A Founder's Diary | My 2025 Marlow & Personal Outlook ??

Welcome to A Founder’s Diary! Every night, I grab a cup of peppermint tea, light a candle, and journal about my day. This newsletter is a summary of those thoughts and pages.

My goal is to demystify entrepreneurship by showing the behind the scenes of being a founder along with lessons learned, strategies, health and wellness tips, resources, and much more.

As we dive into 2025, I'm excited to share with you:

• Our 2025 Marlow goals
• My 2025 personal goals
• My favourite things lately
• Fav podcast episode listens & reads recently

What happened at Marlow this week:

In late 2024, we closed our seed round which means this year we have some ambitious goals to hit! This week, we've been focused on refining our 2025 strategy, milestones, and budget.

1) 2025 Finances

At Marlow, I oversee all of our fundraising and financials which means this week was a lot of time spent in excel doing revenue forecasting, inventory projections based on our sales/targets & associated reorder points, marketing budgeting, and financing plans. Last year, we had some growing pains around inventory management which we're trying to be much more on top of this year.

2) Marketing Strategy

This week, we did a reflection on our marketing funnel & brand vision. We discussed how we want Marlow to be viewed in the market and mapped out a lot of fun new campaigns for the year. We did outreach for dream brand partnerships and also brainstormed some new content ideas we want to test out.

3) Team Reflections

This week, we also each reflected on our roles, refined our key responsibilities, and set our own individual KPIs that we're aiming for. We identified gaps on the team to plan out our hiring roadmap and where we could supplement with contractors as well.

Bonus: Founder's Diary Planning!

This week, I even reflected on the strategy for Founder's Diary and where I want to take this newsletter in 2025. I also had some conversations with some potential sponsors that I'm super pumped about! I started this newsletter as a way to authentically share the behind the scenes of startup life and I love how much it's grown since I launched it last year and how many founders have reached out saying they've learned something from these newsletters. So a BIG thank you to each of you for that ??

My 2025 Goal Setting Format ??

This week, I sat down with Khalid and led a personal reflection and goal setting session for the two of us. If you haven't already done a personal reflection, feel free to use the format I used for us. There are 5 key categories I got us to reflect on:

1. Career & Finances
2. Volunteering, Hobbies, and Passions
3. Health & Wellness
4. Relationships
5. Adventure & Life Experiences

Across each of these categories, I got us to reflect on the following questions:

• What went well in 2024? What are you proud of?
• What were some of your favourite moments in 2024 that you want to include more of in 2025?
• What didn't go well in 2024 that you want to improve?
• What were your worst moments of 2024? How can we avoid that in 2025?
• Overall, based on what you want to improve, what are your top 3 priorities / goals for 2025?

My 2025 Goals

Overall, my theme for the year is contentment. When I say this, I don't mean it in the way that I want to stop growing. Rather, I want to focus and dial in on things that are already working and that I'm doing well and just do them even better this year. So based on that, these are my goals for 2025:

1. Career: Focus on building Marlow! We want to hit ambitious Amazon revenue targets, build a long term financing strategy, launch a new product, increase our number of subscribers, and more!
2. Volunteer, Hobbies, and Passions: I want to stick with my volunteering roles with Venture for Canada and Ivey's Entrepreneurship Strategy. On the hobby front, I want to play more pickleball and learn to ski! I also want to get better at cooking and learn some Indian food recipes from my grandma.
3. Health & Wellness: Recently I listened to a podcast that said there are four key pillars of health - diet, movement, sleep, and stress reduction. These pillars really resonated with me and I want to ensure I'm always focusing on these four pillars. Plus: with my celiac disease, I want to make it a priority to better understand gut health and the relationship it has to your hormones and overall health.
4. Relationships: I want to prioritize time with Khalid, my family, and close friends. Having meaningful relationships is so important to me!
5. Adventure & Life Experiences: Last year, Khalid and I got engaged and I'm really excited to start planning our wedding!

My favourite things lately

On the theme of gut health (this is not sponsored) but I've been loving the Seed DS-01? Daily Synbiotic supplement. It's a probiotic/prebiotic supplement that contributes to gut health, immunity, skin health, and more.

Learn more about Seed

Best Podcast Episodes & Reads Lately

• ?? The Happiness Lab: Simple Ways to Feel Great Every Day with Dr Rangan Chatterjee
• ?? Pursuit of Wellness: Dr. Gabrielle Lyon on Muscle, Creatine, & the Links between H. Pylori and Acne
• ?? Dream Bigger Podcast: Gracie Norton, Healing PCOS through Diet and Lifestyle Changes
• ?? The Top Expert Advice of the Year: The Best of the Mel Robbins Podcast
• ?? Huberman Lab: Dr. Sara Gottfried: How to Optimize Female Hormone Health for Vitality and Longevity

PLUS: Two episodes I did recently for Marlow breaking down our fundraising process and journey!

• ?? Idea to Investment
• ?? Venture for Canada

Over the holidays, I focused on fun reads and really enjoyed:

?? Just for the Summer

?? None of this is True

And that's all for now, thank you for being here and following along on my journey. I am so grateful to each and every one of you and I hope you have a great start to 2025!

Until next time,

Nadia

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