2024 felt like it flew by. I often lost track of time, at times thinking ,“Wait… it’s still 2024?” and other times thinking, “Wait, it’s already [insert month]?” It was a dense year indeed.
My goals from last year were to:
- ✅ Double Omniscient’s annual revenue – We didn’t double but did pretty freaken well so I’m counting this as a win.
- ❌ Speak at 4 events – Didn’t do this.
- ✅ Hire someone to help with sales and marketing – We tested hiring an intern to run our social. That didn’t work. But we did hire someone to run our outbound email campaigns which is working.
- ✅ Host a monthly networking event for Boston tech and marketing leaders – Monthly ended up being too aggressive but I hosted two events.
- ❌ Have one high-quality leisure time activity and produce something non-digital each month – Work
- ✅ Build relationships and continue to be the person that reaches out and connects people
- ✅ Take 2 mini-vacations – Bahamas, Costa Rica, and we were supposed to do a third but ended up doing a road trip instead.
- ❌ Join the 900-Pound Club – I broke the 800 club but had some setbacks that took me out of the gym for a bit.
Annual Playlist
Personal Highlights
When I think of personal highlights, I like to focus on friends and family, fun, and fitness.
Friends and family
Extended time with family
I wanted to visit family at least three times this year but it ended up being two times. I visited for a week in July for my niece’s birthday and again in December and ended up staying for nearly a month. In the past, my stays would be packed with meetups, exercise (2-3 hours a day), and not much actual time with my family. This time around I spent plenty of time with my family. It could be as simple as sitting around talking to them for hours, walking the dogs with them every chance I could, or sharing a meal. My heart is full.
Invested time in friendships.
I used to naturally invest more time into work, but over the years it has become more natural for me to see friends more regularly. I’m definitely feeling the strain of life pulling us all in different directions as folks move away to be closer to their family, have kids, etc. all making it more challenging to keep in touch. Whether it be a simple text or phone call or meeting in person, I feel like I’m spending a meaningful amount of time on my relationships.
I also got more involved with my partner’s business school experience, going to events and investing more time in getting to know her classmates. It was tough to invest more time and I definitely didn’t do the most I could, but I felt like I did my best. For example, there were just days when I was exhausted or stressed from work and needed time to myself or to go to the gym instead of socializing.
Fun
Travel
To be honest, I’m probably done with doing a lot of traveling. I find joy in being home, being in a routine, and building the business. Nonetheless, here are the places I traveled to this year:
- Bahamas – Vacation
- Costa Rica – Went twice, once for vacation and then for a team offsite
- New York – Went three times, once for a meetup, then conferences, and a partner meeting
- Austin, TX – Conference
- Vermont – A lowkey, reflective trip with my dog
- New Orleans – Omniscient leadership offsite
- Long Beach – Twice to visit family
- Guatemala – Fun after team offsite
- Seattle – Visit my friend Justin
- San Diego – Omniscient leadership offsite
- Cross-country road trip – This gets one bullet point because we stayed in most cities for less than 24 hours:
- Grand Canyon National Park
- Red Rock Crossing
- Petrified Forest National Park
- White Sands National Park
- Little Rock, AK
- Dallas, TX
- Nashville, TN
- Beckley, WV
Road tripped across the US
This was totally unplanned and really forced upon us by circumstance. It wasn’t the ideal situation but my partner and I decided to reframe the situation and ask, “How do we make this fun?” So we did. We took about a week to research and plan (by “we,” I mean my partner, with help from AI) an 8-day road trip. I fortunately had a lot of credit card points and we had a travel savings account that allowed us to stay in hotels the whole way without breaking the bank.
In some ways, it was a crucible moment for us. We were stressed out due to a lot of things but were able to assess the situation, create a game plan, roll with the punches, and ask for help where we needed it. We also improved how we communicate and work with each other.
Muay Thai
I went to Muay Thai consistently for about half the year and the rest I had to deprioritize it or was injured. Despite that, I objectively improved my striking technique and found myself helping less experienced students loosen up and improve their form.
Fitness
Solid workout streak at certain points of the year
I had two good runs this year where I felt like I was consistently working out 3-4 times a week which included going to the gym, running, and/or going to Muay Thai. The only unfortunate thing was that Muay Thai was the first thing to go once work got really busy or life got in the way, then running was also deprioritized.
Regardless of those tradeoffs, I got a lot of compliments and was told by friends and strangers I looked fit and ripped, so I’ll take the win.
Worked through injuries and sickness
They weren’t “injuries” per se but my back was extremely tight from hiking up a volcano in Guatemala without hiking poles. It was impressive but perhaps not a great idea. I also got traveler’s belly on the last day in Guatemala which didn’t help. Those things together put me off my regular workout routine for 2-3 months.
Dieted for the first time
I used an app called Carbon to count my macros and the results were great. I felt healthier than ever. I stopped after about 6 months and plan to measure my macros again.
Working with my mindset coach
Had many breakthroughs in developing my mindset as a leader, most notably learning to trust more and more. Trust was my theme last year and while there’s room to grow, I really felt myself break through a lot of discomfort. I have many moments throughout a typical day where I realize, “I don’t know all the details… and that’s okay.”
I let go of a lot of my desire for control
Through coaching and therapy, I worked through my natural desire to want to have control. I was a personal thing I wanted to work on and I knew that it would improve my relationship and leadership style, giving others space to grow and learn.
Business Highlights
Partnership going strong
After hearing about various nightmares between business partners and witnessing how challenging it can be to find a good business partner, I feel even more lucky that I get to work with Alex and Allie. We spend a lot of our waking hours talking to each other and got to spend a lot of time in person this year with our offsite and a trip to Guatemala.
Revenue grew 50% and profitability improved.
It was a big year for the business and we’re still growing organically.
The team grew to nearly 20 employees.
That’s nearly double the team size from 2023. Hiring has been a challenge but we’re excited about the team going into 2025.
Rebuilt the team for the future.
It wasn’t intentional but we had some turnover one one team and had to rebuild so much of the year was spent recruiting and hiring. We also made a key leadership hire that we’re very excited about. Our team is also building various internal tools to improve our processes and help us all work more efficiently and effectively. All of this will ultimately allow us to build a company that can withstand and thrive through a lot of the uncertainty in the market.
Team offsite in Costa Rica.
It was the first time we flew our team internationally for an offsite. Not everyone was able to make it but we got 10 people out and it was also everyone’s first time being flown out for something like that.
Got new case studies and logos.
We got case studies with Smartling, 360Learning, and SpotDraft. Currently working on some more. We also got permission to display logos of companies we’ve worked with and admire like BetterUp, Asana, Loom, and Retool.
Strong pipeline going into next year.
I’m cautiously optimistic going into next year. It’s not that I don’t want to be optimistic. I just tend to err toward paranoia and avoid resting on laurels. There’s a lot of uncertainty in the market, and I’m excited to see how our team takes advantage of the opportunity.
Favorite Books
In no particular order:
- Grinding It Out by Ray Kroc
- How to Get Rich by Felix Dennis
- How Will You Measure Your Life? by Clayton Christensen
- Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
- Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger (audiobook)
- Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson (audiobook)
- The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (reread)
Favorite Shows & Movies
2025 Goals
At this stage of life, my goals seem to be quite consistent each year.
- Business:
- Grow Omniscient’s revenue 67%
- Host a meetup once a quarter
- Personal
- One personal project and/or high-quality leisure time activity each month
- Join the 900 club
- Take 2 vacations, at least a week off each time
2025 Theme: Fuck it
In past years, I had a lot more time to reflect and process the year. I didn’t have the luxury of that downtime this year, so my reflections felt rushed. That meant I didn’t really get to sit and feel a theme. I played with phrases like “invest,” “intense,” “impatience,” and considered “trust” again (my theme for 2024).
One phrase that kept coming up was “fuck it.” An alternative is “just do it,” but I wanted something more intense that wouldn’t remind me of Nike.
This phrase was repeated often this year after Alex shared a video of an interview with Ice T. I’ve included it below. You’ll probably need to watch it on YouTube due to the language.
This phrase really resonated with me over the last year because as the company grew, we all had to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. I really took that to heart and it was a core part of all my coaching sessions.
We reminded each other to say “fuck it” and “just do it” over and over to prevent each other from getting stuck in analysis paralysis or procrastination.
So I got a custom Cameo from Ice T addressing me, Alex, and Allie and talking about his “fuck it” philosophy of being uncomfortable and pushing the line.
Here’s the video.
It’s reminiscent of my theme from 2023, “Faith not fear.” A reminder to focus on what’s possible and what could go well instead of just thinking about what could go wrong.”
So here’s to saying “fuck it” in 2025.
Get past the overthinking, overanalyzing, overplanning, say “fuck it” and then do the thing.
Send the email. Make the ask. Produce the proposal. Host the dinner. Do the podcast. Write the content. Send the follow up. Build the app. Make the decision.
Do the thing.
Fuck it.
Previous reviews:
- 2023 Review
- 2022 Review
- 2021 Review
- 2020 Review
- 2019 Review
- 2018 Review
- 2017 Review
- 2016 Review
- 2015 Review
- 2014 Review
- 2012 Review
