S2 E3: Reflections

I've not been able to write newsletter for a while and given that we're approaching the end of the year, I thought I would seize the opportunity to write one and take a moment to reflect on 2023.

There have been four major (professional) milestones in my life this year.

1. Building CAUSL (the consultancy)
2. Losing my co-founder
3. Developing CAUSL (the analytics tool)
4. Joining LeanConvert

Building CAUSL (the consultancy)

This has by far been one of the most rewarding experiences of my career. Losing my job back in November 2022, whilst terrible, gave me an opportunity to try something very few get to try - start a company. It was not my first choice for what I wanted to do, but it was a second choice - my first choice would have been to develop a product, but the risk is higher and I'm at a stage in my life where I can't afford to take that big of a risk.

I've never really appreciated how hard it is to make money from nothing. Earning money through employment by comparison is fairly straightforward but to make money is something else entirely. There are factors that are in your control to help you do this, but there are many more factors that are outside of your control preventing you from doing this, for example:

• Reaching out to people is well within your control, but how many respond is outside of your control.
• Delivering a great pitch to potential clients is well within your control, but those potential clients ghosting you following the pitch is completely outside of your control.

And that's how it went for most of the year. Nico and I tried our best to control the controllable and accepted that which wasn't.

I know a lot of you are probably wondering, how CAUSL did in terms of revenue. I was on the fence about whether or not to share this but the whole purpose of this newsletter has been to share my journey so that anyone else foolish enough to follow in my footsteps would know what it's like and think long and hard about it and given that I've closed down the consulting side of CAUSL, I guess there's no harm in sharing how we did.

CAUSL generated close to ￡100,000 in billable revenue. That might not sound like a lot, but please keep in mind that we entered this space without a little black book of contacts from past clients. If that does sound like a lot, please then keep in mind that there were two of us, plus people we worked with, expenses and taxes. In my opinion it's not a lot in the grand scheme of things, but given that I stopped looking for new clients around July, I think we did quite well. I just want to take a minute to thank all of my clients who trusted us to deliver work for them. I can only hope that the work we did met and hopefully exceeded your expectations.

Losing a cofounder

I don't care what anyone tells you, starting a company is lonely but having a cofounder makes it much more bearable. Which is why when Nico decided to go back into full time work, I took it pretty hard and questioned whether or not consulting was something I wanted to do by myself. I won't go into this too much because there was an entire newsletter dedicated to this topic, but it's hard to reflect back on this year and act like this wasn't a turning point for me. Nico, I miss you like crazy and will jump at the chance to work with you again in the future.

Developing CAUSL (the self-serve analytics tool)

After Nico left and as I was still deciding on my future, I decided to build CAUSL Analytics, a suite of tools to empower non-analytical people to perform their own analysis. This was born out of years of observing non-analytical people rely on me and my team to perform what I consider basic tasks. If these stakeholders had access to the right tools and the know-how on how to use them, this would have freed up so much time for me and my team to tackle bigger problems and remove the bottleneck for our stakeholders.

Of course there is the question of one's motivation to do this by one's self but the optimist in my likes to believe that people are intrinsically motivated to do some of their own analysis if they could, they just don't know how.

The product isn't quite where I would like it to be, but all the tools work and next year I'll focus on UX, content and adding more functionality. This experience has made me realise that my first choice of building something is really where my heart is at. I've built Keynoat, CAUSL, analytics functions, teams and communities. I like building. Thanks to everyone who has signed up to use CAUSL, Keynoat or been part of the CRAP Community. Building stuff is only fun when it brings value/joy to other people.

Joining LeanConvert

A short while after starting to build CAUSL Analytics, Tim Axon reached out to me and asked if I'd be interested in joining him, Brindusa Axon and Stuart Nelson at LeanConvert. By this point, I had made up my mind that I didn't want to continue by myself. I could have, I just didn't want to. I won't bore you with the details of how I ended up saying yes as I've covered that in a previous newsletter as well, but I will talk about how the experience has been.

LeanConvert has exceeded my expectations. I won't lie, it's hard working across multiple different clients but working closely with Stu and (especially) Bri has been a breath of fresh air. Bri just cares about the team and our clients so much. I've genuinely never come across this level of concern for other people's well-being in my life. I like to think I care about my team and colleagues, but Bri is on another level. She's also an operational wizard. The processes, tools, training and ongoing development she's put in place are nothing short of incredible. Bri has definitely been my rock at LeanConvert.

Then there are the people. The wonderfully amazing people. What can I tell you about them. We had a company offsite in Romania back in October and I got a chance to meet, know and really connect with the LeanConvert team. They are some of the kindest, smartest, dedicated and passionate people I've ever had the pleasure of working with. They've been super supportive and really made me feel like a part of the team. I can't name them all, but I wanted to express my deepest gratitude towards Jack Westwood , Sara Mishchil , Edd Saunders , Marvin C. Amm , Oleksii Vagin , Madeline Haskins , Karolina Kli? , Davide Canu , Josh Venables , Karolina Bossak-Ahmad , Karyna Shatokhina , Oleksandr Horievy , Mihaela Boboc , Stuart Broughton , Micha? Makulski , Beata Hyt , Agata Skrzypa , Sarah Trigwell , Tongying Huang , Andrea Indelicato , Alex Korin , Chris Foots , George Mihaila and everyone else I haven't mentioned.

Closing thoughts

In case it wasn't clear, this year would have been nothing without the people who made it what it was. There were countless others who I should be thanking but I think most people have probably already stopped reading at this point and hopefully the people I haven't mentioned here already know who they are.

I'm not sure what 2024 will look like for me, but I hope it will include doing some more great work with all my amazing new clients and colleagues, continuing to build the CRAP community, further developing CAUSL and Keynoat and lots more writing. The newsletter will continue to evolve. I think life is far too dynamic to have a completely static newsletter and I want to go back to writing educational and industry focussed content as well as continue my journey towards making the world more data literate and self-reliant.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everyone.