Highlights from 2024

Business

• Hit over $1,000,000 ARR (Annual Recurring Revenue) up from about 600k ARR at the end of 2023 – usually less than 5% of companies usually get to this amount of revenue so I’m really happy to have hit this milestone!
• Got over 5,000 subscribers to our YouTube channel – up 2k from the end of 2023!
• Hired our first full time hires to help us work on the business
• Fired our first people…

Social / German / Life

• Lead over 17 group hikes
• Led a group hike away in Turkey in May
• Went to watch rowing at the olympics with some of my family in Paris – a fantastic few days
• Had 18 one on one German sessions with my German tutor. Still around a B1 level. Have over a 250 day Duolingo streak!
• Found a nice new apartment in February – cheap and close to the underground! Delighted to have this place. Have already had several people to stay.
• Have a new girl friend from HongKong called Vivian. We’ve done so much together already in only 9 months – its been great!
• Travelled to over 9 countries this year – Hungary, Ireland, France, UK, Turkey, Switzerland, HongKong, China, Austria
• 26 flights taken, (4 flights cancelled – it would have been 30!)
• Went to 3 weddings
• Was asked to be a Godfather for the second time
• Went on a family trip to visit where my maternal grandmother grew up.
• 3 international trains taken (Germany – Switzerland), (Germany – France), (Germany – Austria)
• Joined Berlin Founders Running Club – a great place to meet people who have started/ are starting their own businesses. Got to know lots of people and get some running done too!

Health/Fitness

• Ran over 700km in 2024
• Got down to 91.8kg on the scales at the end of June to win a bet! Also hit 100kg in October….
• Completed the marathon in 4h, 34seconds – just outside my target of sub 4hs – will have to do another in the future!
• Trained over 12 weeks for the Potsdam – Berlin – Potsdam 100km hike
• Completed the 100km hike in 23 hours and 58minutes 15 seconds – including breaks along the way for food & water
• Did a 100km of running in 48 hours. 16km & 7 x 12km. Very happy that I was able to complete it without any major injuries! – Total time running: 9h, 34mins, 6 seconds – Average HRs between: 140 – 150 bpm – Average pace for the 100km: 5:44 min/km
• Started going to CrossFit – completed over 40 CrossFit sessions and had a lot of strength gains
• Wore a continuous glucose monitor for 4 weeks – it really improved how I eat during that time and made me very aware of how my food impacts me
• Got a blood test done on over 53 different markers – will be doing this twice a year going forward. 47/53 markers were OK and 6 needed to be improved!

Finances

• Paid off all the loans I had accumulated while building the business over the last 3 years

How close was I to my 2024 goals?

Business

• Try to get the business to 100k-250k of monthly revenue by the end of 2024 – We got close, 84k was our best month. More work to do on growth for 2025!
• Get our YouTube channel to 10k subscribers – We put 0 effort into our youtube channel and only added a few videos which we had some freelancers make for us, we still hit over 5k subscribers so I’m happy with that. More effort will be put on growing our video marketing in 2025
• Get our monthly click-throughs from Google to 100k per month – We had a lot of issues with ranking in Google this year – we think we made some mistakes with auto generated content and got penalised for it. We hope to turn things around again and will hire people to fix this if we need to
• Get a few full time employees to help us scale the business more in 2024 – Hit this goal – we hired 5 full time guys (But only kept 3!) ✅

Health/Fitness

• 100km of running in 48 hours – Hit this goal ✅
• 100km hike/walk in 24 hours – Hit this goal ✅
• Get to sub 90kg – Did not hit this, got close again with 91.8kg but will be trying again in 2025!

German Speaking

• Keep improving my speaking/reading/writing and attend a weekly meetup which only takes place in German – Got slightly better but did not find a way to get to the next level of German. Will keep working on this for 2025

Life

• Do a sailing course so I can charter yachts – Purchased a course in Berlin, not enough time to do it in 2024, aiming for first 6 months of 2025
• Move into my own place – Rented my own nice apartment, delighted with it! – Hit this goal ✅
• Clubs finder – get people using my side project where people can find clubs to join in their city – Got a nice test site made, need to get someone to fill it with clubs/societies now
• Maybe do a paragliding or skydiving course – Not enough time!

Thoughts on 2024

Overall I did pretty well on hitting my 2024 goals and I had a great year – On the business goals I think I might have been a bit too optmistic after a great 2023 but I also think we took a lot more time to enjoy life this year and did not work as hard as in 2023. I spent almost 3 months of the year traveling outside Berlin which made it hard to focus on some of my other life/fitness goals but the memories I made with people in this time were worth it! I’ve made my 2025 goals a bit more realistic as I think the amount of travel will probably be the same.

Goals for 2025

Business

• Try to get the business to 120k-200k of monthly revenue by the end of 2025
• Get our YouTube channel to 10k subscribers
• Get our monthly click-throughs from Google back to at least 50k per month
• Work on hiring a marketing team
• Work on hiring some middle management (to remove ourselves from the equation)

Health/Fitness

• Complete a half marathon
• Hike two 4000m mountains
• Get to sub 90kg

German Speaking

• Keep improving my speaking/reading/writing and attend a weekly meetup which only takes place in German

Life Stuff

• Do a sailing course so I can charter yachts
• Clubs finder – get people using my side project where people can find clubs to join in their city
• Maybe do a paragliding or skydiving course
• Organise some get togethers for my run club / hiking club

Priorities for 2025

• Business – Learned in 2024 that focusing on building new features will not get you new customers – marketing is the lifeblood of any company and we really need to focus on this in 2025
  
• Life Stuff – With so many new changes in 2024 I would like 2025 to be a bit more stable and just work on finishing the goals I have already set for myself – taking a bit more time to enjoy life would be good I think
  
• Health – I worked a lot on getting to know my body better in 2024 with the blood glucose monitoring and the blood tests – the biggest change I need to make in 2025 is to eat better. The amount of exercise I’m doing is fine for now.
  
• German speaking – my german speaking is still improving in spurts. I need to stick at it!