Continuing the tradition from 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, 2019, and 2018, here’s my reflection on 2024.

The life I want to live

For the past 6 years, I’ve organized my year in review posts by topic, ordered lightly by the topics that seemed most top-of-mind. This year, I’m choosing a slightly different framing: the life I’d like to live. I’ve started to hone this over the last year and a half, and I’m getting comfortable enough with it to start using it more actively and using it as a lens to view the things I did and choices I made.

At the end of 2023, I chose a theme word—actually 2—for 2024: “strengthening & stretching.” I didn’t explain it any more to anyone who asked, but I intended a few things by it. First: physically. I don’t see myself as very physically strong or flexible. I wanted to work on improving this. Secondly: mentally, emotionally, and psychologically. I’m a “do everything to the best of your ability” kind of person, or I’d rather not do it at all. I wanted to make sure that everything I did in 2024 was something that made me stronger and something that stretched me in some way. More on all of this below.

The shorthand that has resonated most and longest for me is Ramit Sethi’s idea of a “Rich Life”. Though the name indicates a specific financial status, it’s more than that. As Sethi describes:

A Rich Life is your ideal life—one where you look at your personal relationships, your finances, and your ordinary days and say, “Wow!”

It’s a life that is full. A life lived intentionally, proactively, and abundantly.

I like Justin Welsh’s framing on the same idea:

Stop thinking about “rich.” Start thinking about “free.”

But it still feels very singular, solitary, and self-centered. While I appreciate that, I found a passage in Scott Galloway’s The Algebra of Wealth that addresses nicely addresses the gap for me:

An obsession with career and money (beyond what you could ever spend) begins to diminish what is the source of real satisfaction: relationships.

Yes! That trifecta works well for me: 1) being free to do things I really enjoy to the fullest 2) with little worry of cost 3) and sharing that with people I enjoy.

The best name I’ve arrived at so far to encompass all that is a “Full Life List.” I’m open to a better label, but I’m sticking with that for now.

Here’s my ever-in-progress Full Life list:

1. Photograph beautiful places in the world
2. Eat at Michelin-starred restaurants
3. Play basketball
4. Buy rare sneakers

Photograph beautiful places in the world

This one combines two things I really enjoy: photography and travel. My trend over the last few years seems to be decreasing travel and photography, although travel slightly increased this year. My initial goal was to do this quarterly, but I ended up averaging almost double that. I visited:

1. Cusco, Peru
2. Los Angeles, CA
3. Hawaii
4. Scotland
5. Atlanta, GA
6. New York, NY (multiple times)
7. San Francisco, CA
8. Vancouver Island, Canada
9. Stowe, VT
10. Cape May, NJ

I took 17,739 photos in 2024, 14% less than the 20,722 photos I took in 2023.

But I do feel that, though the quantity of travel and photography is decreasing, the quality is definitely increasing.

I turned 40 this year and took a bucket list trip to Peru. Talk about strengthening and stretching. From immediately getting altitude sickness to the 7-mile hike in pouring rain since our train was suddenly cancelled—I’m not a hiker by any means, so this sucked—to see one of the wonders of the world, it was definitely a trip I’ll never forget for this milestone birthday.

Perhaps tied to my mid-life crisis was some anxiety about how long I’d be able to keep up my level of income, so, like many, I entertained the idea of selling all of our possessions and moving to an island for “the simpler life.” We beta tested this idea last year with Mexico, and this year we decided to do the same in Hawaii, visiting Oahu and Maui. We quickly realized this wasn’t the place for us, though it was incredibly beautiful and we made some lifelong memories together including a near-death experience that’s permanently etched in our brains.

I took Sidda and Char on a few-day road trip through Scotland with a quick detour to speak at a conference. They loved it! Their favorite part was seeing all the newborn lambs littered literally everywhere we drove in the Isle of Skye. We’re currently looking for a similar trip to do in 2025. Maybe Iceland. Open to suggestions.

I went on a salmon fishing trip in the Canadian wilderness with 20 entrepreneurs, organized by Chris Do. None of those are words that seasick-prone, introverted, shaky swimmer me would have put together, but here we are! I loved it and made some great new friends in the process.

As per my annual tradition, I blocked out a few days to shoot photos of fall foliage, this year in gorgeous Stowe, VT. Wanting to challenge myself, I decided to try and make a short film in addition to taking photos.

I learned that Cape May, NJ is one of the best locations in the world to see bird migration, not even 2 hours away from where I live right outside of Philadelphia. I joined a bird photography workshop to pick up some tips on how to capture great images of fast-moving wildlife. I even spotted a few river otters!

Eat at Michelin-starred restaurants

I really enjoy eating delicious food, especially at places where there’s an exorbitant amount of care put into the food I’m eating. I think it’s because it engages all of my senses.

These kinds of meals tend to happen at Michelin-starred restaurants, but this year I found that I enjoyed more meals at non-Michelin restaurants (even though I personally think they deserve Michelin stars).

My goal for 2024 was to do this once a quarter, and I’m about at that pace if not slightly over.

Jesse Ito’s Royal Sushi in Philly continues to be my favorite restaurant in the world.

Virgilio Martinez’s MIL Centro is a culinary journey through all of the microclimates of the Peruvian highlands. This meal was special, not only because it was on my 40th birthday, but because we spent a few hours prior to eating exploring the food lab and meeting the locals that plant and harvest the food and make textiles.

Provenance in Philly is the newest addition to my favorites list. Nich Bazik has created an incredible menu that’s as good as just about anywhere else I’ve been.

In addition to the really exceptional places, I also I ate at some other great new restaurants this year: EMei, Oltremare, Vetri Cucina, Cookshop, Monkeypod Kitchen, Fond, Leoda’s Kitchen & Pie Shop, Paia Fish Market, Los Tacos No. 1, Ogawa Sushi and Kappo, Lyla Lila, Atlas, Tartine, Quince, Sushi by Sea, Yuhiro Sushi, Sura Korean Cuisine, Amourette, Butler’s Pantry, The Pier House, Lacroix, Per Se, and The Gallery by Odo.

One thing that’s made restaurants even more exciting for me as someone who likes to take food photos is that I picked up a used Canon RF 100m f/2.8L IS USM Macro Lens. It’s the perfect lens for food photography, especially in capturing all the crisp details chefs toil over.

As with all my hobbies, I’m constantly looking for ways to subsidize them. This year, I’m really grateful to have partnered with Omlet at Render and Config to bring special dinners to design system professionals at each event. I’d love to do more of this in 2025.

Play basketball

I’ve enjoyed playing basketball since I was a kid and I’d play every day as soon as I got home from school. I slowed down as an adult for years, but I’m proud to say that I’ve averaged about once a week for the last two years, which was exactly my goal.

For the first time in my life, I actually think I’m becoming a good basketball player—though I say that hesitantly. I’m no G-League candidate or anything like that, but I can just about consistently count on myself to contribute a few points, some great passes, and some important defensive stops to any team I’m on. As a kid, I was always the smallest and the shortest on the court, so I learned to play that way. I’m only now realizing that I’m no longer that short, scrawny kid and that I can play differently now with the body I have.

A special basketball highlight of 2024 was to organize a basketball game at Figma’s Config in partnership with Wix Studio. I had a lot of fun bringing together around 50 people for some active, sweating time after a few days of sitting in a conference center. I’m thinking about running it back again in 2025.

Buy rare sneakers

I thought I’d get a new pair of sneakers every quarter, but I’m actually at just under double that pace.

Some new pickups this year:

1. Air Jordan 1 Retro High OG “Yellow Toe”
2. Nike Dunk High “Chenille Swoosh” Safety Orange
3. Jay1s TAXI Deconstructed
4. Nike Air Force 1 Mid × Off-White White/Varsity Maize
5. Air Jordan 1 Retro High OG “Black Gold”
6. Nike KD Trey 5 × “Wolf Grey”
7. Off-Louis LV Air Jordan 1

Em also started making some custom accessories for fun. We toyed around with the idea of selling them, but the timing wasn’t right to launch something new with other stuff we had going on. Maybe we’ll revisit this idea sometime in the future.

Work

Of course, I can’t wholly talk about the life I want to live without talking about my work, the thing that underwrites it all financially. I wish I was wealthy enough to not need to work—I’m working on it—but it’s partially called a “Rich Life” list for a reason.

It’s my second full year of what I’ve come to call a “professional walkabout.” I shut down my agency SuperFriendly in 2022 and have been exploring many different business ventures since.

What have I been doing all year? A combination of consulting & coaching, client work, and creating/sustaining/growing my own products and ventures.

I spent the last year acting as a senior director of design systems for The New York Times, leading the team and helping to strategize around how to increase the adoption and implementation of the Times Product Language (TPL) design system product and process across all of the product and feature teams. I did some design system consulting and conversation with Capital One, Advance Local, We the Collective, and Showit. I did individual coaching with a design system principal designer looking to get a new job; an entrepreneur looking to growing their consulting business; a few freelancers wanting to grow their invididual practices into running small agencies; and a few designers looking to make the leap from working for someone to freelancing on their own.

Despite primarily moving away from this kind of work, I also art directed the website for the Harris/Walz presidency; designed the agency website for my friends at NSMBL; did a tiny bit of greenfield thinking on a project with my friends at Blackbox Infinite; designed and built a website for a financial services firm; and did some branding work for my brother’s financial strategy business.

Hours-wise, I worked 1,851 hours, about 36 hours/week. The distribution of my effort generally broke down like this:

(For a detailed description of the revenue breakdown, check out the 2024 info on my Salary & Income page.)

Design System University

In last year’s review, I promised that “lots of changes on the way for DSU in early 2024.” I wasn’t lying.

This time last year, we had 3 paid courses available: Make Design Systems People Want to Use for $499, How to Use a Design System in Figma for $29, and How to Use a Design System in Code for $29. We had around 300 students between those 3 courses. I was a bit discouraged about both the small number of students and revenue. I was even more discouraged that I didn’t really have much else available so that more people could learn about design systems, a skill that I think will become more and more important for digital professionals over the next few years.

Last year, I had also released a design systems course with Dribbble called “Scaling Design Systems.” It had great reception when it launched, but Dribbble changed their education model later in the year to move away from online education. Fortunately, they granted me back the distribution rights for my course, and I re-released it through Design System University as Design Systems 101. This was a much better and more modern course, so I made the other three free and priced this one at $101, figuring even a small amount of revenue from it was better than it sitting on a shelf doing nothing. Even moreso, I hoped that pricepoint would allow more people to learn about design systems, especially with purchasing power parity on top of that. I’m super proud that we now have more than 10,000 students that have taken at least one course and 100 people who have taken all four. I hope to grow both of those numbers in 2025.

I ran 2 more cohorts of our Design System in 90 Days program, one of my favorite things to teach as I get to spend 1–2 hours every week for 12 weeks talking with some really smart people about complex design system challenges they’re facing. Across the 2 cohorts in 2024 were amazing students from The 19th, Jahez, Twitch, The New York Times, Globant, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Brunstad Christian Church, the California State Government, SiriusXM, and more. We’re running our next one in February, and I can’t wait to meet the new batch of students.

I know we’ll have to expand our offerings in 2025 to keep pace with the demand of design system proficiency in the industry. I’ve been having a few conversations with other folks who have great ideas for courses they want to teach (both self-paced and live), and I love the idea that courses could be taught by someone other than me. We’ve also had a few inquiries for not just training but help designing and building the kinds of design systems we’re teaching, so we may pilot a few small service offerings in 2025. Lastly, there’s a product idea I’ve had in my head for a while that I think could really help design system teams with a major hurdle many of them have. Perhaps 2025 will be the year I get that product out the door.

Design That Scales

My design system book Design That Scales came out in November 2023, so 2024 was the first full year it was in circulation. I’m blown away by the reception!

It was Rosenfeld Media’s best selling book of the year!

The book received a very positive Kirkus review with a verdict of “Get it,” one of the most prestigious review publications in the literary world. They called it:

A lively and paradigm-challenging evaluation of what makes good system designs work at any scale.

Swoon! Not only that, but the book received a Kirkus star, an especially coveted designation awarded to books of “exceptional merit.” Only about 10% of the 10,000+ books reviewed annually receive a star!

We’ve run 3 Design System University book clubs for the book in 2024, and I’ve heard of at least a dozen companies that have used the book in their internal book clubs. How cool is that?!

Also, the book was published in Japanese!

Great Job!

Em and I started Great Job! last year as a way for us to work together on something that we’re both passionate about: helping parents raise amazing kids. This was the thing I was most excited to work on in 2024. Our podcast even won a Gold W3 Award in the “Individual Episodes & Specials, Family & Kids” category and a Bronze Signal Award in the “General—Family & Child-Raising” category! We started to noodle on some season 2 ideas, but unfortunately, this took a backseat to a bunch of other stuff we had going on. I’m not sure that we’ll have much time to devote to this in 2025 either, so this might not get much love until 2026.

This website

Last year’s review post was the first time I explicit wrote down that “I’m a writer,” perhaps an obvious sentiment from someone who’s written 3 books and published hundreds of thousands of words on the internet over the last 19 years. I’ve fully embraced that identity this year, at the very least on this website, writing 53 articles, 26% more than last year’s 42 articles. (For reference, these are the same articles that go out through my email newsletter and LinkedIn newsletter each week.)

My top three most popular posts this year:

1. The File Folder Structure Every Designer Needs
2. Shoot Your Shot
3. A “Definition of Done” Template

Last year, I also committed to taking this site seriously as an important part of my business by refining my branding and positioning, tightening up the information architecture and content strategy, and hiring a team to take over the production of the site. I haven’t publicly made good on that commitment yet, but if all goes well, this will hopefully be the last post you read on this version of the site. That’s right: the new site is almost here.

Hiring

For those following along, it’s probably no surprise to hear about my realization that I can’t grow successful businesses without help.

2024 was my first full year of working with my new executive assistant, Camz Uyamot. It’s been incredible to work with her. She powers a lot of the stuff across all of my businesses. If you’ve emailed me, received a Design System University certificate, interacted with a social media post, or gotten a Doordash gift card for a group lunch, you’ve experienced something that Camz had a hand in. She’s a big reason I worked 11% less in 2024 but our revenue jumped by 72%. Now that a lot of our systems are humming, I can’t wait to see what we do together in 2025.

I’m also deep into the process of looking for a designer who can ship to be a regular collaborator with Camz and me. I received 123 applications, interviewed 12—asking 6 questions in the interview—and narrowed it down to 3 people I did paid test projects with. Those test projects have either already ended or are ending now. I’ll share more about this process in 2025, as you’ll see some of the work they did for me start to roll out.

I’ve also changed my tune a bit on hiring, partially as a result of this process. I’ve never had a designer “on staff” with me before, and I believed that lack was a barrier to my business growing. While I do still believe that, I’ve also reminded myself to stick with stuff that has worked for me in the past, stuff that I’m good at. SuperFriendly’s business model was building teams of freelancers and contractors, something I learned to do and manage really well over 10 years. So, a team that includes a few regulars and a few guest contractors from time-to-time could be a good mix of old and new to take it to the next level.

This year, I hired 2 people from Fiverr to execute a few fast, commoditized services for me. I also commissioned a few people to do some higher-value custom work for me, like illustration and specific flavors of web development.

I’m eager to see how this model plays out in the future.

My own distribution

For the last few years, I’ve really been exploring the strength of my own audience and distribution. My hypotheses was that distribution my content directly would be better than partnering with other distributors, but I’ve had to qualify and specify what “better” means to me.

Over the last two decades of my career, I’ve been very fortunate to have conference organizers invite me to their stages; employers allow me to publishers allow me to make books with them; podcast interviewers have me as a guest on their shows; education platforms host my courses with them; and more. I’m very grateful for these opportunities.

I’ve also had conference organizers reject my applications or exploit my involvement; employers attempt to censor my extra-curricular activities; publishers take the lion’s share of the profit split without fulfilling their responsibilities; podcast interviewers not publish the episodes I gave up my time for; education platforms change their business models; and more. Those aren’t complaints. That’s business. I accept that. I’m not the kind of person who asks business owners to change what they’re doing; I think it’s their right to run their businesses how they want to. But I don’t have to like it, and I almost always have the ability to choose something different.

There are two sides of a content creator’s business: making a product and marketing/selling that product. The choice most new content creators face is that they have a product—a course, a book, a template, etc.—that is valuable but too small of an audience turn that potential value into a lucrative business. So they partner with a distributor: some person, company, or platform that has a larger audience. The premise is simple: for a fee—either a one-time fee or, more commonly, a rolling royalty—that distributor turns their audience’s attention to the creator’s product, either turning them into present customers for the creator or adding them to the creator’s audience to become customers sometime in the future. Often times, the distributor has no or little intellectual property of their own; their business is distributing the work of their partner creators. That essentially splits up the work: the creator makes the product, and the distributor markets and sells that product.

What I’ve learned over the past few years is that many distributors aren’t as good as marketing and selling as they claim to be, often times because they don’t have a large enough or activated enough audience of their own to market and sell to. They seem to operate under the pretense that, if the content is good, the audience will come. That often leaves the creator with the conundrum of having to market their own work, but only realizing that after they’ve contractually agreed to a royalty with their distributor.

The simple but difficult solution for the creator is to grow their own audience to sell to directly, rather than indirectly selling to someone else’s audience. It’s a tale as old as time: if and when you can, cut out the middleman. Digital production companies figured that out in the early 2000s and stopped working through ad agencies, instead finding ways to work directly with clients. It’s more work for you, but a lot of times it’s worth it. Although it’s hard to grow a truly engaged audience, it’s also never been an easier time in history to do so.

It took me way too long to realize that I have an audience of my own—and a large, engaged one at that.

That realization is certainly correlated to why I’ve reduced the amount of conference speaking I’m doing lately. Early in my career, speaking at conferences was a major milestone, a big aspiration for me. I got to the point where I was doing about 10–15 conferences each year. In 2024, I spoke at 5 events: UX Scotland, Webflow’s NYC Design System Workshop, Render, Config, and Knapsack’s NYC Leadership Summit. The opportunity cost to speak at an in-person conference is high. There’s time spent writing a talk—for me about 40–80 hours—2 days of travel; introvert energy spent in a room full of strangers, some of whom want to talk to me after I deliver a talk; days away from other work; and days away from home… all to give a talk to 50 to 1000 people. Compare that to a Zoom call I recently hosted online that was attended by 245 people and watched to date by 1,800 people or the online session I taught last year around design system planning that 600 people attended and 7,400 later watched and participating in an in-person conference becomes a tougher value proposition except for a select few.

There’s a good middle ground for me in having online conversations with smaller groups of people, most of them in an “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) or, more specifically, “Ask Me Anything about a particular topic” (design systems, freelancing, design business, etc) kind of format. In 2024, I met with a bunch of GV’s portfolio companies to talk design systems as part of their Design Speaker Series; joined Ben Callahan’s “The Question” twice; did an AMA on design systems with Design Better’s community; did an AMA for Molly Hellmuth’s Design System Bootcamp community; a fireside chat about pricing for Ladies that UX Seattle; an AMA about design systems and creativity for Disney’s creative teams; and a mini-workshop with all product designers at The New York Times. These sessions are pretty low effort for me in terms of preparation and I can deliver a lot of value for the teams I talk too.

I’m torn about podcasts. In 2024, I did 12 podcast appearances. I talked about creativity with Ross Hatton on the Design & Thrive X Space; communication on Design Dads; design system practices with Jane Portman on UI Breakfast; “following the fun” with Dave Gray on The Art of the Possible; the evolution of a designer with Jeremy on Beyond UX Design; the job market and freelancing with Taylor Desseyn; design system chaos with Sophia Prater on The Object-Oriented UX Podcast; freelancing with Ansh Mera at The Cutting Edge School; my design journey with Britton Stipetic on Low-Key Legends; and design systems with Sera Tajima. I’ve been declining most recent podcast appearance requests because the value exchange is often lopsided. A lot of people who ask me to be on their podcast seem to do so because I can bring attention to their thing; I’m not mad at that—that’s the game—but I struggle to see the upside for me; essentially, I become the distributor for them without any compensation (financially, or otherwise) that I realize from it. For that, I’d honestly rather publish my own stuff to my own channels.

Again, I’m grateful for the distributors I’ve partnered with in my early career. I wouldn’t be where I am today without them, and I hope I’ve delivered on my end of the bargain in those partnerships. For this stage of my career, though, I’m focused on different channels that help me connect more directly with my audience: my own newsletter and social media.

Newsletter

Like last year, my newsletter is one of the things I sent consistently every week without fail, and that shows in the numbers.

I started 2024 with 37,000 readers between my email newsletter, the version on LinkedIn, and this website (I post the same thing to each of these three places each week). I’m finishing 2024 with 58,400 between the three.

(I started posting to Substack as well, and, although the number of subscribers slowly grew, I wasn’t really getting a lot of signs that anyone was interested in me posting there, so I stopped doing it.)

Every week, I receive lots of feedback from my readers about what’s resonating, from as simple of a 👍🏽 or 👎🏽 reaction to nice notes I get over email, DMs, and survey responses. This direct feedback loop is something I love having and will certainly continue to foster in 2025, and I’m constantly looking for ways to make the things I share more valuable for my readers.

2025 newsletter goal: 100k readers.

Social media

Though I have a large audience already, I’m still looking to grow that audience, to find more of my tribe that resonates with the things I think, say, and do. Social media is one of the best ways to do this that I’ve found.

X (@danmall)

(I swore I’d never call it “X” instead of “Twitter,” but here we are.)

X has always been my largest and most engaged platform, until this year. The combination of leadership and algorithm changes definitely had an effect on my posts, and I haven’t yet figured out how to work in the new system. I’m not sure that I’ll give this much effort.

I started 2024 with 42.4k followers with the goal of getting to 100k. As of the end of December 2024, I have 45.1k followers, a 6% increase.

2025 X goal: 100k followers.

LinkedIn (/in/danmall)

Last year, I said I would take LinkedIn seriously in 2024, and I did.

I started 2024 with 28,210 followers and 2.3M impressions. As of the end of December 2024, I have 45,295 followers (61% increase) and 4.1M impressions (a 78% increase).

2025 LinkedIn goal: 100k followers.

Instagram (@danmallteaches)

I’m starting to get the hang of Instagram. Posting there takes signficantly more time for me than anywhere else—even though I’m a designer… maybe especially because I’m a designer—but I’m starting to learn how to make better content in less time.

I started 2024 with 4,223 followers. As of the end of December 2024, I have 6,243 followers (a 48% increase).

I joined a coaching program to help me learn how to connect better on Instagram with people I can help, and I’ve learned a lot. Hopefully that’ll show up in the numbers in 2025.

2025 Instagram goal: 50k followers.

YouTube (@danmallteaches)

YouTube is still the wildcard here for me.

I started 2024 with 3,600 followers. As of the end of December 2024, I have 6,250 followers (a 74% increase).

That’s more than my growth on Instagram, but I’ve only posted 2 videos to YouTube in 2024 as opposed to 73 posts on Instagram.

YouTube will definitely be part of my 2025 business strategy, especially as I’ve announced my new podcast coming soon.

2025 YouTube goal: 50k followers.

2025 work strategy and goals

I’ve spent the last year trying different ways to talk to my audience and fans directly to find out what I can do for them. What I’m learning is that people want access to my experience because I’ve done a lot of things people in my audience aspire to do—level up in their career, start a business, find a decent work/life balance—and work directly with me to help them find it.

My services and consulting experience and general content creation has largely been around design systems for the last few years, and I fully intend on continuing to share what I’ve learned there. But more people seem to want strategy and guidance around career growth, professional progression, higher income, and entreprenuerial encouragement… all things I have experience with and thoughts on. My recent experiment of answering some questions live that people are struggling with seemed to strike a chord with the attendees—and lit me up to boot. I love sharing my “secrets” so that others can use them too!

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that people are interested in these topics, given the state of the design industry. We’ve seen hundreds of thousands of people just like us laid off with little to no recompense, reinforcing the idea that our livelihoods aren’t in our own hands as much as we thought. Fittingly, a lot of designers are realizing there are other options, and they have the ability to make them work.

As someone who’s been well down that path for the last decade, I’d love to tell people about what damsels and dragons they’ll encounter there. That could be as easy as answering simple questions that have complex answers, like “How much should I charge for my services?” I wrote a short book called Pricing Design in 2016 that I really didn’t do much else with. My publisher A Book Apart has recently closed its doors, so the book is no longer available. However, I’ll be re-releasing it soon—for free!—so that more people can learn a crucial skill that’s still very daunting for many.

But books only go so far.

In early 2025, I’ll also be start a group coaching program for freelancers, small studios, and agency owners that want to take their service businesses to the next level of income and reputation. I’m still working on the core of the program, so I don’t have a lot of details to share about it yet, but the general shape of it will be a combination of instruction, discussion, practice, and review so I can get specific, tactical, and actionable with everyone in the program. It won’t be cheap, but I’m designing it in a way that I can all but guarantee that anyone who makes the financial investment on this program will make significantly more money than they spent.

If you’re interested in a program like that and can commit to spending a decent chunk of money (probably a few thousand dollars) and time (probably 3-6 months) investing in your business, subscribe to my newsletter and I’ll send out details once I have them to share. I’m committing to spending a good chunk of my 2025 helping designers level up financially and professionally.

My 2025 goal is to help the students in this program collectively make $10 million. From that, my goal for my own business is to break $1 million.

Home & family

The same sentiment I shared last year applies: the older my daughters get and the closer Em and I get, the less apt I am to share about what we do publicly. I like that we have things that we privately enjoy together. So, I’ll share a few small things here, but not much.

Sidda and Charlie are 13 and 11 now, in 8th and 5th grade respectively. These are particular grades, as Em and I met when we were both in 5th grade and we became good friends in 8th grade (while dating each others’ best friends). It’s jarring to realize that my daughters may have potentially met and/or are friends with with a person that may become their life partner. I’m not the “bring me a shotgun, my little girls aren’t ever dating” kind of dad; I do hope they eventually find someone to spend their lives with who will love them and treat them the best. But I will admit that I think of that day as very far away and I’m a bit scared and sad of it being sooner than I think. I know that day is not today, and I do think it will be here before I’m ready for it.

They’ve both been doing jiu jitsu for last 4 months, and I think they’re starting to enjoy it! We’re starting to lightly have college and career conversations and casually exploring some interests and options, from art to law to acting to science and more.

Em’s always doing interesting stuff and tends to be very private about it, so that’s all I’ll say about it here. I’ve always admired her bravery, uniqueness, sensitivity, and sense of adventure. She’s the coolest and most beautiful person I’ve ever encountered. If you’re wondering, she’s doing awesome. Thanks for asking.

Dad & bro

Like last year, I’ve been spending more time with my dad and brother. I hired my dad as my accountant last year, and, if you’re wondering, yes, it is very weird to have your dad literally all up in your business. But it’s been great too. His 40 years of accounting experience has definitely come in handy, and his strategies have given me some financial paths forward that I’ve never been able to see before that are very exciting.

My brother handles my investments and has set up some really great solutions that put me at ease about finances later in life as well as for my family in case something tragic happens to me. Also, my brother and his wife had a daughter last year, so like the surprise FaceTimes with my new niece even though we’re supposed to be talking portfolio allocation.

Mostly, I like the excuse to talk to and see them all more.

The flood

Earlier this year, we were away on vacation the week that it rained pretty hard at home. We came back to a completely soaked basement which we initially thought was from the rain but actually was due to a broken water heater. We have homeowners’ insurance, but this was the first time we had to file a claim for something as big as this. Luckily, my dad suggested we work with a public adjuster and recommended a company he’d used before. Though the process was long—it took about 8 months to finalize all the back and forth between adjuster and insurance company—they helped us get a lot more than I think we would have gotten on our own.

2025 will be the year of basement renovations.

Health, wellness, and self-care

I turned 40 in 2024.

I don’t feel much different, and I’d like to not. I heard a few years ago that muscular strength is inversely associated with mortality; in other words, people start to decline as they get older from lack of strength. So, I figure I should work on being strong now. I don’t think I’m very strong, and a career that’s largely sedentary isn’t helping. I know every little bit contributes, so I raise and lower my desk a few times each day so I’m both standing (on a balance board) and sitting. I play basketball once or twice a week. Em and I play racquetball together every once in a while.

I know the “right” answer is lifting weights. But ugh, I hate lifting weights. It’s so boring to me, and I hate feeling sore afterwards. Yes, I know it’s good for me. It still sucks.

Also, between going to the gym, working out, coming home, showering, and getting ready, that’s a lot of time. Especially during times of year when I have a lot of consulting clients, my days are filled with a lot of meetings and a 2-hour digression somewhere in the middle of it doesn’t always feel like a priority for me.

I have a few small strategies to help me overcome all of this, which have been working to a small degree.

• As a few consulting gigs finished this year, suddenly I had more freedom to structure my day to make room for exercise.
• Instead of going to the gym to go to the gym, I go to the gym to listen to audiobooks and podcasts.
• I remind myself that exercise actually gives more energy and jumpstarts both creativity and productivity. It doesn’t always feel like it, but the science exists.
• I read that short workouts are better than nothing, and also that short, intense workouts can be more beneficial than longer workouts. So, I loaded up some Nike Training Club and BetterMe workouts and the Science of Stretching program so I can do them at home in a short amount of time. In practice though, it was short-lived. I did less than 20 of these workouts in 2024.

Still though, I’m trying.

I generally sleep pretty well; at least I feel like I do. I usually feel well-rested when I wake up. I average about 6–7 hours of sleep each night. My sleep app calls my sleep quality 70%, slightly less than the United States average of 75%, and I have no idea what that means.

I had a goal to not throw up all year, since I threw up once last in 2023. I almost made it through the year, but unfortunately, I woke up nauseous and with a migraine one day in December. I think it was a week of eating a lot of rich food (which I usually don’t do outside of my quarterly restaurant indulgences) and some wonky barometric pressure changes which sometimes make me feel rough. Ah well, 2025 goal is to not throw up.

I started Invisalign in September, and I’ll be done by March. Already seeing a lot of improvement with the straightness of my teeth, and it’s also making me brush and floss a lot more frequently.

I still drink a lot of soda.

Books

In 2024, I read or attempted to read:

1. 100M Leads, by Alex Hormozi ★★★★★
2. Feel-Good Productivity, by Ali Abdaal ★★★★☆
3. Million Dollar Weekend, by Noah Kagan ★★★★☆
4. Trash Talk, by Rafi Kohan (abandoned at 11%)
5. Designing Your Life, by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans ★★★☆☆
6. The 2-Hour Cocktail Party, by Nick Gray ★★★★☆
7. Your First Million, by Arlan Hamilton ★★★★☆
8. The Mountain Is You, by Brianna West (abandoned at 38%)
9. This is Personal, by Brennan Dunn ★★★★☆
10. Free Time, by Jenny Blake ★★★★☆
11. Who Does What By How Much? by Jeff Gothelf ★★★★☆
12. Untangling Critical Race Theory, by Ed Uszynski ★★★★☆
13. Day Trading Attention, by Gary Vaynerchuk ★★★★☆
14. The New Adolescence, by Christine Carter (abandoned at 60%)
15. Never Enough, by Andrew Wilkinson ★★★☆☆
16. The Algebra of Wealth, by Scott Galloway ★★★★★
17. Co-Intelligence, by Ethan Mollick ★★★★☆
18. Greenlights, by Matthew McConaughey ★★★★☆
19. You Deserve a Tech Union, by Ethan Marcotte ★★★☆☆
20. The Six Pack, by Brad Balukjian (currently reading)
21. You Are What You Watch, by Walter Hickey (currently reading)

2025

Even though my word(s) of the year last year didn’t really change much, I still liked it.

My word for 2025 is “Runway.”

Wishing you a wonderful start to 2025!

Join 58,400+ subscribers to the weekly Dan Mall Teaches newsletter. I promise to keep my communication light and valuable!