I’m sure walking by those giant orange letters DEEP on the wall in our office influenced this word to become my 2025 theme, but how I landed there made me realize it was much more than just a visual cue. 

First, let’s start with how I was able to repurpose these giant orange letters 3 times.  The building we are in was named “Deep Work Space” after the book Deep Work by Cal Newport.  When I bought this building in 2021, with only one employee who worked in person, I wanted the building to mean something more profound to me.  I guess you could say, DEEPER:)

 The book Deep Work is all about focus and removing distractions, which we all struggle with.  I wanted this office to be my haven, my place to go to WORK!  And yes, I bought a 9,000-square-foot building with 50 desks and only had Doug from my team, who came to the office daily.  So, you might say I’m a little hardcore with some ideas.  But I am happy to report that just 4 years later, there are typically 30 of us in the office every day, so it worked!

Back to those giant orange letters.  When I bought the building, I created a podcast studio called “Deep Work Studios,” we used that for a few hundred podcasts over the first few years, but eventually, we got rid of that studio as we grew and needed the space for an office.  Now, one might think I would rip the graphics off the wall and throw them away.  NOPE, not this cheapo 🙂 

When I realized the stickers came off the wall without ripping and could be used, I was stoked. I took the “Studios” word and moved it downstairs to our editing room and new studio.  And then I took the word “Deep” and put it on the wall outside where the studio once was, which is smack in the middle of our office.  

Enough about the stickers. We’ll come back to that.  Now, onto the word DEEP!

In early November, I started to think about our company’s future and what needed to happen in 2025 to avoid the headaches of the past.  What might typically be a few weeks of planning turned into 8+ weeks.  Towards the end of the year, a friend of mine, Cris, asked what my one word was for 2025.  I didn’t have one, and I’d never picked a word for the year before.  After a few weeks, two words kept coming back to me.

DEEP & YOU.

No matter what I talked about, it always came back to “going deep.” 

Deeper with what we already know.  Deeper with our current team.  Deeper with our current services.  I was TIRED of new shit, I just wanted to dominate what we know we can, and that required me to focus. 

To go DEEPER!

And that brings me to the second word.  Everything I wrote down always circled back to me.  If I didn’t control where we were going, we’d never go DEEP.  So I was in a pickle. Is the word “DEEP” or “YOU?”

Then it hit me: the word is DEEP, but I must look in the mirror daily and commit to staying the course.  Then I thought about the only time I used a mirror in the bathroom and thought that wouldn’t cut it.  So I thought, that’s it, Matt. I’ll buy a giant mirror and put it smack in front of my desk, but I’ll be forced to look in the mirror more often.  So, off to Home Goods, I went to buy the mirror and scoured the aisles for a sign that said deep or letters that I could buy to hang above the mirror.  

And then it hit me, “Matt, the word DEEP is already in the office.  Use the giant podcast letters.”

The final puzzle piece was complete with my America’s Best Restaurants whiskey barrel sign that Logan from my team got me.  That will soon be hung above the mirror as a reminder of what we need to go deeper into.

America’s Best Restaurants

– ABR Roadshow

– ABR University

– DRYVER Acquisition

– DRYVER Loyalty

We have the four paths forward. We know how to do all four and what to improve.  So no more new shit MP; go DEEP with the cards we already have in our hands. 

And just like that, my vision for 2025 was born in the picture above. Sometimes, the answer and the solution are right in front of us., literally.

Matt

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