What I loved about 2024

I was growing in new ways I never thought possible.

Online business skills development led to my first sales and more opportunities than I can count.

I built a lot of small apps to solve my own problems and I launched my first major course.

Sam (wife) and I traveled to Mexico and the Northeastern United States to see Cabo, New Hampshire, Maine, and Salem, Massachusetts. It was not only our first time in all of these places, but my first time traveling to see family in a long time.

What I didn’t love

I was chronically stressed out, even though plenty of it was good stress. I was always concerned about growing my following, launching a product faster, answering enough DMs or emails in a week, sending enough emails a week, etc.

Looking back on the year, if I hadn’t worked out and cared about my protein intake and calorie count, I probably would have gained weight from all the stress.

I didn’t lose any weight. I didn’t build anything just for fun. And I barely visited any of my friends. Any socializing with people I know personally was conducted 99% over Google Meets or ADPList calls. There were a couple of exceptions.

Everything I built was meant to solve a problem in my business:

MentorProof → port my ADPList reviews over to Senja
WeightTracker → give students an app to test (but also to help me stress less over weight tracking — MyFitnessPal’s UI was super clunky to me)

And you know what, I still have a mobile app I want to make that’ll make it fun to send emails from my phone, and maybe that’s OK for next year. It’d be my first mobile app, so that might be fun anyway.

But if I build anything next year, it should be for the joy of learning something new, not because I want to turn it into a course or turn around and sell the app to people.

I’ve lost that child-like desire to build stuff for fun, or to make room for “non-productive” time.

I feel like I’ve started taking life too seriously, and I want to give myself the freedom to build stuff “just because” again.

Obviously I’ll still need to support my students in Social QA Bootcamp, but maybe my joy for building test automation tools and business apps can fuel my content, and I don’t need to make any new stuff to sell.

At least for a little while. I’m not done selling, not forever. I plan to relaunch the course, after all. But I want to at least stop trying to make new paid stuff for Q1.

Q1 is for me.

I want to work on my physical & mental health, happiness, and enjoy learning new things again. And I want to play more video games and hang out with friends more often. I need to recover from 2024. The entire year felt like “Business Bootcamp”.

My Goals for 2025

Health

Get below 20% body fat

Relationships

Travel with my wife to the Apostle Islands, Niagara Falls, and Scranton, PA (The Office)
Hang out with 1 friend in person
Jump on more 𝕏 Spaces, livestreams, and calls with my online friends

Business

Coach 1 student of Social QA Bootcamp to the finish line (the Wall of Winners)
Build a mobile app to allow me to send Kit emails from my phone

Learning

Build 1 test automation framework for mobile, desktop, web, and API, for each of the following languages: Ruby, C#, Java, Python
Learn a new and challenging song on violin
Learn 1 new parkour movement
Join an archery club OR start taking martial arts classes

My #1 goal is the <20% fat goal. That’s going to be my focus.

In order to achieve that, I realize I need to truly step back from the business stuff and allow it to go into maintenance mode.

If I don’t do that, I’ll likely have a repeat of this year.

I already found out I can’t build personal projects and do all the business stuff this year. So I need to make sure the personal projects don’t interrupt my health goals too.

I figure if I can accomplish that health goal, everything else will be icing on the cake. I have no doubt the travel goal will happen, and I am obligated to coach all my Social QA Bootcamp students, but the others will take my focus, conscious effort, and some planning.

If they happen, they happen.

Looking forward to the new year! I plan to evaluate my goals quarterly. I imagine if I’m truly dedicated, I can achieve the 20% fat goal in 3 months. I doubt it will take 12, so I’ll need to reevaluate all this at some point.

2025 New Year's Resolutions