"Making Less, But Keeping More" with Sean Mort
Sean Mort returns to Adventures In Design after a few weeks away, and the conversation starts with the strange end-of-summer feeling of trying to enjoy life while your brain is already worrying about everything waiting for you at work.
Mark gives Sean a full August business check-in: YouTube had one of its strongest months, the Hey Brickey store came close to its sales goal, and yet the biggest lesson had nothing to do with gross revenue.
After investing nearly $20,000 into inventory and repeatedly watching strong sales disappear into huge American Express bills, Mark is starting to rethink what success actually looks like. Instead of constantly launching new products to manufacture another spike, September is about learning how to sell what is already on the shelf, reinvest more intelligently, and finally keep more of the money the business generates.
Sean relates that experience to opening his own retail shop and the uncomfortable period where a business can appear successful while every dollar coming in immediately goes back out. Together they talk through the difference between building something real and simply creating an endless cycle of new products, new expenses, and new pressure.
More importantly, Mark realizes that August was one of his best months mentally despite missing his store goal. The accountability systems he has been building are helping him stop chasing every opportunity, recognize when enough is enough, and give himself permission to make decisions based on long-term health instead of panic.
That leads into the next chapter: physical health. Mark talks about an upcoming doctor's appointment, the lessons he has taken from losing Adam, and his plan to approach health with the same kind of systems and accountability that finally helped him get his work life under control.
And because it's Mark and Sean, the second half turns into a massive entertainment hang, Mr Inbetween, Obsession, the strange decline of Marvel after Endgame, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey, Robert Pattinson, and finally Sean's extremely unfiltered review of the newest additions to Disneyland Paris.
A conversation about money, creative pressure, getting older, protecting your health, and the surprisingly difficult lesson that sometimes the smartest way to grow is to stop pushing quite so hard.