My dearest gold-chained friend,
I’m writing this letter because we made a promise to each other on the 4th of April in 2024 - to invite each other to take a swing at making our best music to date.
My promise to you to 300% put myself in the spot where I believe I’m best. Your promise to me to 300% put yourself in the spot where you believe you’re best. Our promise to each other to 300% tell each other in which spot we believe we excel in.
Here’s how I believe we should chart the course for our boat in 2025. I’ve been reflecting on our wonderfully beautiful voyage so far. Reflections on the rough open seas we've navigated and how we can make our journey smoother, more enjoyable and more sustainable each year.
When we first set sail together in 2022, our journey felt youthful and optimistic, full of possibility and enthusiasm. Angels.
Then came 2023, which tested us with rough seas, some mental ghosts and an occasional Bermuda triangle. Devils.
And yet, we survived.
By contrast, 2024 felt more mature; we worked ridiculously hard still - but the sailing was steadier, more stable, and more fun. We started to enjoy the process. Sunshine.
Today, we are more skilled better sailors - and our boat is stronger than ever before.
Reviewing our logbook from 2024, here’s our reality of 2024 in tangible terms:
- Together, we invested 2,000 hours in keeping our kaffie boat seaworthy and moving forward.
- Additionally, we spent 1,710 hours serving our clients, nearly matching our internal efforts.
In simpler terms, 54% of our time was spent on our own boat, while 46% of our time was spent on upgrading boats for someone else.
This balance was challenging.
Good fun, but it stretched both of us thin.
Looking deeper into how our internal hours were spent:
- Routine maintenance (operations) consumed about 400 hours combined. That’s 20% of our most valuable asset spent on work we can not re-use tomorrow. These tasks, while “necessary”, often felt like constant repairs and patchwork that drained us both.
- I spent around 293 hours on navigating sales, primarily manual tasks.
- You handled 158 hours of overseeing finance.
We both find ourselves repeatedly doing manual tasks that don't align well with our core strengths. They could be done by somebody or some thing else.
Even more so, that thing is what we happily build for our clients today.
It excites us. We’re good at it.
For me, excessive manual operations tasks mean less time for meaningful interactions, spotting new islands of opportunity, and steering toward bigger horizons. Less time to imagine and dream of structural upgrades to our boat that I can speak about for hours but only rarely draw on a napkin.
For you, firefighting in finance and operations leaves less time to design and build upgrades for our boat. Less time to make efficient systems that would allow our ship to run smoother happen. Less time to poke holes in my fearless dreams and wild imaginations - drawing the better napkin for us.
Both things, we naturally excel in. Those are the spots we’re smart in. Our superpowers.
That’s how we survived 2023.
For 2025, rather than attempting a major overhaul, I propose thoughtful, incremental adjustments. Reducing our combined time in routine operations by 25-30% over the next six months could give us back 100-120 hours each per year. That time should be invested into building more profitable or scalable systems, or simply having more breathing room on our voyage.
More time to enjoy the open sea - visit some beautiful islands we come across.
Since I know you love for me to descent from my metaphor cloud, here’s my shitty napkin.
Ship maintenance (Operations)
Given your magic for structure and execution, I believe your role should be automating or delegating routine administrative tasks such as regular communications and project check-ins. My role would be to identify what can be streamlined. Even a modest 10% reduction here (40 hours/year) can significantly ease our workload.
Navigation and alliances (Sales)
Currently, I spend considerable time on manual sales tasks. While I thrive on human interaction and building relationships, I want to do it more efficiently. My role would shift toward creating automated sales funnels, standardized proposals, and referral systems. Your role would involve shooting holes in my patchwork systems and ensuring these systems integrate seamlessly with our ongoing operations – making them happen.
Managing supplies (Finance)
You're currently investing 158 hours annually here. By automating bookkeeping, invoicing, and reporting, we could reduce this time by 20-30%, saving 30-50 hours each year. Your role would be to set up and oversee these automations, while my role would focus on identifying what can be streamlined and ensuring our strategic decisions align with our financial goals.
Imagine next year, instead of spending 3,710 total hours combined, we could reduce that to approximately 3,400 hours by working smarter. Those additional 310 hours could be redirected into more profitable client work or, better yet, invested into systems that make kaffie easier and more enjoyable to run every year. We have the talent, the heart, the brains and the pirate crew for it. Even more so – they are already doing it as of today.
Regarding how we balance time between kaffie and client work, I believe we have two possible courses to set sail to.
Option 1 (Current course – but 1% better every day)
Maintain our existing balance of about 50-55% internal and 45-50% client work.
To improve here?
- we would focus on smarter systems
- streamlined operations
- clearer processes
It’s familiar territory—stable and reliable. With improved efficiency, we can make this path more manageable and sustainable. Could be fun… but it doesn’t scare me.
Option 2 (80/20 course, the island)
Gradually shift toward dedicating 80% of our time to kaffie and 20% to client work over the next few years. Think of:
- building scalable services and products
- finding sustainable income island beyond client work
- removing ourselves from the clients’ boat solution as much as possible
80% of the time, we wouldn’t know how to do it when we start, but are able to figure it out along the way.
20% of the time, it’s just success taking a little longer to happen.
This path not only appeals to me because it scares the sailing shit out of me - but also because it fixes our biggest agency problem by design. We are our own biggest bottleneck.
Right now, we’re building a sail boat. Sailing is hard work. I want to be able to sail when I want to. But I want to put on the engine for convenience. And I believe I know you want it too. The catamaran, remember?
Client projects would be fewer but of higher value, maintaining profitability while being less demanding and ‘always, all the time’ overall.
Option 2 is ambitious, and significant shifts carry big risks. But it’s my job on this boat to guide, dream and inspire. The biggest risk is not taking risks at all. There is always a way, and the path towards our non- existing island is only made by sailing.
With smart & hard work at the deck, thoughtful risk-taking and incremental steps, I imagine the engine to be achievable before 2027. a fully functional, revenue-generating business with only rock & roll client work / fuel needed for inspiration and challenge.
If we can imagine it, we can do it. I. Really. F*cking. Believe. It.
Our responsibilities for the kaffie boat
My role would be to
- find new islands to sail to
- imagine the engine on a napkin
- smell new islands of opportunity
- identify what we can sell at scale
- make complex stuff wonderfully simple
- make simple stuff wonderfully complex
- make complex stuff happen
- have fun while I’m at it
Your role would be to
- make sure our boat is able to reach new islands
- make better napkins for the engine
- build, maintain and scale the engine
- make sure the boat keeps boating
- make complex things look simple
- make simple stuff happen
- have fun while you’re at it
From our optimistic departure in 2022, through the challenging storms of 2023, to the steadier and more mature experience of 2024. Let’s think big about 2025. While thinking big, let’s start small.
To continue to make our wonderful voyage 1% more enjoyable every day, I believe we need to upgrade our sails and navigation tools — building systems and automations that require less manual input. Instead of spending our days patching our own or clients’ leaks and adjusting sails, let’s equip our ship so it demands less constant attention. As a result, freeing us to explore new horizons, sailing the open sea with confidence and not blindly sailing by the rules of the business navy preaching we should do 80% client work and 20% for our own boat instead.
You’ve always ensured our ship remains seaworthy, organized, and ready for and adventure. I’ll continue scouting new horizons, make shit napkins, and bringing new opportunities on board.
Today feels like a good day time to propose meaningful adjustments so we both enjoy the voyage even more.
I know I can do it. It’s my superpower.
I imagine the complex stuff to be wonderfully simple.
And I imagine the simple stuff to be wonderfully complex. Me being 300% me.
I know you can do it. It’s your superpower. You make the complex stuff look simple. And you make the simple stuff happen. You being 300% you.
I don’t know about you, but it feels like jazz to me.
Looking forward to discussing this soon. Let’s make time to chart the course together.
On the island of Bali*, preferably. Nice island. Lots of opportunities. Wonderfully complex people. Simple life here in 2025. Mermaids.
As a best friend first,
And as a business partner second,
simon
PS: *Let’s find a way to take the team with you. kaffie is always better when it’s shared, right?