Annual Review 2024 — Everything is Spiky

“And what saboteur are we hearing here?” my coach asks me.

Sigh.

The hyper-achiever.

That bastard.

Again.

Every time, really.

I thought I’d figured it out.

I hadn’t.

But this year we made progress.

Why write annual reviews?

2024 marks my seventh annual review.

I wrote in 2018 these reviews exist because “The version of you that you’ll come to know in the next year, depends on it.”

Brendan, writing this in 2025, depends on this review process.

I didn’t do a review last year (or any since 2021) and I think I’m worse off for it.

I came into the year wanting to work hard, but burning myself out over and over in the process.

And if I’ve learned one thing about reviewing every year, it’s that “The days are long, but the years are short.”

It rings in my ears, a reminder of how precious my time is with my wife and boys.

It’s true, you know.

Some days, the hours of 5 to 8pm can seem like an eternity, but these last years flew by.

My greatest fear is that I don’t learn the lessons.

This is second only to allowing my gratitude to fade and all of this become my new normal.

My current projects

• Growth Sprints – SaaS marketing consulting + advising & evangelism
• Growing Up – A SaaS marketing newsletter
• ALL IN – A career-focused community for in-house SaaS marketers

A big thing that got added this year was focusing more on engaging with SaaS companies as an advisor and evangelist.

A change of pace

In the past, I always broke this section down into two parts:

1. Hustle – what I’ve accomplished in business and career over the past year
2. Heart – what I’ve accomplished in family and health

But instead, 2024’s reflection will be broken down into 4 sections (inspired by Sam Parr):

1. Finance
2. Fitness
3. Family
4. Fun

Please for the love of all that is holy, don’t just read the highlights sections.

Otherwise, we risk this being a highlight reel of all my W’s and none of my L’s.

Read and learn from the lowlights as well. That’s where I learn the most, too.

Those of us who’ve been in the game a while know almost all the best learnings come from the lowlights.

Finance

Highlights:

Moved offices. I got a rude wakeup 30 days from renewing my office lease that they were giving it to the tenants next door. So I scoped out a ton of places and, oddly enough, ended up at a spot right across the street from the kids’ school. Exact same square footage but in a MUCH cooler/cleaner building. Couldn’t be happier.

Drive, SparkTogether & Navattic. With 4 kiddos at home, I’ve never been a big conference person. And that’s how I’ve always liked it. But, this year, I attended three events. I had an amazing time at all 3, choosing events that were smaller and more intimate. Not only did I make new friends at both events, but I also cemented a few already strong relationships that were internet-only prior.

Cashflow. This was an up year for Growth Sprints. Last year, I had a down year and that was fine. It was still way into the green, but my SaaS-pilled brain had a weird expectation of always up-and-to-the-right revenue graphs. Not so in service businesses. Still, I crushed the year and had the highest revenue (and profit) year of my life. I also did it without wrecking my health, which is a first for me.

LinkedIn. This platform continues to be about 50% of my pipeline every year. That’s amazing to me because I started posting there as an afterthought five years ago. This year, I hit 40k followers and despite a massive decrease in reach (that pretty much everybody saw), the outcomes were better than ever. Grateful I had somewhere to go after I stopped posting on Twitter & Meta platforms.

Work friends. This year a bunch of work friends became real friends. This was, in part, because of the events above, but I’ve come out of the year with a few less LinkedIn DM friends and a lot more we-text-regularly *actual* friends.

Lowlights:

Building a house. We waffled a lot this year about our house and whether we could afford to move, or even build something. Four boys that are only getting bigger means we’ll outgrow our current spot sooner than later. We tried a ton of options and it took a lot of energy and focus to keep the ball rolling on top of pretty packed schedule. It’s also scary as hell to do something like that. Are we those kind of people that live in a big house? Can we afford that? How safe is the business?

Spending. I’m awful at spending money. I hem and haw for weeks (months) over purchases that have a meaningful impact on my happiness and are totally nominal in the scheme of things. I’m really working on relaxing a bit when it comes to this.

Spiky growth. I had 3 (basically 4) months this year where I closed no new work. That’s scary AF and mid-summer, I was sure it was over. Then I relaxed and built a spreadsheet that keeps my mind at ease. It’s an overly basic chart that simply plots the money I took in that month (blue) and maps it against my topline goal (yellow) and minimum growth trajectory (red). As long as we’re above the red, we’re fine! In fact, we weren’t even close to going below the red so there wasn’t much to worry about, despite it really feeling that way.

Net-new clients:

The sanity saving chart:

Fitness

Highlights:

15 pounds. That’s how much weight I lost this year while still hitting strength PRs. CrossFit still makes me feel absolutely wonderful/terrible, especially in the conditioning department, but I’m excited to take this momentum into 2025.

January: 17 

February: 13 

March: 13 

April: 15 

May: 12 

June: 12 

July: 15 

August: 15

September: 13 

October: 12 

November: 8 

December: 13 

Total CrossFit in 2024: 159

Lowlights:

Still not happy. At no point in my entire life have I had a great relationship with how my body looks. And despite losing weight and being in great shape, I still don’t love how CrossFit makes me look (in my likely bodily dysmorphic view – I’m dadbod incarnate). I’ve always been intrigued by bodybuilding and plan to transition some of my training to work on the body parts that I know I’m the most insecure about. Toward the end of the year, Liz and I had a long discussion about what it might look like in 2025 to prioritize health (diet, sleep, recovery) and training the same way that I do my business.

Tiktok. Fuck this app, seriously. Or any of those apps. I really do enjoy so much that I get out of vertical video apps, but I’ve lost a ton of sleep over the last year scrolling endlessly. It’s very hard to justify the upside when there’s so much downside for me.

Family

Highlights:

Car. “I ain’t got a ‘rari but my whip is really mine, though.” – Kyle. I think about that lyric a lot. I don’t have ferraris or something else to virtue signal on social media. But I do have a really fun truck (Jeep Gladiator) that I bought because the doors and roof come off and my boys LOVE that stuff. I paid all cash for it. It was all mine from the start. Quickly outgrowing our van (which we also bought cash), we bought a Suburban. It’s (again), not a ‘rari, but it is all ours. And it’s the coolest car I’ve ever owned. It’s not about the car, either. It’s about how much my wife and the boys love it. And boy do they love it.

Music. My boys are getting to the age where they’re starting to like what I like. I saw something ages ago where a talk show host said if your kids like you, they’ll like what you like. If they hate you, they’ll hate what you like. It’s not that hard. But in this case, my oldest (11) is really starting to have taste in music and that’s incredible to me. We went to see the 25th anniversary Incubus and Coheed show. 

Middle school. 11yo started junior high and my third started Kindergarten. It’s wild to see them growing up, but this is also a big transition for our family with kids in 3 different schools. Last year was the final year that we’d ever have only (lol) 2 schools. From now on, it’ll always be 3. At least for the next 7 years.

Lowlights:

The kids are alright (sorta). With four kiddos, there’s rarely a time that everybody is happy. There’s no playbook and even when we figure something out, it doesn’t translate across all the kids (they’re all different) and it never lasts long (they grow up fast). If I’m honest, it’s just a LOT to manage. I don’t think this will ever not be the case, but this year was the first year that I felt really challenged by it (mostly, in a good way). And managing my own business means that I technically have endless time for everything since I decide how all my time is spent. I wrestle constantly with spending enough time working to take care of everybody while also spending enough time not working. It’s a tension to manage (versus a problem to solve), so we continue on.

Fun

Jubal. Writing this section, I had the realization that this is the culmination of a lot of hard work over the years. In 2023, I hired a coach to help me build a better relationship with my work, build a better relationship with myself, and have more fun. He doesn’t coach any more (now the COO of a great company), but I know he’d be really happy reading this.

Highlights:

40. I turned forty this year. My wife threw me a big party and it was amazing having so many of my friends in one place at one time. It’s been a wonderful realization how much life is still ahead of me. God-willing, we’re still early days and I’m thrilled about it.

Trips. We try to do lots of family trips and this year we went to Disney (Feb), Indy 500 (May), and Alaska (July).

Double-yellows. This is so dumb but I coach my 11yo’s soccer team and  we both got yellow-cards back to back. It’s one of my favorite things. He got his for telling a kid to “shut up” (apparently that’s cursing?) and I got a yellow for “dissent,” haha.

Chuck. I had the chance to see one of my top 3 favorite authors in person. Chuck Palahniuk did a book tour for his new book and came within an hour of me. In the past, I’d never (ever) do something like this for myself, but not only did I learn a ton from him in that short time period, but I really enjoyed myself. He’s quite a character and I’m so happy I went.

Lowlights:

Flood. In January our basement flooded. If you ever wondered what would happen if all the old crap you’ve been stuffing in your basement (or crawl space) got submerged in water, let me tell ya. Clean it out NOW. Memories are not things. Take a photo of it on your phone so you can remember it and donate ALL of it. Don’t wait until it’s submerged in god-knows-what liquids and you have to drag it out of there.

Election. Determined not to be a bystander, I worked the polls this year. I can’t tell you how much the election hit me like a punch in the stomach. I can’t imagine a person without a redeeming quality was able to convince America (again). But I did learn something: how it happened. A combination of late-stage capitalism where even though inflation is down and jobs are at an all-time high, companies are still price gouging people and times are hard (or at least far harder than they need to be). That really hurt the current administration. Second, social media feeds have created a really dangerous echo chamber for people who aren’t very intelligent, media literate or educated. That sounds harsh and it’s meant to be. I sat next to somebody on election day and watched him scroll: Trump-Trump-Musk-Tate-Trump-Tate-Musk-Musk-Shapiro-Walsh-Musk-Trump-Trump… it blew my mind. Here he is an active part of the Republican party and that’s 100% of his feed. That, friends, is how this happened again despite the candidate calling for the death of his VP, trying to overthrow the government, paying off a p*rn star, convicted of 34 felonies, and sweet lord the list is endless. It’s simply that they live in a completely different universe of information uncoupled from reality. Seeing GW bro out a bit with Obama at President Carter’s funeral a few days ago reminded me that times existed where it was about fundamentally different beliefs, not death and the end times. I hope it can be like that again. My plan for the next four years is to take care of my friends and my community, deploy money, time and energy to causes that protect the most marginalized in our society and continue to be vocal about things that matter (while ignoring the dystopian media insanity he’s already causing – like threatening to take the panama canal by force – good lord).

3 Trends from 2024:

1. My relationship with success is maturing. I’ve gone from viewing success as a destination to seeing it as a process. My earlier reviews were someone desperately wanting to get where I am today, but now I’m here in 2024 with a different challenge: learning to inhabit that success comfortably. I’m still reconciling my achieved success with my self-image.
2. My body is a wonderland metaphor. My relationship with fitness and body image is probably a manifestation of deeper patterns. I achieved my business goals but still feel uncertainty. Similarly, I’ve achieved objective fitness goals but still aren’t satisfied with how I look. This parallel between physical and professional achievement suggests a deeper pattern of setting and reaching goals but struggling to feel fulfilled by them.
3. The evolution of control. There’s been a fascinating shift in how I handle uncertainty. In earlier reviews, uncertainty led to more projects and more pushing. In 2024, when faced with three months of no new work, instead of panic-launching new ventures (like past Brendan), I created a spreadsheet to see the bigger picture. I think this might represent a bit of emotional growth – learning to manage anxiety with perspective rather than action and control.

3 Lessons I learned:

1. My success pattern is proving itself. My business model works. My family works. Things are… working. I’m learning any fear of collapse doesn’t match my actual track record.
2. I’m becoming my own advisor. I can’t always articulate it, but I think this review reveals ongoing growth/work in self-trust. I’m still learning to trust my own judgment about what I deserve or what’s “okay” to want. The same pattern appears in my fitness goals and family time.
3. Community is central to my growth. This review is so much more about relationships than ever before. Work friends becoming real friends, family experiences, 159 CrossFit sessions vs only 4 training alone. This suggests I’m naturally moving toward a more connected, less isolated way of being. I’ve always known community was the center, but I’m seeing it play out.

One last thing…

Everything is spiky. My business. My kids’ happiness. Never a state of perfection. I made a spreadsheet to show myself that business dips are okay and I need to remember that’s also true in family, fitness and fun. Family isn’t a SaaS product. It’s not supposed to always be up-and-to-the-right, right? Fitness isn’t either. One month I trained 17 times and another only 8. These are natural rhythms. Not failures. It’s overall trajectory. Not monthly fluctuations. The most profound mirror might be my self image. I used to beat the crap out of myself in my annual reviews, berating myself on all fronts. I still did a bit of that here, but I’m starting to internalize that my view of things may not be reality. I had numerous semi-strangers compliment how big and strong I looked this year. Clearly I’m not seeing reality here. Like most things (sigh), I learn a lesson first in my work… then apply it to the rest of my life.