Upgraded Us started with a random email and a Youtube ad. The company has come a long way since its innocuous beginnings. I think our success comes from the power of sticking to things and being willing to start with even the smallest seed of opportunity.

In early 2015, Decker and I were graduating from college. We had no clue what we wanted to do for our careers. I was a math major who loved reading, worked in the construction industry, and regularly whiplashed between angst and confusion. Decker worked in a microbiology lab at a prestigious university, spent a year in China learning Chinese, and was as lost as I was. We didn’t have business aspirations. We did have aspirations, but we didn’t know what they were. We were pushed by the feeling that we could and should be doing something, but we didn’t know what.

When the opportunity to start a business presented itself, I didn’t recognize it. One random day in 2015, I opened an email from a marketing guru pitching a course for selling products on Amazon. You’re probably familiar with scammy emails like these. They promise a bunch of money for a few hours of work a week. For whatever reason, I entertained the idea and started clicking spooky blue links. Before long, I got sketched out and forgot about creating an Amazon business.

Whoops! We could have started two years earlier if I’d been less skeptical. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between a scam and an opportunity, so I give 2015-me a pass. Honestly, I don’t think I was committed enough at that time to weather the ups and downs we’ve been through with the business, so it was probably a good thing that we didn’t move forward then. 

Luckily, the same opportunity found its way to me two years later in the form of a Youtube ad. I was two years wiser and much more desperate to create something. I’d left the construction industry, sat on my butt for months trying to call forth something to care about, and entered the staffing industry. As my dissatisfaction mounted, I was ready to entertain a scam.  

I say that jokingly since the opportunity wasn’t a scam, but there’s truth in the idea. Dissatisfaction can be a powerful force to turn you away from a life that isn’t doing it for you. Being dissatisfied doesn’t feel good, but it can be a useful signal and energy source. Ready to try something new, I decided to give “passive income from home” a try and dove down the Youtube rabbit hole.

As I researched, I thought, “this just might work,” and “maybe it isn’t a scam.” I was excited, and I told Decker what I’d been learning. 

We decided to join forces and formed our company, Good Odds (not Upgraded Us!). We named it Good Odds because it seemed like this internet business had a good chance of working out for us. You should note the company’s purpose was primarily selfish. We wanted jobs we liked, good income, and something fun to do. We thought we had good odds of getting these things, but we didn’t have much in mind for our customers. We wanted to do a good job and make cool stuff, but mostly we wanted our lives to be better.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that now. We were ambitious and lost. We found something we could channel our efforts into that seemed like it would pay off. It took us a while to be less selfish and do more with the customer in mind. The important thing is we eventually made that change (more to come in a few paragraphs).

We spent 2017 and 2018 building Good Odds with very little business knowledge, a $1000 online course about selling on Amazon, and the desire to make money by selling cool things. We tried to find profitable products that seemed fun to work on. We didn’t have a mission. We just tried our best and let learning guide us.

Letting learning guide you means doing things specifically to learn, not necessarily because you think they’ll work. Because we didn’t know what we didn’t know, we ran experiments to find out. We weren’t upset when things didn’t work out because we were getting educated. We leaned into learning and invested in our future selves by being willing to make mistakes early on.

After a few years, we’d learned and done enough to have two product lines that our customers liked – Prompta and Poetry Tiles – and several other lines we liked but struggled to grow. We overcame all sorts of challenges (topics for future blogs). We’d created a tangle of brands and didn’t know what to focus on (sounds like life sometimes, huh?). We’d gone broad enough that the business was becoming difficult to manage. We needed clarity and a mission. We needed help.

Nik, the now VP of Marketing for Upgraded Us, joined our team to help us figure out our company focus. We spent several weeks discussing our company, where we came from, and what we wanted to be. One realization that emerged was how much Decker and I grew personally through creating products and building the business. We’d stuck to this business longer than we’d stuck to anything before. The business kept challenging us, and we persevered. We’d achieved some small financial success, but more importantly, we created a company we loved working at. Decker and I found purpose in our work and challenges worth facing. We knew something about the how of business at this point. We were ready to focus more on the why.

We settled on a few core concepts for the future of the business:

• Decker and I had to like our products and find meaning in creating them
• We wanted to forge ahead together
• We wanted to keep growing as people
• We knew we wanted to contribute to the lives of other people and help make life better somehow

We chose to unify around personal development. Because our business journey required so much personal growth and we found such meaning and utility in it, we wanted to spread personal development to others. We wanted to pass on what we learned and keep learning so we could share more useful things. We saw no better way to spend our time than to help others live better lives. Our existing product lines already hinted at that intention. Prompta helped people connect with their loved ones. Poetry Tiles helped people tap into their creativity and share their imaginations with others.  

We re-formed Good Odds as Upgraded Us and committed ourselves to helping people live better lives.

The “Upgraded” component of Upgraded Us stands for personal development, becoming better people, and building skills. The “Us” in Upgraded Us is Decker and me, it’s our team and company, and it’s you. It’s everyone working on upgrading themselves to become more and positively impact the world.  

We’re excited to partner with you on your journey to improve yourself and impact the world according to your vision. Thank you so much for your support, being part of the journey, and enabling us to do meaningful work!

-Sam