A 2025 Recap & Retrospective: Navigating Thru The Storm
Talk about a tumultuous year. I was pretty optimistic in the beginning of 2025 but it got really messy as the year went on. With Trump 2.0 changing pretty much everything on the geopolitical front, combined with even more financial challenges, my perspective on the world got pretty dark. Not 2020 dark & hopeless but just dark. As folks who read my regular postings, there was a much more ruthless tinge and flavor. Something I deplore but this view is what I have come around to. My conclusion is that this mindset is what is required to survive in this new world order. Perhaps even thrive. Don’t hate the player, hate the game as they say. But it was not all bad.
Business: B
Lots of new business lines in our core business, private credit, real estate, a few deals in the defense/industrial sector. Also preparing to do a few PE deals in 2026. Also joined advisory board & IC of new reindustrialization focused credit fund as well as standing up a new Defense-tech focused PE firm.
Lots of new assets and strategies to learn which is something I look forward to as someone who is naturally curious, learning drives me. The violent reset of the geopolitical board has opened up lots of new opportunities and this is exciting although a bit scary at the same time.
Personal Finance: C-, maybe D
Just a brutal year. Still lots of accounts receivables, 19 months now from an unnamed Balkan country institute. Massively negative cashflow from investment properties due to vacancy and lots of renovations and repairs. Anyone who tells you rental properties are easy money is lying to you. There has been a massive emergency and literal cash crunch every 5 years since I’ve owned these properties, going on 22 years now. And my family's cost structure is slightly out of control. Selling off liquid assets is the dumbest way to fix this but here we are.
A continual one step forward, three steps back. It’s infuriating. It's hard not to feel like I lost momentum these last two years and the lack of progress is incredibly frustrating for type A individuals like myself. Clearly something is not working and close to the point of being sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Having said all this, I have been surprised by how calmly I’ve accepted all these setbacks. I guess all that internal work is working somewhat. I learned the hard way in the past, panic always leads to even more losses. Ultimately, I know I’ll be fine in the long run but these last few months have forced me to do a complete rethink of how I manage my finances. The obvious conclusion is I need a complete revamp and a focus on driving cash flow, not stacking more illiquid assets, which is what got me in trouble leading up to 2020. I need bigger reserves and it’s Code Red now. Or more popularly said online, “going more autistic.”
2026 will be a ruthless focus on managing my cost structure better + prioritization on monetization to grow cash flow. I just don’t have much time left for much pro bono stuff anymore. I don’t feel it’s valued by most people these days. In fact, they feel entitled to my time and energy. It does not serve me or my family anymore. I’ll always be happy helping good people and those I consider friends and family, but this circle is getting smaller over time. A tribe by nature needs to be tight. I am taking a harder-edged stance in general: “Gold for my friends, steel for my enemies.”
Travel: Travel was out of control. Said “Yes” to way too much stuff. Spent way too much money. Many of these trips were not even monetization or strategic ones. I need to fix this. But while tiring, I had fun though so it’s something at least. I did do more trips back to Canada to spend time with my folks which was good and I don’t regret that at all as my folks are getting old.
Having said that, I was pretty burned out on travel by the time December rolled around. Impacted my training and sleep in a negative way. Will be cutting back on travel in 2026, I finally need to operate under the age of austerity and focus. I will finally see if I have any of that supposed discipline that I pride myself on.
Went to lots of countries in 2025:
Saudi Arabia: 3X
United Kingdom: 2X
France: 3X
Germany: 1X
Canada: 9X
Poland: 3X
Ukraine: 2X
Georgia: 1X
Japan: 2X
Uzbekistan: 1X
Turkey: 1X
Health: A-
Continually working with my personal trainers although my travel schedule did not allow me to do my annual muay thai fight training trip. But will rectify this in 2026 and probably do the “Lethal Gentleman” training camp in Poland too. (Yes, this is a real thing). I trained and ate plenty of protein and gained 8 pounds of muscle mass. I feel and look better than I did 20 years ago.
Family & Relationships: A-
Some big breakthroughs this year and have enjoyed some calm at home (famous last words). Nice to have the home element feeling a bit more safe and secure compared to the last few years. Lots of fun family trips together to Whistler (twice), Banff, France & Germany. I am really enjoying time with my teenage daughter. Trying to be present in the last year and half with her before she heads off to college. It’s so much fun wandering palaces, museums, national art galleries, farmers markets and shopping malls with Amber. She shares many of my interests, particularly in history and architecture.
Personal Development: A-
Continuing the streak I had from 2024, I have read even more books and watched lots of Youtube videos on a wide range of Silicon Valley, investing, geopolitics, global macro and military/defense related topics. One of the few areas of progress this last year. I’ve also continued to be active on LI and X (aka Twitter) and mined these places for lots of great insights on where the world is going. I can’t believe these tools are free, or relatively free that is.
2026:
So some thoughts as we move into the next year, from the very intelligent Arbitrage Andy:
“If 2025 was the prelude, 2026 is the chapter where the plot actually detonates.
The world is moving faster, systems are wobbling harder, and nobody is coming to save you or me.
Most people can agree things never really returned to how they were pre-pandemic. It just kind of feels like life accelerated.
Life didn’t “go back to normal”, it just hit the gas across the board. Everything started moving faster: the economy, the news cycle, the politics, even the way people think. It feels like we skipped a chapter and woke up in a different country. The pace, the pressure, the instability.
You can feel it on the roads, in the stores, in the way people interact.
The jump from the end of the pandemic to now (almost 2026) was even faster.
Society feels thinner now, stretched out to some extent. People are stuck in some super quick race to survive and “make it” before we hit some type of terminal velocity. You either adapt or get rolled by it.
It genuinely feels like America and the world hit fast-forward while the floor underneath us started to crack. You can sense it in the silence on the subway (where you hopefully aren’t being attacked by a vagrant), in the tension at the grocery store, in the way people drive like they’re in downtown Fallujah. Even in the media masturbation of the same stories, scandals, and pop culture slop.
This is the environment we’re stepping into for 2026 kings, a world moving quicker than the majority of people can process. Normies are entirely stagnant. Based lords and chads see where things are trending.”
The polycrisis is here. We’re surrounded by literal predators, scam artists and wolves. I enter 2026 with some trepidation but I never doom. I’m a grinder and survivor. I’ve reinvented myself many times already. My whole life has prepared me for this.
While I expect 2026 to be a tough year, I will squeeze out as much health, wealth, learning, fun and adventure as I can. I will attack my problems with calm determination. I will focus deeply on the critical path to navigate my way out of this storm. Stay optimistic, stay mentally and physically strong, expect a lot of hard work and pain and you will be okay.
As I have stated before from Dune Prophecy: “Adversity always lies in the path of advancement. Most would run from it, I will walk through it.”
Happy New year everyone!