18 Years of Entrepreneurship – 2018 Year in Review

As we all age, learn and grow, one thing is certain, life itself is extremely hard to predict.

One thing is absolutely certain, I am not a person that can run multiple projects at once and succeed.

2017 was the year of eCommerce. At one point, I had four eCommerce stores all making money online. It was a great challenge and fantastic learning experience. Overall, it was a great year where I spent countless hours teaching myself eCommerce, online marketing and Facebook Advertising.

At peak, I reached $5,000/day in sales and learned countless lessons all along the way.

2018 Year in Review

This year has been deemed the year of change. Lets call it what it really is, the year of mid-life crisis.

At the start of the year, I was overwhelmed, anxious, depressed, unhealthy with my eating and the fattest I’ve ever been clocking in at 299.6 pounds. At night, I felt my heart beating out of my chest, was unable to sleep, started breaking out in rashes all over my body and came down with the most horrific brain fog I’ve ever experienced in my life.

I knew this was the year I needed to make massive, drastic change.

I had so much on my plate that I became consumed and overwhelmed to the point that I couldn’t bring myself to walk to my basement office and put in hours to maintain my businesses.

Here it is in September and I’m ready ready to (mostly) restart my life completely over. Here’s the short of what’s happened:

• Beginning of the year, I was bedridden. Brain fog got so bad that I could barely stand. I felt extremely dizzy, lightheaded and felt like I could faint at any moment. I could no longer maintain my businesses and they begin to slowly crash and burn.
• Depression sets in. I could barely think. I could barely move. It felt like death was knocking on my door. Doctors couldn’t find anything, blood tests only indicated a couple vitamin deficiencies, both of which didn’t help with vitamin supplementation (B12 shots, D2 pill).
• In February, also the month I turn 40, I decide to fight whatever is happening. I begin to review everything in my life from my relationship, diet, fitness and overall health. I decide on the final diet of my life. After succumbing to gout due to the Ketogenic diet (high uric acid eating mostly protein), I decided to make up my own plan of attack to finally get ahead of my health.
• My dad called, left a message, said he needed to speak to me. I missed the call, missed the voice mail notification. A week later, a friend to my dad said I needed to call him ASAP. Finally call Dad, the news wasn’t good, he was diagnosed with lung cancer. I head down to California to visit with him May 8th-10th and he had already sharply declined. He died May 21st just six weeks after I found out he had cancer.
• Five stages of grief are fully experienced. Although I didn’t have the best relationship with my dad due to my childhood, losing him hit me like a brick to the head.
• Through it all, I continue to lose weight, further motivated by seeing my dad lose his fight with lung cancer. From June forward, I begin to get ultra-serious about my diet and health. Hikes, biking, swimming and food were my 100% focus. I reasoned with myself that focusing on my health is far more valuable than jumping back in to repair my businesses.
• I figure out I love swimming. I joined the local Cedar City Aquatic Center for three months. I begin challenging myself with continuous freestyle laps to the point that on September 4th, I reached 100 continuous laps in 45 minutes.
• Lost 48 pounds so far. My weight as of today is 252 pounds. My diet program is absolutely working, it’s maintainable, it’s easy and I would like to share my journey with the world.
• My relationship with my wife through the last couple years has been rocky. Thankfully, through the first half of the year, we’ve started talking more, aired out our frustrations and began rebuilding our relationship. We’re doing much better now.
• As of July, all of my businesses have collapsed through all the hardships. Debt has piled up.
• Late July, I swallow a huge bite of humble pie and begin the job search. August 6th, I begin working for Vivint.SmartHome at their call center here in Cedar City, UT. Training was three weeks and now I am working full time answering calls. I make $12/hr and work 40 hours a week to begin establishing a work history after 12 years of working for myself. I needed some stability with a stable income while I figure things out.
• In September, I begin consolidating business expenses. I collapsed three remaining Shopify stores into a single store, rebranded that store and it awaits my next move. I exported all products from all stores and imported them into this single store so that I can focus on one eCommerce brand going forward.
• I updated the theme here on ScottBuehler.com. I plan to use this site to begin my rebuild and document the progression of the second half of my life.

Obviously a lot has happened to me this year. It has been such an upsetting “rock bottom” first half of the year for me.

Rebuilding Myself – Moving Forward

I’ve converted this site back to a blog and plan to go much further in depth about most of the bullet points above.

Some of my friends have teased me and shown disappointment with my decision to give up and take a job. Thing is, I did it for a long list of reasons. One, yes, I needed a stable income to provide for my family, but a second, more important reason, is to get rid of the heavy stress and burden all of my online businesses have had on me leading up to the inevitable catastrophic crash of this year.

Through all my hikes, I’ve done a lot of self reflection and analysis of everything in my life. I decided this summer that I needed to continue changing everything in my life. First task, take a job where I can help others while establishing a work history. I became a stay-at-home-dad to raise our third child. I’m realizing the same frustrations stay-at-home-moms have when they try to get back into the work force. I have no references, no job history and basically starting from scratch.

Brain fog is mostly cleared these days. I notice when I am at work, the brain fog clears completely as I focus on helping customers with their alarms. The fog also clears when I swim each morning. I’m left with a conclusion that being home, laying on the bed, watching TV or perhaps an allergy is causing most of my brain issues.

My Deadly Serious Sugar Addition

I’m a sugar addict. I’ve eaten large amounts of sugar almost all of my life until I decided to change my diet in February.

It’s hard for me to explain to people who basically laugh off my addiction by saying “I think we’re all sugar addicts.” My addiction is next-level. I could eat large bowls of sugar cereal, drink 6 sodas for lunch, eat sweet dinners and be ready for large amounts of ice cream, cake or other desserts before bed. It was bad.

Coming off sugar was one of the hardest things I did this year besides coping with my father’s death. It was so bad I couldn’t sleep, had heart palpitations and had a brain that demanded sugar so bad I banged my head against a wall on multiple occasions on my first cold turkey week.

I remain processed sugar-free to this day. I only focus on getting 20g-30g glucose per day for organ health. I mainly consume whole, natural fruit for glucose, mainly eating high-glucose fruits like grapes.

My Future Career

Working for Vivint has been surprisingly awesome for me. I really love working with customers again. Vivint has a nice troubleshooting aspect to the job that really engages my brain to the point my 8-hour shifts seem to go by quickly. Yes, there’s always the angry customer aspect to the job, but even then, I’ve been able to draw from my 2 years working for Charter Communications to relax and calm the customer. I continue to say there’s no worse customer than the angry babysitter lady who is experiencing a cable TV outage. Geez lady, take those kids outside and let them play!

The issue with Vivint is the job is not taking advantage of all my skills. It’s not even close. For now, the job brings the stability I need while I rebuild. I’d like to become a supervisor which would take advantage of my employee management skills, however, it is looking like I’ll need to clock 12-18 months of work to get there. For now, I’ll continue to swallow in my sugar-free humble pie, be one of the oldest in the position (the oldest in my training group) and happily report to work on time.

Career wise, I see myself in the finance industry. I’m currently emailing, private messaging and figuring out what all is needed to become a Loan Officer working with large loans like home loans.

I have a long history of Internet Marketing that I’d like to re-purpose and use to promote a loans business. I’ll be able to take advantage of my skills in lead generation, Facebook marketing / advertising, social media marketing, excellent customer service and ability to create marketing websites / funnels to attract clients.

It’s looking like I need a NMLS (Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System and Registry) license which would take 20 hours of NMLS-approved courses and 15 hours Utah-approved pre-licensing education. Before I go that route, I’d prefer to get a job lined up while I study and pass my testing.

Soon, I’ll post a page for use on the front page of this website to advertise myself as a future Loans Officer. That way I’ll have a link to share with multiple Utah-based financial businesses through email, LinkedIN and more.

Until then, look for future rambling posts where I go more in-depth on the bullets above.

These posts will hang around until I land a career in finance. At that point, I will develop this site to market my service to attract clients. Trust me when I say, I have the power to grow a massive loans business. All I need is for someone to give me that opportunity. Once I land that first closed loan with commission, watch as I reinvest into myself, advertise hard and become a force to be reckoned with in all of Southern Utah.

Are you reading these posts? Leave me a comment please!