Collier's Learning Report, 2019
Earlier this week, I took a few hours to look back on my year. I facilitate conversations to help my clients reflect on their performance all the time, but like so many consultants, I often fail to take my own advice.
In the spirit of being honest and open, I’m sharing what I learned from my Annual Review with you today. I hope this blog encourages you to take a step back and learn from your last 12 months. What I don’t want is to start the comparison game. If you start feeling any self-judgement while reading through this please close your browser tab, take a breath, and focus on your experiences this year.
As I’ve done before, I’m structuring my annual review as answers to the following three questions:
What was the story of my life this year?
What did I learn from pursuing my goals?
What will I work towards next year?
I’m analytical by nature, so my approach to this review included reviewing all the data about my business I could find, including my timesheets, invoices, business development tracker, accounting, and so on. Then, I turned to my feelings – how I perceived my wins, challenges, values, and goals. I’m still thinking about my intentions for 2020, so that section is incomplete for now.
So, what was the story of my life this year?
This was a year full of building things. In my business, I’ve been fortunate to have taken on several projects where other consultants and I built something new from the ground up. A few examples:
With Bright by Text, we created an impact strategy that shows how their text messages make an impact on new parents, and the values that guide their team as they pursue new research projects.
With Emergency Family Assistance Association, we developed a self-service reporting solution that allows them to see their impact in new ways, using Amazon Web Services and Tableau.
With Metro Caring, we built a new Salesforce database to replace several separate case management, volunteer management, and donor management systems, allowing their team to see any participant’s engagement across their entire organization.
I also created and launched my new brand, Coeffect, this year. I’m so grateful for the other talented professionals I’ve been able to work with under this brand, including: Hillary Shaw, Kurt Wilson, Matt Krusemark, Richie Sugar, Andrea Cameron, Jennifer Howard, Laura Hollod, Casey Bates, Cynthia Haynes-Williams, and Lauren Andraski.
All of this resulted in a financially strong 2019. I’ll end the year at somewhere between $150K and $160K in revenue, and I’m happy to say that much of that goes to the partners I’ve been able to bring on through my various projects.
Outside of Coeffect, my weekends were also filled with building things. Specifically, Melissa and I embarked on an ambitious list of home repairs, including opening up our kitchen walls, renovating our family room, and countless landscaping tasks. Our own work was complemented by projects we hired out, including a landscape design, a new outdoor patio, and replacing our drafty old windows.
Me and my friend Jackson learning how to lay tile.
Finally, I’ve been able to find a better balance between work and personal time this fall – something that always has been a challenge for me. This year I kept my work weeks under 50 hours roughly half the time (an average of 47 hours per week). This is a big win that’s given me more time to give to Melissa, family, friends, and these ever-present home projects.
What did I learn from pursuing my goals?
At the beginning of 2019, I committed myself to several goals. I learned something from pursuing each of them, and I’ll share those learnings here. For each goal, I also gave myself a rating from 1 (completely failed) to 10 (hit this goal out of the park). I’m drawing from Objectives and Key Results for the structure of my goals, and if you haven’t heard about this approach before, I really recommend it.
Goal 1: Prepare my business for growth [9/10]
Some of my key results here included engaging subcontractors regularly, raising my rates on new projects, rebranding, and developing blueprints for regular project tasks. I was able to successfully complete most of these.
One thing I’m learning is that Coeffect can’t sustain itself unless I have the confidence to ask for a rate that is comparable to the rest of the nonprofit consulting market. When I crunched the numbers, if my goal salary is $75,000 a year (Lower that corporate consultants with my work experience, but equal to or higher than nonprofit program managers), I need to continue to find clients that can pay $125+ per hour. This subsidizes the 50% of my time that isn’t billable – networking and sales activities, facilitating trainings, convening and content creation, commuting to clients, self-education, creating processes, and the emails and other communications to support these tasks. The downside to raising my rates is that there will be an ever-greater number of organizations that can’t afford my services. I hate that. But aside from offering some of my time pro bono, I’m not sure I have a solution that is fair to my clients, to myself, and to the other consultants I collaborate with.
Goal 2: Model healthy and effective habits [6/10]
This was probably the weakest of my 2020 goals. Some of my key results here included waking up by 6 am daily; regular exercise, meditation, and journaling; reading certain books for professional development; and working with a coach to help me stay accountable. This last piece – working with a coach – really helped me develop more effective habits and practices in my business. However, I just missed the mark with my morning routine (I was up by 6 am only 56% of the mornings this year). I feel silly getting hung up on this, but ultimately it left me with less time in my day for meditation or learning. The consequences are intangible, but I suspect I’m more emotionally reactive and less innovative in my work than I could have been.
Next year, I’m going to try moving my workouts to the morning. I recently joined a CrossFit gym down the street. My hypothesis is that the peer accountability from working out in a group will force be to more consistent with my schedule and with the quality of my exercise.
Goal 3: Take four digitally-free vacations [10/10]
This year was filled with some great adventures. Melissa and I visited friends in Whistler, B.C. in March, my cousin Madalyn in New Orleans in May, and I was able to spend time with my good friends Devon and Alain in Munich, Germany earlier this fall.
I came back from each of these trips feeling more centered. Some of them, though, were actually quite tiring – between travel, drinking, and strange sleep schedules, it took me a few days to feel back to normal. I don’t want this to hold me back from traveling, but I want to build in some more relaxation into my vacations in the future.
Goal 4: Transform my home [10/10]
As I mentioned earlier, Melissa and I took on some big home projects this year. For all of our work, we have a more open kitchen, a new patio, a remodeled family room, and (hopefully soon) new windows to show for it. Our strategy of focusing on projects in the spring and fall between skiing and hiking seasons worked out well. I also started applying project management approaches from my consulting work to home projects, and that helped prevent me from setting unrealistic timelines.
Goal 5: Lead an interesting social life [7/10]
Some of my intentions in this area were establishing a regular volunteer commitment, going on creative dates with Melissa, and hosting four house parties throughout the year. We fell a bit short on hosting people - we hosted 2 gatherings at our house, plus my rebranding party. But I’m enjoying being a part of Social Venture Partners Denver and Melissa and I have stepped up our dating game. Going to a painting-and-wine class was one of our highlights, as was our annual tour-de-coffee. We had some big-time fails too, including an ironic but underwhelming date at our local Olive Garden (sorry about that one, Melissa).
Melissa and I’s paint-and-sip masterpieces
So, what am I working toward this next year?
Honestly, I still have to figure out what my intentions are for 2020. I’ll recycle some of the goals that I struggled with this year, and I’m setting aside some time after Christmas to think through what the rest should be. Look for an update from me in January.
Until then, I hope you and your family have a wonderful holiday season. I also hope this overview provides a spark for you to reflect on your 2019, and let what you learned guide you into 2020.
Finally, if you have important goals you’re working towards in the new year, let me know. I’d love to learn about them and hear how we can help each other stay on track.
With gratitude, as always,
Paul C