December 17, 2021
Happy Friday everyone. This will be the last edition of Stretch Four Insights of the year so I wanted to dive into some goals for 2022 and reflections and postmortems from 2021.
This year, like many, seems to have passed fairly quickly. I had the three major life events happen this year.
I pivoted and rebranded my company to ModernTax in early 2021 with an entirely new business model.
Whitney and I got married in Cabo with family and friends.
I learned I was going to be a father on the first day of August and we are now beyond the halfway point at 6 months along.
At the beginning of the year, my primary goals were to raise a series A round of funding for my company, successfully help plan and execute our wedding, and focus on my workouts and nutrition leading up to my wedding date.
This year I wanted to use a process to review how I performed on those goals:
Review the goals from the previous year and assign a percentage of how many I succeeded in. My passing percentage is 30% for each goal, thanks CC.
Make new goals for 2022 and move forward with the goals I did not complete last year, if relevant to the new year. I'm content in pushing goals out a year but of course, if it's taking multiple years maybe I need to rethink the goals I'm setting for myself.
Write a narrative around how I feel about the goals I accomplished and the goals I missed. In this piece, it will read like a postmortem for the things I did not accomplish. Similarly, I want to set up a narrative around the things I want to accomplish for this upcoming year.
This is the process. Give me time to think deeply and reflect on this year (15 days left), and set myself up for success with a clear mindful approach to what I want to do and accomplish in 2022.
New Year's resolutions are what they are. They are a lot of hype, but with that said it's time to set goals and make plans. For me, this helps clear my mind, reflect, and start a new.
With that said, let's get into it. And if you want to hear more or spread the word, subscribe and tell your friends!
📰 2021 Results & Postmortems
First off, I did not sit down and write out specific 2021 goals. This shows I was not as reflective this time last year, likely it was because Whitney and I were in Charlotte visiting family and friends. Moving forward, I am setting a mental note to slow down and take time to set my goals and write my reflections and postmortems no matter where I am at.
Health & Fitness: Focusing on these two things as my wedding approached was a goal I set in the back of my mind. Whitney and I were fairly militant leading up to the date. We did everything from intermittent fasting, dry January, and other bio hacks. Based on when I started in December 2020 until June 3, 2021. I dropped from 248.4 pounds to 233 pounds. I reached 54% of my goal based on those numbers as I initially targeted 220 pounds as my wedding day goal.
Professional: Raising a Series A round of funding for my company was the goal for 2021. What happened was we raised an undisclosed amount of funding technically called our Seed-2 round of funding. This is primarily because we pivoted our business entirely in January and rebranded the company. If we are talking pure numbers, I reached about 4% of this goal, well below my 30% target. This one is easy to push into next year, but the shelf life of my company surviving all will depend on how quickly we are able to get to profitability with growth or raise our Series A.
Personal: Successfully helping plan and execute our wedding was top of mind in 2021. Whitney and I had finally secured a venue at the end of 2020 and COVID-19 was expected to not have much of an impact on our wedding date of June 19th. To say we lucked out is an understatement. If you think back to June, that was that sweet spot where most people (who wanted to be) were vaccinated and the Delta variant was a twinkle in our eye. We had an amazing weekend celebrating and continued the celebration for a week during our honeymoon (also in Cabo). We were 100% successful in achieving this goal.
Writing & Creating More Content: This was a massive goal that I had no real formality to reach in 2021. I underestimated how difficult 2020 would be but in retrospect, I would have liked to begin this newsletter during that time. I plan to push myself to create other forms of content like video in 2022. By starting this newsletter and participating in a formal course on writing I would give myself a 66% success rating, the last mile is growing the blog. See below.
2022 Goals
There is a lot of excitement about 2022, first off Whitney and I are adding a new member to our household in a few months. We are all hands-on preparing for parenthood. With this new baby boy in our future, a lot of things are designed around optimizing our lives to make sure he has all the resources, love, and care he needs to grow up in the new world we live in. For me, the four-goal themes of health & fitness, personal, and creativity will need to be even more streamlined.
The 2022 mission statement: Create an environment of progress in my household, workplace, and mind that impacts people in a positive way.
My mission is becoming more clear as I write this newsletter. I want to see progress in all the areas that I can impact and I want to show more faith in areas outside of my control. Moving into 2022, my mantra is, "work smarter and harder" while also being more mindful of what is happening in real-time and expressing more confidence in areas that I am unsure of. If I do this I believe I can be more impactful on others around me in my home, at work, and in my communities.
With that said here are the four overarching goals for 2022:
Health & fitness
Establish a structured plant-based diet that includes no meat or dairy foods
Working out 4-5 times a week with my personal trainer and hitting 3 freestyle cardio sessions
7-8 hours of sleep on average
two routine physicals a year
These are aggressive goals but I want to track the averages and focus on hitting 30%+ success rates each week. While going completely plant-based is going to be a real labor of love, I am using this quote as an inspiration, "Big changes beget big results, Shoot for the moon— if you fail, you will land among the stars."
Professional
Successfully securing a Series A fundraising for ModernTax
Reaching successful hiring rate across 15-20 jobs openings set to be open for 2022
Achieve $3.5M annual revenue run rate by EOY 2022
Launch investing syndicate in startups adjacent to what I am building
ModernTax's success depends on our ability to secure Series A funding and ramp our revenue in 2022. Additionally, I want to begin an investing syndicate for some personal venture investments. This will be small and highly correlated with what I am already doing as a founder/CEO me. From a professional standpoint, goals are fairly straightforward and while the team is the one doing the work, it is important for me as a leader to be setting big audacious goals.
Personal & Relationships
Take 3-4 weeks away from work to spend time bonding with my son in the early months after his birth
Coordinate cross-country trips to make sure we grow close to both sides of our families.
Maintain a healthy, spiritual, and romantic relationship with Whitney and be more attentive to the domestic things that need to be done.
With the addition of my son in April, I will do my best to take an extended break to spend time with him in those early weeks. Fortunately, Whitney and I are blessed that she gets a five-month maternity leave, with ModernTax being in flux it is unrealistic for me to be able to take such an extended time away from work. Additionally, now that we are married and work is default remote, I want to be intentional about our cross-country trips to visit my family so I will work on being more coordinated and strategic considering we will be traveling with a third person now. Lastly, cultivating our relationship will take time and effort especially with a little one, so more planned date nights are on the top of the list.
Creativity
Maintain a weekly writing and content creation cadence for my newsletter.
Volunteer, participate, and produce more opportunities to contribute to communities where I find interest both philanthropic and professional.
There were some learnings throughout the year that definitely changed my perspective on a lot of things. One is this newsletter and making writing much more a part of my professional and personal life. I thank you all for subscribing. I and grateful to Whitney for editing, and I and excited about the plan moving forward.
Check out last week's long-form piece on how I got scammed in my first foray into Web3.
Lastly, if you found this newsletter interesting and know someone else who would, please forward it to them or tell them to subscribe here. It would make my day if you do!
Back to the trenches.
Best,
Matt