3 Years in Business: Annual Review 2022

A recap of my company's 2022-2023 year, including lessons learned in my 3rd year of business and a breakdown of how things went.

You can read previous recaps here: Year One, Year Two.

Mixing Business & Life

Welcome to my 2022 Annual Review.

This year, things are going to be a little different.

For those familiar, you know I’ve been engaging in the ritual of an annual review for the past few years. I find it’s a great way to reflect, learn, and digest my experiences, in order to gain more clarity and connection with what I hope to build in the coming year.

Previously, I wrote one personal review and then one business review.

But it feels like my work and my life are more integrated than ever before, and thus separating out the reviews felt like I was artificially splitting my life into two.

So this year I’m experimenting with a combined review, looking at my life and my work in a more holistic fashion. It’s a biggie post, so I’ve broken it down into the following sections in case you want to skim:

1. The Purpose of Annual Reviews
2. Reflecting on My Plan for 2022
3. Highlights
4. Lowlights
5. Business Breakdown
6. Financial Overview
7. Lessons Learned

To check out reflections from the past few years, click here:

2020 Business Annual Review

2021 Business Annual Review

2021 Personal Annual Review

The Purpose of Annual Reviews

First and foremost, this is a personal process. Writing helps me to think, it opens up new connections previously unseen, and allows me to clarify thoughts and ideas that until they are written, are unclear and amorphous. In essence, this is about my own growth.

However, I do like to share it publicly for a couple of reasons:

First, it helps keep me accountable. Even though nobody is holding a gun to my head and screaming, “Connor, where is your fucking review from last year?!” I still somehow feel a sense of obligation and accountability to share these because it’s part of what I do. As James Clear writes about, identity shapes habits. Now I have the identity of an annual review person, I just write it.

Second, I feel a debt of gratitude for this process and want to pay it forward. It's been such a powerful practice for me that I want to share it with others. Maybe one or two people reading this will try their own (a few of you lovely readers did this last year!) and benefit as I have. (s/o to Tyler Sanchez who first inspired me to try this myself)

Okay, enough of the appetizer. Let’s get to the meat.

Reflecting On My Plans for 2023

Personal

I set out a few focus areas in my last annual review, so I wanted to start this one by reviewing them.

• Claire & Connor — I knew this would be a big year for our relationship as we started working full-time together, moved our lives abroad, planned FamilyMoon, and more. We set the intention to do couples therapy last year, and honestly I dropped the ball on that one. We did some great Relationship Meetings and spent loads of quality time together, so I’m overall quite satisfied with this area. I’d score this one a 9/10.

• Exploration & Working with Purpose —  as we embarked on our Semi-Nomadic Living Experiment, I wanted to work less and live more in 2022 so I could invest more energy into exploring potential new homes and making friends. I did so well on this, I think the business suffered as a result. Be careful what you wish for! :) Would give myself a 9/10.

• Quiet & Reflection — I wanted to make a practice of regularly unplugging to provide space for reflection and introspection. While I definitely had plenty of days away from my laptop, kept up my daily meditation practice, and made breathwork a priority, I didn’t make time for any type of retreat. Gotta get one booked for 2023. I’d give myself a 6/10.

Business

I also had a few areas I wanted to focus on for the business:

• Course — one of our big goals in 2022 was to publish our first online course, and we did it! I took off 6 weeks in the summer and Claire and I jammed daily to bring Sustainable Productivity to life. I’m satisfied with the creation but we could have done more to launch and market it. Score 8/10.

• Training Teachers — in order to serve clients better and take steps towards scaling the business, we knew we needed to onboard and train some great new teachers and facilitators. We did this too! Claire created an incredible teacher training program and together we trained up 3 new Make Time teachers. I’m very happy we have Ros, John, and Katie helping us spread the Make Time message.  Score 9/10.

• Brand — and we did this! We created a new brand for our training company, Forgewell, plus a new platform for our content, One Percent Wisdom. I’m happy we launched these, but I’m not sure we have figured out exactly how to use these brands to their full potential. I think it was a big step to get them out there but more work needs to be done.  Score 7/10.

Highlights

This past year was a wild one. Claire and I embarked on our Semi-Nomadic Living Experiment and spent half the year in Austin and the other half in Lisbon. Claire officially joined the business, so that was a huge highlight. And we just did a ton of stuff, had too much fun, and even managed to work a little.

• Family Time — I feel like I really filled up my family cup this year. We spent probably 2 months with my family this year, which is a major improvement over the past few years. I’m more convinced than ever that doing fewer trips but longer stays is the best way for me to stay connected with my family.

• Working Together — Claire joined the business full-time in Jan 2021, and it has been a great journey so far. There have been definite highs and lows as we’ve figured out roles, routines, and learned to work better with each other. In the first few months of 2023, Claire took a big step and joined me in co-facilitating, which has created an entirely new dynamic in the business which I’m stoked about. It feels more collaborative and balanced than ever before.

• Family Moon — This is a follow-on of the above, but it deserves its own bullet. Some of you know that Claire and I had a small, non-traditional wedding during COVID times. Our parents and my family weren’t in attendance, so we wanted to do something different to celebrate with them. We ended up organizing a week together in Akumal, Mexico where we had the most wonderful time, eating, swimming, exploring, and connecting. So happy with how this turned out.

• Slowww-Mads — This was the year we went on our Semi-Nomadic Living Experiment and tested out a couple new cities to live in. What a trip. I learned a ton this year about what I want from a home city, and I think the experience of moving to new cities with Claire really challenged our relationship at times but ultimately helped us grow a lot as a couple.

• NSDR (a.k.a. The Scientific Semi-Snooze) — if there is one wellness practice I picked up last year that drastically improved my well-being, it was NSDR. I dove deep into Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR), which is essentially a deeply relaxful state you reach through a guided body scan. This is what the yogis have done for millenia and call Yoga Nidra. It’s what the Western World has now dubbed “scientifically sound” and hence yours truly felt justified in playing with this practice. It essentially means I have taken a 20-minute nap most afternoons this year, and the feeling of rejuvenation it provides is incredible. It’s basically replaced my afternoon meditation.

• Sports — as someone who has consistently worked out for a decade, it surprised me to remember just how fun sports are to me vs. simply exercising at the gym. In particular, I fell in love with pickleball in Austin. Being active, playful, and competitive helped me get into the flow state, and 3-4 hours of play would pass by in what felt like minutes. We took our first padel lesson in Lisbon last week and I’m hopeful this will become a big part of our new life here.

• Rituals — I was inspired by something I read from Nat Eliason about how he had created a weekly ritual of morning swims in Barton Springs in Austin. We joined the swim while we were in Austin and it was really cool to see how a consistent event like that creates a low-friction way to see people regularly. Claire and I copied the format and did a Friday morning coffee & walk in London Fields over the summer, and it was such a joy. I want to double down on a new ritual for my Lisbon community once we’re back (working idea is a Friday afternoon ocean dip).

• Travel — I traveled a lot this year and got to visit (and revisit) some incredible places. Lisbon, Naples, Salt Lake City, Park City, Phoenix/Scottsdale, Sedona, Flagstaff, Santa Fe, Lubbock, Austin, Houston, Akumal, Tulum, Santa Teresa, Baltimore, Bethany Beach, NYC, London, some English villages, Ericeira, New Orleans, Madeira. Kind of mad looking back.

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Lowlights

There were plenty of challenges throughout the year. Here are a few that stood out:

• The Clot — I was diagnosed with deep vein thrombosis (DVT) in November after returning to Lisbon from a hectic travel schedule in the weeks prior. This led to an inpatient hospitalization for a week, and many weeks of recovery time in which I could barely move. It was a huge reminder of the importance of health, and also taught me the lesson that when in doubt, go see a doctor.

• Logistics Life — Damn, we did a lot of logistics this year. I say “we” when I really mean, Claire did a lot of logistics and I did a little. But still, this is my review so let me continue. I feel like we spent so much time and energy making the nomadic year logistics happen. Flights, Airbnbs, car rentals, visas, luggage storage, coworking spaces, and the list goes on. It enabled the super sexy year we lived but I’m hoping we have less of this on our plates as we settle down in Lisbon this year.

• Writing — I hate to say it, but it was another year of mediocre writing. Since I switched the cadence of One Percent Wisdom away from monthly, I lost touch with the discipline and regularity that I had experienced in the past. I ended up writing a ton for the Sustainable Productivity course, by my output overall wasn’t too good.

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Business Breakdown

In my 2020 and 2021 annual business reviews, I went into a lot of detail about all the workshops, talks, coaching, etcI did, but I'm not feeling that this year so I'm going to share a bigger picture overview.

Currently, the focus of our business is on helping teams create healthy, high-performance cultures.

What that means in practice is that we teach skills around time management, productivity, and mental health & well-being.

I believe when teams unlock better collaboration, focus, and prioritization, they feel and function better.

In order to do do those things well, people need to manage their mental, physical, and emotional health. By integrating practices like intentional breaks, active recovery, and rest into their daily and weekly routines, people tend to feel and function better.

So we are helping teams to build these practices of focus and well-being into their culture, so that people can feel healthy, well, productive, and engaged.

How do we do this? Primarily through training, consulting, courses, and a bit of coaching.

Workshops. Through facilitating workshops, we teach the skills listed above in an engaging and personalized way. This area continues to be the revenue driver of our business, which is great because I love running these, but it's also something that's tough to scale.

Consulting. While not a primary focus, we did engage in some consulting with a client of ours last year, helping them embed skills around focus, prioritization, and recovery into a cultural transformation program they were building.

Courses. We launched our first course last year, and we plan to do more in this space in the future.

Coaching. By coaching, I mean 1:1 advisory work. I did very little of this last year, but sometimes we do include it as a follow-up service to our workshops, so I'm including it here too.

Check out our new site and book a call if you want to learn more ;)

Financial Overview

Here’s a breakdown of the financials this past year.

Total Turnover — £228,287  (compared to £215,946 in 2021-22)

Total Expenses (including tax) — £95,164

Operating Profit — £120,647

I'm fairly happy with these numbers considering the focus of our year was on exploring new potential homes and not so much on working.

We also put a lot of effort into the course and training other Make Time teachers, both bets I believe will pay off in the longer run.

Note: I've tried to simplify this overview as best as possible, but it's actually hard to do. Technically, we'd treat the small salary we pay ourselves (as opposed to the dividends where we draw most of earnings) as an expense, which would reduce the top-line revenue. But I've added it back in so that at non-financial businessperson (like myself) can just get the gist of this. Which is, we earned 220k, we paid expenses and taxes, and had 120k leftover.

Lessons Learned

Lesson 1: Be in nature

By far, one of the best parts of my last year has been the increase in time outdoors. This was a major impetus for leaving London, and we made the most of our time in Austin and Lisbon by getting outdoors on a regular basis. Claire and I did a Monday morning hike every week in Austin, made a weekly trip to the beach in Lisbon, and did a lot of our socializing through outdoor activities. It feels so good to me to be outdoors.

Lesson 2: Respect asymmetric risk vs. reward

Getting hospitalized with the blood clot reminded me how important it is to look our for asymmetric risks in life. I delayed going to the hospital because I don't like visiting the doctor and I was wary of the admin of doing it in a foreign country, but I'm so glad I did. The small inconvenience of going to the hospital compared to the potential life-threatening risk I might have faced with my DVT turning into a pulmonary embolism is crazy. When in doubt, I'll always go have a doctor check it out.

Lesson 3: Embrace the morning energy

I've known for a long time that I'm most energized, alert, focused, and productive in the first few hours after waking. Still, I sometimes get caught in the busy bandwagon of admin tasks that running a business creates. I've felt the best when I've used these hours well to create, to learn, to be in nature, rather than checking off another task or todo. I want to keep this in mind for the year ahead.

Lesson 4: Give First

One of my lessons from last year was about being in service to others. I was reminded this year of how important it is to give first. If you are constantly looking for ways to help others, to provide value, and to generally be a nice person, many good things will come back to you. It's not the sole reason I believe I should focus on giving, but it's an important reminder as sometimes I can forget the upside of having this attitude.

Lesson 5: Stop trying to clear the decks

I took a lot from reading Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, one of my favorite books of the past year. One lesson that really stuck with me is about letting go of the need to "clear the decks." This can crop up in many ways, from feeling like I "need" to clear my inbox before I start working on a creative projects, or thinking I "must finish X" before doing the thing I really want to do. Letting go of perfectionism and recognizing my own limits has been an ongoing lesson. Even though I slip back into my old mindset, I feel like I'm getting better at worrying less about meeting unrealistic expectations I put on myself, and instead just enjoying the moments, being present, and doing what's most important first without worrying about the rest.

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That's it! Thanks for reading.

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