2026 - The Year of Consequences
After a year of new bets, there’s nowhere to hide this year
👋 Hi, I’m Iron. I run Simple Analytics, and a few other internet businesses. This newsletter is me documenting the road to 1M ARR. Numbers, decisions, mistakes. Fully transparent.
I’m skipping the “Year in review” and going straight into the “Year ahead”.
Every Christmas, we shut down Simple Analytics (the product keeps running). Apart from eating and drinking too much, I use that time to reflect.
Result: In 2025, we said “yes” to so many things, 2026 will show us if that was smart
Here’s how I think it’ll play out. 2026, let’s go!
Quick look back
Saying that in 2026 you’ll see the result of your 2025 actions is fortune-cookie wisdom. But 2025 wasn’t a normal year for us. It was a year full of “new bets.”
Here’s a brief breakdown of our 2025:
New bets:
Acquired Leadsontrees and rebranded to Signalbase, partnering with Georgi as co-founder & CEO
Founded Rayley and partnered with Jim to become co-founder & CEO
Visited Lithuania, Bulgaria, Singapore and Germany to start new partnerships.
Hired our first (amazing) people at Simple Analytics.
Repositioned Simple Analytics for Enterprise use.
Put all our weight behind a new growth channel for UniHosted.
Milestones:
Simple Analytics hit 45K MRR.
UniHosted hit 15K MRR.
Signalbase hit 1K MRR.
Personally:
Turned 30 with a bang!
I’ve been the fittest ever. Locked in 193 workouts. (Fuck yeah!)
But also… lost my beloved grandma (99). I miss her, but I am happy she had an amazing life for us to celebrate ❤️
To look back on 2025, I scrolled back through my calendar, chats, and photos to relive everything I did last year. It’s a fun thing to do because you get sucked into these (mostly) fun moments.
Last year was a big one. Lets see if what 2026 brings.
Looking ahead
As I looked back in time, I wrote down month by month what I was up to. Then I asked my friend ChatGPT to go back into all our conversations in the past year and identify important themes for the upcoming year.
Result: 2026 is the year of consequences
According to my friend Chat, in 2026, we can expect to see:
Whether Signalbase will become a viable business or not.
If Rayley actually comes to life.
If Simple Analytics achieves breakout growth with the new positioning.
If our hires work out (I very much already believe this one will).
If our new partnerships will be fruitful.
If the new growth channel 10x’s UniHosted.
But there is a more personal consequence I can’t ignore: How the hell am I going to be able to manage four companies?
The hard part
My greatest enemy is loss of focus and being spread too thin.
To manage four businesses instead of two last year, I will need to figure out how to allocate time and impact accordingly.
I already experienced feeling a little stretched when in Thailand, in November. We went to Chiang Mai for a month to work with a group of 12 people including Adriaan (Simple Analytics), Dries (UniHosted), Georgi (Signalbase) & Jim (Rayley). I was spread between four co-founders.
I knew this from the start, so that’s why every business has a dedicated co-founder going full-time. And I finally got the hang of it, when I started to let go of things that are not really that important.
Optimisations vs Levers
Around this time, I had a conversation with my friend Jesse Schoberg, who I met in Chiang Mai and he talked about optimisations vs levers.
He applied this to his company: DropInBlog. At one point, the company wasn’t growing. To break through this stalled growth, you can’t rely on optimisations on current growth channels. You need to swing big and find a lever that moves the system.
This clicked.
In my situation, I was doing so much stuff that:
Didn’t really move the needle
Or things someone could do better than I.
Like:
SEO tweaks
Content edits
Reaching out on LinkedIn
Writing email sequences
And another 100 or so “useful” tasks
So I need to identify my “levers” and delegate or cut the rest.
I’m average at marketing. But I’m great at connecting people, ideas, and opportunities and put them in the right structures to move them forward.
So that’s the focus for the next year: Grow out of my average marketer role and focus on these high-leverage tasks only.
Final Thoughts
2026 is successful when I’m not needed for day-to-day operations. More focus on levers, less on optimisations.
What does that look like?
More writing (like this newsletter. I meet people here. Say hi here!)
More in-person meetings with partners, clients, and relations.
More time for hiring and delegating.
More thinking time.
Funny enough, none of the above sounds like “Work.”
Writing SEO blogs and doing lots of other tasks feel productive, but at this stage I need to be doing less.
Less being an average marketer, more being a business owner.
Cheers ✌️✌️
Iron
Nice! Love an honest account of how things are going, including the ambivalence/uncertainty of doing things "on your own"