2025: The End of an Era (and the Beginning of Another)

Something has broken in the digital world this year we’ve left behind:

• Arturo García (Cerdo Estratega) swaps marketing for carpentry.
• Isra Bravo announces he is leaving copywriting to write books.
• Fran, from EmprendeMelón, retires.
• Genbeta shuts down for good.
• JotDown and AcademiaPlay are thinking it over.

And on top of that, Robe Iniesta, the best poet in Spanish rock, is off to a better life.

Hell of a year.

In my case, as usual, it has also been a year of drastic changes. In my life and in my business, which until now had been more or less the same thing.

As every year, I’m writing you a post with everything that has happened and the reasons behind each decision, in case you find yourself in a similar situation and want first-hand information before taking a wrong step.

That is why, and also for myself, to put my ideas in order and remember why I did each thing, here is my summary of 2025 and what is coming in 2026.

Which is no small thing.

The 2025 summary

This year has been one of change. Of transition. And, like every important change at this stage of life, it costs.

That is why it has not been an easy exercise, but at the same time it has been very beautiful.

I’m going to explain the reasons through each of the parts involved:

• The personal one.
• The work one.
• My investments, which carry considerable weight in the decisions I have made.

I’m going to try to summarize, as concisely as possible, what each area has brought

#1. Personally

Working an average of 60 hours a week in 2024 had a purpose:

To build up the financial cushion as much as possible, so I could have a child in 2025 with as much peace of mind as possible.

And, after a risky, long and tortuous pregnancy, Enrique was born in June.

With him, all the preconceived ideas I had about fatherhood went out the window. In my case it became clear that I was waiting to see what happened and that I had absolutely no idea what it entails.

Even so, from the very first moment, I am very, very happy with the little guy, who has become the center of our lives.

As it should be.

If you are a father, you already know what that means.

And if you are not, keep this idea: everything changes more than you think. And every day is a new adventure, with extremely fun parts and others that are absolutely no fun at all.

Yes, I think that is a good summary of what being a father for the first time is.

On the other hand, within the personal part, we had also planned a change of home, but the high-risk pregnancy —Sofi had to stay in bed from week 20— and some other reason I’ll tell you about later have made us postpone this by at least a year and a half.

At least. It may even move further away in time.

#2. Work-wise

If there has been a very significant change in the personal part, the professional side is not far behind. And on top of that, this part has several fronts:

1. My company.
2. My consulting business.
3. The training and mentoring side.
4. My personal projects.

Well, all of them, absolutely all of them, have already been substantially changed or will be very soon.

My company

As I already told you at the time, I sold my shares in the holding company to my partners in April, although in reality I had already been completely disconnected from day-to-day operations since January.

That means I left aside the project in which I had been involved for 12 years (8 full-time).

Overnight, my day-to-day changed radically: I no longer had to open the PC and see how sales, traffic channels and payments had gone the previous day.

Now something else was up.

And that first day gave me a certain vertigo, although since I had other things going on, it quickly passed.

Also, in the sale conditions, we agreed on one year of collaboration from me, in the form of business consulting, focused more on the operational side and offline companies than on the online part, which was what I had handled until then.

In April 2026 this consulting period ends, although given the good results we are getting, maybe we will open the door to another kind of collaboration, probably with other kinds of projects not linked to the digital sector.

We’ll see.

What I can tell you is that I am very happy both with how the exit transition has gone and with this year of collaboration with the offline channel partners, with whom I collaborated less from the inside. Which is still curious.

My work as a consultant

Once I left the company’s day-to-day, that vertigo I mentioned quickly evaporated because from February I intensified my work with one of my clients, Disruptivos, dedicating 20 hours a week to helping them with the transformation of the agency into a consulting firm.

As I expected, since we had already collaborated on several projects in the past and I knew the company’s management layer, the work itself has been very good at every level.

That is why, although we had a closed agreement until the end of this year, we are going to extend it a few more months.

With some changes, of course.

As for the rest of the clients, I have been closing collaborations with most of them. And as I already said in my newsletter (subscribe for free here), I have not looked for new ones, quite the opposite.

The reason is simply that I was clear that being a father takes hours. And I prefer to steal them from work rather than from daily training or sleep.

So, with a view to stopping offering services, I decided not to take on new business consulting clients.

A bit of a shame, in a way, because I have had to turn down some powerful project I would have liked to carry out, but when there is no room for everything, let people get off before getting on.

My teaching work

In the face-to-face training part, although what I wanted was to reduce my participation in ESESA’s Marketing Master’s —the school I have been collaborating with since they launched this Master— that has not been possible.

In fact, not only has it not been reduced, it has increased: for the first time I am taking charge of supervising the TFMs (Master’s Final Projects) for the students, in addition to teaching my two usual subjects.

This really is going out in style, because what I made clear before accepting is that this is my last year as a teacher. At least with this level of dedication.

That said, giving a masterclass on ecommerce or AI is something I do not rule out. But that: much lighter topics that require little or no dedication from me.

And that is all for the face-to-face training part.

On the online side, I had in mind to have launched two new courses, which has been practically impossible to do.

Even though I already had them planned, absolutely nothing happens if I do not build them. Once again, I preferred to prioritize other things over this one. All good.

By the way, I can already tell you that significant changes are coming in 2026 regarding my online training.

Personal projects

As you may have noticed if you are subscribed to my newsletter or follow me on LinkedIn or on my YouTube channel , the pace of content publishing has dropped significantly after Enrique’s birth.

The reason is the one you can imagine, with a nuance:

If I am no longer looking for clients, but rather to stop providing services, publishing articles on the blog becomes a hobby and not a business.

And yes, years ago, when I did not have the consulting business but did have time, I dedicated it to the blog out of passion.

Now that I do not have it, the truth is that it has been hard for me to keep writing at least until the end of the year and not take an indefinite pause earlier, which I am going to take now.

At least as I have been doing it in recent years, because once again, looking ahead to 2026, there will be changes here. I’ll tell you about them below.

#3. My investments

Here, yes, (almost) everything has continued the same.

And, generally speaking, I cannot complain: the funds have given me a more than decent return (10%) and the stocks have gone wild. That is what happens when you have Nvidia and Palantir in the portfolio, with returns above 500% since I bought them some years ago now.

That said, in real estate, I still have my house occupied by a non-paying tenant.

At least they have already given me a trial date: April 2027.

Yes, 2027. When the contract expired in 2023.

4 years to be able to recover your house. And that is without even talking about the debts they are going to leave me and the condition in which I am going to recover the flat.

Anyway, this is the law that governs this country of ours, and it has had two consequences:

The first is that it has been another reason why we have not moved earlier. Until everything is fully resolved, better not to take steps in any direction.

And the second is that the money I had reserved in the account for buying the new house is not going to sit idle in the bank for 2 or 3 years; I am already investing it.

In any case, although this will increase the return obtained over the next few years in the investment part, it was not essential at all.

No, because my current returns together with the sale of the company have allowed me to achieve what I have been chasing for many years:

Achieving financial freedom.

Which in my case does not mean having a Lambo parked outside.

Nor dining every day at a Michelin-starred restaurant.

But it does mean being able to devote myself 100% to whatever I want every day from now on, which for a high percentage of the time will simply be being a father.

What I am going to do with the rest of the hours, I’ll tell you in the next point, but as I said, providing services is definitely over.

A stage is closing.

End of cycle.

Sayonara, baby.

In the end it will not be in 2025 as I had planned, but it will be in 2026. At 42, two years later than I set out to do at the time.

Despite the delay, not bad.

My plans for 2026

That said, am I going to lounge around and binge all the Netflix, HBO and Apple TV series I have pending?

No.

I have other plans that appeal to me more. They are the following.

#1. Personally

Very brief and very simple. My priority for this year is the one I mentioned: devoting more hours to the family.

And look, 2025 has undoubtedly been the year we have spent the most time together.

But I enjoy it a lot. I have a really good time with them, so it is time to expand those moments.

Of course, I will continue sleeping my 7–8 hours a day and training 50 minutes every day. This is something I imposed on myself several years ago and there is no going back.

• Family.
• Training.
• Rest.

That is my overall plan.

Simple, right?

It is.

And I like it that way.

#2. Professionally

I have already told you the most important thing, which is that I am definitely stopping providing services, but I’ll spell out how I am going to do it on each front:

At Disruptivos I am reducing my collaboration from the current 20 hours a week to just 10 hours. And that will be for the next 3 to 6 months. No more.

My focus will be twofold:

1. Leaving all consulting processes documented and properly built out for each type of business (what an ecommerce needs is not the same as what a lead-generation business needs, or a SaaS)
2. Automating as many parts as possible.

In this sense, N8N, Gemini and Notebook make up an absolutely brutal work stack for any consultant. They are like a dream come true.

If you are a digital business consultant, I imagine you are already using them.

If you are not, but you are considering it, start testing them right now.

Seriously, you will thank me.

At Yo pongo el hielo and ESESA I finish my collaboration in April and May respectively.

This closes a hugely important stage in my career: 13 and 7 years of dedication respectively, almost nothing…

Although, as I said before, we will see whether something new comes up with my former partners or not; in any case, it would be a new and different business.

For now, in this first half of the year, I consider my time in those two projects finished.

Lastly, this may interest you:

I am going to stop offering my online training.

Yes, I am going to stop selling my courses forever.

I do not have the date in mind yet because it will depend on certain factors that are not defined right now, but the decision is made.

I also have to publish the way I will close the sale.

I have it in my head, but I have not written it yet, so I will explain it to you when the time comes.

I can already tell you there will be some little surprise.

If you are wondering whether the reason is that they have become obsolete, the answer is no.

They are as relevant as ever. That is what happens when you focus on the fundamentals of a subject and not on fashionable gimmicks.

The reason is something else.

The one I’m about to tell you.

#3. Personal projects

I take it out of the work section because, in reality, it will no longer make sense to include it there.

In this case, this year I have two projects.

On the one hand, this website you are reading.

Yago Gonzalez – Digital Business (yagogonzalez.com)

Well, after thinking about it a lot, what I have decided is that my website, which until now had focused on Digital Business content, is broadening its scope and will focus on topics of Digital Culture.

Because the concept of Digital Culture encompasses everything related to digital business, but it covers much more. Such as entertainment, technology and other different content.

So, the website will change.

A lot or a little, I honestly do not know, because for now there is no date for the change, nor do I know what the scope will be (redesign? recategorization? just another kind of content?).

What does change is the objective: I no longer write for business, but for leisure. Because I like it and feel like doing it. Which makes it much more bearable.

When the time comes, in the second half of 2026, I will get down to work and land everything properly.

I will start creating the new content —I already have more than 30 noted down— and, once published, I will give the relevant explanations and reasons for the changes.

In a post like this one.

But for now, keep in mind that I am going to keep the domain (it has been the decision that took me the longest to make) and I am not going to use subdomains either.

Before that second half of the year, when I will begin the change, in these first months my focus will be on my other project.

Or rather, on my partner’s.

Pincelada de Historia

It is a very cool project that is about helping students and teachers enjoy a truly fascinating subject. At least when it is explained well.

It is a project that covers the website (pinceladadehistoria.com), ), social media and physical books. For now, because it looks like we will add some other asset.

The project has a solid base:

• Content.
• Followers.
• Possibilities.

But the business has to be completely redefined, since until now it only monetized through the royalties the publisher pays Sofía for sales of the books and through a few overly occasional collaborations with companies.

The idea is to turn the project into a source of recurring monthly income, which will not be anything crazy —especially in the first year— but will probably lead Sofía to stop teaching and focus exclusively on this.

That is what happens when you convinced her long ago of the advantages of investing instead of keeping money in the BBVA account at a fat zero percent return.

For now, I have already started with the basics of any digital project:

• Business plan.
• Objectives.
• The ownership of the project: accounts, passwords, hosting and domain migrations… The basic setup before starting with the strategic part.

The truth is I am eager to see whether I am capable of creating a business around something so far from my core as teaching History in secondary school.

And social media, which I hate —well, let’s say I don’t like it much.

But as I always say:

We came to play.

Next year around this time I will tell you how the game went for us.

#4. Investments

Lastly, there are the investments.

Until now, all the ones I have carried out have been fairly passive, but I am already starting to make others of a more active nature.

The ones that have worked for me will continue the same, but now I add a layer of action and dedication that is supposed to increase my return by a few points.

For now, the first experiments are going really well and that is why the same thing happens to me as with Pincelada de Historia: I am dying to really sink my teeth into it and devote more hours to it.

Everything will come in time; for now you already know my priorities are different 😉

Conclusions

2024 was the last year of the climb in everything. In my business and in my life.

2025 has been the turning point.

And 2026 is going to be the one that begins the downward slope.

If you have taken a bike for pleasure and ridden a few dozen kilometers on road or trail, unless you are a bit of a masochist, you know that what is cool is not the climb, but the descent.

And that is what it is my turn to start from now on. So I could not be more excited.

That said, it has not been an easy climb. Not at all.

There have been many years with hard moments. Very hard ones.

3 or 4 come to mind right now that I would not wish on my worst enemy and that have left me with many weeks of sleepless nights.

But having reached this point, I believe that, despite everything, it has been worth it.

That is why I hope this article achieves one thing.

Just one thing:

That it lights a little flame in you.

That it refreshes your memory with those dreams you had, not as a child, but already as an adult. At university or something similar.

Much more realistic dreams, but still not crushed and pushed into the darkest corner of your brain by the rat race we get immersed in from that age onward.

If, once you have reached this point, this article helps you to fight for your dreams, motivates you or, at the very least, has made you remember them, it will have fulfilled its purpose.

Happy 2026.