Dec 25, 2024 · 55m · startup-ideas
My 2024 Year in Review (net worth update etc)
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In this 2024 Year in Review, entrepreneur Greg Isenberg transparently details his personal milestones, net worth asset allocation, multi-channel audience growth, and business holding company strategy. He reflects on operational setbacks, productivity simplifications, and key management frameworks while looking ahead to venture opportunities in 2025.
Statements from this episode (19)
Isenberg reached his lifetime net worth goal via an equity liquidity event
“And the last biggest win is I hit a financial net worth number that has always been in my head that I thought that I would never get to, but I hit it. And I don't really want to say the number. That's not the point, but I did hit it. And I'll talk more at the …”
Isenberg shifted workflow from Notion to Apple Notes and pen and paper
“I'm spending more time on do not disturb mode. I really think that it's like the only way to get work done. I'm spending more time with pen and paper. I'm starting to write things down more. I'm spending more, I'm spending less time in like more hardcore produ…”
A finance hire's data entry error cost Isenberg hundreds of thousands
“We had someone on our finance team that Was just like putting in not the right numbers. Like the numbers were incorrect. And there were, this was a costly mistake, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars type mistake.”
Isenberg: Business portfolio was less profitable in 2024 than 2023
“This year was a less profitable year than in 20, 23.”
Isenberg's personal brand drives 40% of his holding company's revenue
“I would say without my personal brand, Sales and revenue would be, like, 40% less. So, you know, millions and millions of dollars a year. Yeah, it's actually crazy. Many, many millions of dollars a year.”
Growing to 100K X followers is easier today than in late 2023
“I honestly, I think it's probably, on X specifically, it's probably easier to grow to a 100,000, zero to a 100,000 followers today than it was last year at this time. And that's because the For You page of X Highlights more smaller accounts.”
Isenberg says he has worked 40-hour weeks for 99% of his career
“I work on average in 20, 24 hot take 40 hours a week. You can get a lot of stuff done in 40 hours per week. I honestly, there 99% of my entire career has been working 40 hours a week.”
Isenberg: The tech industry is wrong to dismiss GPT wrappers as businesses
“That GPT rappers aren't real businesses.”
Isenberg: YouTube channel grew from 11,000 to 146,000 subscribers in 2024
“At the end of 2023, I was at 11,000 YouTube subscribers. Today we're sitting at 146,000 subscribers.”
Isenberg: Net worth increased 38% year-over-year in 2024
“So this year my net worth has gone up. 38% year over year.”
Isenberg's asset allocation: 75% stocks, 16% PE, 7% real estate, 2% crypto
“My net worth in terms of breakdown, it's 75% in stocks, 16% in private equity seven percent in real estate, and two percent in crypto.”
Isenberg: Small-cap stocks will come back into favor at some point
“So I actually think that small caps are going to be, they've just been not in favor, but I actually think they will at some point. Come back in favor, so that's why I placed the five percent bet in IWM.”
Isenberg: Boring Marketing generates millions in annual revenue
“Boring marketing. The end of 2023. We had started to scale it. It's doing millions of dollars a year of revenue. AI assisted SEO. And it continues to do that. It continues to scale.”
Isenberg: Boring Ads managed $100M in ad spend in 2024
“We spent a hundred million dollars in ad spend. We've scaled, you know, billion dollar brands in 20, 24.”
Isenberg shut down his 60,000-subscriber AI newsletter to consolidate his portfolio
“You probably need a robot was a newsletter that 60,000 people signed up to get information about AI and how to use it to become a better solopreneur, better entrepreneur. And we shut it down. So we shut it down. Well, we shut down. Yeah, we shut down. You prob…”
Isenberg: Design Scientist generated around $1.3M in revenue in 2024
“Designscientist.com. So that is a design subscription that people pay monthly for and they get, you know, on demand decks on demand, social assets that, you know, that sort of thing. That business did, you know, Oh, I think around 1.3 million in revenue.”
Isenberg: Holding companies should build skyscrapers, not strip malls
“That's like the big learning from running a holding company is, is that, is like you throw a lot against the wall, you make a cash flowing you evolve it into something that excites you. You simplify it wherever you can. You know, last year, going, 20, 23, goin…”
Isenberg: Giving candidates ambiguous tasks reveals how they will work
“So he gives someone a small task with unclear instructions, and then he, you know, He basically sees if they ask any questions or they just guess. And he tells, what's cool about that is it tells you everything about their future behavior. So this is for like …”