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January 7, 2026
30 min read

My Annual Review of 2025

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2025 was a big year in my life and business. For the first time in years I’d like to share a part of my review publicly.

Annual reviews are some of my favorite essays to read from friends and some of the best and most valuable research I do for interviews on my podcast. Seeing someone’s life over many years summarized through their own eyes and words is one of the most powerful ways to understand their growth, challenges, and triumphs over time.

Before you read, I want to name what this is (and what it isn’t).

This isn’t a highlight reel. It’s not a manifesto on how to lead. It’s not a posturing attempt to sound like I have life figured out.

It’s simply my attempt to tell the truth about a year that changed me. It’s written primarily for me, but with publishing for you as a close secondary goal.

Some of what follows is about work. And some of it is about the parts of life that don’t politely stay in the background while you’re trying to build a business: marriage, parenting, grief, stress, travel, and the quiet daily work of staying human.

If any of this helps you reflect on your own year with a little more courage and gentleness, then sharing it will have been worth it. And of course, if parts don’t resonate or serve you, please feel free to skip or leave them to the side.

I’ve broken this down into the following areas, broadly categorized as Work and Life:

Work

  • Clients – how my coaching work grew
  • Content – what I made – the podcast, newsletter, poetry, and social media
  • Team – who made it all possible
  • Books – the books I most enjoyed this year
  • Building for the Future – what’s next

Life

CLIENTS

My client work this year changed what I believe is possible through coaching, grew my confidence in my ability to facilitate change, and gave me visibility into the inner lives of some of the most popular creative entrepreneurs in the world.

I worked with dance studio owners around the world, a private equity group working to grow the impact of creator-led businesses in publishing, homesteading, and growth, an organization working to provide information and routes to freedom for North Koreans, and two of the preeminent minds in modern productivity. I worked with clients across food, marketing, productivity, YouTube, entrepreneurship, dance, travel, food access, homesteading, and publishing.

My clients have a collective audience of tens of millions of people — that’s totaling up each client’s largest platform, not all platforms. And as I have settled into my career as a coach, what I have realized is that my biggest lever for impact is in helping entrepreneurs find peace and wholeness in their inner world so that they can sustain their incredible success. In the process, the way they lead their teams and audiences will shape many, many more lives than I can impact directly. What an incredible privilege.

What is more important to me than the reach or scale of my work or that of my clients is the depth of transformation I help people through. This year, I helped the leaders I coach:

  • Hire a new CEO to lead a new chapter of growth for their company
  • Go from losing tens of thousands of dollars per month to hiring a team and GM that now manages a cash-flow-positive business
  • Grow their sense of confidence and self-worth in order to start asking for what they have earned from sponsors, book publishers, and agents
  • Take their first real vacations and holiday breaks in many years
  • Establish and expand completely new lines of business aligned to what they value most
  • Develop new concepts for upcoming books to follow their previous bestsellers
  • Land and deliver their first or most meaningful speaking gigs
  • Transform their teams to allow the CEO to finally start acting as and performing the role of CEO

And in the process of all of the important change above, every single one of my clients’ businesses has grown in audience and revenue.

My clients have healthier balance, more profit, more productive conflict and feedback conversations, stronger and kinder inner voices, greater sense of purpose, and a better recognition of their wealth and impact. Across the board I see them making decisions based on what they value more than what they think they “should” do based on external validation or mimetic desire.

All of this and more is why I believe in my profession and feel more called to this work than ever before. I have found work that uses all of my gifts to make the deepest possible impact on individual lives of anything I have ever done.

So many entrepreneurs and gurus say “don’t trade time for money,” but I can’t imagine doing anything more important with my time than working 1:1 with world-class creators and entrepreneurs.

CONTENT

One of my own areas of growth over these past couple of years has been embracing my creativity and the power of my voice. For over a decade I both had a deep desire to grow an audience for my writing and also made decisions that put me behind the scenes of businesses led by people with audiences.

In 2024 my goal was to earn the right to invest more heavily in content by being consistent. I did that, so in 2025, I took on a big project to give myself a home on the internet for the next decade. Working with Felice della Gatta, the talented designer, we created a new BarrettBrooks.com to house my writing, podcast, and coaching work. I’m incredibly happy with the result, which allowed us to collapse two websites into one.

The design project took longer than expected, which meant we took a six-month break from the podcast instead of a six-week break. That was largely a function of other life stuff plus the normal project delays you expect.

So accomplishment one: a new home on the web.

Newsletter

On top of that, I settled into a newsletter format that finally feels like a match for my writing style and my business. I published 31 editions of Little Leadership Lessons this year, which now contains the universal lesson from a single client coaching session. The feedback has been that each newsletter feels highly relevant to entrepreneurs because it comes from the real problems of a fellow leader.

My favorite editions of the newsletter this year were:

Poems

I published my first ever poems this year. These feel the most vulnerable to publish of anything I have ever written. But they also feel the most true to my inner world, which means they must be shared:

Podcast

My podcast, Good Work, continued this year as well. It got a refreshed and refined look along with the new website. The bear mascot is gone and against everything I said I would do, I put my face front and center. Why? Because I realized keeping my face off the cover was like painting a piece of art but not being willing to sign it. My face front and center reflects a wider arc of growth within me to fully acknowledge my own value and own my story in public. I’m proud of the outward reflection of my inner growth.

This last sentence reflects the tagline I’ve settled on for the show: Good Work: The Inner Journey of Outward Success.

I now think of every episode as an audio-biography of a leader I admire for their work and life. My goal is to capture a portrait of the people who most inspire me, including the people, experiences, ideas, and places that have most shaped the person they have become.

I still do my signature in-depth research. I look for the questions and topics all of their other interviews have missed. I look for the heart of the story, and therefore the person. The process is like putting together a puzzle of each guest’s identity and life.

My goal is to make each episode the most enjoyable interview my guest has ever done because it honors who they are, it reflects all of the work they have already shared, and it breaks new ground in their own understanding of their story. I think I have found the flow and format that best does this. And in the process I have settled in as an interviewer and conversational partner.

Like a great memoir, I believe every episode allows listeners — you — to hear, in the specifics of this person’s life, the lessons, ideas, and unlocks that you most need. The show honors your intelligence and inner wisdom to take what you need from each episode without being spoon-fed how-to’s and instructional advice that likely will not solve your unique challenges. You already know what you need to do to get what you want. The show surrounds you with a group of peers and mentors sharing stories of how they did what they knew their soul needed in order to become what it was made for.

Here are the episodes we published this year:

  • Ankur Nagpal, on what comes after you make hundreds of millions of dollars from your company
  • Pat Flynn, the creator economy OG, on why Pokémon has reconnected him to what he loves about making things online
  • Kieran Snyder, my mentor and teacher, on the courage it took to step down as CEO of her own startup
  • Justin Moore, the most trusted advisor on sponsorships, on the heartbreak and self-doubt and reinvention of entrepreneurship
  • Ann Brooks, my mom and experienced executive, on everything you learn in 30 years of leading in the corporate world
  • Bonnie Wan, the advertising savant turned author and guide, on what it takes to find out what you really want in life
  • Tina Tower, teacher of entrepreneurship to women around the world, on what it finally took to stop running herself into the ground while running her business
  • Matt D Smith, the designer’s designer, on how he has learned to work with his desire for external validation (THIS ONE WAS MOST POPULAR ON SPOTIFY)
  • Me, interviewed by James Clear, bestselling author of Atomic Habits, on my own story of learning to process pain and move beyond it to find my path
  • Mike MacDonald, Seattle Seahawks head coach, on stepping into the key leadership role of a storied sports franchise while leading authentically – (THIS ONE WAS THE MOST VIEWED YOUTUBE EPISODE)
  • Ami Vitale, renowned Nat Geo photographer, on what war zones do to your humanity and how nature helped her find her voice and soul again
  • Mark Manson, bestselling author of The Subtle Art…, on returning to his roots as a creator with YouTube
  • Emily Anhalt, psychologist and author, on why processing grief is an essential skill for any entrepreneur
  • Jeff Sheldon, founder of beloved product company Ugmonk, on prioritizing craft when the entire modern world is pushing for scale
  • Parker Palmer, legendary 86-year-old author and teacher, on the wisdom and learning of a life spent in deep conversation with himself and others

As I type this list out on my new 1937 Corona typewriter I got for Christmas (shout out to my wife Nicole for the thoughtful research and incredible gift), I see the inherent value of each one of these humans. I see their stories in my mind. I see how they have shaped, inspired, and challenged me to grow.

And I see that I am in the middle of building the body of work I have always hoped for with this show. One that will change people’s lives for the better if they’ll lend me their time and their ears or eyes.

This year I also realized that if I want to be in this for the long haul, I need a pace I can maintain. From the beginning I have wanted to grow the show to hundreds of thousands of downloads per episode. I still do. And also I know that may take a decade or more. To get there I’ll need resources (time, money, people) I don’t have right now. So how do I want to be in the meantime?

Do I want to compare myself to DOAC or Modern Wisdom or Brené or Adam Grant? Yes, but I don’t have the time or budget to produce at the frequency or scale they do.

Instead I’m choosing to go slower for now so I can stay in the game long enough to win. I’ve gone to one episode every two weeks, which reflects how much I hear listeners can tune in and how much I can reliably produce (for now). This might limit growth but it doesn’t change the quality of any given conversation, which is my ongoing metric.

Here are a few stats from this year:

  • Lifetime downloads (audio): 79,936
  • 2025 downloads: 22,746
  • Lifetime YouTube plays: 48,500
  • 2025 YouTube plays: 24,600

Two things seem true to me:

  • The present and future of podcasts is video.
  • It’s going to take a ton of effort to grow audience for the show; the best place to chase that growth is almost certainly YouTube.

And a bonus: people watch about 12-15 minutes on average before giving up on a video on YouTube. 20% of viewers made it halfway through my interview with Mike MacDonald, which is now our most popular episode. 11% watched to the end. We’re going to have to drastically alter our strategy if we believe video is the future.

Social Media

Lastly on the content front was social media. For far too long I’ve scoffed at the game of social media and for far too long I’ve grown no social media following as a result. The reality is that I want my work to reach many, many, many more people. And you all hang out on social media, just like the rest of the world. So I cannot simultaneously want more reach and not want to play the game.

This year I decided to sign up to play the game and to do it in a way that spreads more wholeness, hope, and peace rather than triggering, shocking, and scaring people. This makes the game harder. And that’s OK.

Step one was picking where I want to play. Twitter had historically been my biggest platform and also I had grown to hate it. So I quit over a year ago and decided to start from scratch on Instagram as well as expand my focus on LinkedIn. I knew I wouldn’t have the time or attention to do both well on my own, so I asked for help instead.

Andrew Fink has been running my LinkedIn account and the team at Ampersand Studios have been running my Instagram account. We’ve developed a great workflow that leverages notes and summaries from my coaching work, Marco Polo for spoken word, in-person filming sessions, and a lot of iteration.

Our goals right now are focused on reach and followers. This is not because reach is most important, but because we can’t achieve our more important goals without first achieving reach.

We’re right in the middle of figuring out how to increase reach. That includes the hardest part of all, which is finding a set of core topics and expertise, or rather ways of capturing my expertise, that resonate with an audience. And not just any audience, but talented and capable entrepreneurs. This is a game worth winning because it will expand the ways in which I can help create transformation in the lives of entrepreneurs and leaders. The one drawback to coaching 1:1 is that I can only work with about 12 clients at a time. Media gives us the chance to help many thousands at once.

Here’s where we stand at the end of the year:

  • Instagram followers: just over 1,000
  • LinkedIn followers: just under 4,000
  • Newsletter subscribers: just under 2,500

Relative to the reach of my clients, this feels comically small. But as I have often preached, everyone has to get to 1,000 before they get to 10,000 before they get to 100,000, etc. And so we start now for the benefit of the change we can make ten years from now.

TEAM

My team this year consisted of contractors and agencies supporting different aspects of my business.

The first and most consistent teammate for the past two years has been my executive assistant, Cheryl Harris. She first came across my radar in applying for an EA role working with me at Kit. She was the first person I called after launching my coaching practice in 2023. She has led client experience, podcast guest experience, inbox management, and she’s been the keeper of my calendar. Her support helped me get to this point and laid the groundwork to hire a full-time in-person executive business partner entering 2026. If you’re a creator who could use a great EA, I would highly recommend Cheryl.

I continued my work with Adam Clark and his team at Podcast Royale for podcast production. I added help from Andrew Fink on LinkedIn, Ampersand Studios for Instagram, and Felice della Gatta for the design and build of my new website. All of these folks have been critical to getting the business to this point and I wouldn’t be able to work a full client load, produce content, and speak to entrepreneurs or train fellow coaches without them.

Lastly, the most exciting team development of the year was my wife, Nicole Brooks, joining to lead marketing and growth. For many years we’ve said it would be impossible for us to work together, but this year something changed and we felt like it was the right time to give it a try.

Initially we decided to make our work together a six-month experiment before committing long term. After the experiment went well, we decided to make this a permanent move and expand her role, which I’ll highlight in a moment. It’s been fun to connect with other couples who have worked together about how to do it well.

I highlight the team behind what I do because I think there’s a mythical idea out there that somehow you can magically run this kind of business alone. I find that it’s not possible to do it all alone and I can only achieve my goals by building a team. This year I spent $6k–10k per month on the team because I believe it will help me reach my goals faster and also stay more sane along the way.

BOOKS

I read 20 books in 2025, which is the pace I’ve been keeping for a few years now. I used to aim for a book a week and usually landed in the 35-40 books per year range. Then I had kids!

Here were the books I read that felt worthy of high recommendation:

  1. In An Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness by Peter A. Levine — a fantastic read for anyone who works in coaching, therapy, or somatic healing; also a great read for anyone who has experienced trauma and believes it affects their body today
  2. Shogun Pt 1 and Shogun Pt 2 by James Clavell — even better than the fantastic FX series by the same name; perhaps my favorite fiction in 5+ years
  3. The Audience is Listening: A Little Guide to Building a Big Podcast by Tom Webster — niche read for anyone who wants to build a podcast with a dedicated and growing audience by a radio and podcast industry insider (HT to Clay Hebert for sending me this one)
  4. The Way Forward by Yung Pueblo — modern poetry from one of my favorite contemporary poets and leaders
  5. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott — somehow I waited a decade after buying the book to finally take it off the shelf; a delightful read for anyone aspiring to write or write more or write better
  6. A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life by Parker Palmer — a guided methodology for connecting more deeply with your soul in community with others; perfect for coaches, community leaders, and facilitators
  7. History Matters by David McCullough — a posthumous collection of essays and speeches from one of the greatest historians and biographers of all time, compiled by his daughter and long-time research assistant (HT to Josh Scott for sending me this one)

I owe an update to my 100 best books of all time list. Coming soon.

BUILDING FOR THE FUTURE

Two things became very clear to me this year:

  • I love 1:1 coaching
  • It is very taxing for all of my income to come from 1:1 coaching

There is a limit to the number of clients I can work with from a mental and emotional bandwidth perspective. And then there are the logistical challenges that come when I take vacation, speak at conferences, or train other coaches. I either lose a week of income or we have to cram additional sessions into the time I have available, which often doesn’t work well for clients or me.

You might rightly say, “Well charge more then,” and that is good advice. I already charge in the 90th to 95th percentile of all coaches and work with clients at the top of their industries. To charge more I’ll need to grow my own notoriety, likely through writing books and growing a larger audience. I’ll also need to continue to work with entrepreneurs leading larger companies. This will take time and isn’t the best or most sustainable immediate path.

This conundrum led me to explore different ways of scaling revenue beyond 1:1 work. We tested group coaching and may return to it. We explored courses or asynchronous trainings but the online course industry has shrunk over the last couple of years and also requires a large audience to be sustainable. We’ll likely do both long-term but neither felt as optimal as a new opportunity that came my way.

In August 2024, my mentor Bebe Hansen approached me about becoming her successor at Presence-Based Coaching, the ICF-accredited coach certification training where I trained. Over the course of a year, most of 2025, we explored this possibility together. I ran numbers, I considered what my vision would be for the organization, and I trained as a trainer.

The more I researched the industry and spent time reflecting on my strengths, the more excited I got. PBC is one of the longest running and most respected training institutes in an industry that continues to grow rapidly with no signs of slowing down. It is based in neuroscience, somatic awareness, and emotional intelligence — a rare blend for a training program. And most importantly, it is effective at helping students build the skills, inner awareness, and confidence to become great coaches.

This also creates a more scalable path for impact and revenue.

My biggest career event of this year was making the decision to buy Presence-Based Coaching, become Bebe’s successor, and expand my business into coach and leadership training.

Presence-Based Coaching will offer:

All of this represents a huge opportunity on many fronts. It gives me a company within which to grow as a leader. It gives us a way to grow revenue and impact without being limited by my personal capacity. And it will open up many more opportunities for others to do work within the organization as trainers, coaches, and staff members over time.

Most exciting is the opportunity to continue and build on a legacy at a storied organization and build it into the type of company I have always longed to work for.

A huge component of this will be my wife Nicole stepping into the new company full-time to apply all of her extensive experience leading teams and her natural brilliance to lead growth and marketing for PBC.

This feels like the most important work of my career to date and an opportunity to grow something meaningful for the next decade or more.

FAMILY

This was the most difficult family year of my life. This was the year that showed me how much I can carry. It was the year that broke me into a million pieces so that I could put myself back together in a way that is more true, more lasting, more whole.

I’m not entirely sure where to start here other than to say: damn. Sometimes life hits hard and it hits in waves. This happening at the same time that so many career opportunities came my way felt divine in nature. It gave me the opportunity to rise and to transform my inner world in a way that had been simmering for years.

Parenthood

Our children turned three and six this year. They went from sleeping on mattresses on our floor to sleeping in their own room, sometimes with us on their floor.

Our oldest entered Kindergarten at his Montessori preschool, but his best friend left for the local elementary school, which was so difficult on him. Our youngest started preschool at the Montessori preschool and learning that we are still here for him even though we drop him at school every day is still a work in progress.

I owe my life to these two gentle boys in so many ways. They have helped me heal, they have shown me what I am capable of, and they have taught me how much good is embedded in the human soul from birth. Far and away the most important role I play every day is as their father.

I am challenged by the moments when I feel frustrated, and within those I am most challenged when I respond to them in ways that are unkind, impatient, or not their fault. But more often than not I am present, I am connected, and I am rewriting the story I lived to get here through the way I parent and lead them.

I feel so thrilled, so privileged, to watch them grow. And I feel heartbroken by every inch taller they grow, every new milestone they hit, and every day that goes by because I know I will never get it back. What a gift to have something so precious that every moment matters.

Marriage

My life transformed the most this year in my marriage to Nicole. We experienced some of the most trying circumstances in our lives. It easily could have broken each of us individually and/or our marriage in the process. Instead, we turned the difficulty into a spark for growth and transformation.

We each healed parts of ourselves that have long cried out for support – wounds formed in early childhood that had yet to heal. We changed the way we love, changed the way we have conflict, and changed the way we live together.

When I look back at the beginning of the year and the end of the year in 2025, I believe we each learned to fully be loved. And thank God for that because we needed the strength for everything else we were faced with.

Extended Family

Listen, this section is sad. It was a hard year. If you are having a hard time right now in any way, but especially in dealing with grief or loss, maybe skip this section. Sometimes your own burdens are the only ones you can carry and that’s ok.

This year, we experienced:

  • My father-in-law being hospitalized (he’s ok)
  • My father’s Parkinson’s disease continuing to progress rapidly
  • My grandfather dying of emphysema
  • My mother-in-law being hospitalized (she’s ok)

Each of these instances was a stark reminder of the cliché preciousness of life… The short-term nature of our presence on this Earth… The fragility of love and the grief that inevitably awaits us all as we lose what we love over time.

And in its harshness, it was all beautiful. It taught me so much about how to be in the face of intense grief and loss.


Despite the Scares, My In-Laws are Well

We worried in both cases about my in-laws being hospitalized and were so thankful that neither case was serious. Hydration and physical therapy and more awareness are the extent of what’s needed for now in both cases.


My Dad’s Parkinson’s Got Worse

Dad is another case entirely. Parkinson’s is, of course, a degenerative disease. One whose path is relentless and unfair and heartbreaking. I know the party line is that “people don’t die of Parkinson’s” and “people often live for many years with the disease.” And that sets one up for a certain set of expectations for what the experience will be like. That does not match any of what we have been through.

Whether through circumstance or genetics or fate, my father’s Parkinson’s has led to rapid decline. He will most certainly be taken from us by complications of the disease and if we are given years in the plural it will feel as if we were given the gift of a miracle.

Just two years after diagnosis, he had to have a permanent feeding tube placed this past August. He does and will always receive all of his physical nourishment through this device. It’s hard to describe how heartbreaking it is to watch a man who was a competitive body builder and lifelong fitness enthusiast be forced to rely on the grace of others, primarily my mother / his wife, in order to live.

And yet he lives, which in the aftermath of the procedure did not seem likely. Parkinson’s is often accompanied by dementia, as is the case for Dad, who suffers from Alzheimer’s. And for those suffering from dementia, general anesthesia is brutal.

I spent ten days by his side as he recovered. On morning duty four days after he arrived at the rehab facility from the hospital, something was different. He had not been doing well, but that morning it was as if Dad was passing between eras and continents – as if he could see the other side of the veil in a way that worried me.

He spoke of being in England during war time, a place he had never been. He spoke of soccer games, which he has never watched. He asked if I would stay with him. If we had come to take him away. If it was time to go.

And that morning I thought we had reached the end. I called Mom to ask her to drop what she was doing and hurry over. I rubbed his feet and held his hand. I was practicing for what I didn’t yet know would be my job just two months later.

Then, that afternoon the nurses informed us they had received his meds in incorrect dosages (apparently he hadn’t been receiving them). They started him back on full dosage meds for Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s and anxiety. As if by a miracle, he settled. He recovered. And we began our path out of that godforsaken facility I hope I never step foot in again.

In all of this, I crossed a threshold of loss. It has been as if I’ve already lost him, although he’s still here. As if I know what it feels like even though I know I do not. Crossing that threshold means I know what is coming. Yet my job is to act as if I do not. And that middle ground is perhaps hardest of all.

Even now the tears come as I remember what it felt like to return home to Portland knowing he was stable. Stable in his decline. From a disease no one deserves to experience.


I Held O’Pa’s Hand While He Died

Two months later I returned to the East Coast, this time with Nicole and my boys in tow. We planned a week in Atlanta, followed by a long weekend at our family mountain cabin outside of Bryson City, North Carolina. Then I would trek on to Asheville solo for the concluding retreat of my advanced coach training with Presence-Based Coaching.

The night we arrived, we received news that O’Pa, my grandfather, had fallen the night before and hit his head. He had been suffering from emphysema for some time and had woken in the night to use the restroom. With the snap of two fingers, he went from living with a disease to bedridden and fighting for his life.

Sunday afternoon, we drove to Flowery Branch, Georgia to see him. All four of his daughters were there. Four of his seven grandchildren. His wife.

As we arrived, my uncle was walking to his car. I gave him a hug and said how sad it was to see each other in this way. For the first time, someone in the family said what no one was willing to admit. “I’d be surprised if he makes it through the night,” he said as he got in his car.

I’m not sure what I thought we were doing in going there. Supporting him as he recovered? Seeing the family? Doing our duty? But whatever I thought, I wasn’t willing to admit to myself that we were going there to be with him as he died.

When we arrived, I went in to see him and my cousin Brittany stood up from the bedside chair to let me sit with him. I held his hand. My mom and aunt and Nicole and I shared stories. We talked about what a joy Christmas was thanks to him. We talked about the treasure hunts he arranged around his property at Lake Lanier.

After sitting with him for a bit, I got up and Nicole replaced me to hold his hand for a while. O’Pa loved Nicole. He said she was beautiful (she’s right). He loved her personality (I have a feeling she reminds him of his daughters).

As I sat in the living room, I heard Nicole call to me that his breathing was slowing, so I went in. She gave me the seat back. That seat changed my life.

I held O’Pa’s hand. My aunts laid on the bed nearby. My mom stood behind me. I told him we would be ok. I told him he had done enough. That it was ok to rest. That he had lived a beautiful and joyful life. That he had taught us so much and given us so much.

I held his hand as he took his last breath. And I understood what it means to die. To be loved as you die. To be held and surrounded by your people. To complete a life.

O’Pa died on Sunday, October 5th 2025 in Flowery Branch, Georgia at the age of 92. He was surrounded by every member of his family that could physically get to his house. I held his hand. He was the best grandfather a boy could ask for, even if he was flawed as a husband and father. I miss him every day.

COMMUNITY

Community has always been important to me because I lacked supportive community for so much of my formative adolescence. I have tried to operate with a core belief that “everyone wants to be invited to something awesome, but most people don’t want to plan the “something awesome.””

This year I was fortunate to get to plan a lot of events, including:

  • Entrepreneur(ial) breakfast club here in Portland – we met every two weeks all year long for the third year running! The group is larger and more diverse than ever before. If you’re a Portland entrepreneur who wants to join or visit the city on a Friday, get in touch and we’d love to have you.
  • Pickledad’s – an evolving group of dads that mostly met through preschool and now gets together about once a month for pickleball and once a quarter for a nice dinner; men want to be in community, but we often don’t know how to get past the awkward phase – this group is committed to doing it anyways
  • Fly Fishing the Deschutes – this year was the fourth annual fly fishing trip for a group of eight men from across the country. I started this trip because I wanted a way to stay in touch with and connect close friends from across the country. Now we chase Steelhead on the Lower Deschutes River every October in a tradition I hope lasts for decades.
  • Creator Meetup at Craft + Commerce – my friend Shawn Blanc and I hosted an incredible private meetup for authors, creators, and entrepreneurs at Craft + Commerce in Boise in June; about 30 folks got together to form or deepen friendships and collaborations; I probably gained 8-10 meaningful new friendships from the event.

I also attended a few events put on by others this year:

  • Tastemaker – I kicked the year off as the opening keynote speaker at Tastemaker, which was my second year in a row speaking at the premier event for food creators; I felt like I delivered an average quality talk that I wish I could do over again, but enjoyed being back in community with one of my favorite creator niches
  • Camp Redwood – My second year at a gathering of scaling non-profit founders and chief executives hosted by New Story founder Brett Hagler and his wife Demi.
  • Breckenridge – I’ve now attended five mastermind retreat – 2018, 2019, 2023, 2024, and 2025 – with a group hosted by Shawn Blanc in the high elevation of Breck; this event has fostered some of the most transformative moments of growth in my entrepreneurial journey
  • Justin Moore’s Mastermind – Justin invited me to speak at his client mastermind in Minneapolis and we ended up doing 2.5 hours of live coaching. It was one of my favorite events of the year.
  • MashUp – despite being friends with hosts Shawn Blanc and Mo Bunnell for a very long time, I attended my first MashUp event in 2025; it’s a 50-person mastermind-conference-peer-support-group thing and it was awesome

2025 was a year of deepening existing communities I’ve built or been invited to and continuing to invest in the relationships there. I find that I have wonderful friendships and acquaintances from many different areas of my life.

The two things I continue to want are to 1) deepen relationships that already matter to me and 2) find ways to see friends that are spread across the country. This is a unique challenge of the internet age when the people we are often closest to live a long haul flight away.

And of course, I’m always interested in meeting new friends who inspire me to become more of who I was made to be. The podcast, speaking, and attending high quality trainings and masterminds seem to repeatedly expose me to the work and kindness of new interesting people.

WELL-BEING

Of the areas of focus for me this year, well-being was an area that got little attention. I’m thankful I had a good scaffolding in place because it was a year when I needed it. It’s an area that is important to me in the macro sense and in the micro sense I found little room for improvement with all of the other priorities on my plate in 2025.

Here were the highlights:

  • From November 1 of 2024 to August 10th of 2025, I didn’t drink alcohol except for a polite sip of a drink at work related events. I learned that I’m perfectly capable of not drinking and also that it changes the way I want to spend my time. It alters the decision making about what types of events I’m willing to go to, for how long, and who I want to spend time with at those events. In short, not drinking alcohol lowers my tolerance for things I don’t enjoy.
  • I quit caffeine for about six weeks from July to August. I’ve regularly done these resets over the years, because my body operates poorly when stress increases, sleep drops, exercise fades, and coffee tries to be a substitute for all of the above. The amount of muscular pain I experience goes up, my hydration goes down, my circadian rhythm gets thrown off, and it becomes a vicious cycle of chasing feeling good. There’s a world in which my commitments and my natural energy match and I don’t need caffeine to make up the gap. I’ve yet to find a sustained window when that has been true (the longest I’ve gone is six months).
  • Repeated airplanes and time zone changes are something I haven’t yet mastered. Part of me believes that the combination of stress, dehydration, poor nutrition and sleep, and low exercise when traveling makes it nearly impossible to sustain good habits on either side of said travel. Another part of me believes that I just need to find the system that works better than whatever I’m doing right now. I’m all ears if you’re a regular traveler (especially in high stress situations like speaking and training) and have nailed a routine that sustains you.
  • Stress was high throughout the year and took a toll on my mental health by mid-year. The combination of having to keep future plans private for a sustained period, my Dad’s health, young kids, and the baseline stress of entrepreneurship added up. I had to take a two-week break in July to try to reset.
  • Historically I’ve had years when I lifted weights and worked out 100+ times. This was not one of them. Instead, I think I can count on one hand how many real workouts I got in this year.
  • I did sustain competitive pickup basketball on Tuesdays for two hours. ChatGPT’s best guess is that I run about 3.5 miles every time I play, burn 1,000-1,500 calories, and have an average heart rate of 135-145 throughout. It was good for getting energy out and bad for recovery in a high stress year.
  • I maintained habits of bi-monthly chiropractor, monthly massage, every other month cranio-sacral therapy, and bi-monthly IFS therapy throughout the year. These are my baseline wellness habits that I don’t compromise on at this point.
  • This year I added in semi-regular sauna use based on data I saw coming out of studies, as well as protocols from Huberman, Rhonda Patrick, and Bryan Johnson. I go about once a week to a local sauna spa and do two twenty minute sessions spaced thirty minutes apart at about 185-190 degrees. I started researching this when genetic and blood testing showed my body having a hard time detoxing on its own, which is either genetic or based on poor sleep habits or both.
  • I did bi-annual bloodwork, which revealed very high levels of inflammation mid-year, likely tied to high stress and some good ol’ preschool sickness; ongoing elevated cholesterol but detailed lipid-protein evaluation and carotid ultrasound came back fairly clear; and my biological age is about six years younger than my chronological age

What do I take away from this?

First, despite not being able to prioritize fitness, having a horrible year of sleep hygiene, and high stress and grief levels, my body did in fact hold up. I attribute a huge part of this to my heavy investment in supporting my mind through IFS therapy and my body through ongoing support from talented professionals.

Second, to sustain the quality and depth of husband and father I want to be, work I want to do, and adventure I want to experience long-term – something has to change.

Third, I likely know the ingredients, but I need to stick to them with consistency.

If I were giving myself a protocol for well-being going forward, in order of importance it might look something like:

  • Finally, for the first time in my life, establish a consistent sleep schedule with an established wind-down routine and environment that encourages this.
  • Continue to eat dairy free, gluten free, and avoid obvious trigger foods; reduce sugar to 20g/day or less; and make every attempt to switch to tea over coffee with a caffeine limit (time and quantity) each day
  • Limit travel to absolute essential trips and establish a strict routine for maintaining well-being while on the road. Minimize time away from my family and optimize everything for feeling good when getting back to my family.
  • Set up a modest gym in my garage and workout vigorously for 30-45 minutes every day, with a focus on functional movement and balanced strength.
  • Install a modest sauna in back yard and do 20-minute sessions at 185º 4-5x per week while making minor accommodations to account for reproductive health (ice) and heat exposure to my head (sauna hat)
  • Maintain habits of bi-monthly chiropractor, monthly massage and cranio-sacral therapy, and bi-monthly IFS therapy

Like I tell my clients all the time: you already know what to do, you just haven’t decided whether to pay the emotional cost of doing it. I am human too.

TRAVEL & ADVENTURE

2025 had a lot of travel; not much of it was for the purposes of fun or adventure.

Here was the travel calendar for the year:

  • January: Las Vegas to speak; Scotts Valley, CA to speak
  • February: St. Petersburg, FL to visit my parents
  • March: Asheville, NC for coach training
  • April: McMinnville, OR for a marriage retreat; Asheville, NC for coach training; Atlanta to see my grandfather (O’Pa)
  • May: Asheville, NC for coach training
  • June: Boise, ID for Craft + Commerce (with the whole family!); Hood River, OR with family
  • July: Santa Rosa Beach, FL to see my parents; Breckenridge, CO for a mastermind retreat; Columbus, OH to become a godparent and visit friends; Suttle Lodge to take a much needed break as a family
  • August: St. Petersburg, FL to help my dad recover; Boise, ID to record content
  • September: Boise, ID to record content
  • October: Minneapolis, MN to speak; Atlanta for a mastermind and speaking; Bryson City, NC to see family; Asheville for coach training; Deschutes River on a fishing trip
  • November: things finally calmed down; San Francisco for a day for a baptism; McMinnville, OR for a family retreat; Hood River for my son’s birthday
  • December: a glorious absence of travel; Boise for a day to film content

A younger version of me would’ve dreamed of the kind of opportunity that sent me all over the country. The current version of me has a six year old, a three year old, and a beautiful wife at home and doesn’t get enough sleep. It’s a blessing and a challenge. And one I’m determined to find more balance in as I’m likely to have a similar year of travel ahead.

We also got outside throughout the year:

  • We hiked Silver Falls
  • We trail blazed in Forest Park with the UGA alumni association
  • I did a solo hike in Forest Park
  • I took the boys paddleboarding and canoeing for the first time
  • I did a solo hike on Sauvie Island for my birthday
  • We hiked in Tyron Creek State Park
  • We hiked at Starvation Creek
  • We walked around a local university’s campus lake repeatedly
  • And I once again got to encounter one of the most remarkable fish (Steelhead) in the world on the Deschutes river with a good group of men

One of the things I most want to make sure we do as parents is to invite our boys to marvel at the natural beauty in this region of the country we’re so lucky to live in. I hope as we do that they’re beginning to fall in love with it just like we have.

I know for sure that their nervous systems settle and they seem happy when they’re outside. And that makes me happy.

FINANCES

I won’t harp here, as talking about money in public is a complicated topic.

Here’s what I will say:

  • I have grown my coaching practice to the point that I charge in the top tier of coaching rates for the US
  • My business earned more money (both revenue and profit) this past year than I have earned in any other year in my career (with the exception of selling stock one time)
  • We invested heavily in our future by buying a company and rallying a group of friends to support us in the cause
  • I spent more money on my business than I ever have before
  • We lived a good life that was fully paid for, but we didn’t make any substantive investments in our long-term financial health this year

One of the things I’ve learned from my own experience and that of my clients is that taking risks never feels any easier. Even when you are in fact more financially secure, risk still feels like risk. The difference is that when you have a safety net, you will in fact be ok if your risks don’t pay off (as long as they’re reasonable). That doesn’t make it feel less scary.

We took some big risks this year. Nicole and I teamed up. We bought a company. We put a big piece of our financial future in our own hands. And we have no idea whether or how it will pay off. That’s both exciting and scary at the same time. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Thank You For Reading!

That’s my review of 2025, with little sprinklings of hopes and intentions for 2026. It is, of course, deeply personal.

If you’ve read this far, I hope you found something of value here. Something that helped you pause and reflect on how far you’ve come in the year or decade past.

Here’s to a great year ahead. For you and for me.

PS: I’d love if you dropped me a note if you enjoyed this by replying to my newsletter. You can subscribe just below

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