"When life gives you lemons, ask for more."
I was diagnosed with a brain tumor in the beginning of 2024.
A mentor gave me this advice when I told him I was diagnosed. I was honestly initially very mad at him because I felt he didn't understand how much I was struggling.
He explained what he meant to convey: When life becomes excruciating, lean into that pain because that's the only way to win. During a boxing match if you get knocked down, staying down is the logical thing to do. Getting up is asking for more. In fact, to win most fights you have to sacrifice getting hit in order to swing back and hopefully deliver the knockout punch.
That fight I had with my brain tumor thankfully only lasted 90 days from our first diagnosis until the first surgery. There was a very long road to recovery as well, but the hard part was over.
Three months of preparation honestly should be enough, but if you know me then you know that all I did was bury myself in work for 90 days. My wife was the true superhero who scheduled all the appointments, the CT scans, the MRIs, and all 1000+ blood draws/labs. There isn't a human being on earth who is even close to how amazing she is. I don't know if I would even have scheduled the surgery if it weren't for her.
Surgery day came on May 13th. We had just flown back from Napa Valley because I somehow convinced my wonderful wife that it was a good idea in case there wouldn't be a next time. (Note for readers/husbands: you can get away with almost anything if you have a scheduled brain surgery for a brain tumor.)
Although I had done everything in my power to just focus on work for the previous 90 days instead of processing what my diagnosis meant and what it would mean, I was oddly at peace that morning. My wife and church community had been praying, and although I had been wrestling with the surgery and news myself, I knew things would be alright.
By God's goodness I survived the surgery, where my tumor had even wrapped around a vein inside my own brain (as if brain surgery isn't complicated enough). Prayer answered!
In fact, as I reflect back on this year the biggest theme has been Answered Prayers.
Looking back on 2024, I'm overwhelmed with gratitude. There is one thing that I need to say to each and every one of you for this 2024 year: we are so eternally grateful for you. Thank you for believing in us and trusting us with your investments, because we know this is not an easy decision.
WHAT WAS 2024?
My favorite movie of all time is GATTACA. (This small summary doesn't even come close to doing the movie justice, please go watch it.) If you haven't seen it, the movie highlights a futuristic world where everyone can choose the genes of their kids before they're born. For the main character (Ethan Hawke), his parents actually chose to let him be born with natural genes (he's born without any gene intervention or improvement). The movie follows him as he navigates life when everyone seems to have more advantages than him, including his own younger brother who was born with perfect genes.
The main character's personal mission in life was to become an astronaut, the profession that only the best of the best get. The movie highlights the 30-plus extra steps the protagonist had to endure compared to his peers. It peaks with a swimming race between him and his brother where the goal is to swim away from the beach and outswim the other and make them give up and swim back to shore. Even though he's several inches shorter, many pounds lighter, and less athletic than his younger brother, the protagonist pushes his brother to breaking, who asks him, "How are you doing this? How have you done any of this?"
His answer was the whole point of the movie: "You wanna know how I did it? I never saved anything for the swim back."
I thought about that scene a lot this year. Especially when I was laid up in the ICU for a week post-surgery stuck with a dozen different needles and tubes. The big scary surgery was over, but there were some issues and complications to deal with. There's definitely a change in attitude when things get harder, but to just dig deeper is so opposite of what I naturally wanted to do, which was just give up. My health immediately after surgery wasn't in a life-or-death situation, thankfully. I just had to mentally and emotionally endure the several complications and added surgeries and treatments.
During this time in the ICU we became friends with patients in neighboring rooms. Reality checks came real fast. One friend 5 rooms over had a massive tumor on their brain stem. He's 19 years old and had to have surgery twice as long as mine, a medically induced coma, and a stay in the ICU for over a month.
It can always be worse.
In the midst of my worst week this year, I was constantly reminded that I was significantly in much better shape than several other people within feet of me. Gratitude isn't really the right word for how thankful I am for surviving the surgery and post-surgery issues.
Now, as you can imagine, I was taking Out of Office to the extreme and can only do that with our awesome team and especially my business partner Braden to keep everything running. I don't know how I should feel knowing that I was absent for weeks and everything at work seemed to run smoother without me. (Maybe I'm the reason everything needs fixing when I work, or maybe I'm just the least talented player on the '93 Chicago Bulls team.)
My heart is full to know that we have the best team under the sun.
WHAT HAPPENED TO MR. MARKET?
Our entire investment philosophy was rewarded this year. We believe in investing in extremely profitable companies that are extremely undervalued. There are several factors that go into measuring and evaluating extreme profitability, such as free cash flow, operating margins, and net income. We aim to find companies that not only grow in revenue and cash flow but also have healthy balance sheets (low debt or no debt). "Undervalued" is a very hard term to define because it means assigning a stock or company a value and comparing that with the public or market price. We use a detailed process for evaluating different companies, and when we see an opportunity (or, as happened repeatedly in 2024, when we get handed several beautiful opportunities), we act.
2024 was a year that rewarded patience and discipline. The market handed us a number of moments where well-known, profitable companies dropped sharply on news the market overreacted to, the kind of setups we spend our time preparing for. Whether it was a software outage that grounded flights worldwide, a disappointing forward guide from a long-standing enterprise software leader, or fintech companies in the middle of management and product transitions, the pattern was the same: short-term noise creating long-term opportunity. If you'd like to dig into the specifics of how we think about those kinds of setups, I'd love to talk through it on a call, or you can tune into our podcast, In This Economy???
As we enter 2025, our focus remains the same: see through the news and the noise and find investments that offer value increases. After the hardest year I or the firm has ever faced, we had a great 180 turnaround. And not all the good news is professional. My wife and I are pleased to announce that we will be having our first child in March! If you've been reading this whole darn thing, thank you, and I'm glad to share this world-shattering news with you, as I now have to research baby products like I analyze all of these stocks. God is good. He is so, so good, and as you go into 2025 I pray that this year is full of growth, healing, and love for God and others in your life.
🥂 Cheers to 2025!
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