My 2023 Annual Review

This post marks two special moments in my life.

First, it is the first post I am publishing on seanmccormick.me, a website completely dedicated to writing about things that unequivocally interest me without needing to consider monetary implications. My hope is that the purity of this pursuit will thus deliver more value to myself, but also anyone else who comes across it.

Second, it marks a new tradition of writing an annual review. The purpose of this review will be the honestly reflect on my past year, for better or worse, and set a high-level vision for the coming year. In doing so, I hope to momentarily remove myself from the day-to-day scurry and steer the course of my life in the direction of my deeper desires.

The structure of this annual review will be focused on answering the following three questions:

What went well this year?
What didn’t go well this year?
What am I working toward next year?

I hope this review inspires you to reflect on your life and dream bigger than you ever have before. Ok, let’s dive in!

What went well this year?

Business

Online courses

After starting my online course journey of October of 2021, I finally hit my stride this summer. The biggest shifts I made were launching my courses as a 6-week program (rather than an ongoing membership), and establishing affiliate partnerships with other creators who had much larger audiences, but were not offering the same material.

As an entrepreneur with ADHD, my greatest challenge has been sticking with things and seeing them through to completion, even when the rewards are not immediate. This is the reason I have struggled with musical instruments, learning to code, and many endeavors that I've "sampled" without getting through "the dip" as Seth Godin calls it.

I want to draw your attention to one graph here that shows the journey of course creation for me and why it was so important to stick with it. From year one to year two (2021 through 2022), I made less than 10,000 on my courses after investing dozens, if not over a hundreds hours into learning the platform, how to market, and create content.

But in year two, I finally figured out some of the core features of building and launching courses and grossed (not netted) over 100,000 in one year.

Henry David Thoreau said:

If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

To me this nails the reality of the course building experience. I had to believe that all the work, failed launches, webinars with 0 people showing up, and leads that faded away, would at some point turn into success and sales. This was very hard for me, as I am attracted to and accustomed to immediate gratification.

But by putting that need aside, and trusting the process, I did something great in my book. If I can leave you with one more quote that was my north star when I felt like quitting, it is this, which I discovered on the wall of the Columbus Circle Whole Foods I was working at while attending City College of New York between 2010 and 2012.

“Our doubts are traitors, And make us lose the good we oft might win, By fearing to attempt.” – William Shakespeare

Coaching businesses

I continued to refine and shape my student coaching business in 2023. While there were some definite bumps in the road, the business continued to grow in profitability and we also made some big shifts to improve the sustainability of the organization including:

Converting to a subscription model rather than a “utilize as needed” model.
Promoting key staff members from within
Hiring an Operations and HR director to support with hiring, retention and systems

I also co-founded an adult executive function coaching brand with a motivated and inspiring business partner, to provide support for a growing need: the neurodivergent workforce. This just started in September 2023, but I am confident this will grow into a thriving venture in the coming years.

Writing

Blogging

I was more consistent with publishing on my blog for my coaching brand than ever before this year, publishing a blog post and newsletter EVERY week in 2023. This led to some explosive growth in this area including:

About 3500 new email subscribers
Almost 50k post views

I also decided to take my newsletter more seriously by investing in an improved email software system, rather than using the built-in features of my website host, which was very limited.

Investing this much time in my writing and content creation had huge payoffs. Some of my blog articles reached the front page of Google for different search categories and my master guide on Executive Function Coaching crossed 10k views at the time of this writing. This lead to more customers and growth for both my coaching business and my online courses.

Speaking

For the first time in my career, I had a speaking gig that crossed the $1K mark (woo hoo!). You will hear me put out a lot of numbers here, not because money is the primary goal, but more so because I believe that money is a neutral indicator of value in the world we live in, and helps one judge if an endeavor one should be investing a lot of attention, time and energy into. Of course, as my example above shows, sometimes money does not come at first, which is why it cannot be the only metric of success.

In 2023, for the first time, I ran a half-day workshop at a school in the Bay Area. I limited the number of free speaking gigs I offered and instead focused on high-impact opportunities. This helped with overall energy as speaking can be draining if done often on different topics. I limited the number of topics I spoke on and spoke to my core audience about executive function skills.

Health

Getting exercise

After tearing my lateral collateral ligament in my right knee in August of 2022, and then tearing my meniscus in the same knee in October of 2022, I felt physically diminished and somewhat brokenhearted for about six months. Basketball has been a huge stress reliever and core part of my identity since 6th grade and it was hard to imagine a future without this thrilling pastime.

Things started to shift around July 2023, when I was introduced to Pickleball at a family reunion in Tahoe. After making time to play many weeks, my skills have progressed and I find myself yearning to learn the nuances of the sport and compete more. Feeling the same passion that led me to fall in love with basketball as a 12-year-old, minus the level of risk to my body that basketball requires, Pickleball has been a bright spot that I am excited to engage with further in 2024.

Additionally, I’ve been able to build regular maintenance exercise into my life. After reading the book, Free Time by Jenny Blake, I committed to building in exercise into my week, joining a local exercise class and going every week for the last 3 months of 2023. I also committed to going to hot yoga (Bikram) and have been consistent most weeks since October 2023.

Family

Fathering

Becoming a father to two little girls has been the most rewarding and challenging experience of my life. Rewarding for a multitude of reasons, mostly, that there is nothing that compares to learning how to give your best self to a child who believes in you and loves you. Challenging, in that it is a constant necessity to shed the selfish behaviors of pre-children life and learn how to be relatively responsible 100% of the time. I say relatively because it is important to be playful and silly with children, but at the same time, I am the final decision maker and need to ensure everyone is safe, nourished and supported in most situations.

Something that has helped me in this endeavor is the process of running "board meetings" with my children. In a nutshell, the concept is that you spend four hours of interrupted time with your child, solely focused on an activity they choose. Using this process has given me more confidence that I can leave a positive and loving legacy on my children, while also allowing me to pursue my entrepreneurial goals.

Marriage

Like any couple, my wife and I have challenges and 2023 was no exception. However, I believe this year marks a special turning point in our relationship, as our years of investing in proactive couples therapy, lifestyle adjustments, and more conscientious behaviors of supporting each other started to pay off. This year was a challenge in that we moved to a new home, were raising two children under 5 years old, and I started a new business.

With all that in mind, we found time for each other, often through small things like watching a movie together, making time for a small getaway trip to where we met (NYC), and adjusting the way we communicated.

Learning

Reading

I’ve read some incredible books in 2023 that have truly contributed to my growth as a person and entrepreneur. While this is somewhat impossible, I've attempted to order them from greatest to least value brought to my life:

The Big Leap by Gay Hendricks
A Promised Land by Barack Obama
Atomic Habits by James Clear
The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau
Free Time by Jenny Blake
Fatherhood is Leadership by Devon Bandison
Brave New Work by Aaron Dignan
So Good They Can’t Ignore You by Cal Newport
Cry Like a Man by Jason Wilson
The Illusion of Money by Kyle Cease

Each of these books has expanded my thinking in perspective in large and small ways. I continue to enjoy the compounding benefits of learning from great authors and making small tweaks to my life that have big peaks.

What didn’t go so well this year?

Exploring

Travel

I have not made time for travel and the excuses I am telling myself are that I am running my businesses and have two young children under 5 years old, but I am sure with some focus, effort and planning, this can change. One of the struggles with entrepreneurship is that I feel I have to make myself available at all times. After all, it is my business.

Because of this and raising two children under 5, I have not taken any exploratory trips to other states or countries. This is something I would like to change in 2025, when my youngest child is more ambulatory.

Mental Health

After years of struggling with what has been diagnosed as both Generalized Anxiety Disorder and ADHD, the fog has started to clear and I’m having fewer issues related to these disorders. For a long time I had actual physical symptoms related to anxiety which were not pretty and extremely painful (I’ll spare you the details), but those have largely subsided.

2023 was my breaking point in many respects and I had to make significant changes in my life to reduce entrepreneurial exhaustion including:

Getting clear on my boundaries in my personal and professional life and structuring my days and times so that I generally interact with people who are energizing and inspiring to me, while limiting my interactions with people who feel unhealthy or toxic
Sticking with therapy for multiple years and putting things into practice
Taking regular cold showers and ice baths
Building exercise into my weekly routine
Reducing my caffeine intake
Being sober for the last two years

I look forward to continuing to explore small tweaks that can improve my mental health and allow me to enjoy life in a fuller capacity.

Communication skills

Saying No

In 2023, I found myself overbooked, which led to exhaustion at times and destabilizing my moods. I would sometimes feel like I couldn’t show up the way I wanted to for my children and wife, which is not a pattern I want to continue. To address this, I worked with a coach to review my schedule each week remove unnecessary appointments, and focus on the core essentials. This is still a work in progress as I have found that I tend to overcommit, but I aim to improve this in 2024.

Passive aggressive/passive communication

One habit I hope to fully eliminate in 2024 is using passive-aggressive or passive communication techniques. These communication skills are a holdover from a time when I had no voice as a child or a young person and thus had to resort to these techniques to feel like I was speaking up when I did not know how to address dominant authority figures in my life that seemed unapproachable (parents, teachers, coaches, etc).

I've found that the remnants of these habits have a damaging effect on my relationships and prevent me from articulating and asserting my actual needs and ideas. I look forward to tracking my behaviors in this domain in 2024 and trying to wipe them out for the most part (I can always make room for the occasional slip-up).

What am I working toward?

More creation

More creating, less consuming

I’m my best when creating things I want to share with the world. I want 2024 to be more focused on putting my creations out there through courses, books, and building communities, and less time “preparing” to create. My big goal is to write a book about my Executive Function Coaching process, which I have been speaking about for years.

I would also like to double down on using my voice as a creative tool. Akin to Descartes, "I think therefore I am," I want 2024 to be, "I speak therefore it is." If I say I am going to do something, I want to hold myself accountable for doing it.

More focus

Fewer Projects, Bigger Impact

I’ve realized that I want to simplify my business and work into a few core offerings that give the best of my expertise, rather than spreading myself too thinly. With this in mind, I am looking to work with others who are excited about their strengths and expertise and zone in my own.

Using a framework I created inspired by the book, The Big Leap, I’ve been tracking what areas of my work and life are most energizing and which ones are less so and can be delegated or set aside.

Creating clear metrics for success

In 2024, I plan to implement a weekly scorecard process in which I will “earn” points for things like exercising, meditation, and creating things, while losing points for things like excessive caffeine drinking, going to bed late, etc. My goal is to set up a clear system for measuring my progress week to week.

I also plan to do an integrity check in June to evaluate whether I am aligned with the identity I want to create. I’ll be working with a life coach to support these goals and a few other colleagues to hold myself accountable.

More Time

Creating more free time

One of my goals is to create systems in my business and life. With this in mind, I am looking to create systems to are not person dependent, but process dependent. As the leader of my business, the only way to evaluate the stability of the system is to step away from it periodically as a “stress test” to see if it can sustain itself in my absence.

I’ve had this in mind since reading Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz in 2020, and I am increasingly confident that with the people and processes we’ve developed in my coaching ventures, this will be possible in 2024. I hope to test this structural integrity by taking a 14-30-day sabbatical in 2024 to clear my mind, refresh my vision, and return to all my projects with renewed clarity and vitality.

The Bottom Line

I hope you enjoyed reading my annual review for 2023. God, it felt great to get all this out there and set a vision for 2024. I'm excited to see where things go from here and grateful for the coming year.

Thank you to Chris Guillebeau, James Clear and Jesse J. Anderson for inspiring me to write this.