025 — Welcome to 2025

Hey. How's it going? I'm Ryan Hefner, and this is the All Play podcast. Well, welcome to 2025. I'm I guess it's I kinda feel like I have mixed feelings going into 2025.

I'm, like, super excited about the year ahead. I don't know. I guess I'm also like a little nervous, but not really nervous so much is maybe it's just more of like, kind of like conflicted excitement, you know? Over the holidays, I was doing a lot of reflecting on the year past and then trying to do obviously some projecting on the year forward, you know, getting into my whole, like, reflect, project, connect and correct. And so, you know, just a lot of ideas and, mixed emotions about different things.

Just trying to, you know, just figure it out and really try to start 2025 on the right foot. And actually, with that said, I feel 1 of the steps I did do over the holidays and actually pretty much have wrapped up right now is that I did end up finally, basically on dissolving my LLC that I had had for I think, like four fourteen years, which is kinda crazy. So my previous LLC was called Rock Kick Co, and that had, the whole name kind of spawned from this, logo that I made from this photo, that I had, I guess back in the day, me and my friends used to try to rock kick a lot of different things. I think the photo was either, I think it might have been either us trying to rock kick like a ceiling fan or, like, the top of a door jam or something. So, you know, that LLC served me well when I was in New York, you know, for for the time that I was, you know, actually it's not like I had it the whole time I was in New York, but, over the last fourteen years, that's the LLC I've been basically contracting through and, also trying to spin up various products and had connected to Stripe and all this other stuff.

You know, once I left New York, I really wasn't sure what the standing was is like, did I have to file as like a foreign LLC now? I'm actually still kind of unclear on that. So I'm reaching out to an accountant and hopefully they'll, take me on and help me kind of like settle out, settle up all the, the closing down, the official closing down of that LLC. But I do have a new, Georgia LLC. I think I had made reference to this in the past where, you know, I looked at first base and they were actually recommending going with like a Wyoming LLC.

I think there might be, some minor, optimizations as far as like taxation and different things like that. But looking into it, it did real, you did have the file as like basically like a foreign LLC. And that also meant that you had to do, submit both, you know, Wyoming tax stuff, as well as all the stuff I'm going to have to do here in Georgia as well. So I just decided, you know what, if I get to the point where, the amount that I'm making would be significantly, retained, if I was going to go with a Wyoming LLC, then, then I can always, restructure and move the LLC if I have to. So it's feeling good.

I have the Georgia LLC set up. I have an EIN number. I will set up the mercury bank account. I even have the Stripe set up. I literally just got the, ended up going with another Amex business, card for, for 1, just to try to get the points and the travel stuff.

And, Yeah. So that's, that's what I have that, you know, I have that done, which is feeling really good starting the new year, you know, it's Jan. 9 and, I already feel like I'm ready to, you know, get all my clients invoices and the ACH payments going into, that new account and kind of be done with the old LLC and any of the kind of gray zones that I felt, around that, which also is kind of holding me up a little bit. I didn't really want to like, I do have some updates for starter packs that is going out soon. I didn't want anything from that to kind of like muddy the waters in that old LLC, as far as making it more difficult to, transition.

So I don't know. It feels good. I also took the opportunity to rebrand. So Rock Kick Co. like I said, it's kind of like a jokey name that I was just using, as like a, you know, as like a pass through kind of entity thing for the different things I was working on. But I felt like, you know, it's, it's 2025.

I want to, you know, have a little something new. So I actually started just thinking about some of the different things I've been, that have been on my mind and you know, this whole idea of like community and co ops cooperatives and different things like that. I've been thinking about, and also kind of want to lean into a little bit more, and some future stuff. So the new, LLC that I'm starting or that is started that I'm going to be working under is actually called Commune. So Commune Software, LLC.

I did throw it together, a little holding page and I'm exploring some of the early branding stuff. You can see that at commune.software. That's the website commune.software. And, I don't know. I'm feeling like excited about having that and having something new and seeing where that goes.

You know, like I said, I've, obviously doing some reflection, doing some projection, trying to figure out what 2025 holds and also doing some connecting. And, that's really cool. So I actually tried to record this episode yesterday. Wasn't so stoked on the amount of arms and stuff that I had going on and just felt like it was a little scattered. So, in this rare occurrence, I'm actually rerecording an episode, which I typically don't do, but felt like it was justified.

So the, And I'm dropping more arms, but I'm gonna try to try to hold those down. Today I am doing a live stream doing another jam sessions live with Mubs. So, Mubashar Iqbal, typically referred to as Mubs. I hope I didn't, like, say his name too too wrong. He and I are gonna be jamming talking about side projects.

He's a prolific indie maker, kinda indie hacker guy. I'm pretty sure 1 I well, I know he he, he's launched so many different products and had them on product hunt that he has, like, a golden kitty award from from product product hunt. And so we're gonna be talking about side projects. He's in a similar kind of position as I am where he's doing some client consulting and contracting with, some different people and is also jamming outside projects on the side. He has so many that I don't know how many we're gonna be able to get through today, but it should be kind of interesting.

And obviously both he and I are interested and on blue sky. And so he has the blue sky directory. Obviously I've been working on starter packs. We have a little bit of crossover there as far as, what's going on, but I think he has a bigger vision as far as being more of an aggregator and, doing stuff on that front. And I'm trying to really make starter packs a little bit more of a tool and actually maybe not even have it be strictly limited to just blue sky in general, but we'll see, more on that in future episodes.

But like I said, we are gonna be live streaming today. And so that's why I kind of wanted to get this episode out. Also, it's just been a couple of weeks. It was crazy over the holidays. My kids were home.

When my kids are home, I never really get a good chance to really break away. And even when I do, they're pretty hyper kids. We actually got them a couple trampolines for, for Christmas. So that way they could stop jumping on the couch. And so they're on those trampolines quite a bit.

And they they're not, they're actually springless trampolines, which is cool. And so they're a little bit quieter, but you know, when kids are hopping, they're hopping and, that makes noise and I'm down here recording. So, So, yeah, not, not good, not too much time to really break away, but it was a great holiday. And, at the same time, really looking forward to, to getting back and, and getting into both the client work and, you know, working on the personal stuff. So with that, tune in, going live at 4PM Eastern, Eastern time here and going to be streaming out on YouTube and Twitch and Twitter, I guess still, I don't know.

I mean, eventually I might end up just dropping my Twitter account because it's really, it's really, it's really getting weird over there. So, yeah. So hopefully you'll join us. We'll definitely plan on taking some questions if we have time, towards the end of the stream. So hop in, ride along, drop a few questions or just some hell yeahs or whatever you want to do while we're talking about some stuff.

And it should be fun. So with that, I'm going to drop it here. I'm actually pretty close to I'm only a few seconds over ten and ten minutes right now. So going to close it up, join, follow along. I'm excited for 2025.

Also, if you see this on YouTube, which is going to be, I'm actually going to start recording these as videos. And that's also, I think the reason why I had a lot of arms yesterday. So I'm trying to get used to actually looking at the camera and recording these things. So we'll see how it goes. And that I'm going to try that for, I guess, all the episodes for 2025 and moving forward, but we'll see how it goes.

Definitely just wanna make these fun and quick and easy to put out. So with that, I'm gonna drop it here. You'll listen to all play, check it out at allplay.fm. I'm gonna figure out how to get the end of the videos onto the site. Probably also gonna just do some general, grooming of some of the, some of my personal stuff, my, my my personal site, which is that obviously at ryanhefner.com.

You can check out allplay.fm, jamsessions.fm , which is gonna be for the, the stream today, but actually check your socials, cause that's actually where you get the link. I'll figure out how to get some live stuff integrated into some sort of jamsessions.fm thing. But, yeah. All right. I'm definitely over now.

My rambling went over it. So, have a great one and I'll talk to you later.