THE HERO’S JOURNAL

Copywriter • Director of Marketing • Chief Replies-to-Angry-Comments Officer
Artist: Ryan McConnell

A LITERAL, PHYSICAL JOURNAL YOU CAN HOLD IN YOUR HANDS OR SHOVE IN YOUR BAG OR GIVE TO A FRIEND OR PUT ON YOUR SHELF AND IGNORE INDEFINITELY.

The Hero’s Journal is a magical ecommerce company that helps people become the hero of their own story using kind products.

It’s also a million dollar direct-to-consumer brand two friends and I built from the ground up on $15,000 of Kickstarter money and a metric ton of Shake Shack delivery.

From our earliest years, we’re brought up on a diet of the highest-octane stories known to mankind.

Tales of impossible gallantry and woe. Dashing damsels and insipid villains. Dialogue that has you ripping through an entire box of kleenex. Heroes in impossibly-tight fitting pants that have you covering your lap.

We leave the movie theater vowing to do better—to be better. To renew that gym membership, read that stack of books, or be there for our kids. 

And yet our lives, by contrast, fall flatter than the worst first attempts at a tenth grade short story.

The little spark of heroic nobility in our hearts is buried under a pile of dishes, laundry, and vacuuming. Not to mention the buckets of trauma, self-doubt, and disbelief we dump over it all.

(Plus what’s stopping you from just letting Netflix play the next episode for another year or two, anyway?)

The Hero’s Journal was made for people who don’t think the most adventurous story of their lives should happen on someone else’s page. 

It’s fueled by the belief that, despite pesky fact that Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Harry Potter have already been written, the most interesting, important, and breathtaking story in the whole entire universe is the one you tell about yourself. 

Because despite the bastards of the world and the demons in our past (not to mention the pile of skeletons in our minds), we are still in charge. 

In control of the one thing that matters.

Able to create the moment when the rubber meets that ever-waiting road—

When we dig deep within ourselves, past the piles of non-entity that distract us from who we are—and make the only real choice any hero ever has to face.

The choice to begin again. 

ULTRA TOP SECRET BUSINESS PLAN (If you’re a cop, you’re legally required to stop scrolling). If you tell anyone that you read this even though it’s top secret then everyone will know what a NARC you are.

STEP ONE: Raise $15,000 on Kickstarter

STEP TWO: Buy a bunch of journals

STEP THREE: Accidentally blow up your Facebook Group to 11,000 people

STEP FOUR: Happy hour with friends

STEP FIVE: ????

STEP SIX: Become a million dollar business in your second year of operation

STEP SEVEN: Start seeking investment

STEP EIGHT: Get so stressed out by the investor process you go see a doctor. You tell them that you haven’t been able to sleep in months and that home life has been difficult since your wife of 6 years left after your missed your son’s piano recital for the 3rd time (he was playing the Bach Cantata he’d been practicing solely for you, and when he hit the third section, looked up in slow motion and saw the empty seat he had been saving for his dad). The doctor prescribes you an ambien prescription, because America, and then charges you $450, also because America. You know you’re not supposed to mix pills and liquor, but it’d be a shame to let the half handle of your best friend Jim Bean rot in the passenger seat, plus your liver has already won organ of the month for the last 14 years, if it was gonna quit it’d have done it by now. You notice as I-71 blurs into the horizon that you actually have no idea where you’re going. The landscape looks unfamiliar, maybe it’s the late day sun casting strange shadows, but you have a feeling of foreboding that goes beyond what your sponsor will say when they find out how crossfaded you are. In a crippling moment of insight, you realize that you’re not a real person, but rather a fictitious anecdote someone made up to try to win an argument on the internet. You realize the futility of even trying to act ethically in a world with precise causality and as you sink below the dash, press your foot into the gas, hoping the end will come before you reach the bottom of the bottle.