Building CAUSL - Episode 12: The Future of CAUSL

Due to some personal health challenges that kept me off work for nearly 6 weeks, I’ve not been able to stay on top of the newsletter so this one had to be special… and it is!?

This story actually begins in December 2022 following the layoffs at Hopin. If you’ve been following my story so far you’ll remember that I had narrowed down my future career options to 4 paths: find a new Director of Analytics role, pursue a career change, start a consulting company or build a SAAS startup - as you know I went down the consulting path.?

But during this time, before I finalised my decision, I was approached by Tim Axon who asked if I’d be interested in potentially joining him at his company, LeanConvert. I kind of knew Tim through my network but I didn’t know much about LeanConvert. So I gently explored the role with Tim and whilst I was impressed with everything I heard I decided to pursue CAUSL. There was nothing that Tim or anyone else could have said to convince me otherwise. At least not at this time.?I just needed to scratch this itch.

Although I didn’t end up joining LeanConvert, Tim did stay in touch and offered advice, wisdom and generally checked in on how I was getting on from time to time.?

Fast forward to a warm afternoon in June. Nico had just left CAUSL and I was doing some client work out of a hotel lobby in Copenhagen following a talk I had given at a conference the night before. Suddenly my phone rang. My phone rarely rings. Of course it was Tim. Tim is one of the few people I know who just picks up the phone and rings without going through the calendar dance. I wish more people would just pick up the phone and ring.?

Turns out Tim had read my most recent newsletter and was ringing to see how I was doing after losing my co-founder. At least that’s what he tells me. In hindsight I’m sure that was just the segue for the real reason for his call.?

After what must have been nearly thirty minutes of casual conversation, most of which was filled with Tim’s infectious laugh, he asked me again how I would feel about potentially joining him at LeanConvert. But this time the proposition was very different. It turned out that one of the founders of LeanConvert, Stuart Nelson, was moving to America to expand their already successful operations out there and they were looking for someone to potentially fill his shoes here in Europe. I hesitated as I felt like CAUSL was just picking up traction and it was a bit early in the journey to call it a day.?

That’s when it got interesting. This was not just a recruitment call. This was a “joining of forces” call. Turns out that Tim was proposing that CAUSL merges with LeanConvert under the LeanConvert brand and I join the leadership team as Director of Experimentation and Analytics and help develop their analytics offering as well as drive experimentation, build brand awareness and continue with industry thought leadership - or my ramblings as I like to call them. My jaw hit the floor. Naturally my curiosity got the better of me!

What followed was an intense week of calls where I got to meet the other founders, Stuart Nelson and Bri Axon, learn all about the company, the clients, the culture, the people and most surprisingly, how efficient and lean they were operationally.?

Why had I not heard about this company?!?

I interrogated all three of the founders about why they weren’t out there screaming about themselves, their incredibly loyal staff, their innovative way of working and their high client retention rates. Turns out that whilst they’re fantastic at what they do, by their own admission, they suck at marketing themselves - I’m sure I can help with this. Don’t get me wrong, this was not a one way street. They also took the time to interrogate me, go through my background, the work I’d been doing and make sure that I could back up everything I wrote about on LinkedIn. Thankfully I’m not one to bend the truth. I just dress it up flamboyantly so that people take notice.

Hopefully after reading all of the above it doesn’t come as a surprise that once we came to an agreement on terms of the merger, I accepted the role as Director of Experimentation and Analytics at the industry's best kept secret, LeanConvert.?

So what does this mean for CAUSL? Naturally the consulting arm of CAUSL as you have come to know it will stop as I have now officially started my role (part time for now), but I will continue doing what I love to do as a proud employee of LeanConvert. So if you need support on analytics and experimentation, feel free to reach out, I now have the support of nearly 40 amazing and talented people behind me.?

One final thought. The last 9 months have been incredible and I've enjoyed all the ups and downs of building a consulting company whilst learning along the way. And although I've arrived at this destination sooner than I had planned, the goal was always to get here. I'm aware that saying "destination" makes it sound like the journey has come to an end but in reality my journey continues.

Credits...

...Marvel Style Post-Credits Scene

I know what you’re thinking, “what does this mean for the Building CAUSL newsletter?”. I’m still going to continue it, but instead of building a consultancy, I’m going to be writing about a product I’ve built, CAUSL Analytics - a self serve analytics toolkit for non-analysts. This was behind a paywall but you'll be pleased to hear that I've removed the paywall and I'm now offering the product for free to everyone. I will be documenting my journey towards 10,000 users of the product - for the record, that number was plucked out of the air. The analytics toolkit sits on the CAUSL website, which I also plan to turn into a content and knowledge hub. So watch this space!