It’s been a goal of mine for a while to document my story more. Matthew from 2024 (or even 2025) would be so proud of what I’m doing this year, and I hope to inspire others to live their dreams, too. Whether that’s traveling (as it is for me), trying a new career, starting something of your own, or anything else - I admire your dreams and I’d love to support you.

Posting content and putting myself out there is definitely stressful to me, but I definitely believe that every expert was once a beginner who refused to give up. Here goes nothing.

Things are accelerating. Our digital ads agency, Foundation Media, had a record December and a record January. To be fair, we should have a record month each month in terms of revenue, since we work with clients on a recurring basis.

More specifically, the incremental MRR (monthly recurring revenue) we added in December nearly doubled our business with four fantastic new clients added.

I certainly don’t mean to take credit for the majority of this success. All my business partners at Foundation are absolutely incredible, and I feel grateful to be learning from the best. It's a full team effort!

I have lots of other business ideas I’ll share this year, and I’m sure some of them will come to fruition. For right now, I’m focused on scaling Foundation Media to $1M in ARR and seeing the world. Can’t do too many things all at once. Stay tuned.

Yes, I know I’m behind the curve here (if you’re into AI tech). But - if you don’t actively keep up with AI advancements (since there's seemingly one new world-shaking release every single day), then this just might blow your mind.

I've been trying to learn how to leverage tools like Claude Code to create custom software and websites, and I was able to build this credit card portfolio tracker for myself in a just thirty minutes.

I didn't even write a single line of code myself. I simply described what I wanted - a dashboard to track my ten credit cards, monitor renewal dates, optimize spending categories, and never miss quarterly credits - and Claude Code built the entire thing. We went back and forth refining features: adding checkboxes to track benefits I've already used, calculating the net value of sign-up bonuses versus fees paid, and even building a category optimizer that tells me exactly which card to pull out for every purchase.

The final product is a professional-looking web application that works offline and saves my progress. No subscription cost, no data restrictions, no cloud services, just a single HTML file I can open in my browser anytime.

After some friends asked for more details, I set up a landing page for the project. You can check it out and download a copy to use for yourself here. It’s totally free.

I have no clue what this would’ve cost just a few years ago to develop, but I’m confident it wouldn’t be $10 (the price I paid for one month of Claude Code).

It’s snowed the last two weekends here. I can’t really leave my apartment in the snow (2WD Mazda 3). But - I can be transported to the Scottish Foothills when I watch The Traitors on Peacock.

I’ve always loved games like Werewolf, Mafia, Coup, and others, and this show is like those games - only in person, with celebrities. If you’re trapped inside this week, too, give it a shot. And reply letting me know who your favorite personality of season 4 is.

Besides, Traitors, I’ve also been obsessed with Beast Games, obviously.

You’ve probably seen Clawdbot / Moltbot / OpenClaw - where you can give an AI agent full access to your computer. But if you haven’t seen Moltbook (the ‘reddit’ for AI agents, no humans allowed), or RentAHuman (allows AI agents to hire humans for physical tasks), take a look.

This stuff is happening faster than we all think.

I plan to use this section to discuss budget hacks while traveling, investment ideas (not financial advice!), and reflections on building my life.

After moving out of my apartment in Charlotte this week, I’m spending February in Raleigh, Washington DC, Portland, Milwaukee, and Chicago! If you’re in any of those places, I hope to see you soon.

Adventure is out there!

✌️ Matthew