---
aliases: ["December 2024"]
Is A: Month
Created at: "2024-12-28"
Belongs to: "[[24q4]]"
Rating: "😄"
---
# December 2024

## Focus

- Run [[24q4-annual-review-process]] — review all goals, projects, and metrics for [[2024]]
- Complete [[24q4-cycling-year-review]] — analyze training data, plan 2025 cycling goals
- Set [[2025]] goals and plan [[25q1]]

## Highlights

- Completed [[24q4-annual-review-process]]: reviewed all 4 quarters, 20 projects, and 5 annual goals — documented everything in structured templates
- [[24q4-cycling-year-review]]: 6,200 km total, FTP up 12% YoY, 2 gran fondos completed — decided to target Stelvio for [[2025-ride-stelvio]]
- Set [[2025]] goals: [[2025-reach-85k-subscribers]], [[2025-reach-22k-mrr]], [[2025-ship-laputa]], [[2025-ride-stelvio]], [[2025-read-20-books]]
- Newsletter closed the year at 50.2k subscribers — slight post-Black-Friday churn, but net position is excellent
- [[measure-sponsorship-mrr]] ended at EUR 11.4k — [[2024-double-revenue]] confirmed (was EUR 5.5k in January)
- Read 2 books in December to finish at 26 total — [[2024-read-24-books]] exceeded
- [[person-paco-furiani]] and I sketched out the 2025 operational calendar — quarterly planning cadence locked in

## Reflections

December is always reflective, and this one more than most. Sitting down to review [[2024]] in detail, I realized that every major goal was either hit or exceeded. That almost never happens. The newsletter from 35k to 50k. Revenue doubled. Podcast launched and growing. Two gran fondos. 26 books. It was a genuinely great year.

But the review also surfaced where I was lucky vs. where I was good. The Black Friday campaign was well-executed, but the timing was also favorable — low competition in the engineering leadership newsletter space. The pillar articles strategy worked partly because of SEO tailwinds. I don't want to mistake a rising tide for good swimming.

Looking ahead to [[2025]], the goals are deliberately ambitious: 85k subscribers, EUR 22k MRR, shipping Laputa as a product, riding Stelvio. These require a different gear than 2024. More team, more systems, less heroics. The cycling review was satisfying — seeing 6,200 km logged, the FTP curve rising, the race results improving — it's the same compounding principle as the newsletter, just applied to watts instead of words. Here's to [[2025]].
