Once a month, I write a personal newsletter where I talk about things I'm working on or thinking about.
Preamble:
I was a music producer and touring nightclub DJ for ~15 years. I decided to move on professionally when I developed permanent tinnitus in my ears which made it hard (and stressful) to continue working.
Since then I’ve worked on a bunch of interesting projects including scaling an e-commerce business to 7-figures, investing in commercial real estate developments, and most recently, launching a interview series called The Come Up - all while helping grow a digital agency.
👔 First things first, a professional update…
As many of you know, a little over a year ago, I started working with two digital agencies to help with growth and business development.
There were some wins and great moments over the past 14 months, but most recently I made the decision not to continue forward with the dual-agency partnership.
Truthfully, this wasn’t a “I know exactly what I’m moving on to, and therefore am deciding to leave” situation, but it began to feel as if our efforts as a team were a little too scattered, I wasn’t convinced everyone’s goals were aligning or that we could drive meaningful results spreading our efforts so thinly so I decided to move on.
I’m grateful and appreciate both teams for the opportunity and work we did together, but I think it’s for the best for a number of reasons.
For one, it was always a challenge representing two separate brands, especially with two separate leadership teams. While their service offerings are complementary - in my opinion - it added unnecessary complexity to the sales process.
(anyone in sales knows adding complexity to a sale is the opposite of what you’re trying to achieve)
Additionally, over the past year, August launched an internal SaaS product of their own for municipalities called 311AI. It is an awesome resident engagement management platform that uses conversational AI to allow citizens to make requests, access information in a conversational way.
The best way to think of it is ChatGPT for city services…
It is a great product, but naturally, with the amount of effort going into developing the product, it started to take some of the attention away from the business development efforts for the agency.
Chris and I discussed how we could restructure things in order to create better results, and decided it would be best for me to help build out the sales ops for 311AI on a part-time basis, while I start up a few things on my own.
And fortunately - unlike agency work - the target market is very specific, which already has led to a more streamlined and repeatable sales process.
Rather the “anyone is a potential client” randomness of agency work, we’re looking to speak specifically with Chief Administrative Officers or City Managers of municipalities across North America. (if you know any, LMK!)
This means, even in a short period of time, we’ve been able to build a much more streamlined sales process that feels a lot less random - a win in my books.
As for what’s next (since this is only a part-time engagement), I’ll save that for another day, but I do think there are a number of possible routes that could lead me in the direction I’d like to go, and I’m remaining open to opportunities as they come.
If you have ideas, or want to chat opportunities, give me a shout!
🌆 Creating Community…
One of my favourite parts of the business development work was the opportunity to host and attend interesting events. Given my background in music and entertainment, it was easy and natural extension of my past life, and allowed me to meet all sorts of interesting people doing interesting things.
This is something I’m going to continue to build upon, although instead of simply hosting events for business development reasons, the aim is to create strong communities and opportunities for entrepreneurs and business leaders.
This coming weekend for example, I’m taking a group of founders and entrepreneurs to the Presidential Mountains in New Hampshire for a hiking trip, where we’ll hike for 3 days, and sleep in off-grid cabins at altitude.
Obviously this trip isn’t for everyone - that’s kind of the point - because the people who are both business leaders, and crazy enough to climb 9,000 feet of altitude over 3 days are a very select, (and interesting) group.
My hope is it creates more meaningful and lasting relationships than a generic happy hour or networking event and that it will provide people with new connections and lasting memories.
This particular trip is already full, but if things like this sound interesting If this sounds interesting to you, feel free to reach out.
This is one of the larger events I’ve lined up, but also I will be putting together dinners and other (less intense) events in the city over the next 6 months.
🏃 Speaking of crazy events…
About a year ago, I went down an internet wormhole that had me Googling “the hardest races in the world.”
As a result, I learned about the Marathon Des Sables - a week long foot race through the Sahara Desert where each participant must carry his/her own backpack containing food, sleeping gear and other material.
If you know me well, you’d know that this is something that absolutely appeals to me, (a slightly more insane and condensed version of my Spain trip) and had registration for 2023 not been already closed, I would’ve already done it.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to register, but I decided right then and there that it is something I’m going to take on for 2024 - so naturally, as soon as it was possible to register for the 2024 edition, I made sure to sign up.
You may or may not know this, but I’ve had several health and fitness related setbacks over the past 4 years - most notably, a benign tumour in my knee (something called PVNS) that took over 2 years to be properly diagnosed and removed - followed by a long and painful recovery phase.
The whole experience had me going from working out daily, to barely being able to walk up the stairs, so I’m treating this challenge as the ultimate reason d’etre for getting back to the level of fitness I was previously at.
(It’s not lost on me that it may be much harder at 33, than it was at 24)
I’ve already gotten back to strength training, and am using the Whistler Gran Fondo in September as a bit of a jump-off point, but this will require another level of dedication and grit.
A challenge like this is quite interesting - it’s difficult enough that it is quite possible I fail, though that’s obviously not the goal. I find challenges like this more interesting than completing a regular race for time - it’s more interesting if failure is a real possibility.
Hopefully my knees hold up and don’t cause any issue or hiccups in training, but I’m going to have to stay really on top of mobility and physiotherapy.
I have been toying with the idea of using it as an opportunity to raise money for a worthy cause, though I have nothing set in stone yet.
Stay tuned for updates there.
That’s all for now - have a great month and as always, feel free to reach out✌️