I didn't build Becomly because I wanted to create another goal-setting or habit-tracking app.
In many ways, I had been using Becomly for years before it existed.
I grew up with a single mom, and money was often tight. I still remember us searching through drawers at home for enough change to afford the bus into town to visit my sister. Even then, I remember thinking that I wanted my adult life to look very different financially.
Years later, when I started my first company, initially as little more than a hobby from my sofa, I became fascinated by books about visualization, goal setting and the idea of thinking much bigger than your current circumstances.
I read The Secret. I read Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich. I started learning about visualization and setting bold goals, long before these ideas filled our social media feeds.
But reading about them wasn't what changed things for me.
Things started to shift when I began putting them into practice.
I wrote down my goals. I created a clear picture in my mind of the life I wanted, sometimes imagining things that felt very far removed from my reality at the time. I journaled. I wrote gratitude lists. I paid attention to my habits. And slowly, my everyday actions began to align with where I wanted to go.
It wasn't magic. Writing something on a piece of paper didn't suddenly make it appear.
What changed was me.
Once I had a clearer picture of where I wanted to go, I started making decisions that moved me toward it. Often without consciously thinking, this is part of my vision. I simply became incredibly focused on building the future I had imagined.
Before I turned 30, I sold the company I had started from my sofa for over $4.8 million.
A company that began with an idea, a computer, my own hands and a very different picture in my mind of what my future could look like.
And that's one of the biggest reasons Becomly starts with vision, not goals.
A goal tells you what to achieve. A vision tells you why
We're often encouraged to start by setting goals: lose weight, save money, run a marathon, start a business.
But I think there's a question that needs to come first:
What do I actually want my life to look like?
Not just what do I want to achieve, but how do I want to live? How do I want to feel? What kind of person do I want to become?
When you start there, goals stop being isolated achievements. They become stepping stones toward something bigger.
Maybe your goal isn't really to save $10,000. What you actually want is greater freedom and security.
Maybe it isn't simply to lose weight. You want to see yourself in the future feeling strong, healthy and capable.
The vision gives the goal a reason.
There is some science behind this
Psychologists have studied something called future-self continuity, essentially how connected we feel to our future selves.
Research suggests that when our future self feels more vivid and connected to who we are today, it can influence decisions we make in the present.
But visualization alone isn't enough.
Research has also found that simply fantasizing about a positive future doesn't necessarily make us more likely to achieve it. We still need to recognize what's standing between us and that future and, most importantly, take action.
That's the part of visualization I've always believed matters most.
I didn't visualize building a successful company and then wait for it to happen.
The vision gave me direction. Then I worked toward it.
From vision to everyday life
This is the thinking behind Becomly:
Vision → Goals → Habits → Daily Action → Reflection → Progress
Your vision shows you where you want to go. Your goals turn parts of that vision into something concrete. Your habits bring those goals into your everyday life.
So if you're not sure what your goals should be, try starting with a different question:
If things went really well, what would I want my life to look and feel like a few years from now?
Write it down.
Then ask yourself what would need to become true for that life to exist, and what you could start doing regularly to move closer to it.
Your future doesn't appear simply because you imagined it. But it's much easier to start building a future when you know what you're trying to build.