Road to Kickstarter: Update #1

Road to Kickstarter #01: Hello World! 

Greetings, heroes! We have some epic news. We’re working on a new Planner for 2024, set to launch on Kickstarter later this year! This newsletter will serve as a behind the scenes look, so keep an eye out for these updates in your inbox on a regular basis. We have a long road ahead of us, with lots of work to do before we launch our project. We hope you will read these updates and join us on our quest to make the coolest planner on earth!  

Nick, Product 

Everything we do is grounded in our mission: To enable everyone to live as the hero in their story. This has been our north star since we started The Hero’s Journal on Kickstarter in 2019.


Since we started The Hero’s Journal, we have been asked thousands of times for weekly and monthly spreads. After years of brainstorming and prototyping, we finally have something we are (almost) ready to bring to Kickstarter. 


We are making the coolest planner on earth. As nerdy-hearted, story-loving, high-achieving, ADHD-having heroes, we have seen many planners that have simply failed to keep our attention or satisfy our expectations. That’s why we are coming back to Kickstarter with a planner that scratches our itch for something truly unique and useful.


Planners hold the true story of our lives. They house our appointments with others, our to-do lists, our wandering thoughts, brilliant ideas, and deepest ambitions. We believe your story deserves to live in the best planner on the planet. 


Most planners on the market are templated and repetitive planning systems that feel void of any story or soul. We are on a quest to create a planner like no one has ever seen and bring some new life to an industry that hasn’t seen any imagination or innovation in decades. 

Kyle, Operations

There are many considerations that go into running a successful Kickstarter. Getting your packages to you in a timely manner and making sure that all of the boats run on time takes up a predominant amount of my time, but there are other things that I touch in the early stages of ramping up to a big launch.


My goal is to keep a pulse on the resources we are going to need to give this campaign the best chance to be successful. For example, we will need to allocate money to make a killer Kickstarter video, properly budget for different ad campaigns and monitor incoming samples so that we know the product is absolutely right by the time it gets in your hands. 


The most important consideration is understanding the overall risk of Kickstarter, and what the best and worst possible outcomes could be. As we inch closer to the final project, expect to see some exciting data on our campaign from me.

Ryan, Art

My side of “Project Gertrude” has been a blast to work on. Inspired by time-and-space-hopping tales like Quantum Leap, Doctor Who, and multiversal stories like Everything Everywhere All At Once, the tentatively-titled Hero’s Planner finds Yew forced to jump between strange alternate worlds, cataloging their findings in order to make their way home. Every month puts Yew in a new setting with a new problem to solve. I don’t want to give away too much yet, but the various dimensions have given me the opportunity to draw all kinds of zany stuff. Dinosaurs! Steampunk cowboys! A city where everyone’s a cat! No matter how weird it gets, Yew remains constant, bravely charting a course while making order out of chaos. Like some kind of… heroic planner? Something like that… Anyway, I’m excited to show you what we’ve been working on in the coming months!

John, Community

When Nick said that we’ve been asked thousands of times for weekly or monthly planner spreads: I was one of those thousands. I agreed with you all so strongly that I even pitched the first super rough draft of a weekly spread way back in early-2021. After a few months of personally testing it alongside my own journaling routine, it became clear: We needed the art and storytelling magic of Ryan, and more importantly, we needed to start getting this thing in the hands of some heroes for some ‘real’ testing.


29 comments


  • Samantha Gilley

    Can’t wait. I’m super excited


  • Stephanie

    I’m in. Excited to see what is coming.


  • ilissa

    YES!!! I will be there.


  • David

    So glad we are getting a printed planner at last!


  • Tacie

    I’m ready!!


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