10 Days Since My Last Blog

Life After the 30-Day Challenge: Reflections and New Beginnings

A quick catch-up since the challenge ended 10 days ago. Since the end of the 30-day challenge, it's been rather strange. A part of my life, a habit, ended. It was such a good "rock" that was in place for the last month. At times I dreaded the fact that it was 9pm and I still hadn't written anything, but for the most part, it was really positive.

The Reality of Positive Habits

I think right there is the important fact: nothing is positive all the time. Younger generations are constantly criticised for being shallow and having no grit or stickability. Whilst that may be true, I think a lot of people can relate, especially those under 40 or so. The unwillingness to accept the bad does develop over time, I think.

Moving Forward with New Challenges

But back to the challenge. I will do another one soon. We're off to Italy soon, and there's not enough time for a challenge before then, but upon my return, there will be something involving articles or videos or both. I feel like having that daily task really helps.

The Physical Challenge: Walking and Running

I've got the daily walk/run challenge in place, but it's not quite the same. It's a good thing, and I will likely continue doing this forever. I've had a few days that I've missed and the distance has jackpotted to 4km. Currently, I'm the deepest in yet at an 8km walk-run tomorrow. Overall, I've noticed a MASSIVE improvement in my mood, focus and happiness since starting the blog challenge and subsequently the distance challenge on 15 April. I can't recommend it enough!

Personal and Business Updates

So what's been happening? Well, as I say, our Italy trip is coming very soon. Gina and I are both excited about that; it's been almost a year since we've had a substantial holiday/time off together, so it's well overdue, more for Gina than me, but I always love to travel!

Merch Kings: A New Venture

Merch Kings is the latest project that's firing up; we've started operating. Basically, we offer a solution for brands that want to sell merchandise but don't want the hassle of carrying stock and dealing with the admin. We set up an e-commerce site, customers order products, we print on demand, ship it, and then depending on the scenario, pay a royalty or a commission back to the brand. It's that simple. It's early days but so far so good. It ties into many of my passions: efficiency, speed, no waste, technology, making things easy, and merchandise.

Business Growth and Challenges

Alt. is back up and running; Dan and I are working out of the Screen Concepts building in Wigram. We're learning how to use the equipment to produce products for Merch Kings, which is a lot of fun.

The preschool is growing slowly; we've got some marketing initiatives starting soon, which is exciting and a little scary as a couple of them could go either way in terms of either working or not working - making money or losing it. That's the thing though, marketing is a guessing game. Content marketing is a different subject, but in terms of general marketing tactics, I don't think anyone knows what will work and what won't.

Looking to the Future

In other news, I'm looking at buying a Nissan Leaf. Travelling to Wigram at least once if not twice a day is burning through the petrol, and I'd love to save that £100 or so a week! Everyone I talk to with a Leaf seems to love it, so it seems like a no-brainer. Any feedback on that would be appreciated.

I'll wrap it up here. As I say, I'll likely start another series mid to late June either on here or on the alt. website. The alt. site could probably use some content, so might start a marketing-specific blog. As you can probably tell, I'm no doctor of marketing, but I do have an opinion on it and feel like I can write about it at least conceptually.