2024 In Review

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

I’m not talking about Christmas. It’s time to do my year in review.

I get caught up in anticipation for what’s next, yearning for “better,” and not appreciating how far I have come in a short period of time.

That’s why I do this. It’ll be awesome to look back at this 5-10years from now. A time stamp in my time capsule of life.

If someone were to stumble upon this, I want them to know that doing things like I did is possible, and we all face the same challenges, insecurities, set-backs, and doubts along the way.

Perhaps one day my future kids will see this and they’ll get to see some of the things their dad did before we was just a ~cool~ dad.

I don’t go to therapy (no one told me to yet). But this is therapeutic to me.

I’m going to break it down into the highlights and lowlights of four categories. I call it my four F’s:

• Family

• Finance

• Fitness

• Fun

Ready?

Let’s do this.

Family

Highlights:

Parents - My parents are divorced. I saw my mom twice this year. Once in Denver for mothers day and then again in Nashville. This year for mothers day my mom rented a house in Georgetown Colorado. I visited my dad in Cleveland for passover weekend. This is becoming a tradition. I’m realizing I am now seeing my parents once a year. Maybe 2x if I’m lucky. I saw my dad once this year. I vividly remember that he asked me to mulch his outside yard with him on the Saturday I was there. At first I was annoyed that that was how he wanted to spend time with me. Then I reframed it: if this is how my dad chooses to spend the 1 time out of the year I see him. I’m going to make this mulching as fun as fucking possible. I raced mulch-filled wheel barrels with my bother all afternoon and then had lamb for dinner.

Siblings - I saw my brother and sister twice this year. I’m seeing them less often but we talk on the phone more frequently now. My sister has two children that are insanely cute. It’s sad that living in San Francisco means I see them once a year, at most. I went home to see them the weekend after thanksgiving. It got 4 full days of crying boogers, snot, and endless cuteness. Priceless.

Friends - I’m two weeks away from being 1-yr in on living in San Francisco. It was pleasantly surprising to see how inviting most people are in San Francisco to newcomers to the city. If I had to guess, it is because this city is transient and people want to make new people feel welcome. I also think there is a cycle of people moving in and out of the city so sometimes you’re going to have to replace old ones with new.

Internet Friends - I didn’t understand this until this year. I started posting on twitter about a year ago and made some connections and internet friends along the way. I met: Nick Gray, Steph Smith, Ben Katz, and Aidan Murphy all through twitter (I’m never calling it X). This year I met them all in person. Aidan has quickly become a close friends, I connected with ben through going on runs while he was going through the YC summer batch, I hosted a rare fruit tasting with Steph Smith, and bonded with Nick in the gym and sauna in Victoria, BC during a conference.

Create your spaces - I say it a lot and I will continue to. Looking back, some of the best friends I have made were through events that I threw or house parties of mutual friends. I will beat my chest saying if you want to make meaningful connections it’s going to be done through hosting your own events or intimate gatherings such as dinners or house parties.

Lowlights:

Friends - The other side to the coin. I’ve made a lot of new friends, its a big city. It’s gunna happen. By doing that that meant having to put myself out there more and see less of who I was close with in San Diego. While it may look like I met a ton of really cool people, this was still hard for me. I have cut back on and almost completely eliminated drinking, it became progressively more challenged to connect with people without defaulting to getting drinks. As I’ve come to learn, this can be done just as easily through going to places you're interested in and meeting people there. Some of my closest friends were met through:

• Yoga at the gym

• A party at a plant shop

• Hosting my own parties

• Cold plunging in the Bay

• Going to niched down networking events (99% of the people sucked but I got two bangers out of it, worth it)

Dating - this was a weird year for dating. I went on a handful of dates, but didn’t get serious with anyone. My friends in San Francisco told me I would do great here. I still struggled. I look back and think a lot of it is in my head. I kept telling myself I personally wasn’t feeling established within my own identity to put my best self out into the world to attract someone I wanted to be with.

Other factors:

• I wasn’t clear on what type of person I wanted and where to find that person.

• I was tired and fed up on dating apps.

• I forced myself to meet girls and ask them out IRL.

For the record: I think it’s a bad idea to seriously date someone when you are new to city. That makes it hard to make your own new friends that you didn't just meet through your significant other. Perhaps it’s fine that I didn’t jump into anything.

Finance

(Personal + Business Projects)

Highlights:

Making it work - Break out the small violin, I know you want to. I moved to San Francisco making a San Diego salary. So that I didn’t have to make any harsh life changes or immediately look for a new job I was able to sell some stock off to maintain my current lifestyle. I didn’t need to get a new job, or reduce many of my expenses. You know how everyone tells you San Francisco is really expensive? It is. But I found a way to make it work.

I’m proud of this.

Business Projects - I started 3 projects that made some level of revenue! Within 1 month of moving to San Francisco.

1. Paragon, a preventative health company. We ultimately decided to shut down. We broke even(ish) here which was nice. The best part about doing this was I got to build some level of reputation in the health and wellness space and I got a great friendship out of working with my friend Stedman .

2. I built 2 faceless accounts on TikTok to tinker with affiliate marketing. I dug deep into what it’s takes to grow a TIkTok account and how to get people to buy a product through affiliate product links. I went viral more than once. Learning it’s pretty easy to do on tiktok. However virality not correlate to gaining followers or converting to product sales. With content, in the beginning it’s quantity > quality.

3. Plunge Party - this started out as a spin-off from the marina plunge club. It as a way to do actually cold cold plunges with my friends because the San Francisco bay wasn’t cold anymore. People ended up loving it, I kept doing it, so I had to find a way to make sure it financially made sense to keep doing them. I haven’t made much of any money on it but I do see a path to turning this into a self sustaining business that can be built around a small team.

Lowlights:

Now that you read the highlights, this is the perfect time to break out that small violin. Buckle-up because those ~wonderful~ highlights led me to some low lights.

Making it “work”: I sold off some stock to make sure I could continue my current lifestyle in San Francisco… for 8 months. Once I hit month 8 I was feeling the stress. I didn’t find a way to make an extra 1k/month (passively). I told my friends I moved to San Francisco to start a business. But I still had a full time job, I felt like I was saying one thing but not doing the other. I started re-evaluating my priorities and what was important to me…

I was paying $1.2k/month for a Tesla I barely drove. To park it on the street where break in’s are common. While I lived in San Diego it (kinda) made sense to have it. I realized I needed to sell the car I once set as my north star goal. One problem: I couldn’t sell it without incurring a loss. The car had 7k more on the loan balance than what dealers were willing to buy it from me for. I bought this car brand new and somehow justified paying 1k/mo for it. Then I decided to flip my life on its head and move to a high cost of living city where I barely drove. Now I have to PAY 7k to get rid of it. Yeah, that one hurts a lot. It’s caused a significant amount of stress and I’m actively working on selling it. In retrospect I am learning that buying a brand new 63k car was not the best choice.

Business Projects - It’s cool that I started three(3!) business projects this year. But I feel like there were all cute little side things that weren’t bringing me closer to the “big thing.” Perhaps I’m getting too hard on myself but this summer I hit a low point mentally, I didn’t know what my “thing” was and I applied an overwhelmingly high amount pressure and expectations on myself to have my “thing” by that point.

Leaving Dexcom - I left my Job at Dexcom. I had zero additional revenue streams coming in but was no longer feeling fulfilled or enjoying my job. I was working on a product that changed my life but no long had the excited to wake up every day to work on it. Despite the financial stress I had, I made the decision to leave and effectively remove the only stream of income I had that kept me afloat…. Dozens of people called me a fucking idiot for doing that. My “founder friends” told me “this is the way” and taking the leap was the first step in the journey. One founder friend did also call me an idiot for doing this. While I have been thinking about this next step for months, leading up to the decision date included dozens of stressed out conversations with peers, 3 high anxiety events, and 1 panic attack.

Fitness

(including health)

Highlights:

Strength and appearance - I am really happy with how I look. I have been incorporating kettlebell workouts into my routine. I have been doing programs through Colin Pasque and Jay Maryniak on the Playbook app. I haven’t lost much or any muscle. I started using my friend’s company Kalos’s Dexa scanner to track my muscle, fat, and bone composition.

Endurance - I used to make fun of the PB run club in San Diego. I thought it was stupid. Why would I run with slow people just to make friends. I ran fast. When I moved to San Francisco I went to the marina run club and was instantly hooked. I met some awesome new freinds and I have gotten more and more into running to maintain my cardio vascular endurance. I can now easily get up and run 6-7 miles. I ran 10 miles with my friend Michelle. Thats the longest I’ve ever done. I met michelle when running across the golden gate bridge. She said hi to me WHILE we were runing and we immediately became freinds. The fact that she did that mid-run is pretty badass.

I hiked two really big mountains this year at a really fast pace - Mt Shasta (14.1k ft) and Mt Toubkal (13.6k ft). Mt Shasta has a 50% completion rate. I got really lucky with weather, admittedly, that helped with being able to summit. That was July 4 weekend. It was 100 degrees at the base of the mountain. We used black garbage bags to melt snow once we realized we were going to run out of fuel if we tried melting snow with just heat from our jet boils. Shoutout to my buddy Henryk for that idea and planning the trip for us. Also my friend Colton for letting me use his mountaineering equipment. I hiked Mt Toubkal solo (with a guide) in Morocco. I’m now a huge fan of destination hiking. I’m glad I did this alone (with a guide). I was able to set an unreasonably fast pace for myself and summit that mountain extremely quickly. 2 days after consuming a concerningly high volume of wine at an Italian wedding in Florence, Italy.

Lowlights:

Foot pain - I have had foot pain in the second metatarsal of my right foot for over a 1.5 yrs now. it comes and goes. My podiatrist says its capsulitis or tendonitis. The only want to have it get better is: rest. Of course I haven’t done enough of that. It’s been getting bad again and it has stopped me from doing more running and soccer.

Soccer - I haven’t been able to play competitive soccer like I would have wanted to since moving here. In San Diego I was on a team with guys that played in college. I felt challenged playing with them. I liked that. I met a friend Kes, on a ski trip who brought me to his club practices and some good pickup games. His team was in the middle of the season and wasn’t picking up new players. I was able to do some drop in’s with friends and attend some of the club practices. I haven’t able to scratch the itch of playing and a high level and I’m afraid im falling off fast.

Misc. Fitness

General Health - Easy to skip over but I want to highlight that generally, my overall health is doing great. My diabetes in under control, (A1C between 6.5-7%) I wake up every day and am able to go to the gym and do a tough gym workout, run 5 miles at an 8 min pace, and do yoga 1x/week. I’m grateful that I can do all that.

Appearance - People think Im 24-26 years old. They say it’s a combination of the way I look and act. I’ll take it.

Goals - My general health goals are to look good naked, and be able to hike tall mountains. I can still do that. I’m starting rethinking how I approach my goals. Transitioning from aesthetic goals towards performance based goals. Knowing that aesthetic will still follow.

Fun

This is the most important part of this post. It helps me highlight the fun things I’ve done over the past year. Despite wanting to be better, achieve more, and make money, I am grateful for being able to do a lot of cool shit with friends along the way. Here they are

Highlights:

Skiing - I skied Tahoe, Banff, Steamboat, and Salt Lake City, and Tahoe. I got 12 days of skiing in. 5 of those were powder days. That’s freaking awesome. I skied on a new pair of skis. The 120 bent chetlers. They’re not perfect skis but I love them and they’re a ton of fun on powder. I’d recommend 110’s to myself if I could go back.

Hiking in the bay area and NorCal - I hiked Mt Shasta. which has a 50% completion rate. This was the hardest hike I’ve done in my life. It was fun to push myself and be scared a couple times. I hike tamales point for my birthday with my friend Reagan. I didnt have many freinds yet and I was really happy that he joined me for my 30th birthday hike. We saw Elk there too! I did the cross town trail in San Francisco with my friend Marianne, because I lost a bet. She was nice enough to do it with me. The bay area has nature within and directly adjacent to the city. This is why I picked living here over NYC. I am a slut for the mountains.

Italy + Morocco - went to Italy to celebrate the wedding of two of my close friends. The wedding was beautiful. After I did a solo trip to Morocco to celebrate my heritage, My grandmother was born there and passed away the year prior. Morocco is beautiful and I highly recommend it. It’s geography reminded me of California in a lot of ways. I hiked a 13.6k ft mountain, traveled on a reasonable budget, visited rural villages, and slept under the stars in the Sahara desert.

Hosting Events - I hosted a cocktail party for my new friends in San Francisco. It was a blast and I got to take advantage of the common space that my apartment has. I hosted cold plunge meetups in the San Francisco bay. That led to me joining and helping grow/run the marina plunge club to over 300 people! This branched off into what is now Plunge Party. Hosting these types of events have brought some incredible people into my life.

IP2 - Andrew Wilkinson put on a conference where he gathers people who he considers “interesting” and does an “anti-conference” where we talk about business, do fun things together, but have way more fun than traditional “networking.” It’s called interesting people (IP) and this was the second time doing it. Nick Gray facilitated it. I applied on a whim and was baffled that I was accepted. I spent three days in Victoria, BC. I got to meet Shaan Puri, Greg Isenberg, Sam Corcos, Patrick Campbell, Nick Gray, Andrew Wilkinson, and some other really successful people. I came in excited to meet people that were ahead of me wrt to business. I came away knowing that the only difference between myself and them was that they already “started,” they were just further ahead of me. I knew I could get to where they were, I just have to keep going. It was cool to meet these people that I looked up to in the business world, and that I was able to put myself in the rooms I want to see myself in in the future.

Portola Music Festival - The only music festival I went to this year. It was in San Francisco and was a blast. I got to go with my friend Martyn where we had a delightful experience together. I got to show him why you don’t need to see Jamie xx and Rufus Du Sol. Rather a warehouse, great house music, and a kick ass sound system.

Plunge party - I hosted a cold plunge party in August. I did it because I loved hosting events and I didn’t think plunging into the bay was cold enough anymore. I also saw something similar working in LA. One year ago I would’ve had the same reaction as you… “the fuck did you just say” you do. But I did it. And kept doing it. Coordinating, convincing people to come, and then running it is exhausting, but I love doing it. So I am going to keep doing it. The two big hurdles I see with growing this are being able to do this in a fun way, again and again, and executing content lead growth. I’ll make it work.

Mexico City - I celebrated my friend Chris’s birthday in Mexico City at the end of October. It was F1 weekend. CDMX is one of my favorite places to visit. This was my third time going. We waited too long to buy F1 tickets and they went up to $1k for the final day. There was no way i could justify that if was about to leave my job. So I skipped the F1 part. All that said, CDMX was a food and drink tour that set me into a food coma for 2 days after I got back. Thankfully Montezuma and I did not have any close encounters.

Lowlights:

I was beginning to realize I was doing too much.

I was traveling a ton in 2023 and into the beginning of 2024. I started to cut back on going to shows and saying yes to trips. I used to always be “down” but I knew I had to cut back on the spending and distractions that were coming up.

It feels great to being invited to so many things but it gets hard saying no to trips, parties, shows, and socials when I want to refocus my priorities.

Because of that I have been saying no to many more things.

2024 was a beautiful year of growth and the beginning of a new chapter.

Life is so awesome,

Jared

I Dig So You Don’t Have To

1 Set:

2 IDs:

Gentlemen’s Agreement 🤝🏻

I need a favor from you. Every week I spend several hours crafting this email to give you entirely for free. Banger, after banger. Except it’s not actually free.

I love doing this, but I also love seeing this grow (You might say I’m flawed. But you’re not my therapist). To keep this free it would mean the world to me, and my ego, if you shared this with just 1 person who you think would also like this.

They can subscribe using this link here 🙌🏻