Towards the end of Summer 2024, I made the decision to return to full-time work. I had three reasons:
I missed technical work.
I missed being part of a team; the shared purpose, daily feedback and conversations with people who are not my dog.
I wanted to buy a house.
In short, I wanted out of the freelance life. It was lonely and overwhelming. I didn’t think I was doing a great job of it.
So, I started interviewing. I revealed the results of that process last week. If you want a summary, imagine turning up at a new school, being held down and kicked in the balls for 3 minutes before everyone runs away and later denies that anything happened.
This gave me the nudge to rethink my direction. Behind the scenes, other things had also been changing:
Less anxiety. The fatigue that’s been around since burnout seemed to lift. My anxiety significantly improved after a painful flare-up last Summer and my low mood evaporated with it.
More energy. Anxiety is exhausting. Extra energy I didn’t know was available started to return as my anxiety diminished.
I read David Cain’s How To Do Things which provided the keys to working more consistently than I had in years. It also gave me a vital clue about why this might have been hard for me in the first place. More on this in another post.
My housing situation unexpectedly changed, meaning that I am no longer living at the whim of a landlord.
After sitting with all this for a while, I still felt I had so much to offer people and I ached to get back to that. Several people must have overheard my inner monologue and booked discovery calls to drive the point home.
No one cracks this the first time. I was listening to Coach Builder by Donald Miller recently and he said it takes three years for a coaching career to fully metabolise. I felt relieved. That includes all the work required to tell people what you’re doing, get your marketing infrastructure set up, get enough people interested enough to invest, and for your old job title to disappear from their minds.
I sketched out a vision and set some ambitious goals. I met a new friend with a similar background, who’d given himself 3 months to kickstart his freelance life and our conversations threw further fuel on the fire. My friend is Gavin and you should speak to Gavin if you want to talk to a fellow engineer about optimising your hiring process and finding quality hires, faster.
If I was going to try this again, some things would need to be different. I read a couple of marketing books over Christmas and realised:
My initial coaching offering was too broad. Coaching is effective in many situations and I enjoyed working with different folks. But this made it difficult to find and serve a particular group.
When natural niches did arise, it was hard to keep them interested because I was writing about note-taking one week and the risks of spiritual bypassing the week after.
I didn’t do a great job of explaining how I can help people. I was too tame.
I didn’t link coaching to the other ways I work with companies as a consultant and fractional leader.
I didn’t have CRM, I did no cold outreach, I didn’t have a product ladder…
It was a miracle I had anyone knocking at the door, but referrals and my writings did bring some wonderful people into my orbit.
All of which is to say: I’m taking another shot at this. But with a few key changes. My coaching will be targeted at technical founders of early-stage companies. Here’s an elevator pitch for you:
I’m Dan—a founder, engineer and accredited coach who works with early-stage, technical founders to elevate their leadership, deliver more impact & deepen their resilience. (i want those things!)
I’ll also be stepping up my involvement in a few companies that want my hands-on support to solve their engineering, product & management problems, in an advisory or fractional role. (wow interesting, I need one of those)
I’m excited about working with people in this way. I get to return to supporting people 1:1 whilst staying technical and engaged in the kind of work that I find most challenging. It feels like the sweet spot between what previously appeared as two different directions.
I’m also going to write more for this audience: engineers, leaders and founders. Trying to do that here would be trying to do too much with one newsletter. So I’m splitting these writings off into a new newsletter called Code & Compass. (✨🧭)
There are some great technical newsletters out there, but not so many that explore the intersection of building great products, leadership and personal resilience—e.g. how to scale yourself. Are you taking the elevator back down?
Code & Compass is a newsletter for founders, leaders and engineers looking to elevate their craft whilst scaling themselves.
I will not add anyone’s email to this new list by default. But I would love to have you on board:
If you cannot see the above button in your email, visit this link without hesitation.
Not out but through is not going anywhere. It will continue to be a deep dive into anything and everything that interests me—learning, writing, fitness, philosophy & meditation—alongside personal updates & unsolicited reflections.
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I have a lot of material in the works to get people trembling with excitement about what I’m offering. But in the meantime, you could accelerate your 2025 claim to sainthood by referring people to me:
If you have a friend or colleague starting out as a technical founder, or perhaps a more experienced hand struggling with growth post-fundraising, then please send them here.
If you’re running an early-stage company and want more hands-on support from an experienced technical leader, let’s talk.
I’m also holding unoffice hours. I don’t have a specific time block for this yet, but I’d love to chat with new folks and hear what you’re working on. You can jump directly into my calendar here.
For anything you can do—thank you!
