Annual Review: 2020

Another year complete.

Another year complete. 

Here's a quick recap of 2020, which also happened to be one of the craziest years of my many people’s lives as well as one of the best years of my life to date.

This is something I want to start doing as a personal exercise that I believe will help me reflect on multiple areas of life, and maybe it can help whoever reads it (which at the time of this writing, is probably no one).

This Annual Review will answer three questions, which I’ve emulated after one of my favorite writers and authors, James Clear. 

• What went well this year?

• What didn’t go so well?

• What did I learn?

Please note that this annual review is a personal process and in reality nothing else, it will be made public on my soon to be up website of some sort which is not created yet, so people can read, and maybe learn one or two things, perhaps it will serve purely as entertainment and nothing more, but hopefully, at least one person can learn a thing or two.

I will try to keep this brief and only highlighting the things that had the most impact, both positive as well as the not so good things that took place during the year. This will include both personal and business items since this is an exercise for myself on life, not just on specific aspects of it.

What went well this year?

My dad is still with us…

Thankfully we were able to have my dad with us through another year, in 2019 he was hit with what seemed to be a very random illness which resulted in him having to be hospitalized in a matter of hours.

Without too many details, he had to undergo two brain surgeries, one ear surgery, and a lot of therapy. Dad is doing well now (surprisingly to us and doctors as well). Learned one of the most important lessons because of this. Life is fragile. Cherish moments with loved ones and take nothing for granted.

I bought my first house…

I had originally planned to do this in 2019, but my dad was in a delicate condition, and I had to help out my family financially, so the best thing to do here was waiting, which ended up being a good thing for a couple of reasons (1) I had no idea how to go about buying a house and (2) I wouldn’t have been able to because I had not yet been self-employed for over 2 years, which was a requirement to getting loan approval.

I got engaged…

Pretty self-explanatory here so I won’t go into a ton of detail. I first met my now fiancee (Mily) through Hinge - honestly pretty cool because their tag-line is “the dating app that’s meant to be deleted”, and needless to say that was the case.

I had no idea where/how I was going to do this since the world was on hold because of COVID-19. Mily’s mom had won a trip to Cancun and they invited me, this was before anyone knew about my plans, I don’t even think I knew I was going to do it when they first invited me, I’d definitely thought about it but nothing concrete. After some thought I decided I was going to do it during that trip because let’s be frank, I wasn’t going to be able to go anywhere (outside of the local area) if I didn’t take advantage of this; the backup was probably going to be Flagstaff (about a three-hour drive from Phoenix).

We got the final confirmation for the trip as we neared August and I pulled it off flawlessly, they will probably never read this, but to the concierge at the resort that helped out, thank you for all your help, it wouldn’t have been possible without your help.

Highest yearly revenue to date…

My agency, Fantom Agency generated the most revenue since inception in 2017 when it was really just an “idea” I  had in the back of my head.

~$200k.

I know the dollar amount above is not of much meaning without expenses, we’re still crunching those numbers, but this has been the most revenue we’ve seen.

I’m pretty damn proud of the revenue we generated, not satisfied, but definitely proud, especially being the first year as a full-time business owner/entrepreneur.

For context, the only “full-time” employee there is me, I would say I work over the typical 8-hour day. There are some team members, which include an administrative assistant, two media buyers, one lead scraper, and a general assistant. Accounting is outsourced to bench.co and a CPA who handles most of my tax items.

Might bring in more numbers to make that number more meaningful but for now, that will suffice.

Launched GetAds…

GetAds is an ad banner service that provides frictionless ad banner design. This was the result of a separate idea I initially had in mind, more of a very minor software (a Chrome extension) that is still available here.

After long periods of idle time, I had pretty much left it in the past, but a close friend of mine (which I’ve yet to meet) brought up an idea to start a graphic design service that only delivered ad creative. We left it at that for some time but I knew it was something that was majorly needed in the ad space (being an agency owner I would know from working with multiple clients, and all we handle is paid acquisition).

Finally, we decided to launch the thing and we had a pretty good response right off the bat.

With GetAds we also launched a newsletter that is a play to get more qualified leads (of course) in the funnel. The newsletter is called The AdReport and it showcases 5 ads each week and we write three little excerpts on why we think they perform well.

Read 29 books…

I use to hate reading. If you would’ve told me that one day I would love to read and would have read 29 books in a year I would’ve told you, you we’re crazy. During college, I fell in love with personal development and psychology. This was the by-product of change that happened due to my being overweight in high-school and doing something about it after being made fun of because of it.

The reasoning behind the change wasn’t ideal, but it definitely had a big impact on me. Of course, I wanted to be in shape for a common reason then, I wanted women to be attracted to me. That was what drove me to become a better person of myself then, not necessarily health.

I began to fall in love with the process of personal development and growth, not just physical but mental and spiritual as well. The reason I started my first business (a clothing line at the beginning of college) was that I started going to the gym consistently, and that sparked my entrepreneurial spirit to what it is today.

I’ve made a habit out of reading for 30 minutes a day. For 2021 I’ve challenged myself to read 52 books and increasing 30 mins to 45 mins per day. I’ve also just recently found out about Good Reads (here’s my profile if you want to see what I’m currently reading) which I know will just help in my passion for reading.

Here’s the list (in no particular order) if anyone cares to see what piqued my interest more specifically:

• Slight Edge by Jeff Olson

• How To Own Your Mind by Napoleon Hill

• Atomic Habits by James Clear

• Metahuman by Deepak Chopra

• Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for A Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance

• The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

• Sapiens by Noah Yuval Harari

• How To Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie

• Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

• The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene

• Drive by Daniel H. Pink

• Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

• How To Be a capitalist Without Any Capital by Nathan Latka

• Vital Lies & Simple Truths by Daniel Goleman

• The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz

• The Ultimate Sales Machine by Chet Holmes

• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

• Sway by Ori Brafman

• This Is Marketing by Seth Godin

• Becoming Supernatural by Joe Dispenza

• The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy

• Pitch Anything by Oran Klaff

• The Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie by Andrew Carnegie

• A Happy Pocket Full of Money by David Cameron Gikandi

• Warrior of the Light by Paulo Coelho

• High-Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard

• The Motivation Manifesto by Brendon Burchard

• The Art of War by Sun Tzu

• Stillness is Key by Ryan Holiday

Got to see a lot of family (despite lockdown)...

Most of my family lives in Guadalajara, Mexico (where I’m from, I moved to the US when I was 10). My immediate family and I use to travel down there to see them almost once a year during summer when I was younger and had summer breaks during school. As my sisters and I grew up and had more responsibilities (jobs) we stopped going as often because schedules almost never lined up.

My older sister got married in late November (seeing them plan a wedding during the pandemic was an art). So a lot of family that I had not seen in years got together and we were able to catch up, they were also able to meet my fiance Mily which was a nice feeling, especially the fact that my grandma (only one left) was able to meet her.

Hired a high-performance coach…

This was one of the best decisions to date. I don’t think most people would consider this investment since it was by most people’s standards a pretty big sum of money, especially because it’s nothing tangible. The 12-week program was $6,000.

This has been a very transformative experience. We have a weekly call and there’s usually a focus area (ie. courage, relationships, energy, productivity, etc).

The thing I love most is that I’ve been able to be extremely open and vulnerable during the calls, and when I tend to close up we dig deep to find areas of improvement.

I highly recommend anyone trying to reach higher levels of performance to get a good, credible coach. It will be an invaluable investment.

I was insanely consistent with my habits & built some new ones…

COVID-19 didn’t make for smooth sailing when it came to exercising. My gym time was definitely taking a toll during March when AZ started getting locked down, I knew I had to do something.

I was looking for some gym equipment and even contemplated getting a squat rack and a bench for my parent’s house (where I was living at the time), but there was simply no space for this, and there was nowhere that had it in stock.

I resorted to purchasing a TRX and running about a mile each day. The TRX was a new experience for me, definitely a good investment, and makes for some pretty good workouts as well.

I also kept my meditation habits up and did it almost daily, as well as my journaling and intermittent fasting.

Once the gyms opened back up I went back full force and was able to get in what (so far) is the best shape of my life, I think at least, however like always, there is an improvement to be made.

Two miles a week…

I’ve never been much of a runner, in fact, I always hated running. I remember when I was young in school and they tested our mile time, it was my least favorite thing to do. I hated it.

And because I hated it I challenged myself to do more of it.

I started our committing myself to run one mile a week, usually on Saturdays when I’m able to spend a little more time at the gym.

Once one mile started feeling easy I increased it to two miles per week. Now I want to slowly increase that to two and a half or three per week.

My back pain is somewhat gone...

I’ve dealt with back pain for quite some time (years). I believe (from what doctors have told me) that it’s partly due to hereditary reasons as well as additional stress from physical stress put on my back (this is almost definitely) due to powerlifting in the past.

According to my PCP and some tests I got done in past years, I had what is called Spondylolysis, which is a stress fracture on the vertebrae.

The pain sucks. Can’t stand for long periods of time without having to adjust due to pain, and the same goes for sitting with my back straight.

Because of this, I stopped powerlifting and due to some compound movements (deadlifts and squats) that I knew were only going to make it worse.

I still exercise all body parts, but I’m sure to be more careful with form as well as not choosing exercises that put large amounts of stress on my lower back.

The pain has gone down dramatically without the need for medication or surgery, my form on certain exercises has improved and I’m planning on starting to deadlift and squat again, with caution of course.

Ironically I traveled more than any other year…

Of course during the year that we’re not supposed to travel as much due to COVID was the year that I was out and about doing my thing like there was no pandemic going on.

I’m not a HUGE traveler by any means so most people will probably think this is nothing, but to me it was. I’m going to list out the places I went to because it’s the best way for me to remember aside from pulling up receipts etc. This is in order of me remembering:

1. Traveled to Cancun, Mexico with my (now) fiancee’s family (where I proposed as well)

2. Went to Colorado for the first time

3. Went to Guadalajara, Mexico for my sister’s wedding

4. Went to Sedona, Arizona once or twice, can’t remember exactly

That’s it it’s really not that much unless I’m forgetting something, it definitely felt like more than that in my head, haha.

I remember now (this part was edited after this was published). I was supposed to travel to Miami for a mastermind in August (got cancel because of COVID) and I was also going to go to an event in London in September (also canceled for the same reason as above). Maybe that’s why it felt like so much travel, I was mentally in London and Miami.

What didn’t go so well this year?

I felt like I was getting too comfortable…

At some point in 2020, I felt like things were going so well that I could take the backseat and cruise for a bit. Trying to look back I feel like a big reason for this was that the pandemic happened and to be frank, I wasn’t as affected as other people in the sense that I already worked from home so that wasn’t a big change for me, most of our clients are SaaS companies so we kept pretty much our entire book of business and some of them thrived during this time as well.

While everyone else’s situation seemed to be declining I felt like maybe I was in a good position.

This made me comfortable and I didn’t like it, I didn’t like thinking that I was lucky to be okay throughout this entire time. However one of the good things that came out of this was the fact that I looked for professional help, this was the reason I sought out a high-performance coach.

COVID-19…

Even though I’ve brought up the fact that I was okay throughout the pandemic (and still am thank God), we can’t deny that it was a big change from the norm. Cities were locked down, now we need to be careful with everyone we come across with, can’t go out in peace, can’t see people we want to see because of fear of either getting the virus or passing it on to someone if we had it but didn’t know it.

I think mostly, a lot of uncertainty which led to stress.

Lost a handful of our GetAds clients right as we started…

I’m still not entirely sure why this happened. I know there is a lot of potential with the service from just talking with people who have shown interest in it, and a lot of people who signed up almost as soon as they heard about it. It’s nothing huge by any means, I think we had a total of 4 clients (I told you it wasn’t big by any means, we’re just getting started though). And within one or two months 3 of them were gone so we lost 75% of our customer base rather quickly.

Part of this reason to be honest I think was that communication wasn’t the best on my co-founder’s end, which to be completely honest falls on my shoulders because I maybe didn’t set the right expectations or the training was flawed where he didn’t see that as a priority.

Unfortunately, after bringing it up multiple times it seemed to not have improved so I had a more serious conversation with my co-founder, that seemed to have helped but we’ll see how it goes.

Many hot leads didn’t pull through on verbal agreements or just ghosted us…

This is for my advertising agency specifically. I’m not really sure what happened here. I mentioned above that we had our best year-to-date as far as revenue goes, but aside from that, there wasn’t nearly as much new business as I would have liked. 

At times I feel like this is because the wrong people are reaching out to us; the reason I say this is because typically the objection I get is that they don’t have the funds for the engagement and their budgets are too small.

What did I learn?

Cherish life and your loved ones. Life is fragile…

(Unfortunately) I can’t be the only one that learned this lesson this year. Although I didn’t personally lose anyone, my family and I did almost lose our dad in 2019 and that was by far one of the scariest situations I’ve ever been in.

Being able to spend time with my family and with your loved ones is something that (I hope, but I’m not perfect) I will never take for granted ever again.

Live with intention…

One of the best things that I’ve learned this year, from books and from my high-performance coach is to live with intention and be mindful and present at all times. Intentionality can change so many things because we go into everything with an entirely different mindset than if we were simply going through the motions.

Everything compounds…

The good and the bad, every single thing we do, no matter how minute, compounds for the good or for the worse. Nothing is ever constant. Everything curves either up or down. But it all depends on your actions.

You see this everywhere, just take a look around. Think of the trees or a puppy, one day they are tiny, and even though they are growing by incredibly small amounts each day one day they are huge. Same thing with savings accounts, same thing with bad cholesterol & obesity. The reality is that we each have absolute control over most of the actions that we take.

Slow and steady wins the race…

There’s always a reason behind all those sayings. This can be applied to many different situations but for simplicity let’s just exercise with what I brought up above regarding running a mile and then two and now working on three per week.

Had I started running three miles right off the bat without doing a smaller amount previously I probably wouldn’t have done it again. Why? Because it would’ve been a terrible experience and I would’ve been turned off by it. Instead by doing something that is manageable & small, I’m able to finish it and conquer it, now I can continue slow and steady until it becomes easy and I want to challenge myself again

Move and take action fast…

I think that simply doing something is better than just waiting and standing still waiting for the perfect time or moment to come across.

We waited months before we did anything for GetAds even though we knew it was a great idea and a business that we could take off the ground. Within days of me telling people about it, we had interested prospects that had told me we should launch the service, within days of publicly launching we had paying clients.

Reminder to stop thinking and start doing.

We are not our circumstances, we are our philosophy and actions...

While I see and understand that many people had the worst years of their lives, I also saw many people create businesses out of necessity and I also saw people create excuses for why they couldn’t do something or why it wasn’t the best time to do something.

I saw many people sit back and not do anything and it bothered me, mainly because I’m the type of person that is always working on something, and if there was anything that people had during this pandemic it was time, time to think, reflect, build, create.

I’m a firm believer that people become what they repeatedly think and do. People with a positive philosophy on life had positive experiences during the pandemic and they saw massive amounts, not just business but also personal growth. People who have a negative philosophy on life sit at home while an entire year passes them by and say things like “this year doesn’t count” or “can we delete 2020”.

I’ll end it with something that struck me so hard this year that I got a tattoo of it. I’ve always known it but it’s never been more clear to me.

“As a man thinketh, so shall he become”.