my first $18/month in recurring revenue. Today, that number has doubled. In this MBA Diaries update, I'm sharing what happened next—including the simple follow-up text that turned "I'll sign up" into actual customers, why I'm tracking every member's experience in a usage tracker, and what my very first 20-minute customer feedback call taught me. I also share: * Why I'm focusing on paying customers instead of free users. * How I'm building a feedback system with 48-hour nudges and 7-day check-ins. * My latest One Day MBA update and what we've been learning about product experimentation. * The upcoming Launch House founder event I'm both excited and nervous about. * The decision I made about leaving my 2½-year-old for the first time—and how we found a solution that feels right for our family. This season is less about overnight success and more about testing, learning, listening to customers, and improving one step at a time. If you're building a business, launching something new, or simply curious what the messy middle actually looks like, come along for the journey. Thanks for being here, and as always, I hope you have a calm and colorful day.

Three Founding Members, $18 MRR, and the First Real Signs This Might Actually Work

After more than 40 customer discovery conversations, countless pivots, and a lot of uncomfortable texts, something finally clicked. In this episode, I'm sharing the real behind-the-scenes of launching the MVP for my parenting audio membership and what happened when I stopped trying to build the "perfect" product and started testing what people would actually pay for. Inside this episode: * Why my first three paying Founding Members felt bigger than the money * The follow-up text that turned a "maybe later" into a customer * What I completely failed to track during 40+ customer interviews (and what I'd do differently) * Why timing—not interest—was stopping one mom from buying * The emotional reality of asking friends to become customers * Why $18/month feels like proof that this business can become something much bigger * Balancing entrepreneurship, motherhood, graduate school, and a child with ongoing health challenges * Why I'm more hopeful than ever that I'm finally finding product-market fit This isn't a polished success story. It's a real-time diary of building a business from the ground up—one conversation, one experiment, and one brave ask at a time. If you're building something of your own, especially while raising a family, I hope this reminds you that momentum often starts with just a handful of people saying, "Yes."

Building a Business One Conversation at a Time

This week I'm taking you behind the scenes of my MBA journey and sharing what it's really like to build a business from the ground up. Over the past few weeks, I've completed the Pivot Accelerator, conducted customer discovery interviews, refined my ideas, and made my very first sale. Surprisingly, the biggest lesson wasn't about making money—it was about listening. In this episode, I share: * What I learned from more than a dozen customer discovery calls * Why I completely changed my approach after the accelerator * How I narrowed dozens of ideas into three offers worth testing * What it felt like to receive my first paying customer * Why collecting feedback is more valuable than chasing perfection * The mindset shifts I'm working through as I learn to build a business that truly serves moms I'm also sharing the behind-the-scenes reality of balancing entrepreneurship, graduate school, and parenting through one of the hardest weeks our family has faced. If you've ever wondered what it actually looks like to build something people want—not just something you're excited to create—this episode is for you. Thanks for following along as I build Calm & Colorful one experiment, one conversation, and one family at a time.

Pivot Accelerator Five Interviews In, and a Big Shift in How I Think

This week has been intense in the best possible way. For the Pivot Accelerator, I had class on Monday, class on Thursday, office hours on Saturday, and eight interviews scheduled across the weekend. By the time I walk into tomorrow's class, I'll have completed all five interviews required for the assignment—and then some. One of the biggest wins this week wasn't just the interviews. It was finally feeling confident enough to put my slides in front of real people. After meeting with mentor Brian and getting feedback during office hours, I felt ready to test my ideas instead of endlessly tweaking them. The interviews have been fascinating. Not just because of what people are saying, but because of what I'm learning about the research process itself. A few days ago, I printed more than 150 pages of interview transcripts from research I conducted last year and went through them by hand. Highlighter. Pen. Notes in the margins. Looking for themes, quotes, emotions, and patterns. What surprised me most was how much I noticed that AI didn't. For a long time, I would upload transcripts and let AI summarize the findings. It was fast. Efficient. Easy. But my mentor challenged me on something important: I was delegating my thinking. That hit hard. This week has been a reminder that AI can support thinking, but it shouldn't replace it. The real insights came from sitting with the data myself, noticing the nuances, and making sense of it through my own lens first. Tomorrow's class is focused on reviewing interview findings, identifying moments of "heat" or strong emotion, and deciding whether to pivot or persevere. As it turns out, I misunderstood the assignment and completed five interviews when they only expected one or two before this session. I'm not mad about it. Now I have a deeper pool of data, stronger confidence in what I'm hearing, and plenty to bring into the discussion. One unexpected lesson came from interviewing a friend who had purchased a toddler tantrum kit from someone else. I'll be honest—that one brought up some feelings. Why didn't they come to me? The answer could be a hundred different things. Maybe I didn't have the exact offer they needed. Maybe they didn't know I offered something similar. Maybe they simply found another solution first. I don't actually know. But moments like that reveal where our assumptions live, and that's valuable information too. That's what this whole process is teaching me: customer discovery isn't just about learning about your customers. It's also about learning about yourself, your business, your blind spots, and your opportunities. Tomorrow is Class 3. Another interview. A board meeting. More learning. And honestly? I'm loving every minute of it. The support, the mentors, the community, the repetition of the lessons until they finally click—it's exactly what I needed. For now, I'm off to review interview recordings and look for the moments that made people lean in, light up, or get emotional. That's where the real clues are. Have a calm, colorful day.

I Was Asking the Wrong Questions (and I Didn't Even Know It)

A real-time reflection from inside a 2-week pivot accelerator: realizing the real problem wasn’t the customer interviews—it was the lack of hyper-specific problem focus. Breaking down how broad targeting diluted feedback, why “3-cycle testing” changes everything, and what it looks like to rebuild clarity through sharper customer discovery, MVP thinking, and ruthless niche selection.