Jan 5, 2024 | 2024 Recap
I'll be honest, writing the Year Recap was quite challenging this year. I did not meet my business goals, which made me feel discouraged for a moment. However, business is not the only part of my life, so I started searching "How to review my year" on Google to find some guidance for a balanced review.
I found an article by Dean Yeong that struck a good balance between deep reflection and avoiding overthinking. This year, my Year Recap approach is partly inspired by that article. In "How to Think About Your Life", Dean identifies key areas of life to focus on. I used these as a guide to create my own list:
Safety
Health
Job
Business
Wealth
Family
Safety
The war in Ukraine continues. Like any war in any other part of the planet in the past, it continues to devastate my country and bring out the worst in people.
I was terrified for my life—not because of the rocket attacks or the daily risk of being killed by Russian terrorists, but because of the absolute corruption and lawlessness of TCRSS. So many of my acquaintances have become victims of the inhumane conscription practices and treatment by TCRSS. There are countless real examples of bribes, violence, injuries, and kidnappings on the streets.
I remember a story told by a close friend. He was slowly driving down Doroshenka Street in Lviv the other day. A man in his mid-30s was walking along the side of the street. Suddenly, a blue Mercedes Vito appeared, blocking the section of the street the man was crossing. Four men in military uniforms jumped out and forcibly pushed the man into the van. Cut!
One of the TCRSS officers I know once said: "If you’re able to get to TCRSS not in a wheelchair, you’re fit to be sent to the frontline." My biggest motivator became the desire to avoid being kidnapped by TCRSS and sent to die.
I considered various options to keep myself safe—ranging from legal to gray areas, and even outright illegal ones. In the end, I chose and acted on the option I believed to be a win-win for both myself and the government.
I started a company, began paying substantial taxes, made it compliant to qualify for Criticality Status, and received a legal exemption from mobilization. As an added benefit, this also restored my right to travel abroad, which I utilized as soon as it became reasonable.
I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished and, more importantly, how I did it: I didn’t pay a single dollar in bribes, stayed entirely within the legal framework, and continued contributing to the victory as a significant taxpayer. I absolutely nailed it this year.
What went well:
Got exemption from mobilization.
Started traveling abroad again.
Protected myself and my family.
What went wrong:
Government has changed the rules again and dismissed all previously issued criticality statuses and exemptions. Need to re-apply.
What did I learn:
When things seem out of my control I have the necessary skills to put it back under my control
Righteousness is the pillar of weak people. Never count on it.
No one will ever put your interests in front of theirs
Freedoms are have the most sacred value in life
What to do next:
Maintain the exemption from mobilization
Do not have permanent residence in countries with mandatory military services
Rate: 10/10
Health
Not happy with this one this year.
Last year, I promised myself that I would prioritize myself above everything else: #1 Me, #2 She, #3 Work.
In reality, I only prioritized myself in the area of ambition. So, it ended up being: #1 Work, #2 She, #3 Me.
Physical Health
While I didn’t experience major health issues this year, my focus on work, business, and side projects combined with ongoing safety concerns led to some consequences.
I gained 12kg of extra weight and developed moderate sleeping issues.
My neurological issues have also become more pronounced. I have a bad habit of unconsciously scratching my head and face when I’m under stress. This year, this tendency was worse than ever, leading me to scratch my head to the point of bleeding and develop dermatological issues like acne and folliculitis.
The only effective tool I’ve found to help reduce this tendency is keeping my hands busy with a rosary.
Mental Health
While exploring solutions to my safety concerns, I underwent a full health checkup, which included a mental health assessment. Long story short, I was diagnosed with mixed anxiety-depressive disorder. This condition makes me obsessively focus on things that worry me. When something bothers me, I tend to think of all the countless possible things that might go wrong. I also find it absolutely challenging to switch my focus to something else until I find a solution for an issue that bothers me.
While this mindset often helps with risk mitigation at work, it leaves me feeling mentally exhausted. This year was particularly tough because I tried to juggle too many things at once, spreading myself too thin.
Trying to do everything simultaneously might feel satisfying in the moment, but over time, it takes a toll on my self-confidence. During one of my recent therapy sessions, I realized I was afraid of losing my job and becoming unemployed—a clear sign that something wasn’t right.
My therapist asked me to list five things I would still have even if I lost my job. My initial response was, “myself and my family.” But then I understood what my therapist was really encouraging me to see – it’s about me and what can not be taken from me: my experience, knowledge, ambition and habit for hard work. I also have enough cash saved to live for another year without working.
In other words, I’ll be okay — I won’t die.
My wife won’t leave me.
I won’t end up homeless.
What went well:
I did not experience major health issues such as blood pressure problems, heart issues, tumors, etc.
What went wrong:
Gained 12 kilos
Consistently experienced sleep issues
Frequently woke up with low energy in the mornings
Did very little to no exercise
What did I learn:
I have mixed anxiety-depressive disorder, which often causes me to perceive situations more negatively than they actually are and places unnecessary pressure on myself and those around me.
Trying to juggle many things simultaneously might feel rewarding in the moment, but it negatively impacts my self-confidence in the long run.
What to do next:
Continue working with a therapist
Prioritize my physical and mental health over everything else
Improve my sleep habits
Eat healthier
Start exercising regularly
Rate: 5/10
Job
Yola remains the biggest part of my life. It’s still a full-time job that generates the income I need to support all areas of my life. My goal for 2024 was to maintain my position, income, and the company’s stability as much as possible. Job-wise, I feel I’ve done great this year.
Strategic Growth Initiative
I helped kick off a strategy designed to significantly grow the company financially in the future. This initiative is expected to open new opportunities for everyone in the company, including me.
Win-Win Partnership
I found a mutually beneficial opportunity for Yola, my partner, and myself. Yola needed to migrate ~300 customer sites from a legacy website architecture to a new one. My partner was looking for an entry-level job in web design. This arrangement benefited all parties:
Yola completed the migration at the lowest cost and with minimal disruption.
My partner earned her first income as a web designer.
I've got the job done with very limited resources and I gained by acting as a proxy
Platform Abuse Mitigation
I successfully tackled platform abuse at Yola this year.
As a free website builder, Yola has always been vulnerable to abuse, particularly by link builders who create thousands of accounts and websites solely to publish low-quality pages with backlinks to other sites.
My biggest win was implementing a free-until-you-publish policy for countries where most of the abuse originated. This policy reduced abuse from these regions by 60%.
As a side effect, Yola’s overall conversion rate in the B2C channel improved by 200%, not because users converted better, but because we drastically reduced signup fraud.
AI Enhancements
The AI capabilities of the site builder improved dramatically this year. It now offers more features and works better than ever before.
If this essay is ever read by someone else: you should try it—IMO, it’s the best AI website builder on the market.
Renewed SEO Efforts
I helped ensure that we started reinvesting in SEO efforts. Just last week, we confirmed a few new customers coming from the updated SEO pages. Interestingly, even for a company like Yola with a mature SEO profile, it still took around 8 months to see meaningful results from SEO optimization.
Team Stability and Growth
None of the employees under my management resigned this year.
On the contrary, I hired two new QA engineers, bringing fresh perspectives to the QA function. Finally, three engineers under my management received well-deserved proactive promotions.
What went well:
Maintained my job
Maintained my income, gained some extras
Maintained stability within the company
What went wrong:
The implementation of the growth strategy is taking longer than expected due to factors both within and outside of my control.
Yola continues to be under-resourced, particularly in the design and marketing functions.
What did I learn:
Managing my time using Google Calendar works best for me compared to all other methods I’ve tried.
I can be just as effective working 8 hours per day on weekdays only as I was working 12 hours per day, seven days a week, without taking a weekend.
What to do next:
Continue being a committed employee maintaining my position and income until circumstances change.
Keep prioritizing the implementation of the growth strategy above all else. Deliver what is within my control as quickly as possible.
Push for and secure a budget to hire another designer and a marketing/SEO specialist.
Rate: 9/10
Business
If I were asked to describe in one word how the year went for my business, the word would be "Scattered."
I set a goal of making my business profitable in 2024 and failed to achieve it.
Although I managed to double my earnings compared to last year, my expenses spiralled out of control and I've got too distracted by working on too many projects in parallel.
To be honest, my main goal was simply to make the business profitable this year — even if it was just $100 total in profit by the end of the year. Revenue-wise, I didn’t have any specific target for the business beyond the $100,000 I set as part of my overall wealth goal.
Now, let’s check the facts. I generated approximately $6,000 in revenue this year but spent approximately $16,000, resulting in a pure loss of $10,000.
How did this happen? What can I learn from it?
Let’s revisit everything step by step.
Important note: the steps outlined down below are not the historical sequence of how all of this happened. It's just my best attempt to structure it in a logical sequence that helped me interpret what has really happened over the year. In reality, all of the stuff described below have been happening in parallel and felt quite chaotic.
Step 1. Beginning of the Year
I started the year with excitement and momentum carried over from the previous year. I even shared a summary of it in one of my LinkedIn posts. Specifically, in the area of business, I began the year with a prototype of a product and a few customers who were helping me evaluate and refine it in preparation for scaling.
The product was a service called "From Idea to First Customers in 4 Months" targeted at first-time founders looking to build their own SaaS for the first time. It provided advisory support and step-by-step guidance on validating their idea, developing a business model, testing it in the market, and gaining early traction and customers. I essentially became a fractional co-founder of a startup and helped founders to move from nothing to first customers in 4 months by going through 2 week sprint cycles.
The product appeared to work well for one of my customers with whom I later recorded a podcast about it. We essentially went from nothing to a validated idea, business model, design prototype, and the first few letters of intent totalling $4,800 — all within about 4.5 months, despite not yet having a real product.
I knew that if the product proved to be successful for the customer, I would need to find a sustainable distribution channel. Speaking publicly at conferences didn’t seem like a viable option (even though that’s how I acquired this customer). The reason was that the number of conferences I could apply to was extremely limited at the time. In fact, I could count them on one hand. It was still the first year of the full-scale war in Ukraine — people weren’t gathering much, and the borders were closed, preventing me from traveling abroad.
So, I considered other options for gaining exposure to first-time founders:
Joining local startup incubators and accelerators
Building a presence on LinkedIn by posting content and conducting outreach
Launching my YouTube channel and a podcast about startups and investments
Step 2. Building LinkedIn presence
The idea behind was simple: transform my LinkedIn profile into a landing page for startups, where the primary call-to-action (a button) would encourage visitors to book a call with me.
The product I was offering was a basic lead magnet – free consultation focused on validating startup ideas, developing business models, gaining early traction, or addressing any other concerns founders might have. Sometimes, founders just need someone to talk things through with and help structure their thinking.
To get seen by people, I attempted to combine two complementary strategies: cold outreach and posting content daily.
To set up the cold outreach, I used a platform called Dripify.io to automate an outreach funnel. I also used LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Evaboot to collect potential leads matching my customer profile.
I sent polite, non-binding connection requests, sharing that I’d like to have them in my network and inviting them to check my connections for potential intros that might interest them. The idea was to deliver free value to them, which cost me nothing — a win-win. The acceptance rate for this campaign averaged 40–45%, which is considered excellent according to industry benchmarks.
I expected that, by connecting with me, they would start seeing my content and eventually book a call.
In parallel, I've started posting on a daily basis. Most of my posts consisted of reports and expert content, such as recordings from workshops I had conducted and stories about my experiences as a founder or stories and experiences of others.
Result:
Time spent: 3 months
Money spent: $2,200
LinkedIn growth: From 400 to 3,200 followers
LinkedIn reach: Over 150,000 views
Consultations provided: 11
Customers: 0
It did not work out. Even through I did provide a number of free consultations, I didn’t receive a single customer.
I even hired an agency to write and post content for me, but that didn’t work either—it just cost me more money.
To be clear, I don’t think LinkedIn doesn’t work.
I believe the core issue was that I didn’t create the type of content that LinkedIn’s audience wants.
Finally, I think I did a poor job of explaining how I could provide value to potential customers and failed to communicate my offer clearly and frequently enough.
I plan to revisit LinkedIn in the future when I have something more compelling to offer to its audience.
Step 3. Becoming a member of an angel club (wtf?)
While working with my customer on their startup, testing the "From Idea to First Customers in 4 Months" program, and trying to build my LinkedIn presence, I was approached by Ivan Dmytrasevych sometime in February.
We hadn’t spoken or seen each other for about three months since our last introductory call. Ivan is a great man whom I believe is making significant effort to grow the Ukrainian startup ecosystem. During our last call, three months prior, he mentioned that he was considering relaunching his angel club and would get back to me when he had updates. By that time, I had already started my journey as an angel investor and had invested in Zeely, so the topic was particularly interesting to me.
He contacted me back in February and invited me to become one of the first members of his new United Angels Network. I decided to join, even though I hadn’t planned on becoming a professional angel investor.
Honestly, I have no idea what I was thinking when I agreed. Reflecting on this as I write today, I realize that it turned out to be a distraction and one of the reasons I didn’t achieve my business goals this year. I spent far too much time attending monthly pitch days, researching and evaluating the startups that presented, and contemplating how I could derive additional value from this experience beyond simply investing in startups.
Perhaps I viewed it as an opportunity to gain more of firsthand experience in angel investing: how to conduct basic due diligence on startups, identify important investment criteria, and understand how deals are structured. In other words, I was exploring ways to become more valuable to founders.
On the positive side, I ended up investing in Himera — an amazing team building radios for Ukrainian defenders. I also significantly expanded my network, connecting with more than 100 angel investors. I gained first-hand experience I mentioned earlier, and now clearly understand how the process works and what’s needed to raise money successfully from an angel investor's perspective.
Finally, by listening to dozens of pitches and having conversations with numerous investors and founders, I realized that the venture capital route is most likely not the best path for building my own startups — at least for now. At my current stage and scale, I can sufficiently fund my ventures using my own resources. In fact, this is exactly what I unconsciously began doing in July 2024 when I launched Lisapet.ai and funded it entirely from my own pocket. I explain what it is later in this section.
Result:
Time spent: 6 months
Money spent: $1,500 for membership fee
Customers: 0
Startups invested: 1
Angel Investors in network: 100+
Step 4. Co-authoring a book (wtf?)
Important context. August 2023. I'm at the starting point of my startup advisory practice and want to learn and progress as quickly as possible. To fast-track my progress and avoid years of trial-and-error, I joined the Advisory Institute. It was a significant investment of both time and money, but looking back, I still believe it was worth it.
January 2024. The beginning of the year. At the time, as I've mentioned before, I was energised by the successes of the previous year — launching my advisory practice and landing my first high-ticket customers with "From Idea to First Customers in 4 Months" product. I believed I could replicate and scale this success, but quickly realized it wasn’t sustainable to scale while working with each client individually.
To solve this, I decided to turn the program into a course that people could buy and complete at their own pace for a lower price. For those wanting more hands-on support, I envisioned offering a bootcamp where participants could work with me in a group setting, with
options for personalized guidance.
The challenge, however, was that launching a course requires a lot of work: you need a program, you need to prepare and record the materials, you need to setup an LMS, and many other steps. From past experience, I knew the importance of prioritizing traction first. Instead of creating the entire course upfront, I began exploring ways to test and validate the idea before fully building it.
What happened next?
I graduate from Advisory Institute. Sasha, the CEO of Advisory Institute wants to retain me as a customer by inviting me to join their exclusive "Level 2" program. The offer included various perks: individual sessions, group sessions, additional learning materials, and a PR boost through a co-authored book and a dedicated podcast episode (later, after reading $100M Offers, I realized the specific sales technique they used here). I connect their offer to the idea of launching my course:
I mistakenly saw participating in group sessions and recording a podcast as an opportunity to gain extra exposure and build my public presence.
I mistakenly saw having individual sessions with Sasha as a chance to learn how they launched the Advisory Institute, as it closely resembled the format I wanted to use for my own course.
I mistakenly saw co-authoring a book as an opportunity to organize all my knowledge on building and launching products—a step I would need to take anyway when creating the program for my own course.
Today, a year later, I can conclude that I completely wasted both time and money on this "strategic step". It was yet another distraction in a long list of distractions last year. This is a clear example of how distractions can prevent you from thinking and acting strategically:
Participating in group sessions turned out to be a complete waste of time. The audience in these sessions was entirely unrelated to my target audience of startup founders. I also got the impression that many participants didn’t have a strong understanding of the topics they were advising on. None of the answers to my questions felt deep, well-considered, or well-structured.
Participating in individual sessions with Sasha was similarly unproductive. Each session lasted only 30 minutes, making it difficult to extract meaningful insights or actionable next steps. Our conversations were high-level and aspirational, while I was hoping for well-prepared, step-by-step guidance.
Co-authoring a book was a bright but completely distracting experience. First, the book is still not ready for publication a year after I opted into this opportunity. Second, while the topics I covered in the book and the course were similar, I ended up writing the story of my journey and lessons learned about building products and startups. While the book could serve as a source of ideas for the course, it fell far short of being a structured program. In truth, this was a major distraction from my original plan of going traction-first with my "From Idea to First Customers in 4 Months" product.
Result:
Time spent: 6 months
Money spent: $3,000
Customers: 0
Podcasts recorded: 1
Books written: 1
Step 5. Mentoring at Startup Accelerators
I began working on this initiative in 2023 and successfully expanded my partnerships with accelerators in 2024. Over the course of 2024, I participated in and mentored startups at many of the top incubators and accelerators in Ukraine, including Startup School by Startup Depot, CfE Accelerator, We.Brave Bootcamp by SET University, Yep! Accelerator, 1991 Accelerator, and EÕ Business Incubators.
Firstly, based on the results, I can conclude that this was a strategic step in the right direction, even though it did not contribute directly to my profitability goals and I primarily offered my services pro bono. The only acceleration program that compensated me for my services was SET University. This created an important precedent that encouraged me to believe that, as I continue to grow in value within the ecosystem, I can begin to request compensation more consistently.
Secondly, mentoring at startup accelerators has become my training ground for honing my mentoring skills. Over the year, I conducted more than 150 mentorship sessions (a few of them were paid) and provided 8 workshops. This experience has also significantly improved both my mentoring and public speaking skills.
Lastly, mentoring at startup accelerators also allowed me to validate my "First Customers in 4 Months" product with a large number of founders. This helped me realise that the offer I provided does not work. More on that later.
Result:
Time spent: 1 year
Money spent: $0
Consultations provided: 150+
Workshops created: 4
Workshops provided: 8
Customers: 3
Revenue generated: $1,000
The only profitable step taken last year.
Step 6. Launching $100M Startup
Launching $100M Startup podcast has been my most successful initiative this year. Since launching it in April 2024, I’ve recorded, produced, and published 15 episodes. Most of my customers and the majority of my revenue this year came directly from the podcast.
But the impact of the podcast goes beyond revenue. Through it, I’ve built valuable personal connections with key players in the Ukrainian startup ecosystem, including Viktoria Tigipko, Andrii Zaikin, Andrii Zinchuk, Vladislav Khilkovets, and Yurii Blavt. I’ve also had the pleasure of connecting with amazing founders like Maxym Kuchur, Anton Avrynskyi, Anna Apostol, Dmytro Horilyk, Oleg Frolov, Danylo Golota, Maxim Ilnitskyi, Stanislav Stoyatskyi, Artem Plokhii, Danylo Orlov, and Mykola Lisivka. Conversations with them (especially the off-the-record parts) taught me a great deal.
The podcast has also significantly boosted my visibility within the Ukrainian startup ecosystem. It’s both unusual and rewarding when strangers recognize me and reach out to chat or connect. I remember the words said by Mary Dub on one of the ecosystem brunches: "Eugene, where did you come out of? You appeared out of nowhere!". To me, it felt as the true measurement that I'm doing everything right.
On top of that, I genuinely enjoyed creating the podcast, especially once the production process became standardized. Delegating routine production and publishing tasks to my social media manager made the process even more enjoyable. Funny, but people who wondered about the production details of my podcast did not realise that all of it was primarily done, edited, publishing and distributed solely by me. They thought there was a large team behind it.
I invested approximately $5,500 in producing, publishing, and distributing these episodes and generated $5,200 in revenue from them. While not profitable, it still feels like the right founder-channel fit for me. Honestly, I don’t think I fully extracted all the value and revenue potential from these 15 episodes. Initially, I didn’t even consider selling anything on the podcast — it was purely an experiment. Achieving the quality I did while keeping costs low was challenging, and by the time I realized the experiment was a success, I was too distracted by other commitments to create a product I could sell successfully in the podcast. At that point, I already recognized that my original idea of “First Customers in 4 Months” product does not work for Ukrainian first-time founders in the idea or MVP stage.
Result:
Time spent: 8 months
Money spent: $5500
Episoded delivered: 15
Youtube growth: from 0 to 6800 followers
Youtube views: 150,000+
Telegram channel growth: from 0 to 200
VC's personal contacts: 2
Youtube patrons: 3
Customers: 5
Revenue: $5,200
Step 7. Realising "First customers in 4 months" does not work
As I explained earlier, this was the main high-ticket product I focused on selling during the first six months of 2024.
My conclusion is that the offer – as-is – does not work, even though I managed to sell it once this year.
I validated and presented the offer as a lead magnet to over 50 people, primarily through my workshops.
Here is why I think it did not work:
Excessive commitment
High cost
Distracted founders
First of all, the product requires too much commitment from first-time founders. Buying it means working closely with me in sprints, which demands 20 to 40 hours per week over the next four months. This level of involvement is unrealistic for most first-time founders who still have full-time jobs.
As Alex Hormozi explains, when it comes to products, the perseived value equals (result * chance of achieving it) / (time + effort required). In my case, while the result was guaranteed, it required a significant effort from the founder for a long period of time to achieve the result, which most likely felt too much for founders.
Second, at $2,500, the price is prohibitively high for first-time Ukrainian founders, regardless of their occupation. Initially, I assumed that founders working in IT would be able to afford it, but I misjudged the situation. This is strange and seems like a cultural or psychological thing — First-time founders on the idea and MVP stage are extremely conservative at spending their own money. That's my best interpretation. It's actually quite phenomenal.
On the one hand, you easily find them posting photos and videos from another much more expensive vacation or holiday weekend on Instagram, and then, on another hand, hear that they want to grow the tech business from scratch, but at the same time finding them not willing to do a longterm investment. The phenomenon of perceived value, I guess.
I guess, everything comes down to the no-brainer offer. I guess, it all comes building a sense of 10x value you would get preferably immediately and with no effort for the money that you spend.
In other words, to play it, my offer would have likely worked much better if I promised a $25,000 return on investment within four months with little to no time or effort required from the founder from the original $2,500 they paid for my product. But it's absolutely unrealistic. Building business is painfully hard. Everyone would have done it if it was that simple.
Lastly, the product proved ineffective for founders with full-time commitments. I had one customer this year who purchased the product but couldn’t extract enough value from it because they didn’t dedicate enough time to working with me as required. That's a different interpretation of the same problem with excessive commitment.
Step 8. The step I did not take
After realizing that the "First Customers in 4 Months" product was not working, I should have started exploring ways to pivot the product into something people actually want. This became even more apparent after receiving very little response to my attempt to get people to pre-register for the first cohort of the "First Customers in 4 Months" course / bootcamp.
Unfortunately, I have never done this step.
I've spent sometime exploring options on how to convert the original program to a fully asynchronous course that people could complete on their own. I have even bought a number of existing courses that some of the well-known people in global bootstrap founder community were selling to use as a reference of "sellable product". But, at that point I was already too overwhelmed with the number of projects I was working on in parallel to think strategically, restructure my plan and take the action needed:
Mentoring at accelerators
Producing the podcast
Writing the book
Attending angel club sessions
Working on Lisapet.ai
Hold on, working on Lisapet.ai? Wtf?
Step 9. Launching Lisapet.ai
Yes, Lisapet.ai. A side hobby project that my colleague and I have been exploring from time to time since January 2024.
While building AI features at Yola, my team and I experienced major problems related to developing, testing, and delivering AI features. This sparked the idea for Lisapet.ai.
I think I unconsciously decided to start working on this side project more actively after realizing that my original idea of serving first-time founders on idea and MVP does not work.
But here we are — I can’t undo it, especially now after investing 6 months of runway and time on it.
On a positive note, this time, with this side project, I feel I have the best odds of success compared to my previous startups:
I’m serving a market I deeply understand. I’ve personally faced all the problems we’re solving with Lisapet.ai while building AI features at Yola.
The market for AI infrastructure and development tools is huge and growing rapidly. When my colleague and I first came up with the idea for Lisapet.ai, there were few, if any, similar products on the market. Now, there are plenty—we’ve counted more than 30 competitors. Many of them are backed YC, which is an important sign of demand.
I’ve conducted over 20 interviews with potential customers and shared our design prototypes. Only one did not qualify. The rest asked for early access.
This time, I’m prioritizing product and distribution equally.
What I need now is focus. I must avoid spreading myself thin this year.
Step 10. Testing lead magnets on the podcast
Toward the end of the year, after realizing that the podcast was genuinely working for me, I began testing various lead magnets to gauge potential demand for other product ideas. These lead magnets were intended to evolve into real products if the demand was validated:
How to acquire customers with Reddit and Slack communities
How to get the Product of Day on Product Hunt
How to test and validate mobile app ideas with web-to-app funnels
Each of them performed quite well, as they were directly tied to specific needs or problems my podcast guests faced and navigated during their journeys. From the three lead magnets I tested, I gathered more than 50 leads. That 10x compared to trying to capture leads for "First customers in 4 months".
Unfortunately, due to being so distracted, I never properly followed through or delivered the corresponding products.
Looking back and analyzing everything I’ve done, my biggest regret this year is spreading myself too thin and being distracted by too many simultaneous projects. I could have achieved far more if I had stayed focused.
I hope this becomes a genuine lesson for me.
What went well:
Earned $6,000 on my business. Doubled the revenue compared to last year (2x)
Grew Youtube from 0 to 6800 followers. Got first 150,000 views. Published 15 podcast episodes
Grew LinkedIn from 400 to 4200 followers (10x). Got seen 160,000 times.
Grew Telegram channel from 0 to 200 followers
Provided 150+ consultations, 8 workshops to startup founders, affiliated with 6 accelerators
Established personal connections with key players in Ukrainian Startup Ecosystem
What went wrong:
Did not reach profitability. Recorded $10,000 in losses.
Ended up absolutely distracted across a large number of loosely tied projects.
What did I learn:
Making Youtube videos works great for me as a distribution channel
All my projects deliver results. External ones don’t. Trust myself. Say no to the rest
Doing multiple things at the same time deliver tangible results
What to do next:
General
Make Lisapet.ai the primary focus
Startup Studio
Focus on AI SaaS market only
Focus on providing advisory, design and engineering services only
Convert learnings from Lisapet.ai to cheap products and services
Affiliate with other service providers when possible
Youtube
Switch to global AI SaaS market only
Switch to remote only
Switch language to English. Check if Ukrainian voiceover is appreciated.
Produce long content based on learnings from Lisapet.ai and life
Switch to new branding: bootstrapped startups, indie hacking, digital nomading
Automate production and publishing of short content as much as possible
Rate: 4/10
Wealth
What I enjoy most about these yearly recaps is how they push me to dig deeper and extract real insights from my initial emotional impressions. At first, I was planning to describe this area as complete failure this year. But after thinking deeper, I actually realized that my unmet ambition of becoming rich messed things up a little bit. Here are plain facts.
I've started the year with $100,000 in total net worth and had a goal to double my net worth by the end of 2024, i.e. my net worth supposed to reach $200,000.
Throughout the year I've done a lot of different things that impacted my net worth. To be short and stick to facts:
Started the year with $90,000 in the bank
Sold my first car (converted $10,000 to cash)
Invested $15,000 in Zeely (converted $15,000 to assets)
Invested $10,000 in Himera (converted $10,000 to assets)
Bought new car (converted $42,000 to depreciating assets, last known price was $20,000)
Earned $6,000 on my Startup Studio, but spent $16,000 primarily on marketing (recorded $10,000 in losses)
Invested $3,000 in Lisapet.ai (converted $3,000 to assets)
Ended the year with $56,000 in the bank
So, if I add all hard cash and all assets together, my net worth would be apx:
$56,000 + $15,000 + $10,000 + $20,000 + $3,000 = $104,000
This estimation does not include the following facts:
The valuation of Zeely has significantly increased since my investment, so my $15,000 should have appreciated already
The valuation of Himera has significantly increased since my investment, so my $10,000 should have appreciated already
The secondary car market is at its lowest right now in Ukraine due to uncertainty of war. Actual market price for my car according to AutoRia is $32,000
Originally, I thought that I've lost a lot of my wealth this year. But, facts tell me it's not true. It's just that I did not reach my goal and improved my wealth only by 4%.
What went well:
At least I did record a loss in my total net worth.
What went wrong:
Recording $100,000 in profits from your business are 100 times harder than I originally thought. The market size of the Ukrainian startup ecosystem and demand for my services is a fraction of the size and demand I thought I would have originally. I did not properly manage expenses of my business. More on that in Business section.
I decided to buy a secondary car from US. The original estimate for getting to Ukraine and fixing the damage was $22,000 total. I underestimated the risks and unfortunately found the team working on it unprofessional. The original estimate of 4 months and $22,000 ended up with 9 months and $42,000.
What did I learn:
I have tendency to overcommit and over invest into quality of my work. This slows me down significantly and get my expenses out of control.
I have tendency to overestimate the value I can get from people and frequently end up paying for stuff that I either don't really need or the one that does not really bring value to my life.
I have tendency to avoid conflict. In the moments, when my wealth get's affected due to other people's mistakes or interests I often end up covering that. I do not properly assess financial losses I can experience. I have never requested money back due to poorly provided services or took someone to court for their mistakes.
Once again, my brain makes me think of things more negatively than they actually are.
What to do next:
Limit the amount of money I spend on things I'm not confident about
Protect my interests next time a major financial loss appears due to other people's mistakes
Start planning financials for my business and startups
Rate: 6/10
Family
Absolutely nailed this one this year. Started living, then got engaged and married the best person I've met in my life. My persistence that I've started last year did pay off.
My partner is my best wife, lover, supporter, and friend. I feel the undoubtful connection and confidence in our relationship. We share similar values, views for the life, plans and goals for the future.
She is also the bravest person that I know. On her 23rd birthday I've made a "surprise" for her – the skydiving jump. This person went from absolute panic and tears to straight confidence in a matter of 10 minutes. She jumped like it was a routine for here. Skydiving was one the best thing we ever done in our lives. We both concluded that this is something that really pushes your limits further away.
She is my best supporter and probably one of the very few persons I can talk to about my plans, doubts and concerns to get a through constructive feedback. She jumps to support me in every life battle I get like it's her battles as well.
I also feel that with her I always push myself to get better version of myself. She inspires me to achieve more: build a business, buy a house, have children.
I also so happy that I've met her in the right moment of my life with the just enough level of maturity. I'm pretty confident that if I've met here a few years before, I would be a jerk and definitely screwed things up.
What else could a man wish for?
What went well:
Got married to the best person in the world
What went wrong:
Nothing
What did I learn:
Building a happy family is hard work. Do not take it for granted.
What to do next:
Keep working on family relationship
Keep talking and hearing
Keep growing personally
Keep developing shared interests
Keep experiencing new things together
Keep taking care of her
Start trying to get children
Rate: 10/10