My 2016 Year in Review

I dedicate this year to the people around me and teams I have had the privilege of working with.

Team: Colin Mathews, Alex & Paul, Robert Senoff, Jerad Maplethrope, Matthew & Daniel from Quuu, Kumar, Scott, Mark Lindquist, Cat Dix, Sophie, Nick, Tam and the list goes on..

Awesome People: Hana Abaza, Ty, David Nihil, Max Alt, Peep Laja, Neil Patel, Benji, William Harris, Rob, Sol (Aka Cookie Monster), Dan Martell, Oli Gardner, Johnathan Dane, Arjun Arora, Trent G, Morgan Brown, Noah Kagan, Hiten Shah and the list goes on

Each person contributed to my personal growth and influenced my decision or direction.

The Crazy:

• Clarity. This year everything I was doing over the last few year started to click and make sense. I saw a clear path to achieve what was once broad & lofty goal.
• Fun: Even though I worked harder than ever I had the most fun I’ve ever had
• Fuzzy mission statement from 2014 and from my childhood became solidified
• Replaced my skydiving hobby with buying & growing businesses (somehow I got bored of skydiving and I found the challenge of growing companies and all the hard work that goes into it to be fun)
• Acquired 3 companies: Pick.co, Linktexting.com and Confidential (Shopify app)
• Started a new agency: Web Profits
• In negotiation for book deal (2018 publish date)
• Created 56 videos. My last video shoot I created 7 videos in 58 minutes (record breaking)
• I spent over 100 days on the road.
  • Absorbed some of the Aussie culture
• Gave a talk at Stanford and convinced 1 student pursue his dreams.
  • His startup raised 3.5 million dollars
• Broke bread with hundreds of smart people

The Good:

• Learned to say NO! I say No to most things these days.
• 392 Consulting Leads – Web Profits/SP Consulting
• 8219 SaaS Trials
• 2900 backlinks to Sujanpatel.com and all my sites
• I personally get 100 mentions a month (3.2x increase)
• My content generated 8.7 million pageviews
• 29 Speaking engagements:
• 2 speaking tours:
  • 11 Workshops in Sydney & Melbourne
  • 6 talks in 5 weeks (SF, LA, Sydney, Ottawa, SF)
• ContentMarketer.io pivoted to Mailshake.com
• Bought my dad a Telsa Model S instead of being douchy and buying myself a Ferrari.
• 100 Days of Growth Book passed 40,000 copies sold

The Bad:

• I pushed myself beyond my limits. It was emotionally taxing.
• Narrow.io had a major outage that took 3 months to fix.
  • Because of the issue we lost 30% over night.
  • Jerad released a fix and we regained 80% of them in the last 10 days
• FOMO. Because I say No to a lot of opportunities

The Ugly:

• Gained 23 lbs since 12/31/14
  • Start: 130lbs
  • Current: 153lbs (double chin status)
• Got sued for a patent infringement from a failed mobile app in 2014 🙁
• Spent more on legal fees than on having fun
• Spent way too much time in airports & on planes

Next Year:

• Health: Diet & Exercise
  • I refuse to gain anymore weight
• More Fun
  • Recently bought a Porsche 911 GT3 and signed up for 6 track days at Circuit of the Americas in Austin
  • Have a 4 day snowboard trip planned in January
• I’m learning how to add humor to my public speaking
• Help more people. Advisor, webinars, podcasts and increasing my transparency
• 2 books
  • 1 on growth marketing in 2017
  • I’m currently working with a publisher for 2018 release. Early title is called: UnderdogS
• Growth SaaS businesses by 3x (it’s simple, doable but freaking hard)

What’s your highlights & lowlights of 2016 and plans for 2017?