About

Hi, I’m Jeff Jan.

This website is dedicated to lessons I’ve learned in entrepreneurship, family and happiness. My motivation for these posts is that at some point my children will read them and learn something from them and if others would like to read them too, great!

I was born in California, but grew up outside of Toronto, Canada. I graduated from Brigham Young University-Hawaii and then worked in the Seattle area for a couple years. We moved to Dallas-Fort Worth where I worked for Celanese and I eventually started a e-commerce business, Solo Stove, with my brother, Spencer. We sold most of our ownership in Solo Stove in 2019. I now live in the Seattle area with my wife and three kids.

This website is primarily meant to share my thoughts, experiences and lessons with my children in an easy to read and understand way. I am not a skilled writer or storyteller, but have had unique life experiences that I think are worth sharing.

This website is called Gradual Ascent because many things in life are slow and gradual and we should embrace that.  “Ascent” implies that we should climb to greater heights than where we are right now.