2024 was an interesting year for me - to say the least.

I feel like I’ve advanced a lot more on a personal level compared to the business/professional side of things.

Will break down this review into two parts: business and personal.

Business journey

At the beginning of 2024 I had high hopes for iCodeThis.
This was the main project I’ve been working on for over a year.

We were 3 people working on it and I thought that this was the year that it’s going to go to the moon. 🚀

But unfortunately, that didn’t happen…

Sales slowed down compared to the end of 2023 and sadly I had to cut costs and let one of our members go which was quite demoralizing. 🥺

This sorta set the tone for the proceding months, business-wise.

I kept trying things but nothing quite worked in the first half of the year, so I focused my energy on the personal side of things. More on that later in the post.

The $1m challenge

I (re)started the $1m challenge at the end of August. I was determined to make it happen this time around.

Also made a video about it on my new channel. If you haven’t watched it yet, check it out here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_3Hg2rTWv0

This time around I didn’t set a short deadline like previously (1000 days), but instead I gave myself 10 years to do it.

Felt like this is more appropriate with my personality as I tend to work hard during certain periods and then more or less burnout for a period - still trying to figure out how to avoid these, lol. 😬

The challenge started out great and I made $8,000 in September, but then slowed down in October. Nonetheless, I still managed to make almost $18k by the end of the year.

Along the way I build a few new projects and wrote about them on the blog.

If I’m being honest, I’m not obsessing over this arbitrary number, $1,000,000.

Or at least I’m trying not to.

I chose to set this goal more for fun and for the content aspect of it. I want to have something to talk about. I want to have a direction, and for that I think it’s a good thing.

My main goal was and will remain to figure out how I can provide more value to the world by becoming a better, more skilled person.

I see revenue as a measure of that. The more value provided, the more money is being made.

But before being able to provide more value, I decided that I need to get in a better shape. Both physically and mentally so…

Personal journey

Weight loss

2024 was the first time in over a decade that I’ve reached a weight under 80kg, coming down from my peak of 104kg in 2022.

Running (see below) definitely helped a lot, but I’ve also developed new habits that helped as well!

Things like:

• Walking
• Counting calories
• Eating more protein
• Sleeping better

I finally learned how to walk.
Ok, this might sound a bit weird but let me explain…

I never understood why people would just walk randomly… In my mind I couldn’t justify the time spent doing something like this. I could run a much greater distance during the same time so… why walk then?

Well, I realized last year that walking is a great exercise for weight loss (not as much pressure on the knees, and also keeps your hearth in the right fat burning zone - Zone 2) while also being a great way to meditate, put your thoughts in order and why not, also learn new things by listening to a podcast while walking.

I used every occasion I had to walk. Like for example when going for groceries - I was walking to the store and back as many times as I could (except times I had to carry heavy things).

Whenever we wanted to eat out, we were walking to the restaurant or if it too far, we were parking the car further in the parking lot to get some more steps in.

I used the stairs 99% of the time instead of using the elevator.

All of these changes added up and on average in 2024 I walked (and ran) 15,000 steps per day. That’s almost 5.475 million steps in 366 days! 🤯

I also used walking after lunch to avoid having a glucose spike.
Felt much better than going straight to sleep.

Running

I could say that 2024 was the year of running for me.

At the beginning of the year I decided that I want to run 2024 km. It felt like a nice goal to set and shortly after I hired a coach that helped me get better at it.

I went from running 20-30km per week to 50km and shortly after to 70km at the end of March.

By September 1st I completed my goal of running 2024km by running a marathon.

Then I set a new target: 3000km.

I kept this pace of 70ish km per week until the end of the year when I completed the big goal of running 3000km! 🥳

Last year was also the year I started to go to running events. I participated in 5 of them.

It’s so much fun to participate in these events! Very inspiring seeing thousands of runners in the same place.

Calisthenics

2024 was also the year I started to focus a bit more on bodyweight exercises as I didn’t want to lose more muscle weight, but instead focus on building some more.

Going to gym was always on my mind but I just couldn’t do it. It felt like a chore. So I decided that at least what I can do is to do some calisthenics at home.

One of my greatest achievements in this department is that I went from not being able to do 1 pull-up to being able to do 5 pull-ups! This was just massive! 🥳

Shortly after I started to notice overall improvements in the way I could perform the exercises while also becoming more flexible.

Traveling

We love traveling so in 2024 we continued doing that.

We visited places like Dubai (twice), went on a cruise during which we saw parts of Italy, Spain, and France, then we saw Budapest, and at the end of the year we went to NYC to fulfill my wife’s greatest travel wish: Visit NYC during Christmas. 🎅

We also traveled a lot around Romania, and in most cases we used those periods to participate in running events - which was super cool!

Relationship

And last but definitely not least… in fact probably the most important thing for me in 2024 was the deeper relationship that I built with my wife.

It’s amazing to see how much she evolved during 2024 and I’m very proud of her! I feel like she is very proud of me too.

We’ve been married for 8 years and it’s great to see how each year our relationship got better and better. We’ve been learning more and more about one-another and I’m very grateful for what we have.

If all of the things above go downhill but I get to keep this relationship…

I’m happy! 💜💜💜