This marks my fourth annual review in this format. Check out 2023, 2022, and 2021.

I spend hours each month reflecting on my work, usually through the writing of my Agency Journey series. 2024 marked a big change in my career as I, along with my Barrel co-founder Sei-Wook, moved from being day-to-day operators of an agency business to becoming portfolio managers – we now oversee six agency businesses under Barrel Holdings and are working to acquire and launch more.

This post is not about the transition to Barrel Holdings. I’ve talked about it at various points in my Agency Journey episodes (see here, here, and here). Instead, this annual review is about life outside of work. Family, friends, travel, habits, etc.

As in previous years, I love putting these together because I’m left with feelings of immense gratitude. I realize more and more that living fully doesn’t mean trying to pack in novel experiences and do exotic things. It means building meaningful relationships with people, being able to take on a new day full of energy, to share a lot of laughs, and to make time to take stock of how it’s all going.

Highlights

A Whole Year with 3 Little Ones

I absolutely love how full our home feels with 3 young boys running around every day.

Do they fight? Yes. Do they break things? All the time. Do they make too much noise? Yep.

But these have been small tradeoffs for all the joy and love they bring to our household every day.

We settled into a very predictable routine with the kids this year. I wrote about the simplicity and repetitiveness of this life and how it’s quite beautiful. I particularly enjoy seeing the kids one by one in the mornings as they wake up (or in the case of my eldest son Grant, he’s the one waking me up each morning). I also enjoy our family dinners every night, even if the kids can be picky with their food.

My parents and sister have been incredibly helpful with child care–life would be much more stressful for me and Melanie if they weren’t around. Plus, it’s really special to see the bond the kids have with them. Growing up with grandparents and an aunt just adds extra layers of love and comfort.

And of course, nothing would be possible if not for Melanie. Even with a brutal commute a few times a week (2 hours each way), she’s been the best mom the kids could ask for.

When I look at my camera roll for the past year, it’s mostly seasonal snapshots of the same activities – hanging out at home, going on local hikes, visiting local breweries, hitting up the playgrounds. And yet, I can see the kids changing from season to season, getting taller, their features developing more, their movements changing. It’s wonderful to witness. But also a bit sad because it’s all very fast and fleeting.

Life in the Hudson Valley

2024 was our first full year living in the Hudson Valley. We developed our short list of regular spots for groceries, takeout, and dining out. We also got to experience all the seasons intimately, seeing the day-to-day thaw as winter turned to spring, the lushness of summer, and all the weeks of fall’s changing foliage.

I also made some friends, which has been wonderful. It’s given me a social life outside of work and family. Monthly dinner with a few guys from the area, pickleball every few weeks, Friday afternoon catch-up drinks, and other activities throughout the year that add additional texture to life.

It also feels nice to see friends when I go to work at nearby co-working spaces. I might be spending most of the day in a phone booth taking video calls, but I’m always happy to step out for a coffee or even chat for 10 minutes about this and that with someone in person.

And I can’t overstate the beauty of it all. At least a few times a week in the morning, rain or shine, I try to walk about a mile down the road. The fresh air, the trees, the fields, and the views never disappoint. The seasons ensure that my walks never feel repetitive. Every now and then, I’ll encounter wildlife–some deer, turkeys, groundhogs, squirrels. Sometimes, a neighbor’s big brown labrador walks alongside me. It’s a steep climb back up to my house, a perfect way to raise my heart rate and get my blood pumping before I settle in at my desk.

We initially thought that we’d be up here temporarily and settle down more long-term in New Jersey to be closer to New York City. But we’ve come to embrace the beauty and pace of life up here and are committed to staying. We’ve got family nearby and the kids are doing well.

Some Travel, Mostly for Work

Our family took trips to:

• Massachusetts for a shortened stay at Great Wolf Lodge (too hard with a 5-month old)
• Fort Lauderdale, Florida for spring break (wouldn’t go back)
• Narragansett, Rhode Island (kids didn’t love the beach there)
• Lewes, Delaware (Mel’s sister’s place, great beach, kids had a great time)

Not a very exciting travel year, but I’m sure we’ll get more adventurous as the kids get older.

For work, I found myself in these cities for conferences:

• Nashville, Tennessee as a speaker at Magnet Summit
• Miami, Florida to attend Make Big Happen, a conference by the CEO Coaching International
• Austin, Texas as a speaker at Ecommerce Agency Summit
• Toronto, Canada for Webflow’s Agency Partner Summit
• Fort Worth, Texas for Collective 54 Founders Summit

I tried my best to get out for a run at least once in each of these cities, a chance to take in the local scenery and get a bit familiar with the terrain. I’d like to make it out to the West Coast in 2025–I haven’t gone out there since 2018, before we had kids.

Commitment to Fitness: Working Out 345 Times

I set a goal of working out 340 times in 2024 and was able to surpass it.

I follow a 7-day program that consists of:

• Mon: Running & yoga
• Tues: Lower body strength training
• Wed: Upper body strength training
• Thurs: Athletic movement training
• Fri: Full body strength training
• Sat: Rowing
• Sun: Hypertrophy strength training

When I travel, I try to do modified versions of my training at the hotel gym or do some kind of quick 15-20 minute HIIT workout in the hotel room. Some days, my workouts have been a long hike, competitive basketball, or a bike ride.

In September, I injured by rotator cuff and had to scale back on my strength training. I substituted heavy weights with resistance bands and slowly made my way back to full strength. I had to take off for 3 days because the pain was so intense. Those were the only consecutive days I took off from working out in 2024.

I’ve evolved to become someone who needs to work out daily. The activity gives me energy and is a big part of my identity. I love the ritual of preparing my protein shake, warming up, getting in my sets, and doing my post-workout mobility drills. I prefer to work out at night and I find that I fall asleep really well.

I’ll happily aim for 340 days of working out again in 2025.

Biggest Challenges

A Couple of Totaled Cars

In January 2024, I asked my sister to take my car and drop off my kids since I had to be in New York City. On her way back from the drop off, she slid off the road and the side of the car hit a tree. It was snowy that day and the road was icy. Luckily, she wasn’t hurt, but the car was damaged badly enough that it was totaled. We ended up replacing our Subaru Outback with a Tesla Model Y.

In December, Mel, on her way to the train station for her work commute, slid off the road in our Toyota Corolla, smashing into a neighbor’s tree. Luckily, she didn’t suffer any serious injuries, but the Corolla was totaled. We ended up replacing our Corolla with a Subaru Crosstrek.

The guy who towed the Corolla from the site of the accident to our driveway remarked that he had also towed the Subaru Outback from my sister’s accident earlier in the year. We vowed not to make this an annual tradition. We got snow tires for the Crosstrek and will absolutely avoid backroads when it’s snowing outside.

New House Pains

I mentioned in my Personal Finance Snapshot that we had purchased a house in 2024. The plan is for my in-laws to move there sometime in 2025. There is a basement unit that came fully furnished and ready to rent out. We had a tenant ready to go in early 2025.

But fate had different plans for us. Something didn’t work with the heating in late December when the weather got really cold and our pipes burst, flooding the basement in a big way. We were away for a few days, so by the time we came back, the house was badly damaged.

This first part of 2025 will be dealing with this mess, trying to figure out insurance and getting things fixed. We’ll then have to work to get the house in shape so my in-laws can move in.

In situations like this, Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk’s quote comes to mind: “The things you own end up owning you.”

Cleaning Up My Diet

I joined Wild Health, a personalized health care program that costs about $400/month. I get access to a doctor and a health coach, who analyze my genetic tests and quarterly blood draws to recommend lifestyle changes to improve my health outcomes.

Since I work out pretty frequently and maintain stable body weight, I thought I’d have little room for improvement. How wrong I was. My blood work revealed that my blood sugar levels were quite high, that I was deficient in vitamin B12, and that my cholesterol levels were creeping up. There was a lot I could do to improve, especially around my diet.

I started taking more supplements – vitamin B12, creatine, fiber, and vitamin D (during winter months). I also wore a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) for a month to monitor the impact of different foods on my blood sugar levels. I saw right away the impact of my sweet tooth: foods like donuts, mochi, and cookies spiked my levels aggressively and took a while to come back down. While I might not have been packing on pounds, I was compromising my body’s ability to process the sugar by indulging in sweets.

I ended up cleaning up my diet quite a bit, learning to forgo random snacking and staying away from sweets. My only indulgence now is some raw honey on my whole wheat toast in the mornings with plenty of chia seeds, pumpkin seeds, and peanut butter.

Quarterly blood draws may feel excessive especially when I’ve only had health check-ups every couple of years, but I’ve come to appreciate the tighter feedback loop. Having more data on how my behaviors impact my health stats helps reinforce good behaviors and also deters me from falling back into bad habits.

A service like this doesn’t guarantee longevity–death can come from many sources that aren’t always predictable–but my primary motivation for doing this is to optimize for daily performance. I want to build and maintain habits and a lifestyle that support high energy levels and allows me to feel good day in and day out. A cleaner diet is definitely part of the equation.

Personal Scorecard

I continued my practice of tracking various activities on a spreadsheet throughout the year. Here are some highlights:

• Sent 53 personal newsletters (vs. 52 in 2023)
• Published 24 blog posts (vs. 28 in 2023)
• Worked out 345 times (vs. 245 in 2023)

I finished 33 books in 2024, the lowest number since 2016. I’ll be working on cleaning up my content consumption habits a bit and get through more books in 2025.

Most Impactful Books

A few books that I both enjoyed and found useful this year.

I wrote about both of these following books in Agency Journey Episode 44:

• Who Not How: The Formula to Achieve Bigger Goals Through Accelerating Teamwork by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy
• Implementing Value Pricing: A Radical Business Model for Professional Firms by Ronald J. Baker

A handful of fiction books were very memorable for me:

• In the Distance by Hernan Diaz, about a Swedish immigrant drifter during mid-19th century, in search of his brother; haunting, epic, and stark, like a minimalist painting.
• Table for Two by Amor Towles, a collection of short stories so well crafted and delightful
• Intermezzo: A Novel by Sally Rooney, about two brothers in the aftermath of their father’s death; with 3 boys of my own, I’ve come to be more interested in books about brothers and their relationships

I also found Strategy Beyond the Hockey Stick: People, Probabilities, and Big Moves to Beat the Odds by Chris Bradley, Martin Hirt, Sven Smi very insightful. The book explores how companies can overcome the biases and inertia that prevent bold strategic moves, leveraging data-driven insights to focus on “big moves” that drive outsized performance. These moves include being in the right industry with tailwinds, engaging in programmatic M&A, and driving for performance improvements.

My Intentions for 2025

Become a More Effective and Efficient Creator

I posted over 220 times on LinkedIn in 2024. I generated nearly 1 million impressions to my posts. More importantly, I connected with dozens of people through my content, leading to new business opportunities, friendships, and learning experiences.

In 2025, I want to be a better creator, leveling up the quality of my content while also getting more mileage out of each piece I produce.

After focusing solely on LinkedIn for most of the year, I’ll be getting back to posting more on X to reach a slightly different audience. I intend to invest more time in content planning, mapping out themes and going deeper into certain topics so my content can be more valuable to my readers.

I’ll still prioritize agency operators as my target audience – they are potential recruits for our portfolio agencies, potential referral partners, and potential sellers of their businesses.

In addition to better content planning, I’ll work to generate higher quality graphics and videos that can accompany the content. I had a little bit of success generating some videos in 2024, but I want to experiment with a few different formats.

I also want to continue converting social media audience to my newsletter. My list crossed 1,000 subscribers this year while maintaining 65%+ open rates. I’ve always believed that in the world of shifting social media algorithms, it’s incredibly valuable to own your own list that you can reach directly. I’ll experiment with different call-to-action hooks and sign-up pages to increase sign-ups.

In case you were curious, here were my top 5 most-engaged LinkedIn posts of 2024:

1. Announcement about me and Sei-Wook moving out of Barrel and into Barrel Holdings
2. It took us nearly 5 years to break $1 million in CUMULATIVE revenue at Barrel…
3. Catalog acquisition announcement
4. A love letter to life in the Hudson Valley…
5. Farewell to Barrel’s office at 197 Grand

Continue to Get Involved in the Local Community

In 2024, I became more familiar with my local community. I started reading the local news (via their Instagram account and newsletter), got familiar about local politics, and even attended a local chamber of commerce holiday party. Our family attended a neighbor’s seasonal clam bake and also showed up to our town’s community day event.

As we continue to put down roots in this area, I want our family to be active participants in the community. Whether that’s showing up for local events, volunteering, donating to local orgs, or just getting to know more people on a first name basis–I think it’s worthwhile to make the effort and create a sense of belonging.

One of the things I’ve experienced deeply from being on the Columbia Alumni Association Board for the past few years is that our sense of belonging isn’t something that can be taken for granted. It’s something we have to proactively pursue by engaging with others, investing our time in service of others, and showing up consistently. Those who do these things will feel a stronger connection, not because they’re entitled to it, but because they’ve made the effort.

By the way, the same thing could be said about anything in life: you get out of it what you put into it.