On my way home I stopped off at Spin NYC to watch the Singleplatform gang get WAY too serious about ping pong! Here's the very end of the Jeff G / Stanley SHOWDOWN!
The weird feeling of checking into a hotel in the middle of an office park awaiting to attend a meeting that you don't know much about = the life of a self-employed consultant.
On Thursday, I biked over to Soho for my first day of consulting for ShopKeep. (They were a fantastic client and I ended up working with them every week for the next 9 months!)
...to help them map their sales process in preparation for moving things over to SalesForce. At Flux Capacity I help companies define, then optimize complicated, costly things. Sometimes it looks like this!
On Tuesday I went down to SinglePlatform and admired some of the posters created to by their sales teams. "Eat your Greens for Laser Fucking Focus!" "If looks could sell." Hahaha.
Then spent the rest of the afternoon helping a start-up I advise build a model that takes all their assumptions into consideration and helps them understand how the relationship between all the variables in their business and how they related to the return (or lack of return!) generated by their investment. Modeling this all out beforehand helps companies identify what needs to be true in order to be successful. (Nerd stuff!)
Work-plug: If your company employs developers, I'd love to help you create a similar map that you can use to understand how to best invest their time and effort in order to grow the business. (Flux Capacity)
Late that afternoon, I headed to meet my clients in midtown to present my thoughts. My job is wonderfully weird. I feel really lucky that I get to rent-out my brain to help people solve problems that are important to them.
Spent Wednesday morning organizing my thoughts for a VC fund that had hired me to put together my thoughts about a market they were considering for investment.
After almost two years of consulting full-time as Flux Capacity, I finally had worked with enough clients to put together a decent-looking clients page. Photoshop drop-shadow, kapow!
Helping companies evaluate their growth and come up with clear, testable hypothesis for how use their limited resources in order to continue growing is what I specialize in! I feel lucky any time a company hires me and invites me join in on their strategic planning.
Signed up for a class at General Assembly to go over some Python basics. As a developer, I am C- at C++. (This is my favorite product manager joke. Never fails to get a chuckle from devs)
Crazy mural when you enter. "The mural, designed by Ecko, puts visitors on the red carpet being photographed by paparazzi as they enter the front door." (source)
In order to internalize and process lots of information given to me quickly, I end up making all sorts of weird drawings of how things are connected and interrelated in my mind.
As a consultant, I get to see lots of different work spaces. I always enjoy the kinds of conflicts that come from different companies sharing bathrooms.
Even their t-shirts are good! They were my very first long-term client and really helped me launch my product consultancy! Thanks for an awesome ten months, everyone!
On Tuesday afternoon I went to Yipit's offices. One of my favorite things about consulting is that I get to see so many different companies and how they work and grow. Yipit has a big section of their office dedicated to communal-lunch picnic tables.
In addition to the Foursquare integration, I had also been working with TwoToasters as the client-side product manager for Yipit's very first mobile app!
