Q2 2023 // 1 Year
Last quarter marks the conclusion of the first 12 months of my running a coaching business.
Where I spent effort this Q:
ProdDuck
A bot that reviews your Jira tickets and gives you specific and useful feedback about how to improve it.
I wasn’t able to convert any users to use it, but I am still convinced it is a very useful topic as I wish I had teams using it. I’m not sure why users fail to convert to the free signup (even when they’re friends I know). I suspect the main landing page is just doing poorly at explaining the value and it jumps right into the subscription without showing value well enough.
Waipify
A company that operates as a marketplace for AI.
I’m helping build this company as a Fractional CTO. I’ve been involved in helping fund-raise, designing the technical concepts, building the team, and generally keeping technical topics on-track.
Workshops
Architecture Diagrams
I delivered my Architecture workshop to over 25 people over 5 different deliveries. Customers always have very positive feedback about the sessions and wish to do repeat business (one already has had me train their entire dev team in small batches).
Agile
I have started work to help a company with an Agile Transformation project which has generated several new workshops which I will market and grow soon:
Becoming Agile — What does it really mean to be agile? Plus, exploring what stops your team from becoming agile
Optional add-on of hands-on coaching to teach teams how to run sessions effectively
Optional add-on of weekly guidance to manage the transformation towards agile
Project Planning — How do you plan a project the right way?
Product Vertical Slices — How do you slice things vertically to avoid monolithic deliveries?
Videos
I have produced another round of videos about architecture diagrams (trying to increase support for my Architecture Diagram workshop) but it didn’t have as large an effect as the ones where I walked around with a selfie stick. I will try a different format next quarter.
Blog Content
I have written a bit more than I normally would about goals, leadership, and other topics. Both on my blog and over LinkedIn posts.
My web traffic is quite low, I need a way to get in front of people who want to know about the things I am sharing.
Cards
Sales have nearly come to a stop. I have also stopped marketing them. I think there’s a strong correlation there. I think they would sell better if my brand was larger.
I feel like I’m forgetting something important here.
Objectives for the next Q:
I need to grow my customer base for my workshops. I am going to aim for testimonials by asking and referrals by delivering amazing results. At the same time I am publishing a planning methodology I call “Leftwards Planning” and want to grow some interest around that which hopefully can also translate into workshop sales and increase brand recognition. Third priority is hunting for clients, but I know I will need to do that.
I would like to sell more of the workshops I have prepared instead of new bespoke workshops. There is an extreme amount of work it takes to build a new workshop for the first time, and that cuts into other things that are important to me like finding clients or just spending time with my family. Also, the quality of workshops that I re-deliver increases with each workshop (which helps me with the goal above).
I would like to close bigger ticket engagements or set up repeat business with the same customer. Selling a 1 day workshop for 3000€ feels fantastic the first few times you do it, but actually to make a salary remotely competitive with normal full-time-employment means I need to sell 2 or more (ideally 4+) sessions per month, which means talking to 10x as many possible customers, or pitching to 350+ companies, sourcing from a pool of maybe 3000. I just can’t scale up that way. I think the workshop price could be increased but I also think my brand needs more support from objective 1 to do that effectively (I haven’t tested this assumption). The alternative is to close multiple valuable workshops, which means making my catalog of workshops more cohesive and interesting to buy together, and polishing them (and their marketing).
I’m also going to ask for more help to understand my business drivers from people in my network. I have a fantastic network full of people who want to help me but I never asked.
Anticipated side-quests:
I want to further explore starting a business that creates businesses in Germany.
I want to figure out why ProdDuck doesn’t convert. It doesn’t even convert my friends.
I’m going to take 2 weeks off in August.
Year in review:
This has been a very wild journey so far. I’ve gone from thinking I’ll find success quickly with some strategy to thinking I’m a failure and I should just go back to a normal day job, then back again. I think I’ve now gotten over that cycle and I’m in a more steady frame of mind where I truly see the business as a business. I know I need to increase revenues and recurring business to make this long-term sustainable, but I’m also celebrating that I’ve reached the first level of revenues that make this short-term viable. I think this short-term viability has a lot to do with my financial planning and keeping a cost of living that was significantly lower than my income, and if I just made this change without either of those things I would not have been able to make it to 1 year because the first 6 months brought in a very small amount of income.
I’ve had to learn a lot along the way. I think this is the first quarter where I am only posting about my actual business and not some side quest into taxes or legal requirements. At the same time, I feel this helps me provide value to people in my network.
I’ve been totally surprised by who supports me and who doesn’t. I have some groups of people who I really thought would be very interested and ask me regularly about my business never ask me even once a surface-level question like “how’s business?”. I had someone in my network who I thought would have my back and ended up spreading gossip and misinformation behind my back to my former colleges. People who I almost never interacted with (or sometimes only interacted with once, or haven’t spoken to in years) came out of nowhere with tons of encouragement and support, some even became happy customers. I found I can reach out to strangers and they’ll be enormously generous with their time and give free advice or 1:1 calls only because they want to see someone starting out on a similar path succeed. I’m still not sure what this entire experience means to be honest.
I’m thrilled that I’ve been able to help so many teams build their skills and get towards better tech culture. This is one of the primary motivators for me running this coaching business. I want to really help people make a real change in their team for the better, not just present a workshop and move on. I think I’ve done that for the most part but of course not with 100% success. I also think I’ve been able to make an impact to more people, teams and companies than I could have if I stayed in my previous job.
I’m also glad that I’ve been able to have so much flexibility and freedom in my personal life. I’ve been able to join my wife and son on trips to the doctor or take care of him more than I could if I was stuck behind a webcam in non-stop back-to-back zoom calls (even in “in the office” everyone’s just on zoom anyway). Although it feels like I’m “always working” I feel like I have an infinitely healthier relationship to how my work and life fit together, and my highest stress levels only come from my newly developed caffeine sensitivity.