Now that I'm in my 50s with an unqualified and extraordinary level of happiness — a postmortem on my decades so far: 20s - At the lefthand zenith of the "Dunning Kruger Effect" of life, but this was a good thing, it kept me moving forward boldly. Had fun, did fun dumb stuff, but also did hard things, got married, had children, started a business, and started to exercise the muscle of deferred gratification and discipline specifically around health, relationships, faith, family, and career/money. 30s - Started to lock in. Responsibilities mounted, pressure built, baseline enjoyment of life was solid, but weighed down heavily with the effect of choosing hard things in my 20s. Did more hard things. Had more kids. Invested more deeply in family, faith, career and relationships. 40s - Thanks to lots of reps, got generally better at the skill of life, being an adult, a business owner, a dad, a husband and all the things I'd spend the last 2 decades focused on. Things felt easier and more manageable as a result. Still hard! But payoffs from prior investments started to show up as a light at the end of the tunnel. 50s - The investments of the last 30 years are reaching maturity. This is the moment I was deferring things to earlier in life. Life is filled to the brim with things that bring me immeasurable joy, satisfaction, meaning and purpose. My business has provided financial security and an ability to reach goals I never even imagined. My health is good. My marriage is a treasure. All but one of my kids are adults now, charting their own path, and have become my very best friends. I sit in awe of who they are, and what they do. And I'm a grandpa — truly no hype prepared me for how awesome that is. My faith is my anchor to all of that. These are the things that matter to me and enrich my life. All the categories of my life where prior investments were made and compounded over decades are paying off now. It was worth the wait, and more. I acknowledge an immense amount of luck and good fortune across many factors which have allowed me to arrive here. Any one of those pillars could collapse overnight, and life still throws very difficult curve balls. But I also want to acknowledge that it works. The model of investing in things that matter, usually at the cost of great personal sacrifice and deferred gratification pays off enormously. The impact of compounding over decades on those investments is hard to describe. My life is far richer than anything I could have conjured up in my wildest dreams. Photo: my granddaughter with a tiny toolbox I made her last weekend.

Doing this again for Easter dinner.

HUGE UNLOCK. Previously Plus-exclusive B2B features are now on all @Shopify plans.

Sometimes when I'm doing my taxes I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to just go to prison.

Our collective tolerance for mediocre-to-bad SaaS apps is going to zero, and quick.

I'm insanely jealous.

Human capacity has long been a primary constraint of productivity for the white collar world. It is jarring, exciting, terrifying, and exhilarating to enter a world where that constraint is vanishing.

To stay in business, you don’t need to beat your competitors, you need to beat your costs.

People ask why I’ve been posting more photos of Jenni and me lately. Here’s the truth. 👇

Hello If you or a family member wish to be home for Thanksgiving But can't afford the plane ticket And it's available tonight-Thursday And is bookable using my points and miles I will get it for you Send me a DM with the airports (will delete this if it becomes too much)

The most powerful lesson I've learned studying storytelling: write your ending first. I just used this concept to make our first major branded video - 2 months and $16K investment - more impactful. The beginning is so crucial. It sets the stage, captures attention, frames the story arc. It's also the hardest. So stop trying to write it first. Instead, think about your ending. For this video, that meant clarifying what we wanted to help @ecommercefuel members become. Ambitious and successful, yes. But also in control. Family prioritized. Ok, that's our ending. What's the opposite of that? Late nights, stress, grinding, loneliness. An all-consuming business. That became our opening. Because great stories = transformation. Steal this framework to make your stories more powerful: Step 1: Identify your ending (the ideal state) Step 2: Identify the absolute opposite (the "before" state) Step 3: Paint that as vividly as possible in your opening This leads to the strongest narrative arc - the change - that makes a story compelling. You can use this lesson now on everything from emails to sales pages, not just big video projects. While it's carefully architected, it's also 100% true. My whole mission is to help entrepreneurs build incredible businesses and amazing lives. Big thanks to the team at @mission_films, our protagonist Bryan Walthall and all the ECF members who helped film it!

Parents, I hope your homes are so full of love & joy that when your college son is asked about not being around you and his siblings, he has this reaction.

We've been doing this a long time. And every day we still wake up determined to do right by our clients. When it's recognized, it means a lot.

This is my favorite use of AI yet in our business - We used it to catch an unauthorized Amazon reseller who was breaching our wholesale agreement. AI identified them because their email address was an ANAGRAM of their entity name. No human would have ever caught it.

An endlessly useful piece of advice: Do right by people. Do right by your customers, your clients, your vendors, your partners in business or in life. Be known for your integrity, and be someone who can be trusted.

Have you filled this out yet? 👇🏻 (link in first comment)

Here is an endlessly useful piece of advice: Do right by people. Do right by your customers, your clients, your vendors, your partners in business or in life. Being High integrity/High trust, is a separator.

The piloting, the choreography, the foley, just wow. (I want to see the bloopers)

There could be no higher compliment than that we care. Thanks Dave.

Kaleigh would be an epic hire.