Looking back at 2019 and forward to 2020

This week, we wanted to take some time to reflect on what happened in 2019 and set goals for 2020. We created a series of questions that Rick and Tyler both had to answer. Here are the answers...

• What happened in 2019?
  • In our personal lives
    • Rick: Took 7-8 months of to figure out who he is and what his goals are, especially with his new marriage.
    • Tyler: Figured out a sustainable diet
  • In our professional lives
    • Rick
      • Figured out what he wants to do after leaving his previous job of 11+ years
      • Started LegUp Ventures which is a holding company for his various ventures:
        • GroupCurrent - Outsourced member management
        • Startup to Last - This podcast
        • RickLinquist.com - Rick's personal writing
        • LegUp Health - Reducing healthcare-related anxiety for people without job-based insurance
    • Tyler
      • Started the year working on a new project called Sparse which was abandoned in February
      • The rest of the year was spent on a major redesign of Less Annoying CRM which included two major new features: Custom fields and Outlook Calendar Sync
      • This was the best year for the LACRM product team
  • Biggest accomplishment
    • Tyler: Finally built a real product team at LACRM
    • Rick: GroupCurrent turned around the business model of their first client and got it to sustainability
  • Biggest disappointment
    • Tyler: Sales in the second half of the year were below expectations
    • Rick: Wasn't thoughtful enough about getting his wife's buy-in when starting his new ventures
• Looking forward to 2020
  • Personal goals
    • Rick: Get to a point where he and his wife feel comfortable having kids
    • Tyler: Get a dog
  • High-level professional goals / the theme of 2020
    • Tyler: Continue the product teams momentum and establish a rhythm of regularly shipping updates to LACRM
    • Rick: Calm growth. His life is calm right now, and as his ventures pick up, he doesn't want that to change.
  • Biggest worries / what's keeping you up at night?
    • Rick: Making enough personal income to be able to sustain his ventures
    • Tyler: Growth at LACRM needs to pick up eventually
  • Three specific goals for 2020
    • Tyler
      • Exercise moderately three times per week
      • Write code once per week
      • By the end of the year, average 50 paying users per month joining LACRM through the referral channel
    • Rick
      • Play more sports. He has an exercise routine, but it's boring and doesn't involve games or play
      • Be ready to start trying to having kids
      • Get distribution revenue from LegUp Ventures to $10k/month
    • Shared goal: Get this podcast to 250 subscribers
  • Make a prediction for 2020
    • Tyler: Starting a software business without venture capital will become much more mainstream over the next year
    • Rick: An all-in-one leader will emerge in the no-code industry
  • What do you want to read in 2020?
    • Rick: Too many to name, but wants to read a lot about emotions.
    • Tyler: The unicorn project and Obviously Awesome