Everything started because I couldn't sleep.

Read time: 5 minutes

Hey, welcome back.

Last week, we talked about who loves themselves the most, wins. You can read that (and all past issues, here)

BUT this week's a BIG one - Possibly the biggest week in Heights history. Two milestones landed in the same week and I'm still wrapping my head around both of them.

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We hit 1 million orders. Verified by Shopify. From a company that started because I couldn't sleep and my best friend Joel had gut problems.

Second. Heights became the first consumer health company ever accepted into the Parliamentary & Scientific Committee. No other supplement brand in Europe sits at that table. Massive credit to Harry Jarrett, our director of science, who pursued this with a level of passion that I genuinely admire.

Today I want to use these two milestones to share the lessons that actually got us here. Business. Life. Health. All of it.

Start From Pain You've Actually Felt

Heights exists because I was desperate.

Six months of insomnia. Crippling anxiety. I'd tried everything. Therapy. Sleep apps. Meditation. Alcohol. Sleeping pills I never ended up taking because I knew they weren't a long-term fix.

A dietitian told me my brain was starving. She recommended DHA omega-3s, B vitamins, and blueberry extract. Within two weeks the tension dropped and I was sleeping through the night.

Joel had his own story. Stress-related gut issues that no one could properly solve.

We started Heights because we'd both lived the problem. We knew exactly how broken the experience was because we'd been the frustrated customer buying eight different bottles that ended up sitting in a cupboard unopened.

The lesson here is simple. The best businesses come from problems you've personally suffered through. You understand the frustration at a level that market research can never replicate. You know what's missing because you went looking for it and it wasn't there.

If your business idea comes from a spreadsheet, it might work. If it comes from a scar, it almost certainly will.

Build The Audience Before The Product

We spent 18 months developing our first product. During that time, we could have gone quiet and built in a lab. Instead, we started a newsletter.

The premise was simple. Every week, we'd read a scientific paper about brain health and translate it into something you could actually understand in under three minutes. No jargon. No fear-based marketing. Just one useful thing you could do for your brain that week.

By the time we launched, we had 45,000 subscribers. People who'd been on the journey with us from the start. People who trusted us because we'd shown up every single week for a year and a half with free, genuinely useful content.

That newsletter is now read by over 250,000 people.

The lesson: your audience doesn't start when your product launches. It starts the moment you decide to be useful. Give people value before you ask for anything. Do it consistently. The trust compounds in ways that paid ads never will.

Do It Properly When The Easy Path Is Right There

This is the one I'm most proud of and the one that led to the Parliamentary & Scientific Committee.

When we started, we had a choice. We could do what most supplement brands do. Source cheap ingredients, slap a nice label on it, run Facebook ads, and sell volume. The margins are great and nobody really checks.

We went the other way. Every single ingredient sourced from the best place we could find. Blueberry extract from Italy. Algae oil from a sustainable farm in Nova Scotia. We manufacture and ship within three months of production because supplements degrade in quality over time. Most brands sit on shelves for years.

We hired an in-house science team. We run clinical trials. We measure nutritional deficiencies across the population. We publish peer-reviewed research.

None of that is cheap. None of it is fast. And for years, none of it was visible to the outside world.

Being accepted into the Parliamentary & Scientific Committee is what happens when you make those decisions for five years straight and don't cut corners even when nobody's watching. That kind of credibility can't be bought or faked. It can only be earned.

The lesson: do the boring, expensive, right thing. Over and over again. Even when nobody notices. Especially when nobody notices. The recognition always comes later. And when it does, it means something because it was real.

Your Health Is Your Business Strategy

I know I always say this. But I'm going to keep saying it because a million orders started with a dietitian appointment I almost didn't book.

When my brain was starving for nutrients, everything suffered. My sleep. My mood. My decisions. My relationships. My ability to think clearly about anything.

Fixing the biology fixed everything else. The clarity came back. The energy came back. The confidence to start something new came back.

Joel's story is the same. His gut health issues were affecting his focus, his stress levels, his ability to show up fully. When he addressed that, everything else followed.

Heights was built by two people who took their own health seriously enough to turn it into a company. And I genuinely believe we would not be sitting at 1 million orders if we hadn't prioritised our own health first.

You can't build something great from a body and brain that are running on empty. Take care of yourself. It's the most productive thing you'll ever do.

Partnership Matters More Than You Think

Joel is my best friend. We've been through hell together. A failed startup. Health crises. Years of grinding on Heights before anyone cared.

Building a company is lonely enough. Building one with someone you genuinely trust and love spending time with changes everything. You have someone to call when it's 11pm and a deal falls through. You have someone who'll tell you when you're wrong. You have someone to celebrate with when Shopify sends you a notification saying you've hit a million orders.

If you're going to pick a co-founder, pick someone you'd want in the trenches with you when everything goes sideways. Because it will. And when it does, the relationship is all you've got.

What A Million Orders Actually Taught Me

A million orders is a number. A big one. One I never imagined when Joel and I were sitting in a flat trying to figure out what to call our newsletter.

But the thing that actually matters is what sits behind the number. Every single one of those orders is a person who trusted us enough to put something we made into their body. That's a level of trust that still keeps me up at night. In a good way this time.

We don't measure success in revenue at Heights. We measure it in brains impacted. And a million orders means a lot of brains that we've hopefully helped take better care of themselves.

That started with two people who were struggling. Who decided to fix their own problems first. Who chose to do it properly. And who showed up every week with something useful to share.

If you're early in your journey and wondering if any of this is worth it, I can tell you that it is. Stay in it. Do it right. Take care of yourself while you're building. And find someone you trust to build it with.

To the next million,

Dan

P.S. If you've been thinking about starting something that comes from a problem you've actually lived through, this is your sign. You already have the unfair advantage. You just need to start.

Conflicted

Utopia or dystopia - the truth about Muslim-Jewish relations. I thought this was a very thoughtful, balanced insight.

Listen Here

Children of Abraham

The book from the podcast above... the story of Muslim-Jewish relations.

Read Here

Widows Bay

Loving this. I love horror. I love comedy. This is a pitch perfect combo of both.

Watch Here

A 2020 study published in Emotion found that people who learned to accept their “non-ideal emotional states”, including low motivation, low energy, and neutral days, experienced significantly higher overall well-being and lower stress.

The key insight: self-acceptance amplifies emotional resilience, while self-judgment weakens it.

📌 Quick Takeaway →

Your average days aren’t failures; they’re emotional training grounds.
When you stop punishing yourself for being human, everything in your life compounds faster.

→ Link to study

In my goal to help more entrepreneurs/people who are looking to level up their careers, I've just started taking 1-1 consulting calls (only 1 a week)

Why book a call? Some of my expertise/success:

I've built 6 startups. 3 fails, 1 win, and 2 still going.
E-Commerce: Heights - with revenue over $40M a year.
Community: Foundrs, one of the UK's top founder communities
Podcasting: Leaders Media - Bootstrapped to #1 in business and 10M downloads
Health/Mental Health: Overcame depression, insomnia, burnout and anxiety in pursuit of success
Angel Investing: I've invested in over 100 companies
Personal Brand: Over 400,000 followers across social
Hear me on Diary of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

So if you're interested in booking a session with me to talk all things business or building a personal brand, book for 30-minutes or 45-minutes. (limited spots).

Book a Call with Dan