First of all, let me start with some background.

I am a full stack Laravel developer who has been running my own company (Fluency Software) since 2014. I have one employee/partner (in a non-technical role) and I hire a mix of contractors as needed. Basically, I make my living with a mix of:

• Client work on sites I built
• Licensing my products to clients
• My own SaaS (Community Fluency)

I track my time to the minute, as I have since 2014 (using Toggl, which makes it easy). So let's start with some graphs and numbers.

So the goal for the past 5 years, since I launched the SaaS, has been to grow that RED portion of the pie chart (my SaaS) to basically provide enough of an income that the client work is purely optional.

That is still the primary goal, but as you will notice the GREEN is still the majority of the revenue graph.

The completely new thing this year was the GOLD section - Hypermedia and htmx.

The time graph doesn't even show the whole story — htmx made its way into my client projects and my SaaS.

I came across htmx at the end of 2023, and it really clicked (I have a live post of that experience here). I decided to go all in using htmx in my projects.

There weren't a ton of resources to learn about it — so I decided to create my own.

First, I bought a nice mic and signed up with transistor.fm to create the hx-pod podcast. As I learned and incorporated htmx into my projects, I recorded episodes.

After a few months, I started doing interviews with htmx developers to get an idea of what their experience was. After an off-hand comment from Anthony Alaribe, I also started the hypermedia-tv youtube channel to post the interviews, which is now at about 500 subscribers (!).

Creating content was something entirely new for me, and some of the most fun I had was doing the conversations.

Some of my personal highlights:

• Posted 95 podcast episodes and 20 youtube videos
• Went to Big Sky Dev Con (my recap)
• Interviewed htmx creator Carson Gross, had some corny fun editing it
• Talked to some of my favorite voices in the hypermedia world -- including but not limited to the creators of Datastar, Hyperview, and Unpoly
• Had some fun creating several despicable htmx characters
• Starting to build hypecp.com in public
• My wife creating this thumbnail for me:

This new and shiny and fun hypermedia adventure came out of nowhere and took up a shocking 23.8% of my time.

Next it's time to look at what took the highest portion of my time and the majority of my income.

I have two kinds of client work I do:

• Licensing and supporting my own products
• Supporting projects I have built for clients

I work with energy companies, non-profits, educational organizations, and state legislative professionals. I do dev work as well as sales demos, videos, and trainings.

This year, the number of clients I work with went from 6 to 4. This was a mixed blessing -- fewer clients means less context-switching, but also less income (and i like income). Fortunately, the other client projects and the growth of my own SaaS mostly made up the gap.

Ultimately, the ending of the two client projects opened up the time I used to explore hypermedia.

A similar thing happened in 2014 when I was laid off from my full-time job -- and spent the next 3 months learning Laravel, which kick-started the creation of my own company.

This was a big year for Community Fluency, our constituent service platform for elected officials in Massachusetts. My business partner and I worked together to keep our current clients happy and found a few new types of clients.

To keep this brief (yes, I know you probably don't care about the specifics of this business, but this is MY recap!), here are the highlights:

• Grew our revenue about 30%
• Tried to land "The Golden Goose" -- a large government contract. We didn't succeed this time but we learned a lot about the process and realized we were at the top of the pile in terms of everything but connections.
• Expanded from elected officials to state agencies

We are not at two full-time salaries yet, but we made significant progress this year and opened up some new possibilities.

I won't say much, except that I am a very lucky man. I have a great supportive spouse and two amazing kids.

Along with all the other content creation, I started a personal podcast with a few friends. This has served as a really positive way to connect with them and have some fun with the things in our lives.

The big story of the year is that I focused more on my health, and it has been one of my best decisions of the year. I took a walk almost every day, I started going to the gym, and more recently I start kickboxing classes.

If you are sitting all day, I highly recommend any of those -- walks are the cheapest but probably not the least effective.

Overall, 2024 was all about solidifying and simplifying my development base while exploring content creation.

Htmx helped with both -- I built a lot of amazing new features into my products using htmx, and I had a ton of fun and growth creating hypermedia content.

Client Work
My goal is to keep my client work steady and growing (without taking new projects, just expanding my work with existing ones) for 2025.

Personal SaaS
I would like to continue growing, and make another try for something big -- either hiring a dedicated sales person or applying for another large government contract.

Hypermedia Content
I want to grow the youtube channel, and keep posting regularly to the podcast. Each fill a different role -- I can use the podcast for random thoughts, and the youtube for more polished ideas and interviews.

Paid Courses/Books/Screencasts
This is a new idea, but I think a natural extension of where I have been going. The main problem in 2024 is that I spent 25% of my time on hypermedia content, but got 0% (or less!) of my revenue from it. That's fine for now, but not long term sustainable, especially if I want to expand what I do with hypermedia because I find it so enjoyable and rewarding.

Offering people something of value (courses, screencasts, ui kits??) and charging for it sounds like a win-win.

Secret Project
I have been working on a secret project (it has to do with mobile apps) that I plan to launch in 2025. I love a secret project, I really do. My plan is to build it, use it for myself first. Then if it's as good as I hope, I will release and launch it as a product.

Real Life
Live genuinely. Push exercising and movement and traveling. Learn how to do a cartwheel.

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If you read all this, thank you for reading this. My professional life is a weird mix of projects and goals, but maybe there is something in it that resonated with you and your journey. I have never recapped a year before but I hope to make this type of public reflection a regular part of my professional life.

Programming rules and I am very fortunate to be able to make my living from it. I hope you get to do the same in whatever way you want to.

Intro Securing existing business The Year of Htmx Hx-pod YouTube channel Conference Comedy Added to my inspirations: Aliribe, Carson, Caleb Porzio, Otwell Client work Licensing software Supporting sites TLS AH GPG TM Two large projects ended Personal SaaS Built my own constituent service platform for elected officials One employee Grew revenue, expanded the market Life Joined kickboxing Luckiest man alive Personal podcast w/ friends Recap Overall client projects fewer, revenue for each up Personal businesses up Opened door for time for content creation Looking Ahead: 2025 Goals Mobile development Course Audiobook Add revenue from courses Makes this more viable