2024 REVIEW

 After the corks have been popped and the champagne drunk, after Auld Lang Syne has been mumbled and the confetti has landed, after the hangovers have abated and the good luck beans have been eaten, it’s a new year and time for my 2025 goals article.  But first, let’s review how I did with my 2024 goals.   

2024 Reading List

     In the article 10 Non-Fiction Books I Want to Read in 2024, I revealed my plan to read the following 10 books and review each of them on this blog.  

1. Die With Zero – Bill Perkins
2. Buy Not Build – Walker Diebel
3. Shoe Dog – Phil Knight
4. Your Next 5 Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy – Patrick Bet-David
5. The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve – Edward Griffin
6. Never Split the Difference:  Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It – Chris Voss
7. Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions – Dan Ariely 
8. Private Practice MBA: A Step-By-Step Guide To Put Your Practice On Autopilot – Dr. Jeremy Pyle & Robbie Poe
9. The Laws of Human Nature – Robert Greene 
10. The Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke The World – Liaquat Ahamed

     First of all, I’m detecting a trend regarding business book titles.  Catchy Phrase, colon, explanation of what the book is about.  It must work since 60% of the books on my list share this format.  Anyway, how did I perform?  I read 7 of the 10 books (pretty good) but only reviewed two of them (pretty bad).  I failed to read The Creature from Jekyll Island, Private Practice MBA, and The Laws of Human Nature.   

     Why didn’t I accomplish this goal?  Well, I couldn’t find The Creature from Jekyll Island at the library or the used bookstore, and I have already read The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson (there’s that format again), which I believe touches on similar topics.  I planned to buy the book when I was ready to read it, but that time never came.  I still want to read it, so I guess I’ll just have to bite the bullet and buy it on Amazon—Ditto for The Private Practice MBA. 

I’ve already read two of Robert Greene’s books, and I’m not sure his laws helped me become better at seduction or gaining power, so his title was the last on my priorities, and I just never got to it.  I read several other books not on the list, giving me 12 or 13 for the year.  I try to read about 1 book a month, so I hit the target in volume but not selection.

     While I did release reviews of Die With Zero and Shoe Dog, I discovered that writing them felt a little too much like homework, which hurt my enthusiasm for the project.  I did start writing reviews for Buy Not Build and Never Split the Difference, but since I was actively negotiating an acquisition, I felt it wasn’t wise to write publicly about the tips I learned until after the deal closed in November.  I may or may not finish and publish them in 2025.  I plan on writing about Your Next Five Moves, which I finished recently, but I don’t believe the other two would make interesting reviews. 

2024 Goals Update

In the article My Goals of 2024, I listed eight goals in three categories.  Here is the cheat sheet with whether or not I accomplished the goals.  If you want to read my reasons (excuses), they are explained below.   

1. Top Three Business Goals
   1. Expand Urgent Care Company Accomplished 
   2. Grow Business Is the Best Medicine Failed 
   3. Optimize All Businesses Failed

2. Top Three Financial Goals
   1. Open a Donor Advised Fund Failed
   2. Change My Retirement Plan to a Solo 401(k) Failed 
   3. Deploy Capital Accomplished 

3. Top Three Personal Goals
   1. Work Less Accomplished 
   2. Be Consistent Accomplished 
   3. Be Honest (by not setting a third personal goal I wouldn’t accomplish) N/A

Business Goals

Expand UC Business

     In November, we purchased three urgent care clinics from a rival operator, expanding our footprint to a new market and strengthening our position in another.  It was a big, bold move for our company – one of my partners sold her house and moved to a new city to facilitate the transition.  We’re going all in to make it work.  Hopefully, this will be the start of our business’s future growth.  GOAL ACCOMPLISHED

Grow BBM

     BusinessIsTheBestMedicine.com had its one-year anniversary and has now passed 100 posts.  I believe the blog has grown, but it is difficult to know for sure.  I wasn’t sure what to expect when we started, and we didn’t set any specific goals for growth, so it’s hard to objectively assess.  Here is exactly what I wrote last year.  

 “The goal in 2024 is to gain consistent readership, which I believe we can accomplish using two methods.  We need to market the site more and network with others in the space.  This blog has an important message that I believe would benefit all medical professionals at all stages of their careers.”

     Pretty vague.  Fortunately, I did set SMART goals for marketing the blog and attempting to spread the message of BBM.  

“So, while Heather and I will market the blog more aggressively, there are a few items that I would like to complete.  First, I want to write at least one guest post on another blog.  I will also attend at least one conference relevant to the blog’s content.  Finally, I will speak to at least two professional schools about the importance of understanding business and personal finance.” 

     Did I accomplish those goals?  I did write four guest posts on other blogs, which I discussed in the one-year anniversary episode.  However, I did not attend any personal finance conferences.  I made a list of events, but the dates didn’t work out.  Some were during the summer, and others conflicted with my ER schedule or other commitments.  Additionally, Heather was pregnant and/or tending to a newborn during much of the year.  While I can certainly attend an event alone, I am not the world’s best networker.  Going to an event would be more fruitful if she was with me, as she is much more outgoing with strangers than I am.  

     I also did not accomplish the last goal in this category.  We emailed every PA school in the country but received no responses.  Ouch.  We did get two positive responses from schools in our area when we spoke to them directly, but the dates never materialized.  I lectured on personal finance during our APP Educational Conference this year, but this does not meet the criteria.  GOAL FAILED

Optimize All Businesses

     No excuses.  I just didn’t take the time to do this.  As I wrote in my 2024 Highlights post, my biggest business challenge of the past year was complacency.  I just didn’t feel motivated to change things, and I believe this failure was a direct result.  GOAL FAILED

Financial Goals

Open a Donor Advised Fund

     I want to give a large amount of money to charity before I leave this earth.  I aimed to open a donor-advised fund this year and prime it with appreciated Apple stock, saving me money on capital gains tax.  I often thought about it and read a fantastic series of posts to learn about DAFs YieldAndSpread.org.  I still intend to give away the money, but I decided to wait until next year for tax reasons.  GOAL FAILED 

Change My Retirement Plan to a Solo 401(k)

     This goal would have enabled me to complete a backdoor Roth conversion.  I have never been able to do one, as my retirement account is a SEP IRA.  This is another goal that I just didn’t take the time to research and complete.  There’s no fancy story here; I just didn’t do it.  GOAL FAILED

Deploy Capital

     I was sitting on a large pile of cash at the beginning of 2024 and wanted to find some way to deploy it.  Since we purchased a new home this year without selling our old one, I needed money for the down payment.  So, technically, money was deployed.  Fortunately, interest rates were high, so I made between 4.5 – 5.0% on the cash while sitting idle.  

     I also contributed six figures to my after-tax brokerage account.  Unfortunately, the stock market went wild this year, and I would have been better off had I invested much more into a broad-based index fund at the beginning of the year.  Hindsight is 20/20, and a good rule of thumb is not to invest money you will need in the next 3-5 years since you can’t predict the market.  I stand by my decision, even if the outcome went against me this time.

     At the end of the day, I have less cash in my accounts now than I had last year.  I contributed to my brokerage accounts and purchased a new asset.  I’ll count that as GOAL ACCOMPLISHED.  

Personal Goals

Work Less

     This goal involved working less overall, but specifically during times that affect my family, such as weekends or while on vacation.  I believe I accomplished that goal, but I’m not sure my wife would agree.      

     I worked 2 more shifts in 2024 than in 2023.  However, several were 24-hour stretches, which I count as two shifts, allowing me to be home more.  I have little control over how many shifts I work as a partner in an ER group.  The shifts have to be filled, and our success at hiring dictates how many shifts I need to do.  

     The new relaxed publishing schedule for BBM meant I spent less time writing in 2024.  I also spent less time on my other businesses.  We hired people to take a lot of the calls from providers at the UC, so I received less interruptive calls during family time.  I’m not saying it didn’t happen; it just happened less.  I also had two 5-week vacations this summer where I hardly worked.  

     Overall, I am confident I spent less time working in 2024 than in 2023.  GOAL ACCOMPLISHED 

Be Consistent

     From my 2024 goals article, “I want to write for an hour every day that I am at home (not traveling or working clinically).  I want to exercise 3 days a week for 48 weeks of the year . . . I will keep track by marking on a calendar each day I accomplish these items in 2024.”

     I purchased the calendar and kept track of my workouts.  I worked out at least three days a week for 50 weeks in 2024.  The two weeks I failed were one where I was terribly sick and another where I was traveling a lot.  My worst month was June, when I only worked out 12 times, while my best was October, with 24.  For the year, I worked out 190 times. 

     I only kept track of my writing for a few months.  I’m not sure why I stopped, but I did write more consistently this year, avoiding most of the marathon writing sessions to meet deadlines.  GOAL ACCOMPLISHED     

Be Honest

     The last of my 2024 goals was to be honest with myself by not setting more goals.  I tend to accomplish all the important things I want to do but at my own pace.  Overall, this year was par for that course.  GOAL N/A

2025

2025 Goals 

     This will be a big year for me as I turn 50 years old in May.  I always said I didn’t want to work past 50.  As I began my medical career, I knew I didn’t want to work forever, and fifty was a nice round number that seemed so far away.  But here I am, knocking on the door with no immediate plans to retire.    

     As you will see, the theme of 2025 is trying to make my life a little less complicated.  This doesn’t mean stopping or slowing down, but it does mean getting serious about cutting, combining, simplifying, and streamlining my business and personal life.    

2025 Business Goals 

Sell a Business

     I currently have eight for-profit businesses, not including Business is the Best Medicine, which is not monetized at this time.  All my businesses are profitable, but that doesn’t always justify the non-monetary costs of time, risk, and headache.  

     There is one business in particular that I plan on selling, which has all the issues I mentioned above.  My goal is to sell this business to its current operator by the end of the year.  

BBM

     As in 2024, I want to grow Business is the Best Medicine this year.  I still enjoy the writing process and still believe in our mission – to educate all medical professionals in personal finance and the business of medicine.  To facilitate this growth, I will attend at least one related conference and write at least one guest post on another site.  

     I would also like to write more about business this year.  I feel that we have focused a lot on the personal finance half of things up to this point, and there is a need for business education.  I would also like to finish a book this year.  I have begun writing three books and have only finished one short e-book, which I haven’t released.  This goes to another goal: to be bolder and take some risks with my writing and the site.  I tend to be overly conservative.          

Grow Urgent Care Company

     I know what I want to happen in the urgent care business this year, but most of it doesn’t fit well with the SMART goal process.  We must integrate the new urgent care clinics we purchased into our system.  We need to renovate their locations, assimilate operations, and grow volume.  That is our main focus.  However, there is one SMART goal I can set.  

     While expansion is not in the cards for 2025, I would like to identify at least one location or market for expansion in 2026.  We plan on continued growth and opening a new location next year, so we need to start that process by the end of this one.  

2025 Financial Goals

Reduce Debt

     My financial goal this year is to reduce debt.  While I have always used debt responsibly, turning 50 this year makes me want to simplify and bulletproof my financial life.  I have a large amount of mortgage debt from my real estate investments, and I feel it is time to start reducing it.  

     I recently wrote about the bad financial decision I made to finance the purchase of a new home.  I plan to sell our old house this year, realize the tax-free capital gains, and pay off my new mortgage.  This will free up the cash I’m using to pay the mortgages and start paying off other debt.  I will start with the highest interest rates and work my way down.  I’ll keep track of my debt using my personal financial statement and see how much I can reduce this year. 

2025 Personal Goals 

Be Consistent

     I will continue to work out three times per week and keep track in my calendar.  In addition, I will beat my 2024 workout total of 190, setting the goal at 200, which averages 16.7 times per month.  My only concern is that this may conflict with the next goal.

Address Medical Issues

     Like many doctors, I hate going to the doctor.  I know too much, am skeptical of what can be done, or prefer denial.  It’s hard to say exactly, but I usually just try to deal with things myself.  However, there are a few things I want to have looked at in 2025.  I have knee issues preventing me from running.  I used to run a lot and would like to start again.  However, knee issues prevent me.  Similarly, I have a nagging shoulder issue that I need to finally address.  If either requires surgical intervention, it will derail my consistency goal.  

Conclusion

     I didn’t reach all my goals in 2024.  In fact, I only completed 50%, which is pretty lousy.  That’s because they were somewhat contrived, and I was overly complacent.  My life is good and I’m content, which makes setting (and hitting) goals feel less urgent.  Despite that, I feel like I got something from the exercise, which is why I decided to do it again this year.  Not all of my 2024 goals were ill-advised, as I carried over one directly to this year (consistency), and I still plan on working on some I didn’t reach (starting a DAF and attending a conference for BBM).  I’ll check back with you in 2026 to see how I did.  Thanks for reading.