Building CAUSL - Episode 8: The Growth Conundrum
3 months in to starting CAUSL, we have a new problem to start thinking about. In this newsletter I share the thing that's keeping me up at night and the steps we've taken to address it.
An Update on Things
We’re approaching the end of our third month of operating as a company. Both client projects are in full swing and Nico and I are running at full capacity now. The way we’ve scoped the work has meant that our schedule looks like this:
As we’re new to this whole consulting gig, and not wanting to disappoint, we’ve both thrown ourselves into both projects despite only technically allocating one resource. You may think this is a foolish thing to do as there is no one chasing new leads full time but it’s been necessary to gain the learnings we have. They’ve been priceless.
We simply didn’t have enough experience in scoping projects for new clients and by both of us being getting stuck in, we’ve been able to learn at a rate that is equivalent to 4 consultants but with just two clients. Since starting, we’ve learned a great deal about scoping projects, onboarding at speed and how long we should be allocating to each phase of a new project.
Losing Sleep
Despite some operational challenges, some outside of our control and others inside, the thing that’s causing me to lose sleep is not our current projects - Nico will probably disagree with me on this. Don't get me wrong, they’ve not been easy by any means, but problem solving is what we signed up for and we’re loving every minute of the work we’re doing. No, the thing that’s causing me to lose sleep is what comes next? Where do we go from here and where does growth come from? Nico and I are still only two people so even if we both continue working full time on separate clients, I still need to find an avenue for growth. I’ve said it in a previous post and I’ll say it again - I’m building a company and I need to keep that target firmly fixed in my mind.
So how do we do this? The purist in me wants to stay focused on just product measurement but I’m trying to adopt a mindset that adapts to any situation. Or to use a quote from one of my all-time favourite movies, Moneyball – “Adapt or die”.
Adapt or Die
Obviously adapting doesn’t mean swerving into different lanes every few minutes. I’m still driving in my lane. But what if my lane got a little bit wider and merged with another lane that is still heading in the same direction? Well that's what we're doing.
Recently we had two people join the team at CAUSL, Sean Gowing and Ankit Jain. Sean brings a highly relevant and complementary set of skills to the table that neither Nico nor I possess. If Nico and I are the measurement, Sean is the instrumentation. In order for companies to understand the impact of their product and marketing activities, they first need to be able to measure their product and marketing activities. That’s what Sean does. He builds the tracking and generates the data needed to allow people like Nico and I to do what we do best – find insights and create value.
Ankit brings product wisdom. I don’t say that lightly. He is one of the worldliest people I’ve ever met. Having Ankit join the team means that we can not only increase our offering to include Product Leadership and Fractional* CPO services but I now also have a window into the mind of our ideal customer – Product Leaders. Of course his skills lend themselves to situations where a CPO/Product Leader do not exist in an organization but I can’t hide the fact that I’m excited to have him on the team as it allows us to continue developing our own product skills. He’s probably forgotten more about product development than I know.
*more about fractional services to come in future posts.
Final thoughts
Who knows what the future will bring or how successful these additional services will be, but one thing is for sure, we’re definitely trying to adapt so that we can start to grow.
Bhav