2018: Year in Review

January:

• I am put in charge of the welfare program for our church congregation. This mainly means I help people with their finances and help get food to those that need it.
• All the kids start swimming twice a week.
• My company is acquired by a BIG company.
• Amazon significantly cuts royalties for shirt sales.

February-March:

• More swimming. Lui decides he forgets everything and can no longer even do a back float. We quit swimming at the end of March.
• I try to figure out how to balance church stuff and working for this giant company. In these months, it meant working a lot more than usual.

April:

• I am hired as an hourly employee instead of a contractor.
• We try to catch up on loading shirts that “fell off” Amazon before our big trip. (If they don’t sell in 90 days, Amazon deletes them. Luckily, in June, they extended this to 180 days.) We don’t make any new designs.

May-June:

• We get those kids through those last few weeks of school.
• We go on a 28-day amazing vacation through the UK, Norway, and Iceland without family and think how great it would be to be able to do that every single year.
• I get bronchitis on the flight home and spend two weeks in bed.

July:

• Our annual fishing trip.
• General summertime joy.

August:

• My sister and her family come to visit from Texas. We see tons of whales, hike a glacier, camp in a cabin, and have a great time.
• Amazon opens UK and Germany shirt markets. We decide to try to actually sell shirts again. (Up to this point we’ve mostly been putting old designs back up and that’s about it.)
• Kids start school (Lui preschool).

September:

• I hire two graphic designers on a per-design basis to help with new shirt designs. It’s scary and way out of my comfort zone. Before finding two that work great, I have to tell someone it’s not going to work. Even scarier.
• I attend a t-shirt selling conference in Seattle with a whole bunch of people that sell tens of thousands of shirts a year.

October:

• The PFD helps us cut our mortgage in half.
• We take an epic road trip as a family from Yellowstone to Minneapolis seeing many National parks.
• I spend a few days at the new office of Big Company.
• We hit shirts hard. Sales start coming for Q4.

November:

• We keep designing, loading, and editing designs from our designers onto t-shirt.
• I start experimenting with publishing books on Amazon.
• I’m now friends with the people with the top selling shirts on Amazon for Thanksgiving.
• I learn to only compete against myself because my journey is very different than theirs (and I ignored the side hustle for most of the year).
• Sales keep coming, but with the royalty cut in January, income is lower than last year.
• EARTHQUAKE

December:

• With the earthquake and the holidays, most of our December is spent cleaning up and settling down.
• We make our last extra mortgage payment on the house (paid it off yesterday!).
• We gather data from our shirt sales and make plans for an epic 2020 (with 2019 as a building year).
• I hire one of my designers to start full-time in February. Another scary move. It’s accidental, but her monthly fee seemed too good to not try.

2019 is set up to be an interesting year. No mortgage (more on that later). A full time designer. Balancing church and work and side hustle. It’s a good year to build. No massive trips planned (though I’m sure we’ll travel). In September, I’ll have all my kids in school full time. Seems like a year to take risks and see what’s possible. I’m excited!