Annual Review 2024
Sitting down every year between Christmas and New Year's to review the past year is the most valuable ritual I've adopted for my business and my life, hands down.
Each year, I look back on what the year brought, how I spent my time, and what I achieved. And using those insights, I plan my moves for the next year.
Today I want to share that review with you, both as a matter of public accountability, and because I personally learned a ton from other people's annual reviews and I'd like to pay it forward.
So let's dive in!
2024 Highlights
- Worked with 22 clients
- Joined both the Dutch Game Mentors and Belgian Game Mentors programs
- Managed to grow revenue despite an extremely slow first half of the year
- Rebranded my newsletter and grew to 975 subscribers (inching closer to 1000!)
- Hit 5000 connections/followers on Linkedin
- Celebrated 15 years in the industry
Reflection on 2024 Goals
✅ Work with 12 clients
Nailed this one. I actually ended up working with 22 clients, 16 of which are coaching clients.
✅ Visit 5 events, speak at 2
Yup! I ended up visiting 7 events and spoke at Reboot in Croatia, and UNWRAP in Belgium.
❌ Realize V2 of my brand identity
Didn't end up doing anything in this direction.
I was planning on hiring someone to help with this, but couldn't afford it due to poor cash flow.
This was definitely the right decision, as I only saw my revenue start to pick back up in August, at which point I needed all of it to make good on the losses of the first half of the year.
✅ Create a better process for my content
I spent a lot of time trying to figure out a better content strategy, and I think I found something that works.
It's not perfect, and I don't always perfectly adhere to it, but there's a process and I can fall back on it.
Good enough.
❌ Launch 1+ video course
I've had this on my goal list for 2 years straight, and have nothing to show for it.
After some introspection, I think I can nail this down to two things:
First, and most important, fear of failure.I'm worried that whatever I create won't be good enough, that no-one will buy it, or both, and that it will all have been for nothing.
Second, poor project management skills. I've tried to break this down into smaller chunks so many times, but my fear of failure keeps me from committing even to those smaller chunks.
And since there were plenty of other goals on the list, it was easy to procrastinate on this one.
✅ Revamp 1-on-1 coaching
I wanted my 1-1 coaching sessions to feel as productive as my team workshops do, instead of just an hour of unstructured talking.
I still have to fix some of the content I use in my 1-1 coaching, but I'm very happy with the structure I landed on.
🆗 Invest in family
I feel like I can mostly check this off.
We did a bunch of fun stuff as a family, but we definitely still need to find more time to connect as a couple.
🆗 Exercise/meditate 200 times
I got so close! I hit my mark for meditating, but came in just shy of 200 on exercise.
Still, I have done more in the way of exercise and meditation this year than ever before in my life, so making this a trackable goal did he job it was supposed to.
I'm taking it off my goal list next year, and instead making it part of a handful of weekly measurables to keep myself accountable
Things I loved in 2024
Last week I shared a list of my favorite books, games, movies, shows and songs of 2024, check it out here:
My Favorite Things of 2024
My goals for 2025
This year, I'm picking fewer goals, forcing myself to focus on the things that drive real value for my business and my life.
I'm also splitting out my revenue and client goals, as they should be the logical consequence of the other goals I set.
Revenue goal: +25% YoY
Key Measurable: work with 18 coaching clients
Theme: Focus & Value
🛠️ Create v2 of the Long Game OS coaching program
Right now, I'm still selling this program for less than it is worth. So I want to improve the LGOS program to be even more valuable, and to make its value even more obvious.
📽️ Create FIRM video course
I'm putting this goal on the list, again, with 2 core differences.
One, I have a better idea of the course I want to make and why, and two, I'm proactively timeblocking for this each week so I can force myself to make progress and not stall out.
🗣️ Visit 5 events, speak at 2
Attending and speaking at events continues to be a an incredibly high ROI activity, so I'm keeping this as a goal.
🍝 Go on 4 date nights
This is "invest in family" 2.0, focused on the actual bottleneck of time spent as a couple. Four date nights might not seem like a lot, but coming from 1 or 2 per year, this would already be a marked improvement.
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Right Now
Playing - Observation
Just finished this gem of an indie game. You play as an AI on board a space station where things have gone very wrong. The atmosphere is incredibly tense, and they really nailed the concept.
Reading - Smooth Scaling by Rob Bier
Still working my way through this one, and every new chapter is another confirmation for me that This Guy Gets It.
Watching - Secret Level
Started on this videogame anthology series on Monday. I've only seen the D&D and Sifu episodes so far, but they're both really well done and nail the core of the game in their short run-time. Very curious to watch the rest of it.
See you in two weeks!
Martijn
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