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You started your business for freedom, not to be chained to your desk. I help small business owners grow without burning out through simple, powerful online automations.
On Streamlined Solopreneur you'll get real-world strategies, smarter workflows, and practical tools to help you reclaim your time and actually enjoy the freedom you set out to create.
Your host, Joe Casabona, is a seasoned technologist with over 25 years of experience. He's seen how the right systems can transform a business. But more than that, He's a teacher at heart.
His goal isn’t to overwhelm you with jargon, but to make complex ideas simple and give you an actionable plan you can actually use.
Because your business should support your life—not take it over.
Tune in every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts.
Joe Casabona (00:00)
Hey everybody and welcome to this bonus episode of Streamline Solopreneur. One of my favorite articles to write every year is my favorites of the year. It's actually the 18th installment for the year 2025. I thought I was way behind that, but I just counted and it's true. I wrote the first one in 2008 and so counting 2008, this is the 18th installment. Now,
Because I've been doing this for such a long time, last year I added a review of a decade ago. So I look at my favorites of 2015 or my favorites of 10 years prior and look at how they've shaped the last decade of my life before moving into my favorites. And that's what I am going to do today. I will have a link in the show notes to this article and all the things that I mentioned.
but let's actually get into the favorites of 2025, starting with my favorites of 2015, a review. So 2025, aside from me turning 30, is sandwiched between two pretty big years for me. 2014 is when I got engaged and started my last ever full-time job. Well, I can't say ever, but it was my last full-time job.
And it will likely be my last ever web development job. I have been out of web development so long now and with the changes in AI and stuff like that, I suspect that I am no longer someone with marketable skills in that field. So that was 2014. 2016 is when I got married, when my wife got pregnant with our first kid, and when I started how I built it.
which would become this podcast. So personally 2015 was actually pretty low key. It was a lull into pretty big years. But professionally or maybe like on the tech side it was big for another reason. That is the year that I switched to the iPhone and I haven't looked back. I have been an iPhone user for now 10 plus years. Though I did try a foldable Android phone this year.
I ended up returning it after the 30 day window ⁓ because I just didn't... I wasn't using it. It is an interesting form factor. It's probably like a voice note or an audio note coming on that.
Surprisingly though, 2015 is the only time I've picked the iPhone as my favorite gadget of the year, even though favorite gadget of the year is something I've done in every single one of these. Like that was like my first few favorites were basically only tech. And it's evolved over time. But the iPhone has only been my favorite gadget of the year once and that was in 2015. And even though it's gotten
Much much better over those last 10 years I usually go for impact of gadget, which you'll see ⁓ later over The best or most used right because if I went with the most used it would always be my iphone My favorite app or more accurately my favorite software of that year was handoff That's the technology that allows you to seamlessly switch between apple devices. It's a big reason I switched
to the iPhone, something that I loved was that I could text from my computer without needing some third party app. I could also copy from my iPhone and paste on my computer, which I thought was amazing. So that was big technology. It's gotten better. That has also gotten better over the last few years. ⁓ So much better, in fact, that it's basically commonplace. When it first launched, I was wowed when it worked.
Now I expect it to work and I'm annoyed when it doesn't. So that's how much better it's gotten. For media, my favorite podcast was Criminal, a true crime podcast. And that I can't remember the last true crime podcast I listened to. I think it was called Suspect maybe. And it was by Wondery and it was super interesting. And I just really haven't listened.
true crime podcast since I now opt for history, politics, and tech. And it's mostly history and politics at this point. ⁓ Podcasts is how I get my news. Essentially because you can't do a hot take on a podcast. Like you have to be very intentional about recording that podcast. And so even if you record right when news breaks, you still have to think about
what you're saying and recording and editing it. That's why I like podcasts. can't just like fire off a podcast with your hot take about the latest headline. Anyway. As far as movies, a Star Wars movie came out that year. The Force Awakens. it was the first time in 20 years that a Star Wars movie had come out. And so that was the obvious pick for me. I love Star Wars.
Okay. Let's get to my favorites of 2025, starting with the book. I picked Fahrenheit 182 by Mark Hoppus. Blink 182 has been my favorite band since 1998, and getting a firsthand look from their Only Forever member is pretty incredible. For those who don't know, Travis Barker was the second drummer after
the previous drummer whose name is Scott, ⁓ who he left the band after mental health and alcohol struggles and Travis joined. then, you know, Mark continued even after Tom left before he came back. Mark is the only one of the three who's been in the band for the entire life of Blink-182.
I enjoyed learning about what we didn't get to see on stage or in albums. also, ⁓ this is a little jokingly, but I liked learning that he's the reason we caught Saddam Hussein. ⁓ If you're wondering what I could possibly mean by that, I would strongly recommend you pick up the book. It's a really easy read. ⁓ What struck me the most about this book was how weird it was reading in a memoir about things I lived through and remember vividly. The only...
I've only really read biographies of people who either lived before me or lived most of their lives before I had actual memories. This one is different. He would talk about something and I could fully picture where I was at that moment being a teenager or someone in my early 20s for a lot of it. Just like he would say...
something and it was like the camera in a movie flipped around and I would see it from his perspective after living through it in my perspective. Really weird. But I loved this book. If you're into Templinquin 82 or music, you're just like Mark is a super interesting guy. know, I don't... The persona that he has on stage I think is different from how he is as a person.
in his everyday life and it was really interesting to see that. Now runner-up ⁓ without I didn't do runner-up for every category but without Fahrenheit 182 the anxious generation would have run ⁓ would have won by a landslide. It's had a profound effect on my views of social media and my approach to tech with my kids.
I wrote about it in my newsletter to the school as president. You know, I'm like the president of the PTO essentially. And I just, I think it's a must read for all parents. I think that the changes that Jonathan Haidt, the author, talks about are so important on a community level. And it just, had a profound effect on me. Honorable mention. I did do honorable mention for every category here.
⁓ Never Where by Neil Gaiman I thoroughly enjoyed. It was like the only fiction book I read this year, I think. Tiny Experiments by An-lor Le-cun? Le-chum? Le-cun? Sorry, An-lor, I know I've mispronounced your name multiple times now. ⁓ And Listening to the Law by Amy Coney Barrett. ⁓ I really enjoyed the historical view of how the Supreme Court works, as well as her view on originalism and things like that. Okay.
TV show Alex versus A-Rod on HBO and HBO Max. I finally, speaking of Star Wars, ⁓ I finally got around to watching Indoor this year and I still need to finish it. That was the clear winner for most of the year. Then Alex versus A-Rod came out. If you don't know, it's about Alex Rodriguez, ⁓ one of the, you know, at the time the highest paid baseball player.
Ever. This is the early 2000s. He was a young phenom. Incredible. Played for the Seattle Mariners, the Texas Rangers, and the New York Yankees. And he's a bit of a lightning rod. No pun intended. I've always felt that Alex Rodriguez, for all of his demons, got a raw deal in baseball. Like, yes, he ⁓ admitted to using performance enhancing drugs at a time where everybody was using performance enhancing drugs and very few, like,
I'm not excusing this, but like he actually admitted it and like owned up to it. Whereas like Roger Clemens and David Ortiz and like Barry Bonds never owned up to it. And like Alex is now like really he's I mean he's over it, but he got punished for it. ⁓ Anyway, I feel like he got a raw deal in baseball. Like he was four home runs away from 700.
And the documentary does show that he had offers from other teams in order to get those last four home runs. Because his career ended a little prematurely with the Yankees. He wasn't performing. But they basically told him they weren't going to play him anymore in 2016. Four home runs away from 700. And he thought it was more important for him to end his career with the Yankees than...
Hit 700 with another team, which is like, I mean, there's like a lot of integrity there. ⁓ this documentary drove home the point that I feel like he got a raw deal for me. It's easy to demonize someone who's making a ton of money to play a game. But he is human and he has his insecurities and his struggles and something that was revealed about his, his second,
His second performance enhancing drug scandal is that he wasn't doing it to play baseball better like he was doing it because he was waking up in pain and He just wanted that to stop and as somebody who turned 40 this year Who often wakes up in pain from just like sleeping like I I could see It's it's really easy for me to put myself in his situation and be like, yeah, just make it stop ⁓
So, I I thought it was an incredible documentary. I like Alex Rodriguez. I think the people who hate Alex Rodriguez are going to find a lot more ways to hate him. But it was was eye opening and it pulled the curtain back, much like the Mark Hoppus book on things that we didn't get to see. Continuing the trend from my favorite book of the year. It's also a documentary that happened like about something that happened in my lifetime. And so, again, he would say stuff or they would show stuff and I would remember exactly where I was and how I was feeling.
Is this what happens when you turn 40? Like 40 is the age now where like enough has happened in your lifetime that they're doing documentaries on that stuff. It's a very weird feeling. As far as honorable mention goes, ⁓ Andor on Disney Plus and SNL 50, another documentary on Peacock. I thought about making a category called documentary because this is like two of three. I'm currently watching the Ken Burns American Revolution documentary.
But like again, maybe something just happens when you turn 40. But I'm not watching enough other TV, so I'm going to include documentaries and television until there's some weird conflict. OK, podcast. The rest is history. I, along with many, many other people, have discovered the rest is history and it's a masterpiece. Incredible storytelling, deeply researched historical events. And such a natural approach to conversation that you can't really tell.
It's highly choreographed, which it is. It is not necessarily scripted, but it is choreographed and edited. And you can't really tell. It just sounds like a natural conversation. I love the way that they approach series and how they make it timeless. My wife and I listened to the Gettysburg series during our trip to Gettysburg in February. That was an absolute blast. It was cool hearing them talk about something and then seeing it in real life.
If you're at all into history or if you're just looking for like a deeper perspective on current events, which I think history provides a very good lens for, I highly recommend this show. I would start if you're in the United States with their series on 1968. It shows like you really get a look at how crazy that year was. And I think that's that is important because I think it feels like we're living in a world that's constantly
unprecedented and crazier than we've ever seen and I at least find comfort in the fact that this is in our relatively short history, right? We're like 10 times younger than ⁓ Rome or Great Britain, right? ⁓ We have experienced a lot as a country. So I love this. I love this podcast. I strongly recommend
Honorable mention, ⁓ Central Air by Josh Barrow, Megan McCardell, and Ben Dreyfus. It's about three political centrists talking about the news of the day. It's really refreshing to hear a more central view. I would consider myself a centrist, but the big, big podcasts are all very polarized in one direction or the other. So I really love Central Air. And How We Made Your Mother by Josh Radner and Craig Thomas. Again, another retrospective on something that happened for a lot of my life.
It's a rewatch podcast on how I met your mother. Music. Sad. By May Day Parade. I switched to Spotify at some point this year, so my rap is not complete. But it is accurate enough to show my favorite album of the year is Sad by May Day Parade. It came out the same day as Life As A Showgirl by Taylor Swift, but I gravitated to Sad more. I definitely listened to Sad a lot more.
I really like sad music. Like I have like a playlist called Songs That Make Me Cry that I listen to regularly. So I really like sad music. I don't know what it is. There are a handful of songs I really love on it. Like it's not all bad and I miss the 90s. It is I think a perfect pop punk album for the elder millennial. So I know this is not going to be for everybody but I really like this album. Honorable mention.
I didn't add Taylor Swift here because I know she doesn't need honorable mention from me. K-Pop Demon Hunters was another album that was on repeat in my house for a long time. And The Father of Make-Believe by Kohit and Cambria. I don't like it as much as Vaxus 2, but it is a really good album with like a few real good earworms on it. Movie Wicked for Good.
I'm going to be honest here, K-Pop Demon Hunters very nearly got this. It was such a fun movie and like I just said, I've had the soundtrack stuck in my head for half the year. But I also forgot that I didn't give Wicked the nod last year because Deadpool and Wolverine also came out. 2024 feels like it was like hundred years ago.
Altogether and so like I did see Wicked for Good like a week or so before this came out or before I wrote this at least. ⁓ So altogether Wicked parts one and two clock in at nearly five hours of movie and they are nearly five hours well spent. So they are fun, engaging, and in my opinion the stuff that they add to pad the runtime doesn't feel superfluous. I think I can't say for sure but I think they pull from other canon from the author.
So like seeing how the yellow brick road got built and stuff like that was really interesting. I thought it was very good. Honorable mention goes to the aforementioned K-Pop Demon Hunters. Now for counting movies I wanted to see but didn't. Sinners, The Naked Gun, and Zootopia 2 would be on there. Perhaps I should watch The Naked Gun. ⁓ Really good. I love the Lonely Island Seth Meyers podcast. That was my favorite podcast last year and I've heard really good things about this movie.
Alright, video game. Hogwarts Legacy. I didn't play that many traditional video games this year, but this one was deeply discounted over the summer. It's a fun open world exploration game. I could pick it up and play it whenever I wanted for however long I could. I still haven't beaten it. ⁓ But that's okay. I don't beat a lot of games. They're just ways to kill time. For me? ⁓ Not a lot in honorable mention. Unless you count Flashback from the New York Times. I love that game.
If I don't get a perfect score, I'm very mad at myself. ⁓ It's basically a time on game. They give you one event and then for subsequent events you need to put them in chronological order. So the first couple will be pretty easy, but then it gets harder as like you're maybe dealing with just a couple of decades or maybe even like a few years. So really fun game. Really tests my history. Okay, getting into the tech. Gadget.
the Stellow Over-the-Counter Continuous Glucose Monitor or CGM. This year, well, since being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2021, I've been up and down with my consistency for managing the disease. After seeing a worrying upward trend in my A1C, which if you don't know, that's basically the three month average of your blood sugar. I'll get to a numbers breakdown in a minute, but like you want it to be within a certain range.
⁓ so after seeing a worrying upward trend in my A1C, my doctor and I discussed options. I expressed a desire to not go on more medication. I don't want, I don't want to be on any medication in a perfect world. I'm not on any medication. like someone over the summer tried to give me a hard sell on going on a GLP one. And I'm like, don't I'm like, you don't know me. I don't want to go on a GLP one. I don't want to have this reliance on a drug to lose weight or manage a disease if I can do it.
myself and so he recommended I try a CGM and It worked like gangbusters seeing how food affects me helps me manage it better. It keeps me accountable Knowing where my my blood sugar currently is helps me make better decisions It also incentivizes me like if I want to have a treat at the end of the day I know what my blood sugar needs to be, you know, like below a hundred or around 95 or something like that
and having the CGM really helps with that. So here's a breakdown of the numbers. A good A1C for a non-diabetic is between 5.2 and 5.6 or 5.7. Between 5.7 and 6.4 is pre-diabetic. 6.5 and higher is diabetic. At diagnosis in May 2021, my A1C was 11.7. This is very bad though.
Some storytoppers have informed me that they've had A1Cs at like 13 or 17. ⁓ I would not- I don't brag about that. I'm just giving you the number so that you have a baseline for where I was. I managed to get it back down to 5.4 using only dietary changes and metformin. Metformin is a common medication which appears to be the first line of defense for diabetes. And actually, my doctor cut my dosage in half.
after my A1C dropped to 5.4. So less medication, hooray. However, by May 2025, I was back up to 9. 9 is also bad. It's not 11.7 bad, but it's not good. ⁓ Since getting the CGM, I've come back down to 5.7. No increase or additional medication needed. ⁓ My doctor at this, at my last appointment,
said that he was hoping I would be around eight. So like a precipitous fall over three to five months from nine to five point seven is apparently a big deal. And I'm saying that because it's not an exaggeration to say that this is a life-changing device for me. Which is why it very easily got Gadget of the Year.
As far as honorable mention goes, I got a lot of gear this year. There's my Apple Watch Ultra 3, the OBSBOT Tale 2, and the Terminal. I should probably just do a separate episode on just my favorite tech. All right, let's do a speed run through the software before getting to enrichment. ⁓ So app, Tela.tv. Not even close. Tela has transformed my workflow for any more than any other tool this year. I describe it as if Loom was built in 2024.
It makes recording and editing, talking head videos and screencast so easy. Using Tela has definitely increased my revenue this year. I have closed more clients and sponsors because of Tela. I have released more and better video content because of Tela. It coupled with Ecamm Live has improved my production quality simultaneously while making videos 10 times easier to produce.
I've also added two new categories this year. ⁓ One I'm calling the re-return, which is software I switched away from and then back to. And then the switch. I'll just say the switch this year is Google Drive. I did an episode on this back in July or August ⁓ about how I switched from Dropbox to Google Drive, so I'm not going to re-litigate that. I am very happy with the switch six months in. As far as the re-return goes, ⁓
I have returned to Spotify and there's not a lot to say here. Spotify is better than Apple Music in nearly every conceivable way. Especially now that they offer lossless music. So I do have an honorable mention. It's basically a runner up here actually and it's BareNotes. There was not much to say about Spotify so I wanted to mention BareNotes. Last year I really made a decision to use more of Apple's native apps and I like using Apple Notes. I used it for a solid year.
It's a great note-taking app and I use it to share notes with my wife and my family members. ⁓ But I missed Markdown support too much. So, Bare Notes, lots of Markdown support, customization, it's beautiful. I'm happy using it for all of my personal notes and then using Apple Notes to share with my family. Okay, let's end with Enrichment.
This is a really good one because I have a long form. It's the first long form article coming on paper and smoke paper and smoke dot com. That's my new publication I'm launching in twenty twenty six. ⁓ So enrichment is leaving social media. ⁓ Usually enrichment is either hard to pin down or focused each year because it is ⁓ more nebulous than my other categories. It's like what do I feel helped me grow the most ⁓ this year? It was a pretty easy call when I thought about it.
I almost went with Listening to the Law by Amy Coney Barrett, because as I said before I really enjoyed the understanding and the walkthrough and the history and originalism. ⁓ But the truth is I made a monumental shift in how I interact online this year. About a year ago I left Twitter slash X for good, then TikTok, threads, Instagram, and Facebook followed. The only social media accounts I still have are on LinkedIn. Mastodon, which is basically an automated account,
and Blue Sky, which I barely count because it's not algorithmically driven. This started when I deleted all social apps from my phone and I realized I don't want to use social media apps anymore. They were a time suck. ⁓ The positive impact was immediate. Also, I should say that even though I'm still on LinkedIn, Mastodon, and Blue Sky, again, I can't really say I'm on Mastodon. I have a Mastodon account that auto posts new articles and episodes.
But for LinkedIn and Blue Sky, I don't have those apps on my phone either. So the positive impact was immediate. I'm no longer endlessly scrolling on my phone. I'm not getting annoyed at dumb posts and I'm not engaging in stupid arguments that don't matter. Beyond that, one of the biggest myths I told myself about leaving social media proved wildly false. That I needed social media for my business. In fact,
2025 was my best fiscal year ever. I was able to invest time that I was wasting on social media into my YouTube channel and to this podcast. Clients found me via recommendation search and large language models. So I am really looking forward to even bigger gains without any social media in 2026.
Again, I'm going to talk about this at length over on Paper and Smoke. It's a substack publication. I strongly recommend you subscribe. It's very different from this podcast and the stuff I normally talk about. But that's a wrap for my favorites of the year. Doing a quick rundown. ⁓ My favorite book was Fahrenheit 182 by Mark Hoppus. TV show was Alex versus A-Rod. Podcast was The Rest is History. Music, sad.
by Mayday Parade, Movie, Wicked for Good, Video Game, Hogwarts Legacy, Gadget, My Continuous Glucose Monitor, App, Tela.TV, The Rereturn, Spotify, The Switch, Google Drive, and Enrichment, leaving social media. I always end these articles in this episode by saying what I hope to do for the next year. Last year I was watching more TV shows, which I guess I technically did, and see more movies and theaters, which I decidedly did not do.
In 2026, I hope to do these things. Read more books about real world stuff and continue to stay off social media. The latter will require me to figure out other ways to get discovered. I'm finding to be I'm finding YouTube to be a good bet there. And like I mentioned, I'm starting paper and smoke on Substack. What were your favorites of 2025? Let me know. Head over to streamlinedfeedback.com to leave a voice note or to write in using the form.
You don't need to do both, you can just do one. And thanks so much for listening. Until next year, I hope you find some space in your week.