My 2024 Year in Review (net worth update etc)

0:03what a year 2024 is done 2025 incoming and today what are we going to do today we're going to talk about my big wins my big losses how much I've grown on social a wealth breakdown including all the different stocks and equities I own some business updates like how my business is doing um productivity unlocks that I've had any insights and learnings we're breaking it down in this video um and the truth is I don't know where this video is going to go I don't know where this pot is going to go I didn't come super prepared I just wanted to I wanted it to be like

0:52a conversation that I'm having with a friend I've got a few ideas on what we can talk about and it's just going to be me and you having a conversation about my 2024 year in review and my hope is that by listening to this uh you will get some ideas about your year and you it'll get your creative juices flowing [Music] so I'd like to start off by talking about my big wins so I actually haven't announced this anywhere but me and my wife had a baby yes we had a baby uh she's seven weeks old um and uh it's it's just completely changed my perception about about everything I know all

1:50parents say this um but I'm still processing what what it all means um but I can tell you that it's uh it's just yeah it's one of the most beautiful things if not the most beautiful things uh that has happened in my life um and uh yeah just having like a a miniu kind of in the world that you get to teach um is is so cool um yeah had a baby looking for looking for um all the the baby advice that you can possibly give um um and and excited to to to join this adventure so um that was number one uh the second thing is uh I started working out consistently I started actually lifting

2:41consistently and the amount of mental Clarity that I've gotten from that has been amazing I've also gained weight um like I've gained a lot of muscle muscle weight I think like 15 20 lb something like that um so I'm bigger which is kind of weird because when I look in the mirror I'm like I feel I look more Broad and and and some honestly I don't even know if I like the the look um but the mental Clarity uh is is unmatched so um highly recommend highly recommend lifting and how I got into it I guess is I got a personal trainer so I got a personal trainer uh three times a week you

3:28know I have to show up I'm there um and you know I might reduce my uh my personal trainer like maybe to once a week um now that like I'm in the flow um but yeah definitely definitely [Music] enjoy enjoy just the benefits of of lifting I actually can't believe it took me until like 35 to do it consistently um and then you know the last biggest win is I launch I basically grew this podcast into a serious platform um actually I'm gonna give one more uh big one after this but I I I grew this PL podcast into Year's platform you know last year going into 2024 there was a very small

4:17group of people who listened to this podcast uh I switched the name from where it happens to the startup ideas podcast I really started focusing on giving away everything I could uh in terms of value um I really just wanted people to take the ideas from the podcast and implement it and see what happens it was kind of like a in a lot of ways like a a social experiment and people took these ideas they learned you know growth tactics on how to grow their businesses they took a lot of the startup ideas and actually just go went and built in built them and uh it was a success and and people just started talking about the Pod and and and it's

5:01it's probably one of my biggest wins of the year and the last biggest win is I hit a financial net worth number that has always been in my head that I thought that I would never get to but I hit it and I don't really want to say the number um that's not the point but I I I did hit it um and I'll talk more at the end of like why I hit it um but basically there was a uh company that I had stock in and it um there was liquidity you know I had a liquidity event um and uh and that was a good feeling um okay big losses and lessons obviously you know not everything is

5:48Rosy um I think one of the biggest ones is I felt that throughout 2024 I wasn't working on the most important thing um for for example I'm one of those people you know a lot of people tell me this that I'm really like quick on text and I'm quick on Twitter and I'm quick I'm quick to answer people um and I don't think that's a very good thing um I I find myself you know I could get distracted by someone sends me a text message and be like what do you think of this or um you know some I I just find I get distracted a little bit too much um and I and I it's not like

6:33I'm distracted in the sense that I'm going to go and play fortnite um distracted it means that some other business text comes in and then I end up or email comes in and I end up uh I just end up in a rabbit hole and all of a sudden like two hours uh goes by and I'm I'm I'm just really unable to to get back to where I I was thinking so you know I'm I'm spending more time on do not disturb mode um I I really I really think that it's it's like the only way to get work done I'm spending more time with pen and paper uh I'm starting to write things down more uh I'm spending more I'm spending less

7:14time in like more hardcore productivity software uh stuff so less time in in in places like notion where I get distracted and more time in places like Apple notes where I feel more focused so that that has been a loss just because I I haven't been able to get to the goals I've wanting to get to um just because I've been getting sidetracked throughout the year quick break in the Pod to tell you a little bit about startup Empire so startup Empire is my private membership where it's a bunch of people like me like you who want to build out their startup ideas now they're looking for

7:57content to help accelerate that they're looking for for potential co-founders they're looking for uh tutorials from people like me to come in and tell them how do you do email marketing how do you build an audience how do you go viral on Twitter all these different things that's exactly what startup Empire is and it's for people who want to start a startup but are looking for ideas or it's for people who have a startup but just they're not seeing the traction uh that they need so you can check out the link to Startup empire.co in the description uh another big loss has been I put too

8:34much trust trust in 2024 uh in certain teammates um without checks and balances so I'm one of those people that um you know I look at uh you know I hear people like Andrew Wilkinson you know friend of the Pod talking about how he hires CEOs and he builds these businesses and he has complete trust you know and a lot of trust with these people or you know Warren Buffett talks a lot a lot of a lot similar to that too where uh you know he trusts management to do the right thing um I feel like it's trust management or or trust teammates um but with checks and balances there needs to be

9:14checks and balances and I didn't include enough checks and balances in 2024 and I had to pay the price uh this is going to sound like really dumb and I'll admit that this happened but we had a someone on our finance team that was just like putting in not the right numbers like the numbers were Incorrect and there were this was a costly mistake you know hundreds of thousands of dollars type mistake um and it's going to be okay like we're going to S you know it's fine but like we figured it out um but um this is a person who we hired remotely who was literally working a second

10:03job she wasn't doing it maliciously um but um you need to have these checks and balances especially in a remote work environment you need to have checks and balances big lesson learn there um and then I'd say the another big lesson or key learning I should say is that this year was a less profitable year than in uh 2023 and that's okay I mean it's it's a on one hand like we you know we did a year in review and like oh my God you know we made less money this year you know we pride ourselves in building cash flowing businesses and um and that you know we the

10:48the reality is we were less profitable this year um but it's okay because we are reinvesting our businesses we investing more of our cash into uh technology and I'll talk more about uh that later um but um you know it is a loss like real you know the truth is it's a loss like we should be at least 15 to 20% more profitable every single year uh from a free cash flow perspective we weren't uh next year uh we'll do better I could you know I'm telling myself well you know we're just reinvesting more of the money into technology that's true but I think we can do that while also

11:33maintaining profitability so so right before I recorded this I went on Twitter X and asked recording a year and review podcast what question do you want me to answer nothing off limit so let's let's actually answer off the cuff some of the questions that you all have and uh what's wrck Ora or says what are you least happy about in your current life I would say I still I'm I've gotten much better at sleep but I find I still like wake up a c you know times at night and I wish I had more deep sleep and I'm still trying to figure out how to optimize it I know that sounds like so

12:24trivial but like sleep matters so much um to me and like I'm you know it sets the tone for your whole day so having just like crushing sleep is what I'm least happy about Eric says what are the stupidest things you're doing right now stupidest things I'm doing right now honestly is probably not just like going harder um going doubling down um this is such a good time to be building businesses I feel like I have so many unfair advantages I feel like I'm going fast but I if I'm being honest with myself I think I could be going faster what's the one best idea to have to grow

13:08your business next year um invest in technology um just build software around each of our businesses if you were to focus on just one thing what would it be uh hiring great CEOs and finding Partners to incubate businesses is with and is that two things it's it's basically like finding Partners like I I the one thing I want to focus on is finding business partners and and business partners that I want to work with not just for one year four years like for the rest of my my freaking life what was your primary leverage for expanding your personal brand this year by Cody probably X is is

13:53the leverage you know I think I don't know I think I'm I think that's what you're trying to ask right um I used X to to create the flywheel for everything else around my personal brand how did that growth impact sales and revenue I would say without my personal brand sales and revenue would be like 40% less so you know millions and millions of dollars a year yeah it's actually crazy many many millions of dollars a year um for obvious re Joe Devon for OB says for obvious reasons no one wants to talk publicly about hidden techniques to win at the social media game from Pain engagement to astroturfing

14:41and engagement pods it's gotten harder to reach critical mass what percentage of large accounts got there using these techniques honestly like I don't even know what Astro turfing is the engagement pod stuff I feel like it it it's definitely happening but it's not the it's not the number one reason why someone grows um I I don't like this mentality to be honest um like yes it's hard to grow but it's also I don't even know I honestly I think it's probably on X specifically it's probably easier to grow to 100 th Z to 100,000 followers today than it was last year at this time um and that's because the for you page of X highlights more

15:37smaller accounts so just like for honestly like forget about paid engagement astr turfing whatever that is and engagement pods and just like create really great content that people need in a format that they want to accept it and do a lot of and be a reply guy like reply a lot to people build relationships um and just like forget about just forget about these things uh what single thing is having the biggest impact on your Biz um building media around our businesses um what's your best return on investment item like physical item I mean MacBook right given the volume of ideas you've generated come across process year how did you keep yourself focused um I should have

16:33been more focused but uh you know every day the three things that you know I write down the three things that I need to get done today what are the three most important things how many hours do I I work on average in 2024 hot take 40 hours a week you can get a lot of stuff done in 40 hours per week I don't I honestly there 99% of my entire career has spent working 40 hours a week of course there's been times where I work 70 hours a week and there's some deadline to hit but I think you can get a ton done in 40 hours per week she got to be very constrained and focused um what is

17:24everyone in your industry completely wrong about right now that GPT rappers aren't real businesses did anyone take business ideas and run with it people are always taking business ideas from this podcast and running with it it's absolutely amazing those are some uh some interesting some of the interesting questions uh from from the Tweet okay let's talk about platform growth uh YouTube uh at the end of 2023 I was I was at 11,000 YouTube subscribers today we're sitting at at 146,000 subscribers so that's a absolutely insane grow trajectory I can't I actually cannot believe it and uh you know the the Insight here is I talked a little bit about in the beginning

18:15it's just like knowing who your audience is uh and really just you know leaning into it I think another smart thing that we did was we um we we got really good at titles and thumbnails um and I think that helped um and and the way we did it is we reached out to people um who are the best in the game you know like we reached out to uh you know the people who did you know you know the guy who did titles and thumbnails for Mr Beast and was like would you give us 15 minutes of your time and you'd be surprised like either you can you know ask these people to like you know what do

18:51you give give feedback or just like pay for their time be like hey how much is 15 minutes going to cost to give you to give us um a little bit of uh Direction on where on where we can go and and a lot of these people I mean you can even like here's a hack like go to and I'm not affiliated with these people but go to like intro. Co and like see like what are popular YouTubers on there and and and just be like there are YouTubers there that have millions of subscribers that you can just be like hey I'll give you $250 or whatever they cost for for 15 minutes and tell me

19:30everything you need to know about tit I need to know about titles and thumbnails so YouTube big lesson there focus on the niche um and uh titles and thumbnails make a big difference uh X um I Grew From 361,000 followers to 420,000 followers so about 59,000 followers there a lot of people here know me from from X um I I you know I think you know most of my followers came from a few tweets um that's just the reality of of X today either your your tweets go ballistic or they go absolutely nowhere um but I still think it's a a great place to to gain followers in the business

20:23Niche um and uh you know I my strategy there is is the same you know I've talked about it before I have a notes file with um just key observations I make through the week on Fridays I'll go through it I'll make it more into actual tweets some of them are bad I'll discard those um and then I'll post the ones that I'm ready um and I I tried to I Tred to make my social platforms like a bit more aligned like I'm I don't want YouTube to to be the only YouTube and the Pod to be the only place where I talk about startup ideas so I started on X to just be like okay here's some free startup

21:04ideas you can take and it started to work um and I think I started to become known more in 2024 as a guy who gives startup ideas so that was a huge win on on the XF front um so not only did I grow but I think I also kind of changed positioning and perception there LinkedIn I went from 82,000 to 149,000 followers that's literally with doing like no zero work it's just uh you know copying and pasting my ex tweets and posting some of them on LinkedIn um podcast uh again big year for the podcast uh on audio and Spotify which by the way you know a lot of people listen on

21:50video definitely go and listen on audio and SP on Spotify Spotify and apple if you're you know if if if you prefer to just like go for Bo and listen I know I I I I enjoy that too it went from 360,000 downloads in 2023 to 575,000 downloads so I think it it it grew but not nearly as much as YouTube so I'm still trying to figure out audio I'm still trying to figure it out and uh I also have like a bunch of bad reviews on audio like some some mean reviews so I don't like that that um I don't I don't know why I have some mean reviews there but uh you know in 2025 I'd love to get more podcast

22:35downloads um and I'd love to get less mean reviews and more nice reviews uh my newsletter went from 72,000 uh Subs to about 120,000 Subs so huge huge growth there and I finally cracked the nut with the newsletter uh so created a bit of a flywheel with you know people I post on X some like free startup related content then there's a call to action to go and listen to the podcast or watch the podcast on YouTube um and then people watch the podcast on YouTube mostly um and then there's a call to action with a lead magnet that says like hey if you want more of this stuff go and download

23:26XYZ guide so I in 24 I started creating guides that were lead magnets so uh the that flywheel worked um and it really started taking off towards the end of 2024 um I wouldn't be surprised if this time next year uh the newsletter exceeds 200,000 subscribers I think that's relatively conservative and and totally possible quick ad break let me tell you about a business I invested in it's called boring marketing.com so a few years ago I met this group of people that were some of the best SEO experts in the world they were behind getting some of the biggest companies found on Google and the secret sauce is they've got a set of technology and AI that could help you outrank

24:18your competition so for my own businesses I wanted that I didn't want to have to rely on Mark Zuckerberg I didn't want to depend on ads to drive customers to my businesses I wanted to rank high in Google that's why I like SEO and that's why I use boring marketing.com and that's why I invested in it they're so confident in their approach that they offer a 30-day Sprint with 100% money back guarantee who does that nowadays so check it out highly recommend boring marketing.com okay we're going to go into the next section uh it's the wealth breakdown section I'm going to tell you about some of the stocks I own stuff like that so this year my n worth has gone up 38%

25:01year-over-year so it was probably might have been my biggest yeah it's my biggest year ever and I you know a big reason for that as I mentioned is there was an investment that I made um years ago that that that you know I I got liquidity in um and uh also the stock market ripped like the stock market absolutely ripped so those the two reasons uh my net worth in terms of breakdown it's 75% in stocks 16% in private Equity um 7% in real estate and 2% in crypto uh so I'll just tell you some of the stocks that I own this is not Financial advice do your own research I'm just sharing if in case

25:51it's just interesting to people so uh 10% of uh my net worth is in Berkshire uh Berkshire hathway and and and the reason there really is you know I'm doing such high more high-risk Tech stuff I'm just like what's something that's like extremely boring um and that's why it's such a large percentage of my portfolio uh same is is true with spy 10% of my portfolio uh spy is the S&P uh index S&P 500 Index um Apple 8% Amazon 7% uh Microsoft 6% wcld 5% which is a ETF for the cloud computing index in my last year 2023 year interview I talked about my thesis on this um and it panned out um if you

26:49would have listened to that video and uh in that episode and actually bought wld you would have done really well um the thesis at the time was and it's so similar thesis is that if you're a cloud company um you're very well uh situated to be an AI company so the thesis was that cloud companies were going to become AI companies uh which turned out to be true um in a in a lot of sense so you know that that's wld Google 5% I actually trimmed some Google uh towards the end of 23 shouldn't have done that I was worried about um they're losing their search uh you know advantage and

27:38of course I I do think that they will like they had they had a monopoly on search so uh and it is their big money maker but at the same time like they have so many different business units now it's such a conglomerate wh MO is really really crushing it right now that's part of that's a part of Google they've got Android they've got YouTube Google Cloud uh again you know that's that's a part of my thesis and Google cloud is absolutely on a tear um so I'm feeling good about Google and it trades at like 27 times PE or something like that so I don't think it's super overpriced uh

28:19ping Square holding is uh bill amman's fund uh he owns uh uh he actually owns Google he owns Chipotle you know my thesis there is basically he's like kind of like a mini uh Warren Buffett um so I wanted to place a bet there uh and and see what happens [Music] um yeah and just you know yeah just yeah place a bet there uh iwm which is the an index of the Russell 2000 you know if you look at the the growth of S&P 500 versus Russell 2000 which is I think it's small cap stocks under1 billion the S&P 500 has absolutely destroyed the ADM iwm the Russell

29:162000 just pulling it up you know the just you know for example year to date the iwm is up 11% where

29:31the S&P is up 26% so I actually think that small caps are going to be they've just been not in favor but I actually think they will at some point come back in favor so that's why I placed the 5% bet in iwm constellation software consolation software is another part of like you know I invested 5% into a you know Bill amman's uh persing Square which kind of operates similar to Berkshire and constellation software also operates similar to Berkshire uh they own vertical SAS businesses um a bunch of them and you know it's a 3% allocation there Mark Leonard is the founder he's like he kind of looks like uh Rick Rubin he's like a Canadian Rick Rubin

30:25like doesn't do interviews uh he's like we'll put up a chart of like how well constellation has done over like the last 20 years it's like absolutely insane like gone up uh let's see I mean it's up 24,000 per uh all time it's just absolutely crazy absolutely crazy um so he's a good steart of capital and uh we'll see you know give that's a bet other stocks at 8% % fixed income and cash at 3% uh the pr the private Equity is um is is mostly in funds and and startup Investments real estate um I I actually bought a I bought a new uh apartment for for our growing

31:15family so that's a part there and crypto uh 2% and that's mostly Bitcoin um I guess this is a bit of a loss like I trim my like I rebalance my portfolio um I'm not one of those people that is like glued to my phone to see like what you know house how how my portfolio is doing at any given time I think that's a huge distraction but you know every month or every three months I'll look into it um and and rebalance so I was rebalancing crypto as it was going up huge loss there right um I was selling Bitcoin you know when it was at 60,000 and 70,000 and 880,000

31:58um but uh that's the way I roll that's the way I roll I keep it I keep it pretty disciplined I think that a crypto allocation of 2% is you know is healthy and also in my private Equity uh Investments uh you know call it another two or 3% is in crypto funds there as well so for all for all the crypto heads who are like I can't believe you're so low investment in crypto I think I probably have a you know five % allocation in total um which I don't think is crazy so that's uh my weth breakdown uh 2024 um and I don't really think I'll make huge differences in 2025 uh you

32:45know maybe just add to those positions as I get more more information okay business updates um lay checkout agency which is our uh design agency that builds new products uh for for the biggest brands in the world from you know Shopify to Nike to Dropbox um had a great year it had an absolutely great year and I think we really hit our stride especially as you know we've we've designed some of the the biggest AI products um because people were coming to us and and you know years ago literally and saying hey like you know we're Dropbox and you know we're Cloud you know we're we're looking for a new AI product that we want to build a new AI product so we would build it for

33:38them we would design it for them we would help them to think through a lot of these things so um I would say there that um you know it was a good year like the less in there I think is uh especially with agencies in general is like you do need a niche down I I feel like we found you know our two niches in 2024 which is uh building new products I call them community- based products so what is a community based product it's like we'll we'll basically go into your community and and build them a website an app a new product um that really speaks to

34:18that community that drives revenue and drives word of mouth and then just AI interfaces like we've become known as AI interface you know an AI interface agency and we are just booked up we are so so booked up um we'll probably do more uh partnering with some of the big AI companies and and just basically take some cash and some Equity as a part of those deals so we did a little bit of that in 2024 and we'll continue to do that in 2025 and what's really cool about that is you the cost you know are covered and then you basically just get upside in these you know really really uh

35:05fast growing uh businesses they're not even startups at this point and uh and then you just build that portfolio and and and I'm very excited about that I don't think a lot of people I don't think a lot of people are are doing you know equity for for services and and we're very specific on you know there's only a few in the world that we'll do it with and they need to be multi-billion dollar companies but uh I expect to do more of that okay oh and by the way L lay checkout agency we actually kind of like rebranded to LCA um I don't know if it was a

35:43good thing honestly I don't know if we should have just kept it late checkout agency or just call it LCA we did like a whole rebranding thing effort you know uh it's definitely fun to Rebrand um but like did we need to do it does l checkout agency is that a better name uh but I'm you know I'm starting to get used to LCA but I do notice that people still call us late checkout or late checkout agency so um I don't know that's a that's a question mark That's me being real with you this is me having that friendto friend conversation uh who knows there but uh okay next

36:26business update is boring so boring marketing the end of 2023 we had started to scale it it's doing millions of dollars a year of Revenue AI assisted SEO um and it continues to do that continues to scale um we're starting to use a lot more agents and we're not even starting to use the the the implementation of boring marketing.com as a lot more agents and a lot more AI a lot more proprietary technology uh that uh that we built okay so what you know what you're going to get from Austin 2025 is just more tools that you can use on your own so you won't need to um you won't

37:14need to sign up to the service to actually to to get the the the the amazing result of of boring marketing.com because we we you know that's was one of the key insights I guess for 2024 some people have their own SEO teams or have their own marketing teams and are just like I just want to implement myself and it's like okay great so we're building a we're unbundling a lot of the product so uh in early 2025 uh you'll see some some cool stuff there um we also launch boring ads.com so boring ads.com uh is is crushing it absolutely crushing it and it's the same idea which is like

38:00AI assisted um for you know creative and the best possible ads um because the reality is um you know a lot meta and a lot of you know the the the platforms like they do a good good enough job at actually managing it but it's like how do you actually create how do you actually analyze you know the the best industry and competitive ads to find winning creative strategies fast and I think um it's just starting to it's really really starting to pay off and work we spent a hundred million in ad spend um we've scaled you know billion dollar brands in 2024 um this is going

38:42to be a Killer Business uh it already is a killer business but I wouldn't be surprised if boring ads uh becomes bigger than boring marketing and uh and you'll see the same sort of approach which is is you know we start with you know we start with Consulting to figure out the problem then we build technology to optimize our workflows to be ahead of everyone else um then we uh yeah we basically SE we sell that into our Consulting clients they start getting really good results Word of Mouth goes like crazy I mean the word of mouth of like I'm boring marketing and boring ads the word of mouth is absolutely insane like uh I got a note uh in our slack yesterday that we

39:28have 76 booked meetings in the next couple weeks um just for boring marketing and I'm sure boring ads probably has more so uh it feels really good not to have a a lead problem and just like it feels really good to have customers have great experiences and just tell other people so I think what will happen with boring ads is again same sort of thing with boring marketing is we'll unbundle some of these ad tools that people will be able to use themselves so so we're ready doing that stay tuned um and uh and what's happened is now we have boring ads boring marketing is now under a new company called boring holding so it's essentially we incubated a holding company

40:12so it's pretty meta we have lay checkout which is a holding company that owns LCA owns boring Holdings uh so that's an interesting thing that's happened here in 24 okay business updates and you probably need a robot you probably need a robot was a newsletter was a newsletter that 60,000 people signed up to to get information about Ai and how to use it to become a better solo preneur better an entrepreneur and we shut it down so we shut it down well we shut down yeah we shut down you probably need a robot and as is and turned it into uh a bit you know added it to a business that

41:06we already had running called startup Empire now what is startup Empire a lot of you already know what startup Empire is it's uh a membership that uh people sign up to who want to accelerate their ideas who want to build businesses uh there's a ton of contents there tools there Community there there um in some ways it's almost like the deao membership for this podcast um and you know there's like million plus dollars a year in savings and discounts for tools you get a free school membership uh which is worth $99 a month uh and people pay $149 a month to be a part of it

41:49and it's really designed to like essentially break even um but for us like the lay checkout team to basically you know hire from there buy companies invest companies stay connected um and what we basically realized is like we we like the startup Empire monthly email was so similar to that you probably need a robot monthly email it's like why are we dividing and con conquering and you know how do you simplify that uh in a way that you know just makes sense so we just basically said okay we're going to we're going to bring that email into startup Empire um we're already doing so much of the same stuff which is like people in startup Empire are interested in using Ai

42:37and agents to build their businesses um let's let's bring it in there so it was a win for the startup Empire Community um and uh because now of a sudden they got more content um and they're getting better emails uh we and uh and it was a win for like lay checkout in the sense that dude every time you add a new company it's just like another trial that you have to manage so if we can simplify things that's something we we really want to do [Music] um so that is what happened with you probably need a robot did it fail I mean it failed as is um but like

43:28is it succeeding in some form yes like startup Empire like people are getting tons of value out of it and uh it's it's nice to see a live on design scientist.com so that is a design subscription um that people pay monthly for and they get you know on demand decks on demand social assets that you know that sort of thing um that business did you know oh I think around 1.3 million in Revenue um so it has some staying power like people like the product but uh that is being evolved into something else I'm not ready to talk about what that is going to be um but

44:21uh there's some product Market fit there um but you know I I think it could be a lot bigger and uh in the current setup you know current setup I don't I don't see it I don't see it getting to 10 million um and uh and it's like one of those things where it's like you have to ask yourself if this gets to $10 million like do I want to be in that business like do I want to have a thousand you know eight eight it's not a thousand clients do I want to have 200 clients I'm managing and the answer is absolutely not not so um it's a it's a helpful exercise for people to basically ask

45:02yourself you know if this scales do I want to be in that business oh if not what is the business that I want to be in and that's what that's the current exercise that we're doing with design scientists we actually have an offsite uh Gen 6 to 9th where we're going to be talking with all the part with all the partners of L checkout what we're going to be doing with it um so stay tuned um so that's the business update um of of all the businesses and uh overall super happy with how things are going I mean these are cash flow they're they're cash flowing businesses every

45:41single day spinning off cash great teams teams happy um we don't have like a lead problem which is really good um it's just about fine-tuning optimizing and scaling these businesses to being businesses that have more Enterprise Value um less Services driven more AI driven um working with more cool companies um and uh and and and looking to acquire and partner with interesting entrepreneurs um that's something that you know boring for example came out of a 50% acquisition uh that we made in December 2022 we want to do more of these things we want to find entrepreneurs to partner with and build build businesses with um want to do more of that uh in 2025 uh and uh I I

46:37didn't really mention it but we're also incubating a bunch of new products um I talked about offer button.com which is kind of like a little widget um to help you sell your your company uh and there's things like that that we're incubating so we we have like a little dedicated team that's incubating a bunch of different products using AI coding uh using a agents um and it's one of those things where you you know you put you throw stuff against the wall and you see what works and you evolve them into in into something that you're excited about and that's like that's what it is that's that's like the the big learning from running a holding company is is that is like you

47:22you you throw a lot against the wall you make it cash flowing uh you evolve it uh into something that excites you you simplify wherever you can you know last year going 2023 going to 2024 I said my main mission is to build uh skyscrapers not strip malls which which what I mean by that is instead of having like a hundred little companies how do we have only a few companies and build it up higher and higher and that's kind of what we're doing we're trying to simplify as much as possible and we're kind of asking ourselves the hard question questions around are we excited about these businesses and if not how do we evolve them into something that really

48:02gets us stoed okay moving on to the next section productivity gains and productivity uh unlocks 2024 what what's things I've changed one is uh I started sipping on yerba mate okay I got to be honest this is this is coffee but y mate I try to drink in the afternoons um I drink a brand called Amanda tradition I think it's Amanda traditional I could include the links in in the description and uh I just I find I sleep better because I'm not like drinking coffee in the afternoon um I I get the energy kick from it it's more sustained um the way I drink it is over ice with a little

48:54bit of Honey because it's a bit bitter um can also use maple syrup syrup Shad out Canada and uh and I've been enjoying it so highly recommend your bam mate number two uh I started using Apple notes way more so from 2023 into 2024 I was using notion for everything our whole business is run on notion um you know our team likes it this is not a I'm not hating on notion but for me I just it's too comp complicated and Apple notes is like the bare minimum of what I need and I just find them extremely more productive with Apple notes it simplified my thinking process um so highly

49:41recommend just like simplifying your productivity stack if you can uh the last thing is I used I I use an app called things on my phone and on on desktop it's a to-do list app it's just like the most beautiful to-do list app I've been able to find um and I've H honestly have had things since 201 11 but I haven't really been using it um I've used more complicated to-do list apps and in again like you're hear you're hearing it again it's like simplification things it's just it's it's very focused it's a really pretty app and uh it's been really helpful in terms of productivity gains

50:33for for 24 okay uh another another kind of another section new insights and learnings um I wanted to share a couple of these with you so there's something I called the the Friday afternoon test um I didn't make it up a friend of mine told me about it uh he basically is a c CEO of a few hundred million doll uh uh company um and he says he only makes big decisions on Friday afternoon he says it feels right when you're tired and ready for the he says if it feels right when you're tired and ready for the weekend it's probably right thought that was really interesting um

51:18so a lot of the time you make these big decisions when you're in the moment and you're really stoked you've got a lot of coffee in you and you're like this is amazing let's let's go um take a second don't make don't make any impulsive decisions let it like sit for a bit and when you're tired and ready uh for the weekend let's say it's a Friday afternoon how are you feeling about it you know are you still really excited about it are you are you more excited about it are you less excited about it um and maybe it doesn't need to be Friday afternoon for some people some people could be

51:566 pm on a Wednesday right you're like trying to get through it but I think the point is have have that you know weekly reminder Friday afternoon Wednesday night whatever it is for you um and uh and ask yourself you know is this the big decisions I need to make this you know this month maybe it's not a weekly meeting maybe it's a Once once a month these are the big decisions I need to make um am I excited about it and the same found founder actually gave me another you know Insight in learning uh he calls it the day Zero Integrity test um so he gives he gives someone a small task

52:40with unclear instructions and then he you know he a he basically sees if they ask any questions or they just guess and he tells which what what's cool about that is it tells you everything about their future Behavior so this is for or like when you're interview you know interviewing someone or it's their first week on the job uh just give a small CL task with unclear instructions and you'll learn a lot about how someone works and uh I guess my last kind of insight and this is going to be obvious to people but like I don't know if I can sleep with all this like AI agent

53:19stuff that's going on you know like my insight here is there's a ton of opportunity right now and um some of the biggest opportunities are are in the kind of the most boring spaces um so I'm just I'm trying to strike while the Iron's hot um I think the iron's going to be hot for at least 2025 maybe even 2026 um but it's a really really exciting time to be building um and uh and I want to thank you for being with me in 2024 this has been the most fun year of my career uh it's been so fun you know recording this podcast having people listen seeing the comment section blow

54:10up um thank you for being there thank you for commenting thank you for liking thank you for com thank you for subscribing thank you for just just thank you thank you and and uh this year I will give more startup ideas more grow growth tactics I will never gatekeep anything from from you um it's this is not about gate this podcast is not about gate gatekeeping this is about just giving you free value so uh I hope that in 2024 I gave you an ounce of free value um and uh I hope this conversation you enjoyed this conversation um this is this is this is it this is

54:58this is what I'm going through in 2020 at the end of 2024 these are the things I'm thinking about um and I'm curious to know what what's on your mind so thank you for listening and see you in 2025 [Music]