I haven’t done a good job writing lately (maybe that should’ve been a goal), but with the end of the year, comes a time to reflect. For better or worse, I set some goals at the end of the year. Like with any goal-setting, there was both imperfect information about what would be important during the year, as well as different levels of execution against the goals. So – in the spirit of my own clarity as well as accountability and transparency, here’s my take on the year.

First – a reminder on what I set out for myself:

And now, for the review:

Professional

1. Assess long-term interest in healthcare: 2024 was a year a lot like 2023 in the investing world, which is quite different than the first decade I spent in investing roles. Between economic uncertainty, regulatory uncertainty, and high interest rates, it wasn’t an particularly easy year for the kinds of healthcare services companies I thought I’d be focused on at work. But that difficulty yielded the opportunity to explore other areas of healthcare, as well as figure out how sad I was about not working on multi-site services rollups.

My general thoughts here:

1. There are parts of healthcare that I’d rather yeet myself off a high building than devote my life to (revenue cycle management fundamentally should not exist in its current form and is an incredibly wasteful use of time and resources!).
2. Function / role matters a lot – I might be happy as an investor or doing M&A and strategy but unhappy doing FP&A and physician compensation at the same company (probably a reflection of the low mindshare I devote to how much I get paid, haha)
3. There’s definitely enough within healthcare to keep me engaged for years or decades, but I could (and do!) say the same about consumer. And what’s really important to me at this stage in my career is team (both who I’m learning from and who I can teach), fast pace of decision-making and execution (which may not lend itself to things like pharma and medtech), and autonomy.

2. Two conversations with “new” connections per month: Generally successful here, particularly in having those first “interesting” conversations. Can’t say I track them – that felt too forced. Probably not surprising from someone who runs as much as I do but refuses to use Strava. Places where I want to improve in 2025 is keeping the momentum going / finding good reasons to check in. I’ve recently gotten “for an introvert, you’re pretty adept at networking / find yourself in interesting places” comment a few times and that’s the exact balance I’m shooting for. But because it isn’t the easiest or most natural thing for me to put myself out there, it’s a good goal / thing to keep in the back of my mind if I don’t make this a 2025 goal.

3. Improve comfort with sourcing and “hit rate”: I’m definitely not much more automated or scientific about this than I was 12 months ago. But a lot of this goal had to do with working through fear of rejection – and I think that comes back to having confidence in what you’re “selling”. If you’re networking, you are effectively the product. If you’re cold-calling on behalf of your employer, then it’s confidence in your firm’s value creation strategy and ability to be a great capital partner. On a related note, I think I’m firmly entering the “run through walls to do cool shit with good people, and let the rest of it take care of itself” part of my career arc – so to me, wanting to do this well 100% aligns with having the utmost confidence in whatever I’m selling.

Financial

1. Simplify with index funds: Short answer is I made basically no progress here – turns out that whole thing LPs in private equity are worried about with the relative lack of distributions and liquidity will impact you too, if your personal balance sheet is overweight to private equity. Interests are indeed aligned. I’m shifting my mindset on this goal a bit. Since I’m not retiring any time soon (The only way I’m going to be OK taking the next two weeks off work is that I’m seeing my family and friends out east for the first time in too long), and the timing of these changes is largely out of my hands anyway, I think this is a good long-term focus but a bad annual goal.

As a side note – my employer has decided that we should all use Interactive Brokers to manage our investments, and whoever is in charge of their user interface and experience should be fired into the sun. My only thought is that someone at Interactive Brokers did some research and came to the conclusion that consumer confidence in a financial institution went up when there was a ton of (ancillary) information and things looked insanely cluttered. They’re so smart that they didn’t have time to be organized, etc.  

2. New SMB or Angel Investment backing someone I know: Nothing new here. I did meet some new people in the search fund community in Denver which was good. The “financial” side of this is honestly covered as a fund-level investor in Pacific Lake, so what I think this is really about is being helpful where I can, to people I like. And as the searchers I worked with start acquiring businesses and finding their sea legs as CEOs, I hope they’ll call me / recommend other people who come to them call me.

3. Buy a house / set aside a down payment: Definitely made progress and am prioritizing this as a 2025 action, although between some of my climate concerns and AI concerns, I’m half-debating this purchase being rural land with good water access in the northeast that I could eventually build on (or sub-divide), versus a house I’ll actually live in full-time. The only thing more expensive than insurance is not having insurance when you need it…

Personal

1. Attend at least ten concerts: Easily quantified, something that brings me great joy, and achieved. Glad I set this one. I made it to 11 shows this year – since this isn’t the old music blog I had with friends (RIP Extraordinary Machine – that was a fun 2013/2014 project!). I’m not going to go too deep into highlights, but Spotify playlist here if you want to know what I saw. And it’s clearly time to start making my 2025 plans since I haven’t done that yet. The only regrets were the ones I didn’t go to, particularly when I used the excuse of not going alone to not go (though I did do at least one solo show).

2. See family and close friends at least once in person: In general, I think I did pretty well here. I measure success if I can answer yes to “did I get on a plane to see people when there was a reason to do so” and “did I make that extra effort to see friends when I was in town on business”.  We made it back to Vermont in April for the eclipse (Erica’s idea, but with free lodging at my mom’s house, an easy choice in hindsight), and Erica’s family the week of the Crowdstrike meltdown. I saw friends when in SF and NYC for work, we took a somewhat spontaneous long weekend in DC to see close friends (and saw Ben Gibbard do double-duty in Death Cab for Cutie and The Postal Service). There’s a lot that I love about Denver, but we are far from most of the people we’re close with, so this is always a good use of money and vacation days.

3. Visit a new state and a new NASCAR track: I give myself half-credit, at least. We were thinking about road-tripping up to Mount Rushmore on 4^th of July weekend, but I had been on the road / out of the country a bunch in May/June and wasn’t stoked about that drive, so we pivoted to Steamboat. Steamboat over Vail, any day. But technically, no new states this year.

I did visit a new country in Denmark, and two if you use the “did you spend the night there” rule with Sweden (solo day trip from Oslo to Gothenburg in business school aside). New life goal unlocked of moving to Scandinavia (for at least six months / year – the winter seems kind of brutal and I’m from Vermont).

As for the NASCAR track / race, I did double duty. We went to Las Vegas in the spring (Erica’s first time in Nevada, my second) and while it isn’t the most interesting track on the circuit, it is less than 30 minutes from the Strip. So I hit all three races (Trucks / Xfinity / Cup), without it taking away from other things we did that weekend. Huge success. And Vegas in March isn’t oppressively hot. Which brings me to October – when I realized that the fall NASCAR race at Vegas coincided with a large healthcare conference I was attending, I bought a cheap ticket in the Uber to the airport, dropped my bags off, and went to the track solo. It was really hot, I was solo, but it beats gambling (or basically anything else there is to do in Vegas) 100 times out of 100.

Health

1. Run a 1:30 half marathon: I didn’t race this year. I started the year pretty banged-up – I couldn’t make it through a mile due to a nagging hamstring injury. Super frustrating. Good thing I was in the middle of due diligence on a company with a novel approach to physical therapy. Thanks to the Sword team I got back on my feet, but by the time I built up enough of a base, I didn’t find a race that coincided with a weekend I was in town that was also convenient. Whoever makes all these start times at 7:30am can get fired into the sun with the Interactive Brokers UX people. Brutal. But based on the runs I am doing, I think I’m closer to being able to do this now than I was 12 months ago, so now it’s just time to give it a go.

2. Do the primary care / recommended testing stuff: Check. Thanks to telehealth appointments that I jammed into Q4. But deadlines are helpful. I’m of two minds on all the concierge medicine / Function Health type stuff. As a healthcare investor, I think it’s pretty clear how broken our healthcare system is, and so if working outside “the system” and treating healthcare like any other consumer good is a way for someone to get what they want, I’m fully on board. That said, I want to spend approximately 0% of my time thinking about self-measurement and optimization (hence the lack of Strava, Whoop, Skratch Labs, and basically everything else an active 36 year old dude in Colorado “should” own or use). We all generally know what we “should” be doing and I think the “80 / 20” approach is good enough for basically everyone who isn’t a professional athlete or similar.

3. Make significant strides on one new outdoor activity / hobby: Epic fail. I think I got a couple rounds of disc golf and one Nordic ski day in so far this year. No biking. I did go to my first-ever group workout class this year – I’m “not a person who exercises in groups” but I guess maybe I could be. I know that’s not outdoors. Baby steps on letting go of the “I’m not a person who” shit, but if you see me skiing in Vail, that’s a bridge too far. That place gives me the creeps.

Overall, 2024 was a fine year. I dunno whether I “won” or not. I’m writing this watching football, and in some ways it felt like one of those games where it’s just about field position – lots of punting, not a ton of points scored by either team, not that many turnovers, not the most interesting game, but ultimately a close / winnable game. But to extend the metaphor, I spent a good part of the year focused on something that wasn’t on my radar when I wrote these out (if you know me well, you probably know). Said another way – there was a freak snowstorm that broke out in the 2^nd quarter and the gameplan kind of went out the window.

Writing this out has brought out a couple themes for the year:

1. Don’t be afraid of doing something solo
2. If there’s a question about it and the only consequence of going/doing is a little money and some opportunity cost, just get on the plane / do the thing.

With that in mind, I’m gonna try to get at least one more good ski day in this year, buy some new gear, and think about what this all means for 2025…