So, I finally decided it’s time to get back to some kind of cadence of publishing my personal updates. I want to publish more thought leadership on my website, and I have found that writing begets writing.

Besides, it’s really healthy to journal more-regularly. I’m already doing that in a private context, but I think it would be good to also share some of those moments on my blog. That’s the spirit of this damn thing, after all..

So, here’s to new habits. Or is it just old habits made new again. Or maybe it’s the habits we made along the way. Either way, let’s get caught up on the goings on for the past several months. Hopefully future updates won’t be so…broad, and I can hone-in on specific aspects a little closer moving forward.

The last personal update I published was in last December, and I talked a lot about re-acquainting with being a visionary in my business instead of the developer employee, and honestly that’s been the overall theme of this entire year. Over the last 6 months, Novatorius has committed thousands of lines of code for various clients, as well as updates to Siren.

Most of that code’s been written by others. What I write these days is mostly to make life easier for the team. Usually PHPNomad libraries.

But other than that, almost everything in my life lately has been all about leadership, team dynamics, organization and processes. There’s been a lot of professional growth for me in that regard, with Novatorius peaking out earlier this year during a busy time with about 15 people reporting to me, or reporting to someone on my team. Which, for me, that’s about 3 times the number of people I’ve ever managed on projects before, and it was a lot. So, since then, I’ve been focusing on leveling myself up to become better at communicating and leading people.

Unsurprisingly enough, that focus has paid off in dividends in areas I didn’t even realize needed improvement.

1. I’ve become much better at talking with friends, family, and my children.
2. I’ve found that my clients are generally happier, and I’m not over-promising.
3. I’ve learned to generally speak less. (lol that sounds so bad but stay with me)

Most of this has come from learning to listen, and leveraging better questions to prompt people to think for themselves, and allow me to either guide them to the best answer, or to gather more information before I suggest a solution.

I’ve been saying that I am becoming an actual problem solver instead of a solution creator. This has been one of the biggest changes for me, because my entire career I’ve been looked at as “the person with the answers”. It comes with the territory of being an engineer your entire adult life – you just assume that you’re the one who has to have an answer to every problem. That’s a hard habit to break.

Perhaps the most surprising thing is how much of these skills have allowed me to become a better coach for my children. I always thought I was pretty good at this, but I’ve been able to drastically improve this, and have been able to do better at asking more non-leading questions that get answers from my kids. For example, I’ve been able to much more-reliably meal prep during the week because I’ve stopped asking “what do you want to eat for dinner” and instead asking things like “what did you enjoy last week?” and “look at this cookbook and pick 5 things that look good for next week”.

The unfortunate consequence of all of this learning is that I utterly failed this Summer at forecasting my finances and my sales, and the result is that I have been dead ass broke for the last couple of months. I’m honestly in a respectably-sized hole right now, and I don’t love that.

I’m diggin’ my way out, and I have a pretty good-sized shovel, but needless to say I’m going to be doing a much better job of keeping my eyes on my sales process in the future because asking your parents for a loan so you can pay your bills is just not something anyone wants to do.

I don’t feel shame in this, necessarily, but it was a real wakeup call. I’m still a very small, fragile, business full of a few big rocks, and if any of them leave my jar I’m going to be hurting in a big way. Fortunately, I have the things in place to improve that, and have a path moving forward to ensure that we do better next year.

The simple reality is Summer is always slow in the agency world, and I need to expect that next year. The most-painful part is that we have absolutely made enough this year for me to not be in this position – I just didn’t forecast well-enough to realize that I needed to slow my roll.

So that’s where things stand now.

My biggest focus at the moment is playing the balancing act between balancing the demands of my high-touch clients that pays me now, with investing in processes and systems in my business to allow me to carve out some more time to work on the future growth of the business. It’s a ludicrously delicate balance, and the target moves from month-to-month, but the opportunity to make the transition is one of the biggest reasons why I left my job to work for myself in the first place, so I’m going to keep doing it in the meantime.

Overall this year has been a constant roller-coaster. Some days, I’m having nightmares that my kids won’t have anything under their Christmas tree. Other days I’m fulfilled, excited for the future, and jumping headlong into this journey. I’m mostly concerned about my mental health and maintaining my levels of burnout, which thankfully I have a few great systems in place to maintain that because otherwise I’d be totally fucked.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say this put a pretty big toll on my stress levels. It’s been a lot, and I wouldn’t exactly say I’ve been okay all the time. One of my dear friends, Chris Badgett of LifterLMS mentioned to me in a recent phone call that I’m in what he calls “The trough of despair” and I’ll tell ya what, it’s a pretty good articulation.

But in-spite of all of that, I’m still optimistic about where I am, where the business is heading, and where the coming months will take me. I’ve managed to assemble a small, focused team of people who are helping me grow the business, and fulfill the promises we make. We’re not exactly putting a dent in the earth right now, but we have dreams, a vision, and every week we’re rowing in the same direction more often than last week. That momentum is why we survived this past summer at all, and I believe that upward trajectory will continue in coming months.

Until then though, I’ll be celebrating the small wins with homemade cake.