I made $2.4 million dollars this year, but here's where I messed up

Yo, yo, yo, what's up? This is Brian from adspend.com. hope you're having an amazing holiday. Merry Christmas and almost Happy new year. It's December 31st, 12:11pm in Scottsdale, Arizona. As I'm filming this and I wanted to do a quick video that's different than what I've usually done. Recently, you guys have seen me post a lot of high production value content, a lot of behind the scenes and, you know, not really tactical trainings or reflections about what's actually happening inside the business. And so I wanted to do something completely different and go back to the roots of how this channel started and what the purpose of the channel is in the first place, which is to share with you everything that I'm doing, what's working, what hasn't worked, what I've learned. So you can obviously learn as I continue to grow my business and level up myself as well and not make the same mistakes that I'm making or have made as you for you and your business. Okay, so today I'm going to talk about 2024 reflections, milestones and goals for 2025. And let's just jump right into it. So 2024, okay. As of today, we are going to end at about $2.5 million in total revenue. Last year we did 1.78 million, so we basically increased by about 40%, which is awesome. We've grown year over year every single year that we've been in business. My first year in business, which was only about a half a year, I did about 368,000. The next year I scaled up to 1.08 million. So I basically hit seven figures in my agency in less than two years. And then the next year, third year in business, we did about 1.68. Last year we did 1.78, so not that much. But the difference was last year we sold only our products compared to the year before that, which was a couple partnerships. And then this year we are going to do 2.5 million with just our products. No partnerships with other people, no selling other things, just our products. @adspend.com, which has been amazing, we're going to end at 30% profit margins. Honestly, this is something I'll talk about as the Reflections as well. And we'll get into that in a second. And then we've onboarded and enrolled 184 new clients and customers this year, which is about 82% increase compared to last year. And I'll talk about how that happened as well. So let's get into it. Milestones. So some milestones where we productize our agency's YouTube ad service by introducing a hybrid offer. Okay. It's a done for you, done with you. And we've closed 184 new clients this year at that 15k price point or more depending on obviously what the package was that somebody bought. This allowed us to profitably scale the cold traffic and run ads on Facebook and YouTube and Google instead of relying solely on word of mouth referrals. And I talk about this in a previous video that I did, I'll link it on YouTube right here, which you can click and watch that next after this one to see how this offer works. But long story short, the issue that we always ran into previously was we had a done for you agency and our best clients were already making 100k a month in their businesses and you know, were very hard to find. And the way I would get them was through my personal brand, through word of mouth, through referrals and through masterminds. And that's how we are able to scale up to about 170k a month at the peak. Never really scaled past 200k a month and had to hire a bunch of people to fill on that. But more importantly, those clients never really came through ads. They came through, you know, word of mouth referrals and masterminds, like I said. And there's a very small market for that. Okay. So, you know, especially with what we were selling, we weren't selling like, you know, Facebook, Google and YouTube, we were just selling YouTube ads. And so the amount of people that need just YouTube ads and are ready and qualified for YouTube ads is a lot smaller. You can see the sliver of the market right here. Okay. And so what we had to do was we had to create a different product. We had to create a downsell essentially to cater to the majority of the market. And so what we essentially did was we sold a hybrid which is a done for you, done with you. Now this has been really good because it's allowed us to continue acquiring more customers, collect more cash up front and begin to feed the back end part of our agency, which is creating more agency clients essentially. And that's allowed us to scale. This is what most people, most agency owners, I should say, get stuck on, which is what kept us stuck for the longest time and just continuing to beat our head against the wall trying to figure out how to scale this thing without having to continue chasing whale clients that are specifically in the info industry now. We could have gone different markets, we could have gone E commerce, we could have gone to brick and mortar, we could have gone to different verticals, for example. But quite frankly, I didn't want to. I'm very passionate about courses, coaching, masterminds and info products because that's what personally changed my life. And I love this marketplace. I love the clients that we work with, when we work with the right clients, and the ones that obviously respect us and trust us and pay us. And I really do see this market continuing, continuing to grow.

So I didn't want to go in.

These other verticals just yet because I knew there was still a lot to tap into in this specific market. The problem is with done for you, obviously it's very limited because you have to charge a very high fee. And obviously, you know, you want to scale with the right clients, which are hard to find, especially if you don't have anything else to sell and you want to run ads. Okay? And so you can definitely do this. There's guys like Jeremy Haynes, obviously that are doing this that I've learned from as well, who, you know, have just a handful of clients like 5, 6, 7, 8 clients that, you know, have high retainers plus percentage of profit in Rev shares and those things. And we've done that as well. But I also want to have a team. I don't want to always have everything relied on me because quite frankly, I've done this to build a community, to build a team. And that might change in the future. You know, this isn't all like written in stone. Obviously I've changed my mind on a lot of things, but I needed to be able to sell something that was more mass market. And so that's what we add with the hybrid offer, which has been really, really helpful. And so that's what's allowed us to scale to $2.5 million this year, which has been primarily through that one offer. Now the cool part is, is this offer has really helped our clients because it's forced us, literally forced me specifically to teach how to create a high ticket offer, a scalable offer, something that's unique, that's different, that has a unique mechanism with guarantees, with risk reversals, and be able to get all of the information out of my head, which is a huge challenge because we started working with a lot more beginners, you know, people that were making 10, 20, 30k a month that didn't know how to run ads, didn't have any clue how ads worked, didn't know what a VSL was, didn't know how to write a vsl. They didn't know how to film ads.

Didn'T know what video equipment to use.

They didn't know what funnel they should use, what copy. They should have. All those different very nuanced things that are very specific to beginners that just quite frankly, we never needed to teach because we always worked with people that already had those things in place, which is why our market was always smaller. Because you had to have a funnel, you had to have a sales team, you had to have Facebook ads running in order to work with us and qualify to work with us because we charge very high ticket for our agency, right? And so when I had to go back this year and really relearn all those things and like force myself to.

Teach it, it was a very big.

Challenge because that was painful. You know, it was like teaching somebody how to do marketing essentially.

But thankfully we've done it and we.

Are still working on our product every single day, which is another thing I'll talk about later on. And it's worked, right? So for the right clients that have come in, the right clients that already have an offer, but they need it to be repackaged and positioned and we help them do that, we help them create their funnel, we help them launch their ads, we help them write the copy, the vsl, all those things. For example, like Harvey, you know, he was able to close his first deal for Matt and he actually came to me because he was selling a low ticket MRR subscription based offer. He wanted to scale basically a SaaS side of his business. And I was like, dude, it's just not gonna work. And to make it work, you're gonna have to go negative on your ad spend, lose money on the front end and be able to make it back on the back end, which is gonna lead to a high ticket thing anyways. And so let's just reverse that, let's go high ticket first.

So I helped him repackage, reposition his.

Offer to be able to sell it for a $6.4k price tag upfront, collect that cash, and he was able to close his first deal from ads and scale from 15k a month to 50k a month in about three months, which has been pretty crazy. And then someone like Ali, who's never ran ads before on YouTube, was only relying on Instagram, was able to close his first deal from ADS for $4,700 in about seven days. One booked call, one closed deal, 100% close rate thanks to these systems we helped him install in his business. It's not just the YouTube ads that we're helping people with now. It's helping them with their offer, their funnel, their vsl, their email sequences, their automations, their, their project management, their fulfillment, their sales process, their pitch, right? All of those things actually contribute to getting profitable with ads. And so that's what we helped ali do with mo. He was able to do 3.4x roas in 2 weeks. Sam was able to get $50 book calls for his offer, which he's never done before, thanks to our help. And then Machei, as most recently as of today, was able to get some of his best ads up and running after having our help inside of our hybrid offer, but also now inside of our mastermind, which I'll talk about in a second. And he was able to close his biggest cash collected month ever, literally this month as I'm filming this, he sent me this today, which has been awesome. So, so shout out to you, Machei. You've been crushing it, bro. And you will definitely be scaling to a million a month and we'll be helping you with these things. So with that being said, I'll get into now the dark side of this. So this year was a really big challenge. And primarily because, for those of you who don't know, I was living in Miami with my wife previously before this year, and we moved back to Arizona this time last year. And we moved back to Arizona from Miami simply because our last apartment in Miami, which was a condo actually that we were renting, that had everything furnished. It was a perfect fit on paper and it fit our price point at that time, had mold and the air conditioning kept breaking, broke about six times when we were living there. We came back from London one time and the entire apartment reeked of just mildew. And I woke up the next morning and my allergies were going crazy. It was like a cat slept on my face because I'm allergic to cats. My sinuses were going crazy, my eyes were watery, my, you know, skin was itchy and I started developing skin rashes and I didn't know what was happening, but deep down I knew it was mold. And I got exposed to mold. And mold exposure is nuts, not something to play with. It's very deadly. And the longer you're in it, the, the more your body deteriorates. And long story short, the reason I'm sharing this with you is because this is how it started. I mean, it started. Didn't start like this, but it started as a little circle on my left arm, right Here. And it just kept growing slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. Eventually, obviously, we moved out of that place once I realized we gotta get the fuck outta here. And we left back to Arizona to just restart, reset. And it started getting worse because my body was healing itself. My gut was very inflamed and my microbiome was all out of rack. This is very deep stuff here. And you may have seen me talk about it, you may have not seen me talk about it, but I was dealing with all of this while everything I just showed you was happening. While I'm trying to create this new course content, while I'm trying to help these new clients, while I'm trying to.

Figure out how to build the team.

And scale this business and all these things. And this is the stuff that most people don't talk about that goes on behind the scenes. But for me it was, you know, at one point, dude, I was desperately searching for answers because I didn't know what was happening to my body. I did. I didn't know how to deal with it. I was trying to detox from all of it. At one point I was taking 20 different supplements trying to heal myself and nothing was working. It got worse. Obviously, as you can see here. You know, my skin just kept getting itchier and itchier. It kept spreading across all my body. And it was because I listened to a few people that I shouldn't have been listening to that told me I should take these prescription over the counter medications to help heal my gut, when in reality it was just dousing my gut with chemicals and making it worse. And sure, it was maybe killing off all the bad bacteria in my gut microbiome, but it was actually also killing all my good bacteria in my gut microbiome, which was making it worse. And as a result, my body was trying to get all this shit out of my, out of my body by getting it through my skin. And I ended up getting staph infection, which nobody told me at the time. And I randomly got a Facebook ads message from, from someone that I posted because I was literally on Facebook groups at this point posting these pictures, literally these pictures that I'm showing you, desperately trying to search for answers because I didn't know what was happening to my body. And I got a random Facebook message one day from a lady that told me, hey, I don't know if anyone's told you this, but I had something similar. And it didn't help. Nothing helped me until I just went to the beach and swam one day because that looks like staph infection and staph won't go away unless you actually kill it. And if you don't want to take, like, a bunch of creams and stuff, the best thing you can do is just actually go to the beach and swim.

And I was like, huh?

And, like, deep down, it clicked for me because I knew I was like, something's not right. I'm taking all these supplements. I'm doing all these different, unnatural things. Like, what do I actually know to be true? And it's like I compromised all my values before, which was healthy, right? Natural, organic, whole foods, no supplements, just raw food, sunlight, swim, beach, grounding, everything. And I got away from all that to try to heal myself because I was so desperate to figure this shit out.

And then when she messaged me that.

It clicked, I immediately booked a trip to Miami to stay with my parents for two weeks. Swam every single day, twice a day, for about one to two hours each session. So I was basically spending about three hours or four hours at the beach, in the sand, in the sun, every single day for two weeks. And my skin healed itself. And here's a picture of, like, me with my wife after about a month of just going back to nature, literally just grounding myself in the sun, swimming in the ocean, and my body healed. You know, thankfully, today I have basically my skin back to normal. I don't have anything, thank God. You know, I was. It was just crazy. And this was about a month, two months to just finally get it off my skin and work on healing. But really, I was going through this for about six months before that. So this was all happening while I was trying to scale this business this year. And I didn't want to talk about it because I didn't know what was happening. I was embarrassed about it. And quite frankly, you know, it took me. It took me by surprise. And long story short, I'm healed, thankfully, and I still have a few things to do with my gut specifically that I'm working on. But whole foods, sunlight, as I'm filming this in the sun, obviously just working on doing what works, which is removing everything. No supplements, just whole foods, water, sunlight, beach grounding. That's it. And it worked. And so thank God I'm healed. And this is what I dealt with the entire time this year. I was going through this. Now, on the good side, okay, what else happened this year? YouTube channel growth. We grew by about, you know, 4,300 subscribers, had about 1.2 million views total across my channel. My watch time went up by about 36,000 hours or yeah, hours right there. As you can see, I went harder. I went from one YouTube video per week consistently to about two videos on YouTube posted per week. Midway through the year, I hired an in house videographer and editor and thumbnail designer. I tried some new formats of content. You know, more lifestyle, more dating relationships, more mindset, more behind the scenes stuff and, and you know, more broad topic type stuff as well. And although some of those things did work for views, I learned a lot. It's what Alex Hormozi already learned, which I should have learned from the very beginning, which was business owners want business owner content agency owners want business owner content coaches and course creators want how to get more clients. Like these things are very easy to understand logically. But you know, in the moment, sometimes your ego gets in the way and you want to do a bunch of things that are going to grow your brand, when in reality, like the best way to grow your brand is by getting clients better results, posting those results, getting more clients better results, and just continuing that cycle over and over and over again and talking about what you're learning, like what I'm doing right now, as opposed to like these sort of, you know, very broad topic type videos. And so long story short, I had to learn a hard lesson this year and figure out what's the easiest thing we can do without all the bells and whistles, keep it simple, that delivers the most value. And it's these videos right here. These videos are the ones that get me clients. These videos are the ones that you guys love the most. These videos are the ones that actually get the most retention because I'm actually showing you what's happening. And I'm not, you know, focusing on fancy production. I'm just doing what I do best, which is talking to the camera and sharing what we're actually working on and what's happening and what we're learning. And so that's going to be the main focus of this next year is simple videos, really. No editing, no crazy thumbnails, just direct to camera loom video walkthroughs, tactical trainings, tutorials, everything that we're doing and working on to help you grow your business and actually give you real value. Like if it's not valuable, it's not going to be posted on my channel. And that's just, you know, it's like what's actually valuable. It's the information and how you can actually implement it. It's not the production, it's not the editing. Like that's cool. For me because it makes me look good, but it doesn't really help you. And I'm not saying I'll never do that again. I'll still have a mix of that, but it's like just getting back to basics, obviously, and keeping things simple, which you'll see is the common theme heading into next year. Instagram growth as well. We were able to go grow about 20,000 subscribers, mainly with ads and posting one to two shorts per day. We also hosted two in person masterminds, one of them which was in Arizona, which I had my good friend Cole Gordon and David Dre and Clark Hegley speak at, which was an amazing event. You can watch it on my channel. I'll put the link at the top right hand corner which you can click on and save to watch for later. That was an amazing event. Q3 Dublin, Ireland we had this amazing event as well. This is the first time I ever went to Ireland. No one's ever done a mastermind in Ireland, so I thought it would be cool, which it was. Was able to have a successful event there. We sold about 12 tickets at 3k each to that one. Completely sold that event. Only 15 people were allowed, which is amazing. We have our next event coming up in New York City March 13th, 14th and 15th. We're only selling a handful of tickets to that that will sell out as well. So if you bought your ticket, shout out to you, I'll see you there. If you haven't, make sure to do that. In Dublin, I was able to go to Conor McGregor's Restaurant and Wear the UFC belt, which is a trip that was always a dream of mine. I was able to do a podcast with Tai Lopez. He interviewed me on what's working with YouTube ads and our clients because obviously he's famous for that. And I learned a lot from him as well. This was a very, very awesome feat for me because I watched his, you know, ads in high school and I didn't know what info marketing was at the time. So fast forward 10 years later to be on his podcast, being interviewed by him about YouTube ads and telling him what's working for our clients and our company was amazing. And then I was able to speak at Will Brown's Mastermind earlier this year in Dubai and share how we helped Charlie Morgan scale past the million dollars a month with YouTube ads as well and help all of his clients in that room get started on YouTube too. I traveled all over the world this year as well. So I went to Dubai like I said with Will Brown twice. Mexico, Italy, Spain, Greece. My wife and I, we decided to do a Europe trip this year. I've never been to any of these places besides France, once in the uk. And so we just. We just went everywhere for about a month and a half. We went to Italy, Spain, Greece, France. I loved Greece, by the way. This was the best. Greece had the best beach. Athens. Mykonos was phenomenal. Monaco was super sick. I definitely wanted to do a admin in Monaco very, very soon, as well as an admin in Amsterdam, mastermind100. We went to LA, Chicago, Washington, Miami, Arizona. And I traveled a lot this year, which also contributes to the lack of growth, which I'll talk about in a second, too. And that's my wife and I in Monaco now. We also announced that we're pregnant with our first child. Like I said, I learned a lot this year. And while I was going through all this health stuff, my wife and I always had a goal to start a family at 30 years old, which we turned 30 this year. And unfortunately, we had our. We had a. Unfortunately, and fortunately we had a miscarriage earlier this year, which I talked about briefly, which you might have seen me on Instagram or Twitter or Facebook or even YouTube community posts, but that really set us back. But the good news about that was it brought us closer to God because we realized that we were trying to create plans ourselves without even including God in that. And, you know, I've grown up religious my entire life. I was Catholic at first. My parents basically helped us convert to Christianity. Going into Arizona, my middle school years. I fell out of that, you know, in college. I never really got back to it until it was. We had the first miscarriage. And then my wife and I actually got closer to God. We started reading the Bible every single day and praying every single meal, every single night before bed. And we still do to this day. And it's been a blessing. And thankfully, as a result of just being patient and loving and continuing to stay fruitful and faithful to God, we were able to have now our first successful pregnancy with our first child, which is going to be a baby girl this year, which I'm super excited about. The Moncada family era begins, and it'll be a fun time. So that's a beautiful blessing as well. Now let's get into the lessons. Okay, so the first lesson that I learned this year is that you don't have business problems, you have personal problems showing up in your business. So, you know, there's a lot of friends that I know that were able to scale a Lot faster than me. And on the outside, I was very jealous of that. I was very egotistical about it. And I was always kicking myself because I know I could be doing more. And the reality was is I was dealing with a lot of things and I was making excuses. And the health stuff definitely fucked me up. It definitely took my eyes off the ball. It definitely made me question what I was doing. It definitely made me realign on what I actually wanted. Because it's hard to focus on business when your skin looks like complete shit, when it looks like you have a disease, when it looks like you can't even take off your shirt in public without being stared at, obviously. And I was wearing long sleeves during the summer in Arizona when it was freaking 120 degrees outside. And it was completely embarrassing. And that really ate at my confidence, my ego, my. My confidence, my. My, my mindset.

It just, it just, it was killing me.

Like, literally, I felt like I was dying. I didn't know what was happening. And I was like, how is this happening to me? I'm so, I'm the most healthy person I know. Like, I'm the most. I believe I'm the most healthy person I know. I believe I'm the most health conscious person I know. I believe I do everything right. Why is this happening to me? And what I realized was I was just dealing with so much stress from the business as well, and I didn't. And I was also dealing with being exposed to mold. So that wasn't helping. And that was contributing more stress to me. And it's like, that's gonna. Until you fix that, nothing else matters. And what I learned more than anything this year is that doesn't matter how much money you make, like, all that matters is your health, your peace of mind, like your positivity, your actual physical state. If that's not in check, it doesn't matter how much money you make, you're never going to be able to be happy. And so on top of that, I also traveled a bunch. Like, you saw all the places I went to this year, how are you going to be able to expect to grow to a million dollars a month or 500k a month or, or consistent 500k a month. If you're just traveling, you know, a bunch. And I was going a bunch of different places. And I would call this my year of lifestyle. And I'm not ashamed of it. I mean, I learned from it. I definitely was doing more traveling than I was working, more distraction than I was focused. And as a result it shows, yes, we've grown this year, but it wasn't at the rate that I wanted to and I got to do better. You know, that's just the reality. So the personal problem was I was distracted, I was unfocused, I was more focused on the lifestyle than I was focused on the actual day to day effort. And it showed up in the business. And as a result, we weren't able to scale as fast as we'd liked. You live and you learn, you don't have business problems, you have personal problems showing up in your business. So I guarantee you, wherever you are at right now, if you are struggling to focus, if you are struggling to do the work, if you are struggling to actually get the results that you want, it's probably because you're distracted. You're not focused on the right things. You're doing things that are outside of what you actually should be doing. I can say this firsthand because this is exactly what happened to me. And I put myself first above the team and above the company, which is the opposite of how you do things. You, as a leader should be focused on the company first doing what's right.

For the company because the results of.

The company are what dictates you and how good of a job you are doing as the CEO. The results of the company first, okay? You always gotta prioritize the company first. Then comes the team, then comes you yourself last. You always heard the quote, leaders eat last, right? I was eating first this year and it definitely didn't help. You know, we had a lot of good momentum, we had a lot of, we did a lot of good things, right? But I also learned a lot of things that we didn't do right, mainly because of me and the decisions I was making. So I learned a lot. The second thing is more not new. You know, Hormozi talks about this a lot. This is the constant plague of entrepreneurs, including what plagued me. And still I have to focus on and fight to this day, which is new new offers, new products, new new, new this, new that. It's like just shiny objects, man, like just the work. Hormozi said it best in one of his most recent videos. He was like, the business, the business you should focus on is the business in front of you. Like the business in front of you right now or something like that. It was basically like, the next business you should start is the one that's already in front of you, which is literally, don't start a new business, don't start a new product, don't start a new offer, it's like, focus on the thing that you already have in front of you and make it better. And so more, not new. And this is something that's another repeat in my life this year. Because when things get tough, especially when you're scaling, building a team, growing, getting new clients, running into issues, product fulfillment, client success, all those things, it's like, it's very easy to just distract yourself and say, you know, f this right, I'm just gonna go jump ship and do something different, something easier, something less fulfillment intensive. And it's like, that's not how you grow. Like, that's not how you grow. You grow by fixing these problems and these opportunities that are really challenges, that are problems disguised as opportunities and front of you. And so it's not more, it's not new, it's more. More inputs, more content, more focus on the current business, more results, more better clients. Like nothing new. It's just more of what you're already doing. Just force more inputs and don't get bored. Like, figure out how to make it fun. Figure out how to make it fun even though it's boring. Because you and I, as entrepreneurs, at least if you're like me, you want to launch something new all the time because it's very easy for you to do. That's what you've done and it works. You can launch an offer right now.

And make 100 grand a month like this, right? But the problem is you got to scale it. And then scaling requires team hiring, management systems, processes, fulfillment management, accountability, all those things that you are already running away from right now. So it's like, you might as well learn this lesson finally, once and for all. Which means doing more, not new, right? Like, it's never new, more often than not. And so this is another lesson that I had to learn this year as well. Because it's always easy to just look at the shiny object, the woman in the red dress, the grass is greener. But it's like, fix the problems in front of you right now. That's the best thing you can do to make you happy. Now, the third thing, your business will only grow to your level of leadership. I already talked about this, but this year I was very distracted because of all the things I just mentioned. And I was very egotistical in believing that my business was already running without me. I got myself off sales. I hired a setter, I hired a closer, two closers. And I had all the sales, fulfillment, everything delegated off my plate operations. And I was just Focused on marketing. Just focused on marketing, you know, making sure my team was good. And I really wasn't doing much besides working on the product. And so as a result, I got comfortable. And then we started planning Europe. And then what happened was when I went to Europe, my business got exposed, and I realized that things started breaking, communication started dwindling, service started dropping, team started, you know, slacking. And, you know, if my team's watching this, you know, I love you guys, and I'm just keeping it real. And this is not your fault. This is my fault. I'm the fucking leader. Like, this is. This is what.

This is what.

I'm taking on the chin right now. And I'm willing enough and radical, radically transparent enough to admit this, because this.

Is what we do.

This is what I do. This is what I wanted to do. I want to share what's actually happening. And I learned a very hard lesson that my leadership still sucks. And I got to work on it. I need to invest more time and energy and effort into becoming a better manager, becoming a better leader, holding people accountable, focusing on the results of the company first, the team second, and then myself last. And my business did not grow at the level I wanted it to this year because I didn't do my job as a leader as best as I could have. And I need to do that this next year. And so I'm not perfect. I will get better. And I just. You just. You just got to do it. You just got to do what you got to do. And you can make excuses. You can just get results. Really it. Right? So no more excuses. Like, you just have to be able to be a better leader and hold people accountable, manage people, make sure the job's getting done for the sake of your business. Like you. It's your job to take care of your business. And when I got back from Europe, I was like, shit started breaking. Our marketing stopped working. Paid ads started going crazy. Facebook and YouTube costs started skyrocketing for.

Ourselves and our clients as well.

And then things got hectic. My closer ended up quitting, and, you know, then I had to get back on sales calls. I had to get, you know, more. I had to get more team. It was just a bunch of things. And long story short, you learn from these things, right? And it was very easy for me to get distracted and think about new as well when this was happening. But I'm reminding myself again, even right now, making this video like it's more not new. You've done it once. You got to do it Again, just better. Like, don't quit. Just keep going. So your business will only grow to your level of leadership. So if you suck as a leader, guess what? You're always gonna stay stuck. You'll be able to continuously inspire people, continuously get people to be held accountable to results. Continue building a good culture, raising the standards of your vision, your mission, your values, everything. Next, hire when it hurts. Otherwise, you have to fire because it hurts. We hired a lot of people this year, and we hired a lot of contractors this year. We had a lot of people that fell on the service. But what we didn't hire the most of was salespeople and setters, which is like how you actually grow a business with marketing and sales. And as a result, we had to let go of some people cordially. But I also realized what actually matters, right?

What actually matters when it comes to delivering value to clients.

And so you have to go through these lessons because then you figure out how to create a good product. Only this year was the first year that I realized how to create a good product because we had 184 or 183 new customers come through it.

And so you have to realize what.

Actually matters the most to them, to their results, to their happiness, to their experience. And then you have to contract, right? It's always this. It's never a linear growth. It's like boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It's like never a just straight line shot, moonshot, right? There's always peaks and valleys. And this is another lesson that I had to learn as well. Because, man, I think the biggest thing was I had an ego as well. Of, like, I'm delegated from the business that's running without me. I'm just gonna hire people to do all the shit that I don't want to do. For me, I'm just gonna manage it. I'm just gonna operate it. I'm just gonna be the owner of it. And that can work. But it wasn't the right time for it. And for me, I hired a bunch of people, some people that I just.

Wasn'T managing properly or I wasn't having managed properly.

And we had to let them go. And that's why you have to give more expectations to your current team first, make sure you and your team are actually hurting with the work, and then.

Hire people to help you. Otherwise you'll have to fire because it.

Hurts so much, your profit sucks, and you're losing money, expecting future growth without.

The future growth already happening.

It's like what Layla Hermosi says all the time, it's like, you can't hire people and then look for things to do. You should hire them when there's already so much for them to fucking do. So another lesson, last but not least, expect hell. Expect hell. I learned this from Sam Ovens, actually, and he said, you know, expect hell. It's people who don't expect problems that end up getting the worst ones.

It's not going to be easy.

This year was clearly not easy.

I've learned a lot.

Maybe it wasn't easy for you as well. Maybe you felt it as well. But if you expect the worst and you get something better, it's a good day. But if you're expecting problems, you're expecting them, you're ready for them. You're embracing them, right? You're looking at them as challenges and opportunities versus death versus fear versus anxiousness versus stress. Like, I did not expect problems this year. I expected it to be easy. I expected us to continue scaling profitably with ads, with team and everything working customers, getting results easily. Didn't happen that way. There was a lot of problems, a lot of issues. And it really ate at me when clients didn't ever go. When clients weren't getting results as consistently as I wanted. At the beginning, I was pissed, I was sad. I was taking it out of my team, I was taking it out of myself. And I was just like. It was just resentful as well. And I was like upset at clients for some reason for not getting results. When it's like, dude, this is your product, this is your service, this is your business. You gotta fix it. I was expecting ads to always continue working without fatigue.

And I'm the ads guy.

I've done this for clients for five years. And it's always a good, humbling experience when your ads stop working for yourself and you're the guy that does it for clients. And then you have to scramble and figure out how to make it work. And that happened to us as well. And you just learn a lot of stuff and so expect hell. But pray and thank God for every day. Because if I didn't go through all this this year, if I didn't have the miscarriage with my wife for the first time, if I didn't have the skin issues and the disease, basically looking on my skin and heal myself from my gut, if I didn't go through that health issue, I wouldn't come back.

To what actually matters, which is health.

First and not money. It's health, and I would trade all the money in the world for proper health. I'm the richest man alive right now because I have health. I'm happy. I have a wife who's pregnant. I have my family taken care of. I have friends that love me. I have clients that love me, that love working with me, that I love working with. I have a team that is working with me to build this thing. And, man, I'm on the mission and.

I'm thanking God for everything that he's.

Given me because I used to pray for these problems that I have today. I used to pray for these. I used to dream about these.

I used to ask God for these.

And now I have them. But I didn't expect hell. I thought it would be easy, and it's not. And so you got to expect hell and pray and thank God for every day. Because when it doesn't end up being hell and it's pretty easy, you're like, okay, cool. This is good. It's the people who don't expect problems that end up getting the worst result, getting the worst ones, which is what happened to me. And I'll leave you with this. I can't cry about having a lot on my plate when my goal was to eat, which was the truth. Now, goals for 2025. I'm gonna keep it simple now. Coming up on 35 minutes, peace, profit and purpose. I actually had a conversation with my friend Will Brown about this, which I.

Believe he's using as his new angle.

For his new program, his new coaching or his new business model. And shout out to Will, I want royalties on that, by the way, because you definitely got that from me and you know it. But peace, profit and purpose, that's my goal for 2025. Peace. What does that mean? It means happiness.

It means positivity.

It means being, enjoying being and enjoying the moment, the present, not the future, not the past. Right now. Having peace with everything. Prayer, meditation, happiness, like just being happy. That's the most important thing. This year was. Been a fucking tough year. Tough year. Yes, I've made more money. Yes. I've also learned a lot more lessons. It's been tough, and I've learned a lot. I want peace this next year, which I've learned how to do with a few tactical habits that I'm going to be keeping, continue using. But peace, health, happiness, family, friends, community. Simple, Just simple, simple. Next is profit. Profit. Because the only way you have peace is with profit, right? Like, you can't have peace if you're not profitable. You can't have peace if your expenses are More than your actual income. You can't have peace. If you're spending every single month more than you're making. There's no way you can have peace. You're just digging yourself into a ditch, into debt, into anxiety, into stress. You need to make profit. And I've consistently made around 30 to 40% profit year over year. And that's been good. But I want to make it better. How can we do it better? That's my goal for this year, is more profit. Not just, you know, professionally, but also personally as well. Profit. Because the only way you have peace is with profit. And lastly, purpose, right? What's your purpose on this earth? Are you living your purpose? Are you doing your purpose? Are you working towards your purpose? If not, why not? What is it? What is it that you need to do? Right? You got to get clear on that for me, right? I know what that is for me, and I got to work on that. It's continuing to dig what I've been digging is continuing to do what I've been doing. It's continuing to get better and become the best version of myself, to become a better leader, right? The only way to do that is to grow myself and my team, my clients and my business and my community and my channel and my impact along with my income. Because the only way you make more money is you help the clients. You deliver value, which is the only way you make profit. Because to get profit, you got to be living your purpose, which makes profit and then brings you peace. So those are my goals for 2025. Simple. I'm not going to give you the specifics. I don't think it's really necessary. But if you're interested in that, you know, you can ask me. I'm happily going to share that at.

The next mastermind, obviously.

But that's my goals, that's my learning lessons. And so if you found this video helpful, definitely leave me a comment.

I'm reading all the comments.

And more importantly, you know, I'm keeping the simple YouTube channel this year. One video a week minimum. Simple tutorials, nothing crazy, no fancy bells and whistles, and just making simple, valuable information for you to learn from and to actually get value from and implement in your business immediately. So that's it for me. Hope you have an amazing new year. Welcome to 2025, and until next time, keep smiling, keep learning, keep growing, and I'll see you in the next one. Cheers.