2025 Reflection

I let myself get distracted by too many shiny ideas. I spent a fair amount of time looking into other business models (private equity, building new SaaS tools, etc). But I kept coming back to how Alex Hormozi preaches the importance of focus in entrepreneurship, and how important it is to focus on your main thing instead of entertaining other options.

I wasted time and mental energy on social media. For about five years, I’ve been disciplined about staying logged off social media during weekday working hours to eliminate distractions, but at night, I’d waste a lot of time by endlessly scrolling and getting pulled into random conversations. That led to many wasted hours on Instagram and a lot of pointless convos on Snapchat. So, in December, I deleted my entire Snapchat account, and started cleaning up my Instagram - both who I follow and what the algorithm shows me. I reduced who I was following from about 2,400 people down to roughly 1,000 because I was tired of clutter from random strangers I didn’t even know, and I became much more intentional about clicking “Interested” or “Not interested” so my Instagram feed stops showing negative and stupid content that adds nothing to my life.

I spent too much of 2025 selling personally instead of building a sales engine for ReplyAssist that isn't reliant on me. I’ve been selling professionally for 7 straight years. So I'd like to think I'm pretty good at it by now. But, regardless of how good I am personally, I'm only one person. So, rather than rely only on myself to be the primary originator of leads & closer for ReplyAssist, I decided to build a sales team in November, and I wish I had done this sooner.

I delayed hiring help for customer support longer than I should have. Handling customer support and operational tasks myself ate into time I should’ve used for strategy, growth, and deep thinking. Not delegating this work sooner was expensive - in energy, in progress, and in momentum. Hiring people is an investment, not a cost.

My sleep schedule was extremely inconsistent, which affected my entire life. In general, I’m a very productive person, but when my sleep is dialed in, my productivity goes to a whole new level. And, I’m also a better person to be around when I have a better sleep schedule, too - I’m less moody & more patient when I wake up early & on time. That means I need to be more disciplined about waking up on time, which ultimately starts with going to bed on time and doing that consistently.

I improved ReplyAssist’s customer onboarding + support. Around April, I refined our onboarding process by rewriting our welcome email campaign, upgrading our onboarding call notes, and creating our Help Center so new customers had a more intentional path to success. People love to talk about sales & marketing in business, but growth isn't really possible if you can't keep customers around for a long time.

I created what I think is my best resource yet: our LinkedIn Outreach Playbook. I launched this in September, and I’m glad I kept it free (at least, for now) because it's been a great way to grow the newsletter, strengthen our brand credibility, and it's genuinely a tactical resource for any sort of sales/business development professional, and even anyone who wants to get more out of their use of LinkedIn.

I simplified my prospecting workflow. By August, I stopped using Hubspot for tracking follow up tasks, and just started keeping track of all of those in my ReplyAssist Inbox. Prospecting can get really time-consuming if done the wrong way, so it's nice to be able to prospect and manage follow ups all in ONE portal instead of bouncing around from platform to platform like I was doing in the past (when I used to jump from LinkedIn to a lead gen software to Hubspot). There's less friction now, and it's easier to prospect efficiently.

I sold my condo and moved out of Chicago. Chicago is a fun city. Just not my place. So, in hindsight, making the decision to move was the correct decision. It was a hard decision, but when you know something is inhibiting you from living the life you truly want to be living, you need to let it go.

I stayed disciplined with my health. I was pretty consistent with my workouts & diet for the entire year. Plus, I had my last drink of alcohol on January 5th, so, as of today, I've been sober for 362 days. And no, I wasn't addicted to alcohol or anything - I just knew drinking was my #1 distraction, so I decided to cut it out of my life. Also, in late October, I felt anxious a lot and didn't feel like "me", which led me to finding a YouTube video that showed how to do Zhan Zhuang (basically a standing meditation) to help get my energy back in the right place. And that was so helpful that I've been doing it daily ever since - I highly recommend trying it.

I invested aggressively in myself even when I didn't particularly "want" to. Without getting into all the details, I invested a meaningful amount of money into growth this year - from a coaching program, to premium AI tools for business strategy, to hiring a developer to build a simple SaaS tool, to testing different marketing approaches for ReplyAssist, and sourcing and hiring a full-time employee. I could’ve kept more cash in the bank, but as Hormozi says, I chose to invest heavily in the S&“Me” 500 instead of just the S&P 500.

I returned to focusing on creating high-quality newsletter content (hopefully you've noticed) instead of relying on social media platforms for engagement. I started my first newsletter back in 2021 and honestly should’ve never stopped creating content for it - email distribution doesn’t care about platform algorithms or constant changes. Posting on LinkedIn for nearly four years straight burned me out because engagement didn’t steadily improve over time; if anything, it often dropped as the algorithm shifted, which was frustrating despite my consistent effort of trying to create quality content. Writing long-form content for the newsletter, on the other hand, gives me two things I actually value: 1. It forces me to clarify my own thinking, and 2. It allows me to share ideas & tactics that are (hopefully) genuinely useful to you as a reader.

I implemented minimum contracts for new ReplyAssist customers, and it was the right call. For years, I was afraid of implementing "minimum" contract lengths for new customers because I thought it would scare people away. While I'm sure implementing a 6-month minimum did scare some people away, it only scared away the people who we don't want to work with anyways. Lead generation isn't a 2 or 3-month quick marketing play. It takes time to build trust, especially with complete strangers, so we were doing ourselves and our customers an injustice by letting them only try us out for a few months.

I became more technical as a founder. By working on test projects like building a web scraper of active financial advisors, creating a simple campaign generator for ReplyAssist, hiring and collaborating with a developer on a simple SaaS tool, and experimenting with AI tools like ChatGPT, Lovable, and Base44, I’ve become competent enough with development that it’s no longer my Achilles’ heel. That alone makes me a stronger entrepreneur, because it’s no longer an area I avoid or feel intimidated by. My lack of development knowledge put me in a bad spot in 2023 & 2024, so I learned my lesson the hard way. Do I need to be the one writing the code? No. But I do need a basic understanding of what’s happening under the hood - and now I do.

I took time to evaluate many different business models and what I actually want my future career to look like. Although this did distract me a bit during the year (see point #1 in the above section), exploring tons of different business models was valuable for me - I looked into everything from AI agents, hedge funds, private equity, venture capital self-storage facilities, self-service car washes, parking garages, SaaS tools like a credibility-driven referral tool, and even consumer products like TRT for men, potentially selling coffee, and creating a "healthy" toothpaste... In hindsight, looking into all of these different business models made me sharper, and helped clarify what I want to be doing in my future career. As a side note - I almost bought a SaaS tool that was listed in Acquire.com, but walked away from the deal when I noticed red flags - like the founder lying about how many users they had. I cannot & will not work with someone who lies. Honesty is everything to me.

I aggressively removed clutter from my life. I got rid of about 25% of my clothing since it was stuff I never wore, removed almost all recurring calls from my calendar, intentionally reduced my call availability so that people can't book as many calls with me, and unsubscribed from roughly 75% of the newsletters I was subscribed to. Distraction is expensive, and focus is powerful.

I built a sales team. I can't really say why I was so hesitant to hire sales reps sooner, but I'm glad I finally did it. We're now at 5 reps, and I wouldn't be surprised if our team grows quite a bit throughout 2026, too.

I stopped giving in to everyone who wanted a call with me. Just because someone asks for a call with me, even if they’re a customer, doesn’t always mean a call is the best first step. I’ve found that many conversations don’t actually require a live call, and in a lot of cases, it ends up being inconvenient for both people. My new approach is simple: start with email first, use a short video recording tool (like Loom) second, and only jump on a call as a last option if a call is still truly necessary.

I chose momentum over “fun” when it actually mattered. For example, I almost went down to Tampa for New Year's Eve to celebrate with a friend and watch my Iowa Hawkeyes play in their bowl game, but right now, momentum is more important. I'm mentally clear and wanted to end the year on a strong note, so I made the tough decision not to travel to Tampa for the trip. Fun is... fun. But winning in business & building the right kind of momentum I want is even more "fun" for me. This is just one of many examples this year where I said no to "fun" right now to set up a more enjoyable future for myself.