Building MomentumEQ: The First 8 Weeks
48 beta users, 87% weekly return rate, and the data is pointing at something we didn't expect: visibility matters more than motivation.
A beta user said something last week that I haven't been able to stop thinking about: "For the first time, my daily tasks feel connected to something bigger."
I've been coaching professionals for years. That sentence captures the exact problem I kept running into... and the reason I started building MomentumEQ in the first place.
The Problem
Most professionals have goals but no system. They know they want to "grow into leadership" or "make a career change," but there's no bridge between that vision and what they do on a random Tuesday. The vision lives in a performance review doc that gets opened twice a year. The Tuesday lives in a task list that has no connection to anything beyond this week.
I saw this gap in every coaching engagement. My clients would leave a session fired up about their development plan, and within two weeks the daily grind had consumed their attention. Not because they lacked motivation. Because they lacked a system that kept the connection visible.
I tried everything. Spreadsheets, Notion templates, weekly check-in cadences. They all worked for a while and then decayed. The friction was always the same: the system lived in one place and their daily work lived in another.
So I started building.
Week 1-2: Values First
The first decision was the most important one: start with values, not goals.
Every productivity tool I've used starts by asking "what do you want to achieve?" That's the wrong first question. It skips the foundation. Because if your goals aren't rooted in your values, you'll either pursue them without satisfaction or abandon them without understanding why.
MomentumEQ's onboarding starts with a values discovery process. Not a quiz... a guided exploration. By the end, users have a ranked set of core values that become the foundation for everything that follows. Goals get defined in terms of values. Habits get connected to goals. Daily actions get connected to habits.
The chain matters. Every link in it serves the purpose of answering: "Why am I doing this?"
Week 3-4: The AI Layer
Once we had the values-to-actions chain working, we layered in AI-generated development plans. Not generic career advice... personalized plans based on each user's values, current role, and stated goals.
The early versions were too prescriptive. Users felt like they were being told what to do rather than guided. We iterated toward a model where the AI suggests and the user decides. The plan is a conversation, not a directive.
The 3E Model (Education, Exposure, Experience) became the backbone of the planning framework. Every recommendation falls into one of three categories: something to learn, someone to connect with, or something to do. This made the plans feel actionable instead of abstract.
Week 5-6: The Data Starts Talking
By week five we had enough usage data to see patterns. The headline numbers looked encouraging: 34 beta users, 64% journey completion rate (versus the 15% industry average for online courses), 83% weekly active return rate.
But the stat that surprised me most was the 64% completion rate. Most online courses see 5-15%. Most habit apps are abandoned within two weeks. Most career development plans collect dust in a drawer.
We tested two theories for why ours was different:
Theory 1: Values-first onboarding creates stronger commitment. When you know WHY you're doing something, the daily work stops feeling like a chore. We tested this by comparing values-first and goals-first onboarding flows. The values-first group retained significantly better after four weeks.
Theory 2: Visible progress sustains momentum. Users who could see a visual connection between their daily habits and their quarterly development plan stuck with it. Users who just had a checklist didn't. Same actions, different framing.
Both theories held up. The combination of "rooted in values" and "visibly connected to outcomes" seems to be the recipe.
Week 7-8: Compounding Signals
Now at 48 beta users with an 87% weekly return rate. For context, most habit apps see 20-30% return after the first month.
The numbers I care about most aren't engagement metrics though. They're the qualitative signals:
One user told us she "finally sees how her Tuesday afternoon connects to her 2026 goals." Another said MomentumEQ was the first tool that made him feel like his daily habits actually mattered.
These aren't product testimonials. They're evidence of the core hypothesis: when people can see HOW their daily actions connect to WHO they want to become, they stick with it. Not because of gamification or streaks or push notifications. Because the actions feel meaningful.
What I've Learned So Far
Motivation isn't the bottleneck. Most people don't lack willpower. They lack visibility. The connection between today and five years from now is invisible in most people's workflows. Make it visible and the motivation problem largely solves itself.
Start with values, not goals. Goals feel imposed from outside. Values feel like yours. The order matters enormously for long-term engagement.
The AI should suggest, not prescribe. Early users pushed back on AI-generated plans that felt too directive. The sweet spot is AI as thought partner: "Based on your values and goals, have you considered this?" Not: "Here's what you should do."
Building in public is terrifying and useful. Sharing these numbers before we have a thousand users feels premature. But the accountability of building in public has pushed us to be honest about what's working and what isn't. And the feedback from people following along has been invaluable.
Eight weeks in. Still early. Still learning. But the data is pointing in a direction that feels right, and when your beta users start telling you their daily tasks finally feel meaningful... you keep building.