Nobody said this would be easy.

2024 was the hardest year of my life. It was also the best year of my life. Those two things are not mutually exclusive, and understanding that distinction has completely changed how I am approaching 2025.

What Actually Happened

I started the year feeling great. My business was profiting $10K to $15K a month. I was running marketing for a tax firm out of Chicago that had scaled to $3 million, and in 2022 I had started offering those marketing services to other businesses. The trajectory felt good.

Then it all went to zero.

For the first half of 2024, revenue disappeared. I had a couple of months that were actually negative — losing money before I even tried to cover personal bills. I essentially rebuilt the business from scratch starting in February.

My wife got in a car accident at 60 mph. She is okay, thank God, but getting that phone call was one of the most stressful moments of my entire life.

There were probably a dozen times throughout the year when I was legitimately considering what it would look like to go get a 9-to-5 job. That is the honest truth.

But by Q4, we had rebuilt to a comfortable, sustainable position — profiting $10K to $15K and even up to $20K a month. The monthly revenue is actually about the same as it was this time last year. The difference is the business model underneath it is significantly stronger. Better product-market fit. Better positioning. A foundation that I believe can scale in a way the old model never could.

And honestly, I am stoked about that.

The Lesson: Purpose Comes From Hard Things

Building a business and getting married at 22 — living an outlier kind of life — that is supposed to be hard. And as much as it is hard, it is also amazing. I have got an incredible wife. I love my work. Even when I am grinding through 60-hour weeks for months on end with very few breaks, I can still go home and be proud of the work I put in.

My life has purpose. And that purpose does not come from having it easy or doing what everyone else is doing. It comes directly from the hard things I am trying to pursue.

This is changing how I approach 2025. Last year, I was on such a high going in. I thought I would be on a million-dollar run rate by the end of 2024. I did not plan for things to go wrong at all. Now I know better. I am planning for things to go wrong, and I am building something that can survive those moments and come out stronger.

The Content Strategy Going Forward

I have published about 59 videos to YouTube since June 2023, maybe a quarter of which are still live. Moving forward, here is the plan.

I am not in a position to educate on every single thing in business. I have a very narrow area of expertise — marketing — and I genuinely believe I understand it better than 99% of people. But that does not qualify me to create content about sales, recruiting, operations, or automation. Too many YouTubers go outside their domain of expertise because they ran out of content ideas in their lane. I do not want to become one of those creators.

Instead, I am going to document, not create. You have probably heard that phrase before, but here is what it looks like for me: I want to document my mindset, my way of thinking about problems, and my experience navigating the circumstances that come up when you are building something from nothing. Open book. All of it.

Partly this is for me. I want to be able to look back in 5 or 10 years and see how I was thinking when I was 23 and had just restarted my business. But it is also for other people out there building who do not always know what they are trying to do. People who want to see someone being real — someone who does not have it all figured out, just like them.

There are a couple of people doing this well right now. Alex Hormozi’s podcast feed is very much this approach — documenting his thinking on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis rather than just telling you what to do. Paul Daly in the info space is doing it too, documenting how his beliefs and mindset are shifting as he builds.

What This Means for You

If you are in a tough season right now — revenue is down, you are questioning whether this whole entrepreneurship thing is worth it, you are considering going back to a regular job — I just want you to know that season does not last forever. It did not for me. Six to twelve months of focused rebuilding got me right back to where I was, but with a better foundation underneath.

The businesses that survive difficult years are the ones that come out the other side with better models, not just patched-up versions of what broke. Sometimes the reset is the best thing that could happen to you, even though it absolutely does not feel like it while you are in the middle of it.

Plan for things to go wrong. Build something that can take a hit. And do not quit when it gets hard — that is literally the point.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happened to Peter VanderWall’s business in 2024?

He started the year profiting $10,000 to $15,000 per month, then revenue went to zero for the first half of the year. He had a couple of months that were actually negative before he even tried to take a paycheck. He rebuilt from scratch and by Q4 was back to a sustainable $10,000 to $15,000 in monthly profit, but with a fundamentally stronger business model than what he had before.

How do you rebuild a service business after losing revenue?

Focus on getting better product-market fit rather than just trying to replace lost revenue with the same approach that broke. Peter rebuilt with a different model and different positioning that he believes is much stronger for long-term growth. Sometimes starting over with a better foundation is more valuable than patching what was broken, even if it means months of pain in the short term.

Should entrepreneurs only create content in their area of expertise?

Yes, and Peter is intentional about this. He avoids making content about sales, hiring, or operations because marketing is his true domain of expertise. He has seen too many YouTubers go outside their lane because they ran out of ideas. His recommendation is to document your real experience and thought process rather than trying to teach topics you have not actually mastered yourself.

What does it mean to document instead of create with content?

Instead of scripting polished educational content on topics outside your expertise, you share your actual mindset, real decisions, and genuine experiences as you build your business. It is more authentic, more relatable to other people going through similar challenges, and it does not require you to pretend you have all the answers. The goal is transparency, not perfection.