2018 - Year in Review

 “Middle finger to my old life” Jay-Z, Who Gon Stop Me
  
As we close the chapter on 2018, I wanted to reflect on the year. I’m breaking this up into 3 parts – grades, worst of, and best of. In an exercise of brevity, I’m going to try to keep this in bullet point format as I tend to write 5,000 words when 50 will do (it's still long).

Grades 

• Personal Learning: B+ – to the best of my recollection I read 56 books in 2018. I joined the Farnam Street community. I’ve gone deep (and deeper) into several subjects – investing, financial history, business biographies (deeper), biking, and blockchain (deeper). I’ve stepped up my podcast game and am learning a lot through that medium. I’m leaning into twitter and its my number one source of curiosity, exploration and recommendations.
• Personal Health and Fitness: B – this is probably my most generous grading and largely reflective on where I am currently. As discussed later, improved my health a lot but still no where I want to be.
• Personal Emotional Well-being: C Minus – this is a huge, glaring weakness for me. I struggle to be optimistic about myself and that has impacted my relationships with others and my own ability to find happiness. I tend to focus on “what is defective” in everything rather than what is good. While a generally helpful business trait, less so personally. Working on it.
• Business Improvement: A – our best year at Capital on Tap. After a few years of 90-100% growth, busted out this year with 150%. Also, hired some great people in key positions.
• Business Health and Fitness: B Plus – in a very strong place to build on our success in 2019. I think as we add process and scale we need to be diligent about maintaining simplicity. Simplicity = speed and speed is our best weapon.
• Business Emotional Well being: B Minus – I am struggling in the transition from scrappy start-up to "established" business as I prefer chaos and struggle to calmness and success. In Ben Horowitz’s book the Hard Thing About Hard Things, he writes about war time CEOs and peace time CEOs and how those are different skill sets (and usually different people). I live for war time.

Overall GPA of 3. I'll be posting later today or tomorrow my 2019 objectives, so hopefully this scoring will be more quantitative rather than qualitative next year.

Worst of 2018

Before going into what was good, I want to embrace some of the suck in 2018.

• Biggest Frustration – myself. I think I have so much room to grow and become a better person (friend, co-worker, leader) that I find myself frustrated with myself when I revert to bad habits and laziness. Being too tired to read or workout or finish some analysis – I’m not too tired, I’m just lazy. I know I’ve got the capability to do better, need to unlock it.
• Worst Moment or Memory – in February, a few days after my relationship with my long term girlfriend had ended (the hardest thing by far I went through in 2018), I got a phone call from my parents letting me know our family dog Duke had passed away. Sitting in my flat, by myself, I was utterly broken in that moment.
• Worst Health Moment – getting blood tests back and having not the greatest level of cholesterol. But it did kick start me into health regimen that has seen me drop from 195 to 172, lower by body fat from 18.9% to 14.6%, and overall invest more into my health (including getting this awesome bike and Zwift).
• Biggest Business Failure – my failure (which is continuing) is in always wanting to be scrappy/start-upy even when that might not be the right course of action. What worked when we had 15 people and £1M in revenue is not what will help us scale at 75 people and £50M in revenue. Personally, I don’t want nice things at work (I would argue we should have shitty chairs not fancy chairs), I don’t want great perks and benefits, I don’t want high salaries (including for myself), I don’t want to hire anyone else. I want to work hard and build something great. I'm obsessed with keeping a chip on our shoulders, but at a certain size my mindset needs to shift a bit (not all the way). I’m struggling with this but aware of it.

Best of 2018

Now that that cathartic exercise is complete - on to the good about 2018. I've tried to keep the lists as short as I could. 

• Best Books – Snowball by Alice Schroeder, Living with a Seal by Jesse Itzler, and Bad Blood by John Carreyrou
• Best Podcasts – Invest like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy – extremely smart with interesting and varied guest interviews. Less about investing than the title suggests. Shutdown Fullcast continues to be the stupidest podcast in the world but if you have any interest in college football it is amazing. The recent episode “Behind the Fullcast – A Special Look at How a Terrible Podcast Gets Made” was the best podcast episode I have ever listened to.
• Best Twitter Follows - @AustinAllred (founder of Lambda School, my favorite company in the world, following him to keep track of the progress), @AndrewChen (insightful business twitter), @DavidPerell (great podcaster and discoverer of people/content), @MorganHousel (the best writer on the internet), @trengriffin (if you love unit economics and gross margins - you need to read and follow Tren), @naval (smartest insights into life - a shining beacon in brevity as well), @rrhoover (helps satisfy my curiosity twitter craving and also great podcaster), @m2jr (totally authentic and honest, also not worried about voicing what may be unpopular opinions), @paulg (the OG) @Eriktorenberg (insightful twitter and great podcast). I obviously struggled to keep this list short and also back-doored some nore podcast recommendations.
• Best Newsletter – Farnham Street Brain Food. Always good book and article recommendations. It's my “never miss” newsletter.
• Best New Discovery – Wattbike Atom and Zwift (linked earlier). I’m obsessed with efficiency and I’m natural lazy, so the ability to get an amazing workout in my living room at any time is a real game changer.
• Best New Trend – more extended trips with long time friends and family. From the sun soaked costs of Croatia, to gritty Berlin, to exploring Ireland to skiing in the Alps and more - its been phenomenal. Exploring the world with people you’ve known for over a decade is just magical.
• Best Work Achievement – hiring more exceptionally smart and hard-working new positions. The growing number of people who are much better than me in most facets of the business is amazing.
• Best Moment or Memory – recent memory (cue recency bias), but a couple of weeks ago I went skiing with my parents. One beautiful sunny afternoon my Dad and I were at the top of Val D'Isere skiing together. 2 Polish immigrants standing on top of the world. I loved it.

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​On that happy note, I bid 2018, goodbye. On to the next one.