Collier’s 2020 Learning Report
As soon as our local coffee shop reopened for dine-in service this month, I sat down with a large coffee to reflect on my 2020. This last year was challenging for me, and for all of us. How did I rise to that challenge? I’ve found quarterly and annual reflections to be one of my most valuable habits. In the spirit of transparency and humility, I want to share with you today what I learned from my annual review.
Let me be totally clear — I’m writing this for me, not for you. Perhaps reading it encourages you to take a step back and appreciate what you accomplished in the face of unexpected obstacles. But I don’t want this to inspire comparisons or self-judgment. Mark Twain told us that “comparison is the death of joy,” so please take a deep breath and let this short blog post go if you don’t find reading it useful to you.
Each year, I structure my annual review around three questions:
- What was the story of my life this year?
- What did I learn from pursuing my goals?
- What will I work toward next year?
I consult with organizations around their use of data, and I try to “walk the talk” by leveraging data effectively in my review process. In preparing for this post, I looked at timesheets for myself and my subcontractors, invoices, my customer relationship management system, accounting records, and so on. You will see highlights from that research below. But it’s also important to acknowledge feelings in this process, so you’ll also discover my honest reactions and aspirations.
What was the story of my life this year?
As for most of us, for me this year was about adapting and surviving. First, I’m acutely aware that the challenges the last year has brought us all have impacted me less than many others. I’m incredibly lucky to be able to work remotely, and I have the privilege of earning an income while so many others do not.
Melissa and I don’t have kids so we’re not moonlighting as remote learning facilitators, like so many parents today. And we are both young and healthy, so we know that if we contracted COVID-19 (and we haven’t, yet) we should recover without too many challenges.
For me personally, the most challenging aspect of the year was losing my mother-in-law, Diane, to heart failure in September. This has been particularly tough on my wife, Melissa — they talked every day. Here’s one of the most recent photos I have of Diane.
I also experienced a significant downturn in my consulting business in the last few months of 2020, as organizations were navigating the uncertainty of rising COVID-19 numbers and the presidential election. This was stressful and I cut my own pay to ensure I have a healthy amount of business savings.
And like so many people, I’ve felt a general sense of isolation from not meeting with clients or friends in person. I’ve found myself dwelling on my own shortcomings and my identity as a white man doing social impact work (e.g., “what gives me the right to…”). I think having more opportunities to meet with friends in person would have helped these dynamics feel more normal.
At the same time, I proved to be remarkably resilient. Despite the ongoing pandemic, I was able to increase Coeffect’s revenue, and I maintained healthy habits like regular exercise and meditating even when Denver was fully locked down. I’ve done better than ever at investing in my own professional development and applying lessons to my client work and business. And despite the stress of losing a loved one and spending all of our time in the same space, my relationship with Melissa is still strong and we were able to enjoy many camping trips and other outdoor adventures in 2020.
Each of my clients also experienced a unique combination of challenges this year, and we worked together to help them use data to respond and adapt. When the pandemic hit, I worked with the Bright by Text team to poll the caregivers on their platform to understand what their needs were in this uncertain moment.
For other clients like Uncharted, the pandemic accelerated changes in how and when they work, and I helped them evaluate the impact of important workplace policy changes. And for several clients like Metro Caring, I was extra flexible with our data project timelines so their team could attend to pressing community needs.
This year also presented me with several opportunities to give back in new and creative ways. First, I launched a learning cohort with Social Venture Partners Denver to coach smaller organizations in creating their theory of change. Through this project, I collaborated with eight talented organizations impacting the lives of children and youth in the Denver area.
I also started offering free office hours to any organization with questions related to their data and learning practices. And I was able to publish a blog series called “Exploring the future,” where I shared my own research into trends, alongside insights from discussions with many of my talented clients and mentors.
Financially, Coeffect had a good year despite the aforementioned slow end to 2020. We saw 13% revenue growth and ended the year with just over $175,000 in revenue. I’m also particularly proud that I was able to engage my small community of subcontractors more in 2020, and increased my total payouts to subcontractors by 67% compared to 2019. With expenses down due to less travel, I was able to increase my take-home pay despite fewer billable hours.
One of the biggest benefits of the pandemic for me has been not commuting to client meetings. In the past, 5–10% of my time was spent driving to client locations around Denver. Cutting that out has helped me achieve better work/life integration than ever before. Most weeks this year I worked between 40–50 hours a week, and from July through September I was even able to shorten my workweek to four days, enabling Melissa and I to spend more time outdoors.
What did I learn from pursuing my goals?
At the beginning of 2020, I committed myself to several goals, and I want to share my results and what I learned from pursuing them. For each goal, I gave myself a rating from 1 (completely failed) to 10 (hit the 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 recommend it.
Objective 1: Create an economically sustainable and innovative consulting practice [6/10]
This was my weakest area throughout the year, primarily because I failed to hit my internal targets for billable hours and invoicing clients. I was near my goals in these areas from Q1 — Q3, and was pleasantly surprised that the pandemic didn’t disrupt my business more during this time. However, I failed to hit my goal because of a slow Q4. I attribute this to two factors.
First, October through December were filled with uncertainty, and the usual flow of referrals and project opportunities slowed during that time frame because organizations were hesitant to start new projects. Second, I haven’t optimized my process for soliciting client referrals and making a concrete pitch to potential clients. I could have done a better job of asking my clients for connections during this slow time, and I could also do a better job of encouraging referrals in general. While I’ve been quite responsive to my clients’ needs and interests, I’m wondering if I could have won larger and more impactful projects by describing concretely how I prefer to work with organizations.
That said, I did have a number of wins in this area. I completed two pro-bono “Theory of Change” cohorts with Social Venture Partners Denver, and also offered three free trainings on this topic with the Colorado Nonprofit Association. I built a learning agenda for Coeffect and made progress on answering key questions on it through my own research and conversations with clients and mentors. And I published several blog posts, which were well-received and should support my business development efforts in the future.
Objective 2: Maintain habits that enable health, creativity, and mindfulness [10/10]
Some of my markers for success in this area included waking up by 6 a.m. at least four days a week, exercising three times weekly, meditating three times weekly, spending at least two hours a week on self-education, and engaging in quarterly reflection on my goals. I succeeded in all of these areas this year!
My success in embedding helpful habits depended on peer accountability. Late in 2019 I joined a local CrossFit gym and committed to attending the 6 a.m. class. After seeing all of the other athletes that somehow had a chipper attitude that early in the morning, it was easy for me to get up and out the door. When our gym was closed due to our statewide lockdown, it hosted Zoom workouts.
Though the quality of the video and coaching during that time left something to be desired, seeing other people live on Zoom gave me a boost in motivation. Similarly, participating in a book club with Denver Data Storytellers helped me read “Data Feminism”, a dense but valuable review of how data can both perpetuate and challenge toxic power dynamics.
Objective 3: Go on adventures for rest & renewal [10/10]
While the pandemic forced me to change what adventures I chose, living in Colorado enabled me to achieve this goal without threatening the health or safety of others. Some of my key results included:
- Engaging in four digital detoxes of four days or more — I took two extended camping trips, and two other digitally-free trips in the summer and early fall.
- Snowboard 20 days — I made it to 18 days before Vail shut down its resorts, which I count as a win.
- 15 nights in a tent — I met this through many weekend camping trips around Colorado and New Mexico.
Here’s a quick “family portrait” of me, Melissa, and our up-for-anything border collie Lucy from one of our camping adventures.
Objective 4: Transform my home [10/10]
Being at home more provided me a ton of motivation to tackle some important home improvement projects. In the spring we transformed our landscaping — a process that involved renting a Bobcat as well as wheelbarrowing upward of 20 tons of rock. This summer, we transformed our finances by refinancing to get a lower interest rate and a shorter loan term. We also managed to repaint a bedroom, and are in progress on remodeling our kitchen right now.
Objective 5: Continue building my support system [9/10]
While the coronavirus has limited my ability to spend time with friends and mentors in person, I’ve still been able to make meaningful progress in building and maintaining supportive relationships. One of my most important key results here was having creative dates with Melissa. Not being able to go out to eat forced us to do some more creative activities, like hosting a spa night for ourselves, or engaging in our own drink-wine-while-painting adventure.
Another technique that really helped me was to track the number of times I reached out to friends or family. I keep a “friends and family bids tracker” on my clipboard, and have set a goal for the number of times I reach out to these important people in my life. Doing this and having a target has helped me feel more confident that I’m doing my part to stay in touch and support the people I’m closest to.
Finally, in late fall I started working with a therapist, who has been quite helpful in supporting me to respond constructively to the feelings of loss and isolation that have come up throughout this year. While expensive, I’ve found it an important investment. Interestingly, I’ve found that having a regular meditation habit through the Ten Percent Happier app has emphasized some of the same wellness lessons, so these two activities support one another.
What am I working toward this next year?
As I think about 2021, I’m feeling hopeful. As before, I’m going to recycle some goals and reprioritize others based on what I’ve learned from the last twelve months. In particular, I want to maintain many of those habits I mentioned. In terms of specific objectives and key results, here’s what I have in mind:
1. Be uncommonly focused and strategic with Coeffect: In 2020, I realized that I said yes to many opportunities and relationships that weren’t particularly strategic. I want to make better decisions this year. Some of my key results in this area include:
- Minimizing networking and informational interviews with individuals who are unlikely to become clients.
- Rating new projects by their alignment with my target market and potential for positive impact.
- Facilitating regular internal post-project retrospectives.
- Further refining my sales process and practices for encouraging referrals/word-of-mouth marketing.
- A billing and revenue target for my business, with both a lower and a higher bound to encourage some, but not too much growth.
2. Build the Coeffect Community: I also recognize that I could be doing more to build community among my clients and subcontractors. I hope to be opportunistic in this area throughout the next year, but have some ideas:
- Host at least three Coeffect learning book clubs with my clients and subcontractors
- Host at least three other Coeffect-branded community gatherings
3. Strengthen my subject-matter expertise: I thought I would have made more progress in learning in 2020 than I actually did. In 2021, I want to make it through my reading list, which includes several of “the best resources” on important topics in my field:
- Organizational strategy: Emergent Strategy by Adrienne Maree Brown
- Quantitative methods: Asking Questions by Bradburn, Sudman, and Wansink
- Qualitative methods: The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers by Saldana
- Measurement strategy: How to Measure Anything by Hubbard
- Evaluation history: Evaluation Roots by Alkin
4. Go on meaningful COVID-safe adventures: During the summer of 2020, Melissa and I did quite a bit of camping and found that to be healthy and restorative for us both. This year, I want to do more to support our national parks by visiting the Grand Canyon, Canyonlands National Park, Tetons National Park, the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park, and Death Valley National Park.
5. Declutter my life: It’s been too long since I did any major “cleaning out” and I feel the need to work through both the stuff and the to-do’s that have accumulated in the four years I’ve lived in Denver. Some of my key results here include cleaning and redesigning my office, clearing out my closets and backyard shed, and filtering through Coeffect’s files and to-do lists.
I hope you can also find things to be hopeful for in this coming year. If you have important goals that you’re working toward, 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
