2025 Year in Review: Bouncing Back
The last year in review I wrote up was for 2023, in which I failed miserably at consulting after quitting my job:
Kamran Ayub
I published that in May 2024. If you didn't read that full post, at the end I shared I had switched to full-time authoring for Pluralsight.
It's time to report back on how it's been going, and what plans I have for 2026!
End of 2024: Flywheel Sufficiently Cranked
In January 2024, I began the long, arduous process of creating a course flywheel. In case you haven't heard about this concept before, I recommend checking Nathan Barry's creator flywheel concept.
Rohan Bhardwaj
The long and short of it is that in order to build up my passive income stream from courses, I had to create a system to publish consistently.
I focused on creating new systems to make publishing on Pluralsight easier for myself. I invested in new technology for face-to-camera production, attended the Pluralsight Author Summit, and basically made that the whole focus of my year.
Guided courses don't throw off residual income, but video courses do. So the way I approached this was to always have a video course in production and then to fill in any immediate income gaps with guided courses. It took a few months to start cranking the flywheel, but by the end it was flying pretty well.
In 2024 I published 4 video and 9 interactive courses:
- February: React Performance Playbook
- April: Guided: Advanced Git Merge Strategies
- May: Guided: React Foundations – JSX and Components
- May: Building a JavaScript Development Environment
- June: Guided: React Foundations – Props and State
- June: Guided: React Foundations – Hooks and Context
- August: Guided: Optimization in React
- August: Authoring and Maintaining GitHub Actions
- October: Guided Optimizing an E-commerce Product Page in Next.js 14
- November: Guided: Migrating to App Router in Next.js 14
- November: Adding Internationalization and SEO in Next.js 14
- December: Guided: Accommodating Images and Media for Web Accessibility
- December: Guided: Qwik City Foundations
The end result was a 10X increase in passive course income thanks to several popular topics (React and JavaScript).
While this was happening, I also began investing time into learning more AI tools and building agents, which leads me into 2025.
2025: Downshifting During Summer
My goal for 2025 was to work a lot less during the summer, since I worked through the summer of 2024 to build up my course catalog. Now with half of my income being earned passively, it freed up more of my time to focus on other projects such as the podcast and KTOMG.
Wait, a podcast? I might have forgotten to mention this 😅
Launched the TypeScript.fm Podcast
In January 2025 me and my best bud, Erik Onarheim launched the TypeScript.fm podcast – a weekly show where we share the latest news and community highlights in the TypeScript and surrounding ecosystem.
Since launch we've published almost 60 episodes and have had multiple guests on, including members from the TypeScript team. We launched primarily on podcast platforms and recently have began publishing to YouTube as audio-only.
It's been going really well!
KTOMG: Doubled Revenue
This past year I worked on a major update to Keep Track of My Games, playthrough and completion tracking – and I shipped it just a couple weeks ago in Early Access. I don't even have a blog post for it yet 😄
Meanwhile, even with no major updates, KTOMG's revenue doubled and surpassed $1000 ARR in 2025 which is pretty exciting. I'm hopeful that it will grow even more in 2026 once the new updates go live to everyone, and I'll also be revamping the membership/billing system.
Pluralsight: More Courses and AI Engineering
In 2025, I published 8 video courses, twice as many as 2024 but only one guided course:
- February: Creating Personal AI Agents
- March: Guided: Using TypeScript with React
- April: Testing .NET MAUI Apps
- April: ChatGPT Pro: OpenAI Deep Research
- June: Distributing .NET MAUI Apps
- August: Qwik City Foundations
- October: Staying on Task with the Pomodoro Technique
- October: Prioritizing Work with Rocks, Pebbles, and Sand
- December: Model Context Protocol in Practice
You might notice a few of those topics are not just on coding. Part of 2025 was branching out more into the AI course authoring space. My Creating Personal AI Agents course was the first experiment and it did really well – that was a major contributor to the 10X increase since 2024. The rest of 2025 stayed more or less the same as far as course royalties as most of the topics were pretty niche.
I also had a unique opportunity to give an Author Talk in front of 3,000 people for a major consulting company. Companies can ask Pluralsight for authors to give tailored talks based on their courses and I had a lot of fun doing that. I'm definitely open to doing that more if those opportunities come up again.
In Pluralsight authoring, every course is a bet – either you bet it will do well and be a major ongoing revenue driver or you bet that it's niche and you optimize for upfront payment. I knew that MCP would be popular, and the bet seems to have paid off. That course alone has increased my viewership numbers by over 85% and because I bet it would do well, I picked a higher royalty percentage. I won't know until mid-January how well it's done but based on rough estimations, it may well double (or triple?!) my course royalties. Not only that, I also have a follow-up course on Advanced MCP in production right now so the two together might be my workhorses for 2026.
AI engineering for the time being remains one of the top areas at Pluralsight so in 2026 I expect to pick as many of those as I can. My hope is that the MCP bet pays off and I can further decrease my course workload and increase my focus on other projects even more for 2026.
Lifestyle: Less Work! More Fun!
This past summer I worked an average of 10 hours per week and only had a single course contract. In fact, I didn't have to bring in any active income at all. Thanks to quarterly royalty payouts, there's always a deposit in July which basically covers the entire summer.
The way I think about these quarterly drops is that in 2026, each payment covers about 1.5 months worth of expenses. That means that passive income covers 6 months worth of income I need to bring in – so in other words, it pays for summers off ☀️
We had some great trips in 2025. We did a tour of Colorado and hit about six national parks. I also went to the Slow FI Retreat in Lake Tahoe and made some new friends.
Left: Sunset at Lake Tahoe. Right: Emerald Lake at Rocky Mtn NP
I was able to make progress on my studio backyard build! I built a retaining wall and gravel base:
My hope for Summer 2026 is to complete the framing of this bad boy!
Finances: Stable and Growing
For 2025, overall household income remained steady with only a small increase compared to 2024. Business income grew by 9%. Our net worth continued to grow and reach new milestones despite taking some cheddar out as we stayed below a 4% withdrawal rate. I want to plug ProjectionLab as a great piece of software to see how you're doing and Monarch Money continues to be well worth the price.
For 2026, I think business income will continue to grow and I'm on track to reach my $70k revenue goal. With one kid still in daycare, and no major salary increases on the horizon for my wife, I don't expect our spending patterns to change a whole lot – instead, I'm hoping that higher course revenue will result in more cash savings at the end of the year.
2026: Community and Travel
For 2026, my personal goal is to prioritize community and in-person connection. To accomplish that, traveling will continue to be something we value and spend money on. We are doing a family trip to Tahoe for the Slow FI Retreat in May, and I'll be going to the New Hampshire retreat solo in October. Our summer trip will be to Atlantic Canada. I would also like to make it a priority to attend the Pluralsight Author Summit 2026 since I had to miss the 2025 summit.
Since we now have had the podcast for over a year, Erik and I will be submitting sessions to NDC and I hope those work out which will be yet more travel.
For local community, I might start attending the local Stacking Benjamins meetup and go to some Minneapolis Tech co-working events. Attending local conferences like Minnebar and Open Source North will also be on the agenda.
As our kids grow older, we're also spending more time with other parents in our neighborhood, doing Girl Scouts, and other activities.
Reflections and What's Next
Even though consulting didn't work out, it just goes to show that there are still plenty of options for flexible work. At a macro level, things aren't great in the world right now, but at a micro level, we're able to live our lives and enjoy the time we have.
One of the things that drew me into the Slow FI movement is that you can design a life you don't want to retire from. Attending the retreats is a way for me to be around and get inspired by like-minded people who are taking action to design a life they love. It is a much better use of my time than social media because most of these folks aren't on there – they are busy doing interesting things.
I would say at this point, I am very close to living the ideal life I had in mind when I started coaching some years ago. My hope is that for 2026, I'll be able to swing a full summer off where I won't even need to have any work contracted so I can focus on traveling, hanging out with the kids, and building my studio. Having a beautiful space to work will go a long way towards making our home a "destination of choice" and in a few years when the house is paid off, we might be able to look at some larger renovations to further improve our living situation.
I apologize I've been radio silent here. A secondary goal for 2026 is to write and publish more – but I've been paralyzed by having multiple blogs taking up space in my head (and bank account). I'd like to consolidate all of them into just this single place but I haven't found the time to do that yet. You can however follow me on BlueSky and LinkedIn where I post a little more regularly.
That's it for this year, stay safe and healthy, I'll see you soon! 👋
