EP289: 2019 Goals – Month 11 Update

November’s a busy month for many ecommerce sellers, myself included. But between selling ColorIt and putting our remaining brands into their own LLCs, everything somehow feels more serene…more organized.

Putting in the work all those months ago has certainly paid off as I now find myself in a great position business-wise and in my personal life. There were definitely a handful of struggles along the way but it has so far been worth it. 

If there’s anything you can take away from this episode, its to strive for balance. The pull of entrepreneurship might be strong but you also need to practice self-care and be with people you value the most. 

And so here’s an update on my 19 goals for 2019; where I’ve traveled to, where I’m speaking next and the other things going on in my life.

1. Sell a brand. (3:39)
2. Position another brand for sale in late 2020. (5:30)
3. Getting back to location independence. (6:24)
4. Reducing debt to zero dollars. (8:44)
5. Hike the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island. (10:29)
6. Take at least 10 weeks of personal travel. (11:24) 
7. Record 6 or more episodes of the Roadshow. (11:47)
8. Invest in at least 1 ecommerce business. (12:53) 
9. Lose 10 more pounds. (14:22)
10. Visit the Philippines office in 2019. (15:45)
11. Start selling our services for EcomCrew. (16:41)
12. Significantly improve the quality of the podcast. (18:33)
13. Film season 2 of the 5 Minute Pitch. (19:52)
14. Break each of our brands out into different companies. (21:19)
15. Start hosting personal events for EcomCrew. (22:00) 
16. Speak at 6 industry events. (22:58)
17. Shift to doing things that only bring me immense personal fulfillment. (23:58)
18. Do intermittent fasting for all of 2019 and eat less meat. (26:33)
19. Not to drink the rest of 2019. (29:36) 

Learn about our tried-and-tested strategy for launching new products on Amazon. Order your copy now! 

Want to be part of the second season of 5 Minute Pitch? Send us an application!

Previous goals episodes:

• E227: 19 Goals for 2019
• E243: 2019 Goals – Q1 Recap
• E279: 2019 Goals – Month 8 Update

EcomCrew Roadshow episodes:

• E282: The EcomCrew Roadshow – Focusing on Your Why
• E288: Getting a High-Touch Business Back on the Growth Train

I hope you enjoyed this latest installment of the podcast. As always, feel free to leave a comment below. If you think this episode has been useful to you, please take a moment to leave us a review on iTunes.

Full Audio Transcript

Mike: [00:00:00] The Ecomcrew podcast is awesome! Mike, the host of the Ecomcrew podcast highlights all aspects of Amazon selling entrepreneurship and more in this ‘can't miss' podcast. The host and expert guest offer insights and advice, information and so forth, that's helpful to anyone that listens. Thanks for the review, Brooke. We really appreciate it. Now on with the show.

Mike: [00:00:22] This is Mike and welcome to Episode 289 of the Ecomcrew podcast. So glad to have you guys along with us today. And hello from San Diego, California. La Hoya, California, to be exact, at the cove in La Hoya, to be exact, if you don't know where that is, do a quick Google search. Oh man, I'll tell you what. We hit the jackpot with this Airbnb that we rented. We put the RV in the shop here for a little bit and we have a one month stay here in La Hoya. All's I can see is water out of our windows and I can hear nothing but seals making noises all day at night. They've come to be like, little affectionate neighbors of ours, it's just been an absolute blast being over here. Been hanging out with old friends that– you know, we obviously used to live in San Diego. So getting to see a bunch of people, got to hang out with Jacqueline, our COO for some time here, which I hadn't had a chance to see her in person for quite a while. So it's just been an awesome couple of weeks here. We're gonna be here for a little bit longer, really up until Thanksgiving. 

Mike: [00:01:20] So I'm gonna be recording some podcasts from here, gonna be doing lots of good content from here, I think. Got some cool stuff lined up while we're here in San Diego, but it's already November, which is just absolutely bonkers. And that means that it's about time to do a review of the goals for 2019 and let's see how we're doing. So in this episode, we're gonna get into the 19 goals that we set for 2019. I hope you guys will stick around and listen to that. Before we get into that, I do want to mention real quick our Amazon Domination book. Head over to Ecomcrew.com/book to go check that out. It's a book that Dave and I put together, along with the help of everyone in the Philippines team. We've had a lot of success with this free plus shipping offer. It's a way to engage with our listeners and show them even more value. It's the same method that we've used for our own e-commerce businesses and it's working really well, obviously for Ecomcrew as well.

Mike: [00:02:19] Getting to meet a lot of our listeners that eventually get the book and then reach out to us through email and strike up a conversation. It's really cool and we're meeting them at conferences around the world, which is awesome as well. So anyway, enough about that, Ecomcrew.com/book. Now let's get into today's episode on the 2019 goals.

Intro: [00:02:37] Welcome to the Ecomcrew podcast. The Web's most transparent podcast from two seven-figure sellers who share the good, bad and the ugly about running an e-commerce business. You'll learn how we build our brands, find products, and develop marketing strategies that will help you start and grow your own million-dollar e-commerce brand. And now your hosts Mike Jackness and Dave Bryant.

Mike: [00:03:02] Alright, guys. As I mentioned at the beginning of the episode here, today's purpose is to go through the 19 goals that I set out for 2019. Man, again, not to continue to repeat myself, but it's crazy that it's almost the end of the year already. And so, pretty soon I'll be doing the final recap of the 2019 goals and then setting the 2020 goals, which will be a lot of fun, a lot of big changes going on in our life and excited to share those with you and probably have 20 goals for 2020. But let's go through the 19 goals in order here real quick and see how we're doing so far with those goals.

Mike: [00:03:39] So the first one was to sell a brand. If you've been listening to the Ecomcrew podcast for any length of time, you know that we did several episodes on the sale of ColorIt. April 5th was the official closing date, so we're about seven months removed from that. Actually, I guess six months and things just couldn't be more different now. It's kind of crazy how quickly things can change, just a lot less stress after the sale of this, we paid off all of our debt, which we'll get into as one of the other goals.

Mike: [00:04:07] And just been able to spend more time enjoying life instead of being stuck behind a computer in an office which was really starting to grind on me. I think entrepreneurs in general go through cycles. And because I've been through these cycles in the past several times, it was important to make some changes before, like getting completely burned out and being useless to my staff and my partners and the Ecomcrew audience, etc. etc., so massive changes were made and I think it's been nothing but positive really. There is some typical entrepreneurial thing where you sell a business that you really enjoy, that you kind of feel like was your baby. And you start to miss it and I'm definitely at that point with ColorIt.

Mike: [00:04:47] I really look back at what we did there, I'm very proud of that. It's amazing that we were able to take something that was absolutely nothing and within a few years sell it for seven figures. But, you know, it also was our baby and someone else is taking care of our baby, which is kind of awkward, but at the same time, it's afforded us all the things that we wanted out of life and to be able to make these changes so, you know, you can't have everything you want. And I think that the overall reality here is that it's a much more positive than negative outcome. And so we deal with the sadness of not having ColorIt to wake up to work on every day as a result. But that's really been the only negative so, pretty cool. Number 1, checkmark on that one.

Mike: [00:05:30] Alright, number two, position another brand for sale in 2020. So that's rapidly approaching, which is kind of crazy. Still, haven't decided exactly which brand we will put up for sale. We've been trying to position really all three of them to be in a position to sell. And then we'll pick one of them that we think is the best and put that up for sale in 2020. It'll probably be mid to late 2020 when we decide which one we want to put up for sale. And then hopefully that'll happen pretty quickly when it does. But, you know, we're treating each one of our brands now, as individual companies, and really being critical of all the numbers and putting ourselves in a position where any of them can be sold at any time rather than what we had to deal with before. If you listened to any of the episodes about the disaster of trying to break ColorIt out from one company and one Amazon account and all the things we had to go through with that where we're never gonna have to deal with that again, which is great.

Mike: [00:06:24] Alright. Number three, get back to location independence. Well, I'm not sure how we could check this off any better. We have spent the last five months or so, in an RV driving around North America. It's been an absolutely incredible experience. It's our second time doing this. So, you know, I would just appreciate it so much more. Didn't take anything for granted as we were driving around the country, but we basically drove from Dallas up to Kansas where I met one of our vendors, and then beelined over to Denver and then up through Yellowstone and Red Canyon, Utah. Big Sky, Montana, Bozeman, Montana, where I get to spend some time with Andrew Youderian. If you haven't ever heard him talk about e-commerce fuel, you should definitely go check them out at e-commerce fuel.com. It's a private community for seven-figure store owners.

Mike: [00:07:12] I originally met Andrew through that community. We've become good friends and got to spend some time with his family this summer, which was awesome. And also just got to spend some time with them again recently at a different event. But every time I get a chance to pull through a city where he's at, I always try to make time for that. And then from there, we drove up to Glacier National Park and I– actually, we went through Helena as well, which was kind of cool. Got to go see another capital in the United States and then up into Calgary, Banff, Jasper, Kelowna Wine Valley, Vancouver, where I got to hang out with Dave and Dave, from the Ecomcrew. Did a Ecomcrew meet-up up there and headed down through Bellingham, Washington. Seattle, Washington. Portland, Oregon. Over into Bend, Oregon, Crater Lake, Oregon, down into Reno, Nevada, Lake Tahoe, Nevada, down to Las Vegas, and now back into San Diego. So that's been the last few months for us. So location independence, I think, again, kind of making this a little bit more long-winded than I probably should. But check, check, check. It's been awesome and I really like it. There's some downsides to this as well. But it's nice knowing that we can go where we want and spend time where we want, whenever we want. And that's really cool.

Mike: [00:08:24] And still have a thriving business along the way. It's not like we're not working along the way. Working has become more frustrating because of Internet issues, which is one of the reasons why we did rent this condo in La Hoya where the Internet's been great. I have a great spot to record the podcast. And when we get sick of being here, we can go on the next place. But it's been pretty awesome. Alright, number four, reduced debt to $0. And this was a double goal. Aim is to have zero debt in the business and in our personal life. So check, check and check. Not that we had any real debt in our personal lives before, but we did have a mortgage on the home, which we– you know, so everything's– there just is no debt. We have no debt of any kind, no credit card, car loans, home loans, vehicle loans, you know, the RV's paid for as well. I just prefer this zero debt lifestyle that we had become accustomed to for years leading up into doing e-commerce. And then you realize how tight cash becomes, even if you think you're relatively well off. I feel like compared to the way that I grew up, you know, just very, very fortunate with our financial situation.

Mike: [00:09:27] Get into e-commerce and then you realize that you have no money. Because it's just such a cash-intensive business, especially as we were doubling every year from 1 million to 2 million, 2 million to 4 million, 4 million to 8 million. You just keep on eating more, more money and there's just never any money in your bank account, which is a weird feeling for me as someone that I got into this point where we just didn't have any debt. So check, check and check and know this is just a personal thing. I know lots of people who are more comfortable with debt. We'll probably take on some more debt in the future as we look at other businesses and other things we're doing, but for right now, I like being in this position and being in a little bit more of a cash-rich position, if you will. Knowing that there's potentially a recession or something like that on the horizon. Just being in a better spot to take advantage of that and be able to ride through that and come out the other end unscathed rather than being leveraged to the hilt. And one thing goes wrong and we're kind of in a bad spot. So again, check, check and check on number four. Really happy about that.

Mike: [00:10:29] Number 5 was to hike the West Coast Trail on Vancouver Island. Man, this was an amazing experience, I've already talked about it a little bit on the podcast. But checkmark here on this one, we did the half West Coast trail trip, which was what we had planned to do from day one. It's really hard to get tickets for the full West Coast trail. I kind of felt like the half of it was good enough. You start getting out there longer and it's just more grueling and less enjoyable. But for the time that we did it, it was three days, three long days of hiking and two nights out there. It was awesome. And I really enjoyed it. So wanna thank Dave and Dave and Mike Ketchum for coming along with me on the ride, it was a ton of fun. We got along incredibly well. We got blessed with great weather and got lucky that no one got hurt. And everybody came back safely and had a great time, great experiences, a great part of our summer.

Mike: [00:11:24] Alright. Number six was to take at least 10 weeks of personal travel. Don't know how I could possibly check this off any better as well. It's been a great summer, as I mentioned. We've been traveling basically nonstop. Some of this was just pure vacation. Some of it was working while on the road, but definitely been checking off the personal travel thing here. I was able to far exceed what I was looking to do here, which makes me really happy.

Mike: [00:11:47] Number seven here is record six more episodes of the Ecomcrew Roadshow. I don't know that we're going to quite get to six, unfortunately. So we have recorded several of them, some of which will not be aired just because we were trying to figure out how to do them in a good format. I feel like we got the format down now, we released a couple of these, we'll put those in the Shownotes. One was with Corey from Woodies, one was from with JP, a good friend of mine here in San Diego. Oh, he actually lives up in Orange County, but with Pro Teeth Mouthguard. And so there's just several more of these that  I want to do. We're getting ready to do another one here that's gonna get released and I'm excited about.

Mike: [00:12:26] But unfortunate couple of them ended up on the cutting room floor. And these are pretty exhausting to do. It takes a lot of time and just didn't really have enough time while traveling to get more of these in that I was hoping to do, but definitely wanna do more of these. I really enjoy them. It's just a great way to give back to the community and I just feel like a total nerd in his environment when I get to do these Roadshows because it's so much fun talking about other people's businesses. It's what I really love doing, so.

Mike: [00:12:53] Number 8 here is to invest in at least one other e-commerce business, so I don't know if I can quite check this off. It's kind of interesting. I had been using KickFurther. We did a full episode about this. Ecomcrew.com/kickfurther if you're interested. So I feel like I am investing in e-commerce this way even though I technically don't own any of the company by doing this, so I don't know if you can check this off. It certainly was the way that I had anticipated at the beginning of the year when I wrote this goal was to actually own some shares basically in other companies. After talking to several people about this and just thinking it through, I'm not sure that that's going to really be the best way to go for us. There's just so many particulars that can kind of go wrong. You don't have control over stuff and just– I don't know. It's a very tough position to be in. And so doing investing in inventory through these co-ops that Kickfurther does kind of scratches that itch.

Mike: [00:13:49] I mean, I get to be involved in lots of other businesses this way, which is awesome. And we've now put to work over six figures of capital into these KickFurther campaigns and we're getting a great return on our investment. I feel like we're helping the ecommerce community by investing in inventory. So it's a win-win. And we've already been able to talk to several of the people that we've invested in their inventory and hope to be able to do that for more. And so hopefully we'll be able to do more for these people indirectly as well through those conversations. And maybe some of them will become podcast episodes, which would be awesome as well.

[00:14:22] Alright. Number #9: Lose 10 more pounds. This is definitely a checkmark. Was able to lose almost 20 pounds actually over the summer. Just prepping for the hike and being out on a hike and just being more active, not being behind a computer every single day. Unfortunately, I have gained back several of those pounds. As Las Vegas got closer and I was hanging out with my friends there that aren't the healthiest people. And I don't know, I think you kind of– when you're eating super healthy for a period time, it's very easy to fall off the wagon, if you will.

Mike: [00:14:51] And you miss a lot of foods and things of that nature. And that definitely–  I could tell that it happened, so now we're eating healthy again, we're back down to Southern California, been doing a lot better. Need to figure out a way to be active here because we don't have the hike on the horizon that we had. And it's hard to join a gym when you're only in a place for a short amount of time. So been trying to get on doing some walking and other things. Been working on this hundred push up a day challenge, getting close to doing a hundred pushups every single day now, getting my body used to doing that many pushups and just sticking with that, getting very close to 100. Like I said, definitely by the end of the year, I'll be doing 100 a day.

Mike: [00:15:31] Trying to do some other exercises as well to keep that weight down and hopefully can lose some of the other weight back that I have gained in the last few weeks as like I said, been hanging out and being a little bit gluttonous with with the food.

[00:15:44] Alright, Number 10 here was to visit the Philippines office in 2019. That was something we completed earlier in the years, spent a couple of full weeks down or yeah, I guess down there, over there, whatever you want to call it. In 2020, this will be another thing on the goals list to do. My hope is to spend at least three weeks there this next time. I do like going to the Philippines office to spending time there. Now that we had this location independence thing going on, it's easier for us to spend more time there. I mean, they really are our Nucleus, our bread and butter. Everything that we do at this company pretty much revolves around everyone there. We have one employee in California. Besides that, all of the rest of our employees are in the Philippines as of recording this. I believe that number is 12 plus we did have four that went with ColorIt sale, otherwise, we would have 16. But those guys are still out there in the Philippines as well, and I like going to see them and reminiscing about the good old days at Terran when we were all one big, happy family. 

[00:16:38] Alright, number 11, start selling our services for Ecomcrew. I think we're going to make this by the end of the year. If we don't do it by the end of the year, it's going be very early Q1 that we'll be able to start offering this. We're already doing some testing for this, so we're doing some free services for people. People are just kind of that are in my orbit that I just that I know that would give us honest feedback and trying to just see how the team does producing graphics and content writing and things like this, that will eventually be the services that we offer through Ecomcrew. Our goal here is not to become an agency. That is not at all what Ecomcrew ever wants to endeavor to be. But we do want to offer the ability for our premium members to use the same resources that we've been able to use that we're very proud of our team to do. And it's tough, like one thing I really realize from doing the Ecomcrew Roadshow and talking to podcast guests offline. Most of the people that listen to us or that are premium members are Solopreneurs or have a very small team and it's very easy for me to relate to this and think back to when we were in this position.

[00:17:44] And it's really hard when it's just you or just you and one or two other people to find the content writer, to find the graphic designer, to find customer support or to find someone to do your PPC. It's very difficult. So having Ecomcrew to lean on to help with these things for our premium members is really our goal. It's not something we're looking to make a big profit centre. It's something that we're looking to do again, simply to get back to the community and especially our premium members who have been with us and continue to make that more of a value because we made Ecomcrew premium a subscription. And so, you know, as a part of that, you would get access to these services when we do get to the point that we're going to offer them and we'll just never expand it past that. As far as I can see, because again, we're not looking to become an agency, that's not the goal. So that's number 11.

[00:18:33] Number 12 is significantly improve the quality of the Ecomcrew podcast. So what we have done is gone down to once per week. And I think that because of Ben being back there in the Philippines office, a full time podcast editor, he's done a great job making the podcast better, trying to get a lot of the spaces out of the edits and just making the whole thing cleaner, getting rid of Umms and Ahhs and things like that and just making the podcast just a little bit more polished. Maybe it's stuff that the average person doesn't even notice. But I do notice it. And, you know, he's responsible for the quality of the podcast. So having someone full time doing that, a lot of little subtle things happen over time. He's improving the quality of the audio files and we're using a new podcast recording software. We're kind of chopping up the intros a little bit differently and just doing things differently than we have in the past.

[00:19:25] And so we've gone down also to one episode per week trying to make the quality of each episode better. If we have nine episodes to do per month, which is what twice a week ends up working out to be with the spacing of the weeks. It's a lot more difficult to come up with nine really high quality topics versus 4 really, really high quality topics. And so we're trying to aim for that and we're, I think, doing a better and better job of that. And hopefully that's noticeable to the community out there. Number 13 is to film Season 2 of Five Minute Pitch, this is definitely going to be an X, the first X on the list. Five Minute Pitch is definitely not going to film Season 2 in 2019.

[00:20:03] The good news is that we finally came to a consensus of what Season 2 of Five Minute Pitch is going to be and looks like we're going to go forward and do it, which I'm really excited about. It was my favourite thing to do in 2019, so I was really sad at the thought of not doing it again. And we're just not going to be able to do it in 2019, though we're still collecting applicants. If you're interested in being a Five Minute Pitch, go to FiveMinutePitch.com and apply today for that. If you are not familiar with five minute pitches, it's a contest where we kind of do eliminations from 32 people down to eventually, one winner will win $50,000 in cash and prizes and mentorship by the entire panel. And so this last year, Kim Meckwood, won of Clickn'Carry. What an awesome experience, I mean, she's just an awesome person, first of all, which was really cool to have her win it. It was fun being able to spend a couple of days with her in Austin. That was a part of the prize package. She came down, spent time with Greg, Steve, Scott and I, went over her business in detail and hopefully helped her significantly in the future of her business. And she also has $50,000 cash in a bank to help with that as well, so that's definitely been pretty darn cool.

Mike: [00:21:18] Alright. So the next one here is to break each of our brands out into different companies. This is all done now. It was a lot of work, but IceWraps and WildBaby and Tactical are now officially their own LLCs, they have their own Amazon accounts, their own credit cards and checking accounts, bookkeeping, etc., etc.. Obviously, everything that goes along with that and it was a lot of work. I'm not going to lie, I was not happy having to go through that process. But now that it's done, I'm happy that it's behind us. And again, as I mentioned before, when our goal is to sell a brand in 2020. And so this will make that way easier. And I'm excited about that.

[00:22:00] Alright. The next one here is to start hosting personal events for Ecomcrew. These are not full fledged conferences and definitely never want to do that. I will leave that to Scott and Andrew and Steve and all the other people that I know that do this. I have no interest in doing this, even if someone else ran it. I would not want the pressure of hosting a conference. And I feel like it's important. The things that we've done, everything that we've done. I feel like unless we can do something that's so significantly different and better that we shouldn't even attempt to do it at all.

[00:22:31] And so that's how we've approached the podcast. It's how we've approached Ecomcrew Premium and a lot of the other things that we do. I just don't see a way to make the events better. I mean, there's a lot of really great events out there and I enjoy going to speak at them and be a part of them. And I'm glad I call a lot of these people, my friends, but I definitely don't think that I can do better than what they're doing and/or approach it from a different angle in a way that would be substantial. So we just have no interest in doing that.

[00:22:58] Alright. The next one is number 16 here, which is to speak at 6 industry events. I get to sit here and add these up in my mind. I think I'm going to be at 5, though. It might be 6. I did do Brand Accelerator live. It was probably going to be the final one for the year. The travel plans have gotten in the way of a lot of this. I have made, you know, spending time with my wife and doing this road trip that we did a priority and had to just not do a couple of the speaking gigs that I was originally planning on doing. And so the next one I'll probably end up doing will be e-commerce fuel. I just spoke with Andrew and that's gonna be in February.

[00:23:36] So I'll be coming to that. Originally wasn't going to come to it because we are going to be in Australia. But I know that event's important enough to me that I'm going to fly back and do that and see where the rest of the year takes us from there. So we'll be at e-commerce fuel live next year. But I think I've spoken in all the events that are going to happen in 2019. So I think that that was five. I'll go back and add that up.

[00:23:57] Alright. So the next one here is Number 17: Shift to doing things that only bring me immense personal fulfilment. I've read another book that kind of is in line with this, and it's The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***. And that is literally the name of the book. We bleep out the F-word there. Obviously, probably competing to pick from the S word or the F word that what the beat might have been, but it's a great book and basically is more about saying no to more things. And that's definitely been the theme of 2019. Less is more was kind of the theme and it really has been that way. I mean, we are doing fewer things, we're going to continue to do fewer things. And my goal is to shift to doing one really amazing thing and, you know, picking one big, big project and working on that and documenting that for Ecomcrew.

[00:24:46] And that's kind of where we're trying to shift towards for 2020. And it's going to probably be in the form of investing in a business or something like that or buying a business and just doing one thing, focusing on one thing. And doing something that I really enjoy, rather than being pulled in a bunch of different directions and getting stuck in this, “doing it for the money” thing that's really easy for entrepreneurs that get stuck into. And so, by saying no to more things and just focusing on profitability and personal fulfilment, that's kind of funny where we're making more money now than we ever have in ecommerce, even though our revenue was half of what it was when we had ColorIt, we're actually netting more money because we're just not doing as many things and being pulled as many directions. And we still do have several brands and we're going to see these projects through. But we're focusing on doing things that bring more fulfillment and enjoyment. So, you know, a lot of that revolves around Ecomcrew and you guys out there listening to this. I really do enjoy helping people doing the Roadshow, just that the relationships that I've made through doing this. And at the end of the day, like relationships are everything to me. And I look at how many people I've become really good friends with in e-commerce.

[00:25:56] And that's where the personal fulfillment and enjoyment for me comes from. You know, people in my mastermind, the people in the ecommerce fuel community, the people in the Ecomcrew community, the people in the million dollar seller community and so many more angles where I have met people from speaking and over things. And those are the things that really– when I look back at what is enjoyable, it's those things. It's not necessarily the money in the bank account. That's definitely awesome. And I never want to act like that doesn't matter at all. But it's definitely not the number one priority. So just again, working on making those things the priority has been really important to me.

[00:26:33] Alright, number #18 is to do intermittent fasting for all of 2019. That is, I'm going to give myself a checkmark here. There have been a couple of days, but I am being literal. There's been, I think two days, maybe three in all of 2019 where I ate before noon basically. And it was for a social reason. It wasn't because I didn't have the discipline not to eat. In fact when I did eat in those situations, I wasn't hungry, I kind of had to forced myself. But every now and then in business you find yourself like having to go out to breakfast and it's really awkward to just be like I'm not eating anything.

[00:27:08] I'm just having coffee while everyone else's eating. Especially when you're at a restaurant that has really good food because I can always eat. It's kind of a problem for me. But the reality is that most days I'm eating between 12 and 8, give or take a little bit here and there and I'm eating two meals a day instead of three. It's also contributed a lot to the weight loss. It's also helped me feel a whole lot better.

[00:27:32] If you're out there listening and you have afternoon crashes or you're constantly hungry or you get like irritable or you feel lightheaded a lot through the day. Everyone obviously is different. I'm certainly not a doctor, I'm not giving you doctorly advice here, but maybe try to give it a try. It's something that's worked really well for me. I highly recommend it. It's been an incredible experience. I mean, I could go all day without eating now, without a problem, definitely by the 22nd hour is usually about when I'm– when I try to eat one meal a day where I do get hungry, I'm definitely ready to eat. But it's not the same way that I used to be. I used to– If I didn't eat a snack, like every 90 minutes, I was constantly lightheaded and just feeling irritable and was constantly going through these, like, you know what I imagine to be like sugar rushes and highs and lows and just was always eating something.

[00:28:20] And it was just an awful experience. And it took a couple of weeks to get used to not eating in the morning. But once I got used to that, I mean, the reality is I'm just consuming less food. Your stomach gets smaller. You get used to not eating like that. And it's helped regulate my blood sugar throughout the day. I don't really have the afternoon crashes anymore. It was in a situation where I could easily took a nap every afternoon. And now it's 9 o'clock at night as I'm recording this now and still don't have the crash that I would have when I wasn't intermittent fasting. So something that worked really well for me. Highly recommend trying it yourself. Now what I've really been trying to do was get to one meal per day, which is called OMAD and that often is tough again, just because of social situations, especially here in San Diego, I'm back in town and everyone wants to do lunch with me or dinner, which is awesome. I feel an awesome sense of community and love from everybody that wants to hang out with us. And I don't want to say no to that. So I end up eating two meals a day, which is fine. But if it was back on the RV trip and out in the middle of nowhere where there wasn't that outside influence, it was getting pretty easy to just eat one meal per day, which I was losing even more weight and feeling even better by doing that.

[00:29:28] So just something to keep in mind out there. I know this stuff can be difficult and just something I wanted to pass along as a personal experience share. Alright. And the final goal here in the number 19 goal is definitely the biggest fail of the year, which was not to drink the rest of 2019. Man, I was doing such a great job with this for the first four or five months of the year. Got over to the Philippines. They talked me into having a couple of drinks with them, or I should say a few drinks, being realistic, during karaoke night, during our annual party that we do over there. And so I made that first excuse, and then I found myself at Brand Accelerator Live having drinks there kinda getting off on a boondoggle, then getting in to Vegas. And I've just kind of given up on this goal at this point. It makes me feel bad because it was something I was so excited about and got so much feedback from the community on doing this. But what I can say is that for certain I have been drinking a lot less if I compare 2019 to 2018.

[00:30:28] I'm drinking probably one tenth or one eighth as much as I used to. You know, really, I don't go out to dinner by myself and/or just my wife and I and have a drink very much anymore. I used to do that all the time or come home and have a glass of whiskey at night to kinda just take the edge off. So it's a combination of just being less stressed and not needing to do that. But there's definitely been social situations where it's really hard not to want to go drink. I mean, it's fun. I mean, it really is fun and it builds camaraderie and you end up talking about things and doing things that if you weren't doing that, it becomes more difficult to have those same experiences. So I go to these conferences especially and I want to stay up all night, like hanging out my friends and creating these experiences. And if I just go to bed and don't drink, then you don't have them. And the obvious thing would be like, well just go out and do it without drinking. But the problem is that the drinking is kind of what fuels the staying up late. You know, it's hard when you're not drinking. Yes. You get a lot more tired. I get more tired quickly. And when you're around a bunch of drunkards that and you're not having a couple drinks, then they become a lot more annoying as well.

[00:31:36] And so it's been tough. I gotta tell you, it's something I've been really struggling with cause, you know, I prefer to just not drink for health reasons. I first wanted to stop because I was worried that I might have a problem. And after not drinking for four months, I realize that I can do without it if I need to. It was at a point where it was no big deal, not to drink. But at the same time, there's a lot of fun things that come up when you do drink and trying to do this in a way that's in more moderation that I'm not feeling like I'm losing an entire day the next day because I went out to drink. And so it's tough. It really is very difficult. Something I'm going to work through in 2020. And I do want to apologize to everyone out there listening who was rooting for me with this. I know you were out there. I apologize for letting you guys down. No any other way to say it and it makes me sad. And one of these things that's really tough about doing a podcast is that you put yourself out there, and become so vulnerable with these types of things and it sucks when you let people down.

[00:32:33] And I do apologize for that but we're gonna work on it more in 2020. There will be some goal around this in 2020 that is probably more realistic than just not doing it at all because that has kind of proven itself to just not be realistic in business and friendships and things like that.

[00:32:49] So that's going to wrap it up, guys. That's 19 long-winded goals for 2019. Checkmarks on almost all of them. The rest of the ones that don't have the checkmarks will complete probably by the end of the year hopefully here and we'll see where 2020 takes us and the rest of 2019 as well. It's been an awesome summer. Awesome few months, just doing what we were doing and having a good time doing it. So I want to thank all of you guys for allowing me to be in your ear along that journey. It's awesome. As we were driving on the country, how many people that I finally got to meet in person and hang out with. Got to have lunches with or play pickleball with or go on hikes with. And it just absolutely warms my heart. It's been the joy of my life the last few years, meeting all you guys and doing this stuff. It's been absolutely awesome. So thank you guys so much for all your support as always. And until the next episode, happy selling and we'll talk to you soon.

Outro: [00:33:46] We hope you enjoyed this episode of the Ecomcrew podcast. If you haven't done so already, please head over to iTunes and leave us a review. It helps more than you know. Did you know that Ecomcrew has a ton of free content, including e-commerce courses? Head over to Ecomcrew.com/free to check it out today. That's going to do it for this episode of the Ecomcrew podcast. Until the next one, happy selling and we'll talk to you soon.