2020 Year In Review: Disruption and Renewal

2020 was the most disruptive year of my lifetime. And for the sake of the entire planet, I hope it remains that way. However, it was also a year where we had to adapt. We are human beings, that’s what we do.

I thought that 2019 was perhaps the most productive year of my life. At the end of last year, I even said, maybe I’ll pull back a little in 2020. Little did I know, 2020 would decide that for me, as the COVID19 pandemic would define this year in ways no one could have imagined.

New Year’s Eve 2019 was celebrated with friends in my Baldwin Park neighborhood. We watched the fireworks outside and enjoyed a few of the neighborhood establishments, including at Admiral Cigar Club. I look back at the photo I took with my friends Trevor Eaton, Alex LaRue, Marshall Polston, and Sukeina El, and think: “wow, 2020 held so much promise.” The next day, Trevor and I went to a college bowl game, the Citrus Bowl, here in Orlando, and witnessed Alabama pummel Michigan, after a close first half. I’m glad we went. It would be the largest sporting event I’d be at all year – yep for the next 364 days of it.

On January 5, my nephew Alex was born in Santa Monica, California, and I made plans to see him in March. However, those plans would later shift to July! I now not only have a wonderful niece, Gabriella, but also a nephew – and one who shares a birthday month with me.

The year also began for me how years always begin for me: celebrating my birthday on January 13. I began the weekend with my friend Eric Smith coming over to my apartment for a drink while I smoked a cigar on my balcony. We then grabbed some dinner and joined with a few other friends to see the movie 1917, perhaps one of the greatest war movies ever made. The next day my friends Marshall and Sukei took me to Disney World, where we visited Animal Kingdom and Epcot Center, having dinner at the Moroccan restaurant. On Sunday afternoon, the festivities continued. I cashed in the voucher I had “won” (read: bought) at a silent auction a few months earlier for a wine-tasting event at Total Wine Company on that Sunday. About 20 friends came together with me to celebrate another trip around the sun as we tasted the wines of the Southern hemisphere. What an amazing birthday weekend it was, spending some quality time with so many friends.

Later that month, I got over to St. Augustine to see my friend Josh Ahrens, who I had traveled to Israel with one of the programs he led in 2018. He and his wife had been doing the mobile home thing and living near St. Augustine.

In February I shot up to Ocala to meet up with my friend Jake Murphy and his girlfriend to do some mountain biking. I also attended the Delray Beach Open men’s final with my friend Jose Romero where we watched American Reilly Opelka win it! We also got there in time to meet the Bryan Brothers after they won their record 119th doubles title. They thought they’d have more titles in them in their final year on the tour, but this would be it! With so many events canceled in 2020, they retired. I also saw my friend Charlie Kirk speak at my alma mater, invited by the FAU business school with the President of FAU in attendance, mostly organized by my friend Bob Rubin. One thing that COVID19 taught us: attend events and get together with friends when you can! You never know when you’ll be forced apart!

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Work life with National Review Institute

In January, my work life at National Review Institute began on a high note. We hosted a fantastic debate in Dallas between Alan Dershowitz and Ken Starr on the role of government in protecting individual liberties, moderated by Charles C.W. Cooke. Over 200 people attended a packed debate hall at Old Parkland. The idea of social distancing would never have crossed our mind then. 

At the end of January, we brought NRI fellow Richard Brookhiser to Palm Beach. In February, we brought together a group of 20 members of NRI’s 1955 Society in Houston to have dinner with NRI fellow Kevin Williamson. Little did I know that flight back from Houston in February would be my last work flight until November. At the end of February, we brought a collection of writers and speakers back to Palm Beach for the first in what was supposed to be a series of seven regional seminars (half-day conferences) across the country, that were also supposed to serve as fundraisers. The Palm Beach one in late February would be our only one held in-person, before we shifted the rest to virtual events. We held over 100 (I lost count) virtual events over Zoom throughout 2020. I credit our president Lindsay Craig for being so quick to shift and adapt all of these planned in-person events to Zoom, well ahead of most other organizations. Within weeks and months, Zoom would become “the new normal,” a term I continue to despise, yet just used.

Right before – literally one week before – the quarantines began – I traveled to Tallahassee and joined up with National Review Online (NRO) editor, Charles Cooke, who lives in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, for a fun evening at Fuma Cigar Lounge, where more than 30 people attended, including my friends Christian Minor and Sunny Aggarwal. We were able to wave the NRI flag in Florida’s capital city and bring together some great people, including several state legislators like Danny Perez and my friend Vance Aloupis. It was also the first time I met State Representative Anthony Sabatini in person. Throughout the course of 2020, he would become a great friend, and the most outspoken person in the Florida legislature, calling for an end to the lockdowns to protect our freedoms and our right to work. On that same trip, I was able to see many friends in Tallahassee and even got a hit on the tennis court in with Coach Kevin Record.

While I was concerned about our fundraising capabilities without having the ability to physically be present in front of our supporters through in-person meetings and in-person events, I was pleasantly surprised that our supporters kept giving. We met our budget at the end of our fiscal year (July 31) and in October we held our largest fundraising event of the year, the Buckley Prize Dinner, as a virtual “Gala-at-Home,” and were able to raise $1 million from that virtual event (typically we have raised about $1.2 million for most of the recent in-person galas). Here in Orlando, I hosted about ten friends who joined me for the occasion to tune into the virtual gala-at-home. We ordered up Cuban food from Zaza and made some NRI-suggested cocktails, with Buckley themes.

NRI also hired two new staff members during quarantine and started new programs such as NR Capital Matters (bringing on two new NRI fellows, Andrew Stuttaford and Kevin Hassett). I have always been a remote worker for NRI since I started in February 2017, but I have never seen my colleagues’ faces so often as our weekly staff and development team calls moved to Zoom permanently. One thing COVID19 reinforced for me as a fundraiser: develop those relationships with supporters in-person as much as possible because it will only become a strength to you when you’re not able to meet in person! And then, touch base with them by phone, Zoom, or email, as much as you can, just to stay hello and ask how they are doing. These personal touches go a long way.

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The Rock Boat Before the Pandemic

You would think in a year of a pandemic, I would not have been able to travel much, or at least not internationally, and especially not on a cruise. But this is where planning ahead and taking a trip – a cruise – in January comes in handy. At the end of January, I hopped on The Rock Boat for my seventh time, joined by many friends including two of my closest longtime friends, Sean Gross and Kristen Moran. It was a special event, Rock Boat 20! Switchfoot, Needtobreathe, Sister Hazel, and about 25 other bands delighted us over five nights in the Caribbean, as we made stops in two new countries for me: Belize and Roatan, an island that is part of Honduras. And who can forget that Zach Myers cabin show? We enjoyed some unbelievable beaches in Belize and a snorkeling and sloth adventure in Roatan, with nearly 5,000 people aboard the Norwegian Pearl. This now brings me to a total of 23 countries that I have visited on Planet Earth.

A month later, being on a cruise ship would be one of the last places you would want to get stuck. Lucky for us, there were no cases of COVID 19 on board. Although later I would wonder what would have happened if COVID19 had raged on The Rock Boat. In reality, we had such a carefree time enjoying life – another thing COVID19 has reinforced for me is that it’s important to enjoy life and traveling when you can! Don’t take opportunities for granted!

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Shutting Down the Economy

In early March, there began to be an eerie feeling across the land that things might be shutting down for a while. I’m not sure we could have imagined how long it ended up being. On Saturday, March 7, I attended a book event in West Palm Beach for my friend Charlie Kirk, co-hosted by my friend Julio Gonzalez. We were in a house of about two hundred people, which included Congressman Matt Gaetz and Donald Trump Jr. This was partially organized by my friend Michele Vandervelden and we invited my friend Rich Meade, a former FAU tennis star, to come along!

The next day, I was at a movie theater with my mom in my parent’s retirement community in Boynton Beach watching Ford v. Ferrari – an amazing film! Life was everything it could be with the best economy in over a half-century. On that same day, March 8, as I was looking forward to visiting my brother Tony and his family in Santa Monica, California on March 18, including plans to meet my nephew Alex for the first time, it was starting to become apparent that trip might not be happening. We had originally planned to attend an LA Galaxy MLS game and I was going to drive over to Palm Springs for the first time and attend the Indian Wells tennis tournament. However, on March 8, Indian Wells announced the tournament was going to be canceled. It was beyond belief to me at the time.

Later that week, while back in Orlando, I tuned into the President’s address to the nation on March 12, announcing that all travel to and from Europe would be shut down. What? The next day, I ventured about an hour or so drive over to Brooksville to see one of my favorite bands, my friends The Currys. It was the last live concert for them and for me and for all of the world for quite some time. It was also Friday, the 13^th of March. When I drove back that night from Brooksville, after the show, there was a weird feeling in the air. Almost like a last day on earth feeling. Two days later Disney World shut down, their last day being Sunday, March 15. They would be closed until July. When Disney World shuts down, you might as well just proclaim it the apocalypse! I was concerned for all of the hundreds of thousands of people in Central Florida whose jobs and livelihoods depend on tourism.

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Quarantine Life

I was a little disturbed that we were shutting so much of the economy down, as I wrote about on March 17, but after a few days, I realized that was out of my control. It was time to just enjoy the worldwide pause and start adapting. Friends became more available for phone calls and Zoom happy hours, with groups of friends, some who didn’t even know each other but got to know each other through my Zoom window.

While I had been a remote worker for over four years, I realized I needed to begin starting my days by getting outside. I did that by taking morning walks of 20 minutes or more before I logged into my emails. Throughout the year those morning walks got longer and I started enjoying listening to podcasts and audio books while walking – a great beginning to the day, and especially privileged for fantastic spring weather and beautiful natural surroundings here in my Baldwin Park neighborhood.

When gyms started shutting down, I did virtual workouts provided by my small group fitness gym, Rock Hard Fitness. I played more tennis (especially with my friend Luke Russo), did a fair bit of running and biking, and decided I would continue to get myself physically, mentally, and spiritually healthy. When churches shut down, I began attending virtual mass – and I started incorporating the daily virtual mass into my routine. There were no excuses not to now! I also had already begun my year with NRI fellow Kathryn Lopez’s A Year with the Mystics, a book of daily reflections from a different saint every day. Now it seemed 2020 would be a year with the mystics, and perhaps only with the mystics.

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Mourning a Loved One During a Pandemic

On April 3^rd, my grandmother, Marta Gonzalez, passed away from a long bout with pancreatic cancer. I drove down to be with my parents in Boynton Beach. We picked up my brother Manny and his wife Tiffany in Broward County, and we all ventured together to the funeral in Miami. Ahead of time, we were told there would only be ten people allowed in the funeral home at a time. We had to wear masks while inside. It was my first real time wearing a face mask, as the grocery stores weren’t yet requiring them. Even at the cemetery, which was outside of course, we had to wear a mask, and only ten people were allowed in the surrounding burial area. In both places, we took turns circulating different people in and out (there were probably 30 or so at the funeral).

It was very strange, very morbid. A funeral is a difficult time as it is, and to be put in this situation just didn’t seem right. However, compared to many geographic locations in the country, I suppose we were fortunate in one way: we were actually allowed to have a funeral and be there in person. In another way, it was also all of our first times being with more than a few people in over a month. So, it was nice to see so many family members and be together, while we were told to remain apart.

I was also fortunate just a week or so earlier to be able to FaceTime with my grandmother just a few days before she passed. She never even had an iPhone or the ability to FaceTime, but my Aunt Barbara used her phone and put her on. We had a nice conversation, and it would be our last. However, now we have an advocate in heaven, and she can finally be with my grandfather, who passed in 2009. They had come from Cuba in 1960, when my dad was seven years old. They left a land ruled by totalitarian dictator. They would never see their native land again. But on this April day, as my grandmother was laid to rest next to my grandfather, I found some comfort that they were buried on freedom’s soil – and if it wasn’t for them, my dad, uncle, aunt, and the rest of our family, including me, would not have had the opportunities we have had. May she rest in peace and may we be forever grateful for their sacrifices.

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Things That Matter

COVID19 taught me another lesson: take time for the things that matter. Even as a single guy who lives on my own, I am never alone. God is with me and the saints can be too, if I would only let them in. I’m also blessed that I got rid of cable television more than two years ago. I can’t imagine wasting my time watching every little news update about a largely unknown virus and the pandemonium – and division – the world was in. By June, I was pretty much done with social media, for a bit, and took the entire month of June one hundred percent away from social media (kind of a big deal for me!) That was right after the riots and the intense BLM virtue signaling started. I refuse to be a sheep.

Since I began my career in the conservative movement back in 2004, I have worked for three organizations: Intercollegiate Studies Institute (2004-2007), The James Madison Institute (2008-2017), and now National Review Institute (2017-present). I have traveled extensively for all three organizations. And, as many know, I also love my personal travels all over the globe. COVID19 forced us all to travel less, and with my traveling on complete pause from March to June, I realized I had never been at home so many consecutive nights in more than 16 years. It was a welcome break.

However, with more time wanting to get outside and enjoy the amazing Florida weather in March through May, I spent a lot of time on my balcony, and that meant quite the increase in smoking cigars. Considering I began participating in my own personal cigar lounge on my balcony, I joked with the phrase, “a cigar a day keeps the COVID away.” As I write this in the last days of December, still COVID-free, I think I might have been on to something! I also enjoyed meeting up with neighbors here in Baldwin Park, including my friend Leland McKee, who established regular cigar and drink meetups at “The Oak Tree Tavern,” which simply meant late afternoon happy hours under a big Oak Tree outside the shutdown bars and restaurants.

In early May, restaurants began opening in Florida, and to celebrate and support those businesses, I dined out every day that week, at a different LOCAL restaurant, with different local friends. And throughout the year, I always enjoyed my lunch meetups with my friend Kevin Stewart. This year we dined at various international restaurants in Orlando: Vietnamese, Peruvian, and Colombian restaurants made the list. Strangely enough, they even closed beaches temporarily during the pandemic (this seems stupid in retrospect), but as soon as we were free to go to them, I did. Took a day trip over to Cocoa Beach with my friend Kyana Rubinfeld and then enjoyed one day during Memorial Day weekend over at Clearwater Beach with my friend Trevor Eaton. We later met up with Michael Long for dinner in St. Pete. These little outings seemed almost revolutionary at the time.

Hope Amid Chaos

In late May, my friend Sunny Aggarwal hosted a dozen or so of us at his Titusville condo, which overlooks Cape Canaveral and is about ten miles from the launch pad. My friends Dan Lesniak and Josh Nadal came up from South Florida and my friend Lance Barnett came down from Jacksonville with his new wife Claire. He also brought some other friends, including Josh Platillero who became another new friend this year and a social media sensation on his “one wheel” on TikTok and Instagram. We watched the first manned launch by a private company, SpaceX, on U.S. soil. We also saw the President ride in (and out) on Air Force One two times that week (since the first attempt of the launch was scrubbed).

After the launch, I drove the 50 minutes back to Orlando only to hear of the crazy riots happening on the streets of America that same day in response to the fallout of the George Floyd death (at the hands of a police officer) in Minnesota. It was such a contrast of a day. As we marveled at a bright future ahead with the exciting launch from the Cape, the chaos of the human condition was happening on the ground. If only we human beings can get along and get past our tribal ways, we can do great things for humanity!

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Taking Flight

By June, which was 3 months into the “15 days to slow the spread,” I decided quarantine was over and I took a week off to go slightly north. I also took my first plane trip since February. By this time, we were having to wear masks and the planes were not filling the middle seats. The Orlando airport was the emptiest I will probably ever see it. TSA was waiting for me.

I flew to Atlanta, engaged in some brand strategy sessions with my friend Carter Fowler, to see if we could come up with ideas to take all the things I do (my podcast, my travel writings, my book reviews, and all that) to another level. My friend Kevin Scott in Atlanta joined us in person and my friend Evan Ernst (in Cocoa Beach) joined in by Zoom. I am incredibly grateful for these guys. I stayed with my friends Seth and Esther Weathers, and one night they invited over my friend Ruth Malhotra as well as their friends Jeremy and Ky Hunt. We had such a fantastic evening and later Jeremy and Ky would tell me it was their favorite night of the summer. And, of course, the Weathers’ children love seeing me, adopting me as their Uncle Cisco – ha! Also, while in the area, I met up with my friends Denise and Jason Harle, as well as my friend David Healy.

I then drove two hours up to Chattanooga to spend a wonderful weekend with my friends Chris and Mackenzie Cox, who I first got to know in Orlando. We went hiking on Signal Mountain, walked the streets of historic Chattanooga, drove through Lookout Mountain, and played tennis at Covenant College, where Chris played tennis and is now a member of the coaching staff. Upon my return, I even created my first travel vlog about Chattanooga, a city where my mother was born!

From there, I drove another two hours up to Nashville, where my friends Chad and Hillary Blackburn hosted me and I was able to get together with many friends over the next two days, including Josh Thifault, Grant Starrett, and Justin and Alex Baker. I also gathered five former guests of my Agents of Innovation podcast – Matt Brown, Mark Cleveland, Steve Everett, Amy Gerhartz, and Andrew Leahey – for a two-hour discussion on many topics. I later created 13 different short video segments from these conversations that I loaded up on YouTube. I believe this is the beginning of taking the Agents of Innovation from a podcast into a community of aspiring and ascending entrepreneurs who can help each other succeed. What a cool evening!

In July, I flew to Denver, Colorado to meet up with my friend Ryan Nichols, who works at the highest levels of the U.S. Department of the Interior. We stayed the night there and then the next morning we drove about five hours up to the Black Hills of South Dakota for an Independence Day celebration with President Donald Trump and South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. We had VIP passes and sat in the first twenty rows of the amphitheater and witnessed the return of fireworks to Mount Rushmore – the first time since 2009. We were treated to epic flyovers of Air Force One, Marine One, the Blue Angels, and so many others. It was perhaps the largest gathering on the planet since March, with thousands in attendance, as we donned our Betsy Ross flag face masks, made by BringAmmo.com, which many friends saw as we were constantly in the view of the national television cameras. CNN called it a celebration of white supremacy. Another reason to cancel cable.

Ryan and I then drove around South Dakota the next day, including stops at Custer State Park, Wall Drug, the Minuteman Missile Site, and the Badlands, before returning to Colorado. The next day, Ryan flew home to DC and I flew to California.

I spent two days in Orange County, quarantining myself in a hotel room to get some work done and enjoying evening drinks and dinners with my friends Ryan Sorba and Matt Harrison. Ryan and I even randomly met a few young Californians who worked in tech and told us how bad things were in California. I kept in touch with one of them, Remus, who later met up with me in Orlando in November.

I also ventured down to La Jolla to see some of my Teneo brethren organized by my friend Adam Gordon. And, I was also able to have lunch with one of my previous podcast guests, Alex Goryachev, the chief innovation officer of Cisco Systems. It was great to connect with him in person! I then shuttled back up to L.A. to be picked up by my mom, who was already there visiting my brother and his family.

I was finally able to meet my new nephew Alex, who was now six months old, and see my niece Gabriella, who was growing more talkative and running around the house even more. We spent a lot of time at their home and one morning on the beach. While there wasn’t much else for us to do in a mostly locked down California, it was simply nice getting to spend quality time with them.

In late August, I had a fantastic opportunity to travel to Hendersonville, North Carolina for an extended weekend. My friend Lance Barnett had moved up there for the latter part of the year to run the ground game for the campaign of one of his longtime best friends, Madison Cawthorn. During the weekend, I interviewed Madison for my podcast at the Casablanca Tobacconist cigar lounge in Hendersonville, where he is a locker member. We smoked cigars and recorded the podcast over audio and video. It was incredible getting to know Madison and I released multiple video segments on YouTube as well as the full audio interview through the many podcast platforms of which the Agents of Innovation is available.

At the beginning of that weekend, my friend Giovanni Triana, who works for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), was coming through North Carolina at the same time. We had conversed many times by phone and worked together in some capacity, but this was our first time meeting in person (during a pandemic, nonetheless) and we instantly became close friends. During the weekend, I also ventured 30 minutes up to Asheville to meet up with my friend Brett Landau, meet his girlfriend, and play some tennis like our ol’ days in Tallahassee.

At the end of that weekend, country music artist Darryl Worley played a benefit concert for Madison’s campaign at the Point Lookout Vineyards in Hendersonville. What a beautiful scene in the mountains, with nearly five hundred people at a real live concert! We ended that night back at Madison’s home with about a dozen of his friends, where he treated us to cigars and drinks and we talked about the future of the country and some of the ideas he had should he be elected to Congress. Between my podcast interview with him and the conversations at his home, I became a great believer and advocate for this emerging leader. A bright future is ahead for him and those who he will lead and represent.

In September, I took a weekend trip down to South Florida to see my parents and once again meet up with my friend Dan Lesniak, his wife, and three small children, as we took a boat outing on the intracoastal. What a great day. The following day I hung out with my friend Michele Vandervelden as we partook in a fun outing in Jupiter amid Trump fans.

A week later, I flew back up to Atlanta, where I hit tennis with my friend JY Aubone, who was off the road for a bit, since the pro tennis circuit had been canceled for a number of months (he’s on the coaching team for Reilly Opelka). I also had lunch with my buddy Carter Fowler, and stayed once again at my friend Seth Weathers’ home for one night. The next day, I was even able to visit a donor couple in northern Georgia, who were delighted to see me. Shoot, they were probably delighted to see anyone!

From there, I ventured up to Barnsley Gardens in northern Georgia for a four-day, three-night retreat with the Teneo Network, a private organization of conservative young professionals that I have been a part of since it was founded in 2009. This was the first real conference of any organization I could attend since the world shut down in March. We had over 260 of us there and many great safety measures were taken (masks indoors, outdoor lunches and dinners and small group conversations). It was strange at first but by the weekend’s end everyone agreed: it was good to be together!

At the end of that weekend, I was also able to see my friends David Healy and Matt Thomas in Atlanta, as we gave each other life updates, before taking my flight back to Orlando. Later in September, I was at a house party in Winter Park and met the one and only Carrot Top, who lives here locally. In early October, my friend Matt Tyrmand called me up while he was in town for a conference and we did a little outing at a local attraction, Machine Gun America. It was dead empty due to them missing so many overseas tourists that usually fill their venue.

In mid-October, my friend Sunny Aggarwal and I co-hosted a fundraiser in Orlando for Madison Cawthorn. My friend Lance Barnett came down for it and about fifty people attended. We then took Madison out for dinner and cigars in downtown Orlando, introducing him to Jeff Borysiewicz, the owner of Corona Cigar Company. It was my first time meeting Jeff in person as well. Another great night!

On October 31, I flew back up to Asheville and spent a week at a home I rented in Hendersonville, North Carolina, with my friend Giovanni Triana and his friend Ryan Beeson. We were joined one night each by my new friend Joshua Platillero as well as my longtime friend Caleb Standefer, who I had not seen in over a dozen years. The reason I came up that week was to spend the last 72 hours before election day to campaign for Madison Cawthorn. We then went back to the Point Lookout vineyard for an epic election night party with hundreds of his supporters. Madison won handily by 12 percentage points, becoming the youngest member of Congress in U.S. history (or at least the youngest in over 220 years). While the country is divided, this young man gives me hope, especially considering all the odds he has overcome.

We then went back to his home with about forty or so of his family and close friends to continue the celebration until well past 1am, being given a victory cigar and following the results of the Presidential race. Giovanni, Ryan, Josh, and I then went back to the home we rented down the road to continue watching results until we went to bed around 3:00 AM, with President Trump holding a pretty comfortable lead in the remaining swing states. Well, the next morning greeted us with a surprise turnaround that many still find questionable today. But regardless of that, we had an absolute blast in Hendersonville. I continued working from there the rest of the week, really reflecting on how much I enjoy the mountains of western North Carolina. I was treated to lunch at the home of my friends and supporters Mary and Terry Bebout and I also returned back to the Casablanca Tobacconist cigar lounge in Hendersonville to interview its owner, Sam Souhail, who has quite the American Dream story. We also visited his original cigar lounge in the Biltmore Village in Asheville and took in some good eats in that city as well.

The next week, I was finally able to go on a business trip for NRI – back to Dallas – where I had a few meetings with some donors and prospects. We also hosted a lunch for about a dozen of NRI’s 1955 Society members, as we heard directly from NRI fellow Kevin Williamson. After nine months of being shut down with only virtual events, this in-person gathering felt like a small step back towards normalcy.

While some people were told not to celebrate Thanksgiving with family, I was not going to be stopped. I drove down to South Florida to join my parents for a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. I also saw a few friends while there: John Rich, Bob Rubin, and Dan Lesniak, meeting for cigars, as we discussed the future of our country beyond 2020.

Earlier in 2020, my friend Marshall Polston had restarted The Orlando Local News, a publication founded by his grandfather in 1980. It had not been in publication since the late 1980s. Marshall’s grandfather, a 94-year old WWII veteran, passed away in May. But Marshall had gotten the idea to restart it while his grandfather was in a nursing home and Marshall was going through some of the archives. I told him I would be happy to help support him in this effort, introducing him to some supporters and coming on as his business manager, in the little spare time I had! By December, The Orlando Local News had published seven monthly print editions while also having a website with new content each week.

Also, in December, The Orlando Local News hosted a “Best of Central Florida” awards ceremony for local business owners and other local leaders. We were allowed to have 45 people at the University Club in downtown Orlando and we filled the room with such a great collection of people, as Marshall and I presided over the lunch gathering. We handed out more than 30 awards and it really moved me to see the impact we had made on the lives of the people accepting the awards. I watched as over the course of the rest of the day each of the awardees shared their awards with pride on their social media accounts, with their friends and family congratulating them for this recognition. After a year of being shut down, we came along and told them we cared and that their business enterprises and their involvement in their communities did not go unnoticed. As I had dinner with Marshall later that evening, I started crying, when I realized how much this meant to people and that we were a part of making that happen. What a special day.

In late December, my friend Michael Sasso and I ventured over to Daytona Beach for the afternoon to meet up with our friends Ilya and Kristin Shapiro who rented an Airbnb for a month to get out of Washington, DC which was mostly locked down — not to mention cold.

Later in December, returned once again to Palm Beach for the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit on December 19-21, taking in the first three days of the conference and seeing nearly 3,000 people gathered together – indoors! I give great kudos to my friend Charlie Kirk for leading this organization since he founded it in 2012 and for having the strength to hold the summit when no one else is hosting such a large gathering. I remain proud to serve on their Advisory Council and attended a real in-person advisory council meeting on December 19.

As of this writing, the event did not only not become a “super spreader” event for COVID19, but I am not aware of any attendees contracting the illness. We watched so many great speakers including Tucker Carlson, Matt Gaetz, and my friends James O’Keefe and Madison Cawthorn. I was even able to join Madison backstage before he rocked the house with an epic speech. Later that afternoon, I joined with my friend Ben Starling to co-host a lunch for Madison, to help him connect with some conservative donors in Palm Beach. And, we joined together at my friend Eric’s house later that night to host Madison and other great conservatives like James O’Keefe, Seth Dillon (of the Babylon Bee), and Darren Beattie (of Revolver.news), as well as three state legislators, one each from Florida, North Carolina, and Missouri, for a fun time with friends. Four previous guests of my Agents of Innovation podcast were in attendance: Madison Cawthorn, Eric Wind, Dan Lesniak, and Bob Rubin. I hope to bring more people like this together in the future.

While in Palm Beach, we also hosted a gathering for about a dozen members of the Florida chapter of the Teneo Network. And before I left South Florida, I also did a fishing outing with my friends Dan Lesniak, Mark Wadsworth, Anthony Sabatini, and Sunny Aggarwal. These four days in Palm Beach really put a heck of an exclamation point on 2020.

But then, two days after I returned to Orlando, my parents joined me on Christmas Eve. The next morning, we drove another four hours north to Albany, Georgia, to visit my brother Manny and his wife Tiffany who had recently moved there at the end of 2020. They are situated on about three acres, where there is plenty of land and freedom to spread out, giving a whole new meaning to social distancing – in a good way – just a piece of God’s green earth.

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Health & Wellness

I am grateful for the great health I had in 2020. I made it through the year without ever contracting COVID19, of which millions of other Americans weren’t so lucky, and over 300,000 died from. Perhaps being younger, a good immune system, daily exercise, and all that is helpful.

My health was tripped up a little bit at the end of 2020. In mid-September, I started getting some shooting pain down my leg and it became difficult to sit (without my butt hurting!) for a few weeks. I got some massages and then eventually saw a chiropractor for the first time in my life. The diagnosis was that I had sciatica, which is basically caused by the interruption of the nerves going from the brain down the spine and eventually down the legs. It usually affects one side of the body. Let’s just say the more I learn about the human body, the more I am amazed. While walking was great, it was sitting that really was the problem. And the more people I told about it, the more I realized many people I know have had it. But it’s a very uncomfortable health issue and one you feel is out of your control.

However, by mid-December, I started feeling much better. Around that time an MRI diagnosed that I had a slightly herniated disc in my lower spine and that is what was likely causing the sciatica. In this last week of 2020, I was able to go back to the gym four days in a row. I’m taking it lightly, but I’m feeling better. Daily stretching and more core and mobility exercises are now in my daily routine. I suppose this is the first real time I am feeling that body starting to break down, but I’m always determined to counter that by keeping fit and staying strong physically, mentally, and spiritually. This entire year is a reminder, however, that health is one thing we cannot take for granted. Do your best to be preventative.

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Voluntary Roles

This year, I also continued to serve on the boards of AMIkids Orlando and The Philadelphia Society. Unfortunately, all the plans we had for 2020 were scrapped. I did attend one or two of our monthly board meetings for AMIkids in person, before the pandemic. After that, we transitioned to doing all of them virtually. Later in the year, the AMIkids national annual meeting was also turned virtual, and surprisingly, I was awarded with the Community Development Award for doing what I’m simply supposed to be doing: spreading the word and building relationships for AMIkids around our Central Florida community. Luckily, the AMIkids staff kept serving students remotely from March to August and in August the students were able to return to the day treatment program, which also serves as a school.

The two meetings of the Philadelphia Society that were supposed to be held in St. Louis in March and in Fort Worth in October were also both scrapped completely, and our board meetings were held virtually. What a strange time!

For the fourth year, I also continued to write (almost weekly) short columns in the Orlando Sentinel’s Central Florida 100 Voices page that is printed in every Sunday edition.

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25 Books Completed in 2020

In 2020, I once again completed reading 25 books. You can read my synopsis of the 25 books of 2020 in this separate blog post here. I did a mix of print, Kindle, and Audible books. All those walks around the neighborhood sure helped me knock down lots of Audible books. And, the book, Atomic Habits by James Clear, was one already on my list that I began around early April. A pandemic with a worldwide pause was a great time to read this book and invest in forming new habits and growing each day. And reading the book on The Wright Brothers by David McCullough immediately after seemed almost more than coincidental as those guys were living with atomic habits at least a century before James Clear made it cool.

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Agents of Innovation Podcast

In 2020, I was able to release 20 episodes of my Agents of Innovation podcast, which I first began in 2015. This was the greatest number of episodes I’ve put out in any calendar year, bringing me to 87 in total. I began the year with two women, Jen Shultz and Shannan Slevin. Jen encourages people to break the mold of their corporate 9-to-5 jobs, while Shannan helps us bring a culture of well-being to the workplace. Well, the workplace sure did change for most people in 2020.

In late March, I held an “emergency episode” of the podcast, bringing on three guests for short segments – Kevin Scott, Zak Slayback, and Esther Davy – each of them helping us to adapt to the challenges COVID19 would bring to our work and to our families. Nate Amaral, who I met last year in Bermuda, talked to us about how his events-based businesses were being challenged by the pandemic.

I had musicians Aric Damm (of The Brevet), Jon Wiley (formerly of Melodime), and Houston Keen, who came back on for his second appearance (the first being in 2016!)

I had Alex Goryachev of Cisco Systems, who authored the book, Fearless Innovation, as well as Sam Staley, a professor of economics at Florida State University, who talked to us about social entrepreneurship and his new book, The Beatles and Economics, which went on to win a Florida Book Award.

I also had my friend Eric Wind, a vintage watch dealer, introduce us to that fascinating line of work and how he transitioned into it. Adam Andrzejewski explained how his organization, Open The Books, was bringing innovation to making government more transparent to all, while Marcin Jakubowski talked to us about the importance of collaboration in his venture, Open Source Ecology.

One of the most amazing interviews I did this year was with Chris Mueller, a forward for the Orlando City Soccer Club, who started the “Be The Best” book club during the pandemic. When the MLS season returned, Chris became the player of the game of the first two games of the MLS is Back tournament, which Orlando City went all the way to the finals in. When the regular season resumed, Chris made waves and helped the team make the playoffs for the first time ever. I was able to attend the first home game back as well as the two playoff games. The game they won in the first round goes down as the most epic soccer game I’ve ever attended in my life, as it went to penalty kicks and included plenty of drama! In December, Chris was called up to play for the U.S. Men’s National Team. The playoffs and playing for his country were two of the career goals he shared with me on the podcast interview back in June. I was not surprised. He kept his mind sharp during the pandemic and I remain excited to continue following his journey.

Of course, the interview with Madison Cawthorn, mentioned earlier, in Hendersonville, North Carolina, was a real treat. I not only had the opportunity to hear from a young man who has overcome so much, but also speak with much wisdom. He has an emerging political career that may have an impact for our country for decades to come. More importantly, I gained a friend and a collection of friends that surround him, including Sam Souhail, the owner of the cigar lounge where he is a member. I returned to Hendersonville in November and interviewed Sam for what has to be one of the most amazing American Dream stories I’ve ever encountered in person.

I also interviewed my friend Glen Gilzean, CEO of the Central Florida Urban League; Jack Maginnes, a young developer of a new dating game app, Savvy; my friends Dennis Murashko and Wade Eyerly joined me to discuss the Degree Insurance Company – their idea to insure college degrees; I learned firsthand from John Rivers, the founder of one of my favorite barbecue joints, Four Rivers, who is also engaged in an incredible philanthropic project to feed the hungry by teaching people in the inner city how to grow their own food; and in a year where religious liberty was under assault, Lathan Watts of the First Liberty Institute came on the podcast to explain the innovative things his organization is doing to protect that first liberty enshrined in our constitution.

I continue to be impressed by the amazing innovators I get to meet and have conversations with. They span many professions and many topics and are somehow incredibly relevant to the times we are living in. And 2020 has sure been an interesting time to live in! It was a year of disruption, but a year of lessons learned, a year of getting stronger, and a year that gave us an opportunity to reflect amid the fast-paced lives we all seem to live these days. We caught our breath a little bit and focused on the things and people that matter the most. We will likely talk about 2020 for the rest of our lives, but let us not think of it as simply a year of a pandemic, social unrest, or a heated political season, but rather a year where recharged our batteries and prepared for the days and years ahead.