Essays

There are 44 posts filed in Essays (this is page 1 of 5).

The many ways we say yes and no

I’ve been thinking a lot about how imprecise “yes” and “no” answers can be. Here’s what I mean:

FRIEND: “Do you think we’ll make it to the move in time for the previews?”
ME: “Yes.”

Here’s how yes and no translate to numbers:

Yes | 51–100%
No | 0–49%

My friend asked me a yes-or-no question, and my response was “Yes.”, which is a direct answer to the question, but it could mean a wide range of things. I could be saying, “We’ll definitely be there for the previews!” or I could be saying, “I think it’s more likely than not that we will be there for the previews.”

Although there are only two answers, each answer can mean many things, which means “yes” and “no” are actually pretty vague answers.

I think we all intuitively sense this, and that’s why most of us wouldn’t just say “yes” or “no” to that question.

If a friend asked me the question above I might respond with “Probably!” or “Probably not.” or “I think so!” or “I doubt it.” or something like that.

Although those answers are still one word or just a few words, they convey a lot more meaning.

Those answers encapsulate two ideas:

  1. Whether I think we’ll be there in time for the previews
  2. How confident I am in my answer

Here’s what I mean…

Question: “Are we going to make it to the movie in time for the previews?”

Answers:

A hundred percent! | 100%
I’m pretty sure! | 80%
Probably! | 75%
Probably. | 65%
I think so! | 60%
I think so. | 55%
I think so? | 51%
Maybe. | 50%
I don’t think so? | 49%
I doubt it. | 45%
Probably not. | 35%
I doubt it! | 25%
I don’t think so! | 20%
Now way, LOL | 0%

And of course those interpretations will vary by person, culture and many other criteria.

It’s also interesting how the punctuation—how emphatically we give our answer—can make a difference. “I don’t think so!” (with an exclamation point) seems more pessimistic than “I don’t think so.” (with a period).

One last thought: I struggled to come up with “yes” answers for 80% and 100%, and “no” answers for 0% and 20%. Maybe my vocabulary just isn’t strong enough, but it seems like that’s sort of a gap in the English language.

It’s fascinating how many things we can say with so few words.

Would you be as calm as Maggie?

Imagine that you’re learning to fly an airplane. You’ve already spent hours and hours flying with instructors, and now you’re flying solo.

You just took off on a solo training flight and the tower radios with the following news:

“…your right main is now missing from the airplane – it’s fallen off the airplane. Say your intentions.”

What would you say?

I know exactly what I would say and I’m not going to write that here. But let’s say it translates to roughly:

“AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

I’m generally very calm under pressure, but this would freak me out. I don’t know much about flying (I flew Cessna once, and that’s about it), but it seems like one of the main objectives of flying an airplane is to land the airplane (I did not land the Cessna—my uncle took care of that).

And the tower just said, “One of the things you need to land the plane just fell off. State your intentions.”

I’m not sure I’d be all that calm.

Maggie, on the other hand, remained calm as a cucumber and landed her plane like a pro.

That seems sort of like a spoiler, but it’s really not. The beauty of this recording is in the story itself—knowing Maggie lands at the end only makes it better.

Do yourself a favor and watch this—it’s well worth your time:

WATCH: 17-YEAR-OLD STUDENT PILOT LANDS HER PLANE WITHOUT A WHEEL!

Then I’ll share just a few of my thoughts.

…

All done? Wasn’t that fantastic?!

Every now and then real life gives us a story that’s better than the best screenplay or audiobook. This is one of those times.

Three things stood out to me in this recording.

Maggie’s voice over time

She’s cool, calm and collected at first (:59 in), then she sounds a little concerned, but not overly so (1:13), then it sounds like the full weight of the situation sets in (1:30), then she sounds much more relaxed once an instructor jumps on the radio (3:00).

Even when she was talking with the air traffic controller, she wasn’t nearly as calm as when talking to the instructor. Talking to the right kind of expert for that situation made her a lot more comfortable.

Once she knew she could rely on a veteran pilot’s expertise to help her get down, she knew she was going to be ok.

The importance of her training

Most of the instructions she’s given mean nothing to me because I’m not a trained pilot. I just hear a bunch of lingo punctuated by words I technically know, but don’t really understand.

If I were talking with that instructor, he would’ve had to stop every few seconds and explain basic things to me. I’m sure he could’ve done it, although it would’ve been a lot more work.

But Maggie already knew how to fly a plane, so they could skip over basic definitions and jump straight to the tactics to land the plane (even without one of its wheels).

It’s a lot easier to conquer difficult situations when you already have a grasp of the basics—then you can jump straight to tactics to help you get through it.

Everyone says “Good job, Maggie!” when she lands

It’s great to hear everyone applauding Maggie and acknowledging that she’s the one who actually landed the broken airplane. Sure, they helped, but Maggie had to execute the plan to land safely. She executed the plan to a T.

As a teacher, instructor, or coach, the most satisfying thing is to see your student deliver a perfect performance. That’s how you know you did your job well.

There are lots of other great things about that video—it’s definitely worth 12 minutes of your time to watch it!

The breakthrough that helped me smash the six-minute barrier

Earlier this week, I ran a mile in under six minutes for the first time. It felt really good for a couple of reasons.

First, it’s nice to achieve a challenging goal and it felt good to cross it off my list and see some results from all the hard work I’ve been putting in.

Second, I had already tried and failed to run a six-minute mile twice—both of my previous attempts were about 6:11—and that was really frustrating. I had been so close yet I felt so far away and it really stings to be totally exhausted without much to show for it. But not this time! This time I got it done.

What’s even better is that I had a significant breakthrough with this particular goal, but it’s difficult to describe without some context.

My one-mile run in almost-real-time

Before this attempt, I made a lap-by-lap plan so I knew exactly what I needed to do. It’s one thing to know I have to do four laps in 360 seconds. It’s another to know exactly what I needed to do on each lap to make that happen.

Here’s a summary of how I felt throughout the run—I took this down as a note on my iPhone once I managed to catch my breath and stave off some leg cramps:

First lap—1:27 I wanted to start fast because I knew that I could go much faster than the 90-second pace that I required. I added about 10m to that first lap to make sure I ran a full mile, so I wanted to be sure that I got around with time to spare on my 90-second-per-lap limit. That would give me some cushion if I slowed down later.

Second lap—1:28 I already felt tired, but I knew that would happen and had already prepared myself to just keep pushing and try and maintain the same pace through the second lap.

Third lap—1:32 This is when the mental fatigue really hit me. By this point in my run, my brain was repeatedly shouting STOP THIS RIGHT NOW!

I told myself that I was going to finish running a mile either way and if I just kept going at this pace it would be over quicker.

For the final 100 meters of the third lap, I basically had to get myself to focus on a six-minute pace again knowing I had been gradually slowing down and that I had probably used up most of the cushion from the first lap.

Fourth lap—1:26 I actually felt pretty good going in because I knew it was almost over. I’d also kept some energy in reserve, which I think was a result of my recent training to keep my legs working when I’m tired.

I started picking it up with about 300m left and began kicking with about 200m left. I went pretty much all-out for the final 100 meters although I never got into a full-on sprint.

My six-minute mile time with 400m splits

Even though I had been monitoring my time after each lap, I was really surprised to see a final time of about 5:54. That’s a significant improvement over my previous times. I actually had a little left to give at the end and the overall run went about as well as I could’ve hoped.

Before I say any more, take a minute to look back at that recap and see if you notice a theme.

My big breakthrough

Do you see it? There’s almost nothing about the physical difficulty of running a mile. The entire recap was almost entirely about my mental state throughout the run.

I started fast because I knew I had to. I got tired, but I knew that would happen so I just kept pushing. I told myself I would finish the mile regardless of how long it took, so I might as well just get it over with. I felt great and had some left in the tank, but I may have left some time on the table because I relaxed a little when I realized I had hit my goal.

It was all mental.

The last two times I tried to run a sub-six-minute mile, I lost too much time on the middle two laps. Those two laps are really tough because the initial adrenaline rush has worn off, yet there’s still a long way to go.

I expected to lose time in the middle due to physical fatigue, but I had also lost time due to mental fatigue because I wasn’t totally prepared.

I suspect I’ve been physically ready to hit this goal for over a year now. I just had to try it a couple times to see my own weaknesses and find a way to work around the mental fatigue that slowed me down.

And now, of course, I’m wondering if I can get that time down to 5:45. We’ll see.

How to get different results from the same old routine

I work out six days a week. Here’s my schedule:

Monday – Running – Track workout (usually sprints)
Tuesday – Weights – Chest, Shoulders, Triceps
Wednesday – Weights – Leg Day™
Thursday – Running – Medium distance (3.5 miles or so)
Friday – Weights – Back, Biceps
Saturday – Running – Medium distance (4.5 miles or so)

This has been my routine for a little over a year now.

It’s usually fine, but this week my legs are super sore, so my most recent Saturday run and Monday track workout were very painful.

That’s weird, right? I do the same types of workouts on the same days of the week every week, and suddenly my legs are so sore I can barely move? What happened?

My “weights” days go through a slow progression from high reps, low weight to low reps, high weight.

Last week was my first week back on high reps (15 reps) and now I’m paying the price. My legs don’t like that jump from low to high reps at all, so I’m basically going to be sore 7 days a week for the next month and then things should return to normal.

This is interesting because it shows that you can make significant changes within your regular routines without actually changing the routine itself. And those changes within your routine can teach you a lot about the other parts of your routine.

For example, now I get to see how much different my performance is when I begin my workouts on tired legs. I also get to train differently for my medium runs—my focus is more on maintaining a good pace even though my legs are tired as opposed to pushing my pace faster from week to week.

This has me thinking about other tweaks I can make to existing routines that might teach me something. Some ideas I’m batting around:

  • What if instead of 3 cups of coffee in the morning, I have 2 or 4? How would that affect my productivity in the morning and throughout the day?
  • What if I read a book with my coffee instead of reading the news?
  • What if I move one of my weight workouts to an earlier time in the afternoon?

None of these changes would change my actual routine, but they may still affect me in ways I might not anticipate. I could learn a lot by making small changes, which is nice because it’s a lot easier to make those small changes than to try one of those “I’m gonna try a whole new routine!” experiments that inevitably fail.

The War will be won on the Western Front

…or at least that’s what we’re counting on.

Some friends and I are playing a game of Axis & Allies: WWI 1914. We started about 10 days ago and we’re probably half way through the game.

Axis & Allies: a 1914 - Eastern Front

The early stages of the Eastern Front

I’m playing as Russia and the US along with my other Allies—France, the UK, and Italy. In the beginning of the game, the US sat out (just like in WWI), so I was only responsible for Russia and the Eastern Front.

It was immediately clear that the Eastern Front was a big challenge for Russia. My job was to hold the line as long as possible so the US could enter the war and swing things in our favor on the Western Front.

Fortunately, France and Italy have been playing well and getting lucky, so things are going well for us over there. I’m pretty sure the Allies will win the war on the Western Front.

This game is a lot of fun because it’s a good mix of strategy, tactics, and luck.

The luck component seems a little frustrating at first, but it’s a pretty true to how things actually happened in WWI.

A few countries would send a bunch of infantry to a battle front and although they might have some idea what would happen, the outcome would be uncertain until the battle actually finished. Maybe one side’s tactics were stronger, or maybe the weather thwarted one side’s game-plan.

In the real War, there were several battles where hundreds of thousands of soldiers were lost and nothing really changed.

The same is true in AA14 (my unofficial shorthand). We do the math on the possible outcomes, line up a bunch of infantry and artillery, then roll the dice to see what actually happens. Sometimes there’s a big swing, and sometimes nothing changes at all as both sides lose a lot of infantry and artillery.

It’s important to have a pretty good overall strategy, but the key to the game is to adjust our tactics any time we get new information. If there’s a big battle that goes our way, we may have more options available to us. If we lose a big battle, we may have fewer options and it might make sense to change course or ramp up our risk tolerance.

Lately I’ve noticed that this is true in my business as well: I make the most progress when continually update my current plan to match the information I have and to maximize the opportunities available to me.

When I get stuck on a particular plan without incorporating new information, I often make mistakes. My business is growing because I’m making fewer and fewer of those mistakes—hopefully I can maintain this trend.

Dodgin’ storms in the U.S.A.

Two Sets of Fireworks

As we finished the last of the vanilla ice cream and blueberry cobbler, it began to rain. And not just a light drizzle – a pretty serious summer downpour, even by Florida standards.

We hadn’t seen this one coming on the radar and then it was right on top of us, soaking everything only 30 minutes before we were supposed to take the boat out to the Gulf to watch the fireworks.

What we had here was a classic Florida pop-up shower, which is usually a quick-hitter sort of thing. You don’t see them coming, then you get drenched for a few minutes, then they’re gone.

We had a decision to make: Go out on the boat as planned, or watch the fireworks from the porch? Although there was a pretty dark group of clouds behind us on the horizon, we decided to head out and chance it. Even if we got hit by a couple small pop-up showers, at least we’d get a great view of the fireworks.

As you can see behind my friend Jenn and me, the sky wasn’t too bad as we made our way out. We barely made it out to the Gulf before they blocked the channel, and we went to our spot where we would watch the show that would begin in about 45 minutes.

But then, that dark gray storm began drifting in from the west. And we noticed another storm to the north. We started getting a little nervous: Those weren’t little pop-up storms; they looked pretty nasty.

But our intrepid captain had a plan: “I’ll shoot the gaps!” He told us how he would hop around to avoid this storm, then that one, then pop down to this other gap, then back over and we would be fine.

And then the rain started.

No problem! We would just “shoot the gaps!” So we punched it and got to the first gap. Nice! The sky was actually pretty blue and the rain stopped for a minute.

But then it started up again, so we had to try to find another gap. This time, instead of following the coast, we headed seaward. But the gap we were heading for closed, the rain got heavier and colder, and the sky got darker.

Uh oh. In hindsight, playing Boat Frogger with thunderstorms probably wasn’t the best idea. Hindsight is 20/20, of course.

The ponchos and towels came out, albeit a little late. I was wearing cotton shorts and a t-shirt. There were not enough ponchos. Did I mention the rain was cold?

We spotted another gap and headed that way. This time, we arrived in what felt like a sort of clearing. It was dusk, so the sky above us was dark blue and calm with a few whispy clouds. But this was little solace because we were now surrounded by storms on all sides—there were no more gaps to shoot and it seemed like our present gap was closing even as we arrived.

Justin, who was huddled in a sort of parka fort on the floor of the boat, got out his iPhone 7—they’re water resistant now!—to take a look at the radar and see where our gaps went.

Sure enough, we were in a teenie-tiny gap which was literally surrounded by red storms. This was not good. Red basically means “THIS IS VERY HEAVY RAIN AND WIND! YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE OUT IN THIS STUFF!” But we were out in this stuff. On a boat. In the Gulf. At dusk.

Suddenly, there was a lot of lightning and things went from bad to worse.

I grew up in Florida. Heavy rainstorms happen here all the time. In the summer, they happen pretty much daily. So being stuck in a rainstorm in a boat on the Gulf isn’t like FANTASTIC or anything, but it’s not too far away from what a typical Floridian experiences once every year or so as they make an afternoon run to Publix.

Of course, as a Floridian who grew up with frequent intense rainstorms and hurricanes, I also learned to have a healthy respect for lightning because it will kill you. This lightning was probably 5–10 miles away, which meant we were in striking distance.

Where do I go from “Uh oh.”?

Things got nastier still.

“I think we should go south!”, Justin shouted from his parka fort as he stared at the ever-updating radar. Then he showed us the radar, which showed that things were about to get considerably worse. But maybe there was a gap down south, so we headed south.

As we were heading to our new southern destination, Justin showed us the latest radar. The area we had just evacuated was now PURPLE. This is worse than red. According to Weather Underground, we were experiencing the second-most-intense level of rain they measure. On a boat. In the gulf. At dusk. Plus there was lightning everywhere.

The rain was steady, though less intense than it had been earlier in our ordeal. But now we were literally surrounded on all by sides by dark skies and lightning.

Here’s a video of one of the bigger, more surprising strikes. You can hear our intrepid captain’s concern excitement as he and his dad marvel at Mother Nature’s fireworks as she tried to kill us.

This meant that although we were hopefully headed for a gap, we first had to head directly into a lightning storm. Still, the floorboard-parka-fort command center said to go south, so we went south.

After 10 or 15 minutes of heading into a lightning storm at full throttle, we found the gap the radar had foretold. It was near the shore, which happened to be one of the only stretches of uncolonized beach in the area. It was beautiful and eerie. The clouds had dissipated overhead, so we were in a sort of void, surrounded by lightning storms, next to an empty beach as the sky got darker.

We waited and watched the radar, hoping that no more storms would pop up and that the storm we had escaped would continue moving westward into the Gulf.

After 20 minutes or so, a few small fireworks popped just inland of us—a good sign. The gap we were in began to grow so that we could see several miles up the shore to the original position we had abandoned earlier.

We could see that the people who had stuck it out were getting absolutely hammered by an enormous storm. The sky above them was black, constantly lit by lightning strikes. As bad as our situation had been, theirs may have been worse.

More fireworks began dotting the shoreline to our north, and we consulted the radar to confirm the worst had passed. The red was all to our west, so we began creeping northward along the sleepy shore, dodging the beach’s outstretched piers as they reached for us.

Things still looked pretty bad by the channel where we naively began our journey—dark skies, lightning and rain—but then we saw some bigger fireworks that seemed like they would be part of the big show. Our technicolor lighthouse showed the way, so we pushed the throttle, heading back to our starting point.

When we finally cut the engine a few hundred yards short of the police boats and buoys that cordoned off the splash zone, we got to see not one, but two spectacular fireworks shows: In the foreground, the man-made one we had come to see; in the background, the lightning that had chased us from gap to gap, into the Gulf, then south, and finally back to the shore we followed home.

Two Sets of Fireworks

My 2016 Year In Review: From zero to profitable

University of Florida College of Engineering Interview Preparation Workshop

In September 2015, I quit my job (again) to publish Fearless Salary Negotiation and start bootstrapping a business. So the one-sentence summary for 2015 would’ve been: Write and publish my book.

My one-sentence summary for 2016 is: Build infrastructure to turn the book into a business.

As usual, this is a long post, so here’s a table of contents in case there’s something you want to jump to:

Here we go!

How did I do in 2016?

For 2016, I thought I would just publish the book, build some products to augment the book (video courses), ramp up to enough revenue to cover all my bills and then return my focus to TaskBook. I hoped to do that early in 2016.

If you’ve built a business, you know how silly this plan was, especially considering I was more or less starting from scratch. Yes, I had published a book. But that was it. I had something like 700 people on my mailing list when I launched the book, and somehow I thought I was heading to enough monthly revenue to pay all my bills from digital products early in 2016? Who was going to buy all these products?

On average, I made about half of what I would’ve needed to pay all my bills in 2016. That’s the bad news. The good news is that I finished the year on a five-month stretch of basically paying all my personal and business expenses. So it took me almost a year, but I am paying my bills, and my business is profitable.

Of course, the ultimate goal is to make multiples of my previous day-job salary. But that’s going to take a while, so I need smaller goals in between. The first one was “Pay all my bills”. The next one is “Make a decent living”.

What I now realize is that 2016 was another foundational year. If 2015 was “Write and publish my book.”, then 2016 was: Build infrastructure to turn the book into a business.

Looking ahead to 2017

For 2017 I have a more strategic focus, supported by tactics, to build on the infrastructure I created in 2016.

It feels like this is the difference between working in the business and working on the business. I’m not exactly sure what that means, but I think that’s what’s going on. I’m moving out one level from working in the business—building products, building a web site—to working on it by growing it.

Fewer new products, more new sales

I’ve built a lot of great things in 2016, and now it’s time to grow my business and revenue. Building new products is extremely challenging and time consuming. But now that those things are built, I can reallocate that time to growing my business.

So I don’t plan to create many products in 2017, and will turn my focus to finding my niche and finding the right customers to benefit from the products I have built. I’m sure I’ll build something new, but I’m planning to resist the urge to make make make.

Focus on helping software developers

I think “the right customers” for my business are software developers. I like working with devs and they are generally positioned to gain a lot from my expertise. In many ways 2016 was just a series of experiments with different markets, and every time I worked with devs, or made something specifically for devs, the response was tremendous. For example, this article on How software developers can get a raise without changing jobs has been viewed over 30,000 times so far.

It’s pretty obvious that this is where I should focus, so that’s what I’ll do in 2017.

More traffic (continued)

By the end of 2017, I would like to have 100,000 visits from organic search per month. That’s about 15 times what I’m getting right now. There was a time when this goal would’ve seemed totally unattainable, but I know what I need to do, and I just need to execute.

The problem with this goal is that much of this is out of my control. An algorithm change or something else could wipe me out. The good news is that if I do the right things to drive this number, lots of other numbers will improve. As I’ll talk about in my detailed recap below, organic traffic has been a lagging indicator that I’m doing the right things, and I’m really interested in this stat as a proxy for other things going well. If those things go well and this stat tanks, then so be it.

What’s interesting is I have no idea if this is a stretch goal, or low-hanging fruit. One one hand, 100,000 organic visits per month seems like a huge number. On the other hand, I’ve consistently tripled organic traffic every 60 days for a year. I don’t think that’s sustainable, but I also didn’t think it was sustainable a few months ago and here I am.

If I keep up that pace (again, it sure seems like this is totally unsustainable), I’ll hit 100,000 organic monthly visits in July or August 2017—plenty of time to spare.

Make a decent living

I’m basically breaking even right now—my savings account is no longer shrinking, but it’s also not growing. And I’m living very lean to make that happen. “Make a decent living” would mean replacing about half of my previous day job income, starting to re-grow my savings account, and opening up my personal budget a little bit.

I’m not really swinging for the fences here, but that’s because I’ve learned that this is likely to be a slow, steady grind forward. Hopefully I blow this goal out of the water, but I’m not counting on it. Maybe “Make good money” will be a goal for 2018.

Finally finish my audiobook

I managed to re-record about 70% of my audiobook after learning some tough lessons earlier this year, but then I ran out of steam. I would like to get this project finished, and I’m hoping to get back to it early in 2017. We’ll see.

A detailed 2016 Year In Review

Here’s a look back at what I built in 2016.

Products and services

Most of these things are new things I built in 2016. Plus there’s a TaskBook update for those who are curious.

Video courses

I started the year by building video courses to accompany Fearless Salary Negotiation. I know a lot of people learn visually and need action items and next steps, and I wanted to give them a way to learn and apply my strategies and tactics.

This was the hardest part of 2016 by far. Not only did I have to create all the content (about 400 slides, each one scripted word-for-word), but I had to learn how to record and edit audio, video and screencasts. Meanwhile, my monthly revenue was close to zero and I had to spend about $2,000 on my car.

It took me about 10 weeks of non-stop work, but I got everything done and I’m very happy with the result. The result is over three hours of quality screencasts that augment the book and visually illustrate key concepts so they’re easier to understand and use.

FearlessSalaryNegotiation.com

I started out here on JoshDoody.com. Once I picked a title for my book, I registered FearlessSalaryNegotiation.com and published a few sales pages, but I still kept writing and pointing everything to JoshDoody.com.

In March this year, I realized that Fearless Salary Negotiation was its own brand and that I needed to start treating it that way. So I redesigned the site, moved to a new platform, and started publishing new content there. At the time, FearlessSalaryNegotiation.com had about 10 pages total. Now it has over 150 pages, and I’ve built every single one.

About 60 of those pages are the online version of the book. The rest are a mix of articles, landing pages, and sales pages.

Coaching

I’ve been coaching people since I started writing my book because I needed to know exactly what was happening in interviews, salary negotiations, and raise and promotion discussions. At first I didn’t charge anything and I worked with friends and family, then friends of friends. I did that for over a year.

Then I got a call from a friend who said, “I have a big job opportunity and I don’t want to mess up this negotiation. What’s your consulting rate?” I…didn’t have a rate, but I knew she was a freelancer, so I said, “Whatever your rate is.” She charged $75 an hour, so that’s what I charged. Then another friend reached out and since my first client didn’t flinch, I charged $120 an hour. Again, no hesitation, so I knew I needed to raise my rate again.

Fortunately, I went to BaconBiz Conf during this $120/hr engagement, and I talked to my pals Josh Kaufman and Jim Gay. I was pretty proud of myself for getting up to $120 an hour and planning to “Charge more!”, but they had other ideas:

“Why are you charging hourly?”

After a 30-minute conversation, I was planning to charge $1,500 for a fixed-fee engagement with a money-back guarantee. I would promise to increase my clients’ base salary by at least $10,000, so this would be a slam dunk ROI calculation.

Looking back, I’m not sure I actually believed I could find clients who would pay me $1,500 to coach them. (This was classic Imposter Syndrome at work.) Sure, I had made people tens of thousands of dollars. Sure, I knew what I was doing and my previous clients (paid and pro bono) had loved working with me. But would strangers really pay me $1,500 to help them bump their salary by $10,000?

You bet they would! But they didn’t much care about the $10,000 promise and I think it actually worked against me early on. $10,000 is a lot of money to some people, but it’s not much money to other people. For those other people, a $10,000 promise just wasn’t compelling (if you’re making $150,000 a year and I promise to help you get to $160,000…that’s not an exceptional jump for you). So I dropped the $10k promise and stuck with the money-back guarantee.

Since then, I’ve worked with folks negotiating at Google, Amazon, Tesla, Samsung, Verizon, and other companies you’ve heard of. And I’ve raised my rate to $2,000 with a plan to raise it again soon.

I was obviously nervous about offering a money-back guarantee, so I mitigate this risk by holding the money aside until my client tells me they’re satisfied. But so far, none of my clients have asked for a refund. (I’m sure this will happen eventually—it’s just a part of doing business. But it’s nice to have a perfect record in 2016.)

My coaching offering has been a huge boon to my business this year. About one-third of my revenue was from coaching.

The Interview Cheat Sheet

Initially, I made The Interview Cheat Sheet for my coaching clients. I found that I always gave them the same homework before their job interviews, so I figured I would make a nice cheat sheet for them. I hadn’t launched any tiny products, so this was a good chance to try that.

It only made a few hundred dollars, but that was just gravy since I made it for my coaching clients anyway. And now I include it with all my eBook and video course bundles as well.

Get Your Next Raise

Any time someone buys Fearless Salary Negotiation, I ask them “Are you negotiating an offer for a new job or looking to increase your salary at your current job?” The responses are pretty evenly split.

Then I ask some followup questions to see where they might be stuck. I found that I had a really good offering for people who were stuck on interviewing and negotiating and wanted more help from me, but I didn’t have much to offer for those who were hoping for a raise.

So I built Get Your Next Raise. It’s a pretty unique self-paced and guided course that walks students through step-by-step process to ask for a raise while I get them feedback along the way. I launched it at the end of November and I plan to promote it heavily in 2017.

This is also the first product I have built by working backwards from the specific need I saw to a solution (the course) to a free offering that offers value and helps potential students determine if the course is right for them.

Shutting down TaskBook

I’ve decided to focus 100% of my time and energy on growing my business around Fearless Salary Negotiation, which means I’m sunsetting TaskBook in 2017. This is tough because I still have people reaching out who say, “Why can’t I sign up for TaskBook?”, and I know it would help them. But I simply don’t have the resources to grow two businesses.

There’s an alternate timeline where my first big project is Fearless Salary Negotiation, and it fizzles out because I don’t know how to sell or market. Then I take what I learned and build TaskBook, which takes off like a rocket. But instead, I started with a SaaS (pro tip: Don’t do this!), didn’t know how to find customers, and got distracted by a shiny new thing, which is growing into a business.

Stats!

I mentioned this was a foundational year, and I think that will show through in this section. Here are my high-level stats from 2016.

My email list

A big metric for businesses like mine is “How many subscribers do you have on your list?”

  • December 2015: ~700
  • December 2016: ~2,500

That’s a decent growth rate considering I haven’t done any meaningful paid acquisition (Facebook ads, etc.). One thing I need to work on is learning more about what folks need when they join my list or download a free guide from me. And I need to provide more value and build a better connection with everyone on my list.

In September, switched to a new Email Service Provider (ESP) called Drip. ConvertKit was great for getting from zero to almost 2,000 subscribers. But as I tried to do more with my list, engage more effectively, learn about people, I kept bumping into limitations. Drip seemed like the best way to get to the next level, so I switched. To ConvertKit’s credit, many of the things that I left for are starting to show up in their product, so it seems I was just a few months ahead of them.

Traffic

After BaconBiz Conf, I spent an extra day in Philly. I decided to walk to a little coffee shop and found myself crashing a post-conference work session attended by many of the conference’s speakers (many of whom are already my friends). Not one to let a good opportunity go to waste, I coaxed a little advice from the group (this was not difficult), and the main message was:

You’re doing the right things, you just need to do more of them and get more traffic.

At the time, I really didn’t know what that meant, but I started doing things I thought would help. I was already doing a podcast tour, inspired by Kai Davis among others, and had begun looking for opportunities to write guest blog posts. (See a summary of my podcast appearances and guest posts here.)

I also began writing and promoting more content at FearlessSalaryNegotiation.com so I would have more content to point people to when they asked questions, and so Google would have a greater surface area of things to find and suggest for search queries.

My focus has been on Organic traffic (when people Google things and click through to find the answer) because I think that’s a lagging indicator of all other types of traffic. If I get lots of traction with my content, podcasts, guest posts, social media, etc., that will eventually translate into Organic traffic.

Here’s my 2016 weekly organic traffic:

2016 weekly organic traffic on FearlessSalaryNegotiation.com

As you can see, it’s growing pretty steadily and quickly. I have basically tripled traffic every 60 days this year, so I went from almost zero traffic in January to almost 2,000 visits a week now.

Book sales

I’ve sold almost 1,200 copies of Fearless Salary Negotiation so far. Most of those sales were on Amazon, which is why I launched on Amazon. One cool thing is that I have steadily raised my price and sales continue to improve. So I’m making more sales and getting more revenue per sale. This has been a nice surprise.

One concern I had about launching and selling on Amazon was “You don’t know who your customers are!” (this is a common thing I hear in the self-publishing community). This is partially true—I technically don’t know who buys my book because Amazon doesn’t tell me.

But! 10–15% of Amazon buyers subscribe to my email list because I point back to my site, where I offer free worksheets and email templates to accompany the book. Some of those folks have eventually become coaching clients, so I see the Amazon version of my book as a sort of combo product/marketing tool/calling card.

Coaching

I worked with about a dozen different clients this year. Not bad considering I didn’t launch my coaching offering until mid-year. I’ve intentionally grown this part of the business slowly because I want to make sure my clients get great value for the price, and because I wanted to iterate on the offering as I got to know more clients.

I’ve found that the folks who benefit the most from working with me are experienced software developers moving to larger companies like Amazon, Google, and Tesla, so that’s who I’ve been working with lately.

Talks

University of Florida College of Engineering

I had a chance to do about 10 talks this year, and they were a lot of fun. As I write this, I realize that all but one of those talks were to engineers or software developers—another sign that focusing my efforts on helping software developers is a good idea.

This talk on salary negotiation for software developers for Orlando Devs and The Iron Yard, Orlando was my first of the year and it has almost 7,000 views on YouTube. I also gave several talks at a local code school called Gainesville Dev Academy, where they buy a copy of my paperback for every student.

The really fun thing is that talks are easy for me to do—I’m extremely comfortable with public speaking. And they give me a chance to meet developers and see what they’re struggling with.

Podcasts, webinars, quotes, and guest posts

Here’s a one-page summary of my podcast appearances, webinars, quotes, and guest posts.

I was on more than 20 podcasts this year. Most of them were software developer podcasts (yes yes, another checkmark for “focus on helping software developers”), and the response was fantastic.

I think the highlight for me was talking with my pal Patrick McKenzie on his Kalzumeus podcast. Patrick’s detailed blog post Salary Negotiation: Make More Money, Be More Valued was an early inspiration for me to learn more about salary negotiation, try it for myself, and eventually write Fearless Salary Negotiation.

I also participated in three or four webinars, which was great practice. I’m extremely comfortable in the podcast format (probably more comfortable than public speaking), but not as comfortable with webinars where I sometimes need to be on camera, and where the audience is live but invisible.

I did four guest posts and was quoted in a Forbes.com article, so that’s pretty nifty.

Revenue

I’ve decided not to share my revenue numbers publicly because there are some drawbacks and I can’t think of any real benefits.

That said, I’m basically paying all of my personal and business expenses each month. That’s a big deal for me because it means I’m not spending my savings anymore. Hopefully in 2017 I can replenish the savings I burned through earlier this year.

Wrapping up 2016

It was a good year. It started slow and stressful, but things turned around mid-year and most of the important graphs are moving up and to the right.

I am learning a lot about building and running a business—this experience is invaluable. I’ve spent the past several years getting to know some very smart people, and their guidance has helped me keep focused on the right things and ignore the things that don’t matter.

I’m really looking forward to seeing how this business grows in 2017.

Business lessons learned recording my audiobook

Home studio

I’ve been recording the Fearless Salary Negotiation audiobook and boy-oh-boy is it a lot of work! Some of it has been a lot of fun, and some has been miserable. Along the way, I’ve made lots of mistakes and learned several good business lessons. I thought I should share a few of them here.

Not everything is about ROI

The standard way to think about business stuff is “What’s the ROI on that?” And I think that’s fine most of the time. But sometimes ROI just isn’t as important as other factors.

In my case, I have no idea what the ROI on the Fearless Salary Negotiation audiobook will be. I’m recording it because I don’t feel like it’s complete without an audiobook version. Audiobooks are very popular—I’ve been listening to them more and more—and a lot of people primarily read books that way. I want to make sure those people can benefit from Fearless Salary Negotiation as well.

Beyond the decision to even do an audiobook, there are lots of ROI-type calculations that I’m ignoring. For example, I’m not a professional voiceover actor, but I do know a few. And it would be easy to reach out, negotiate a rate and have them read my book.

But I’m doing it myself because I think it’s better for my readers to hear me read my book in my own amateur voice.

I need to trust my gut

I’ve been planning to record my audiobook for many months now. I finally had a window on my calendar, so I found a local studio online and booked some time. When I talked to the audio engineer, he told me that his studio space had been acquired by a bigger firm, but that he kept the equipment and moved it to his home studio.

This made me a little nervous, but I know a lot of home studio setups are great for audiobooks, so I didn’t think much of it.

There were several red flags when I got to the studio on the first day. It was a small house with three dogs and tile floors. The studio itself had no sound proofing/dampening, and my ears told me right away that the audio in the headphones was “wet” (echo-y).

But I figured I was already there, and I had been planning this for months, and the audio engineer claimed he knew how to get great results with audiobooks, so I just went with it.

Fast forward to the following evening. We finally finished recording the book and I asked for the files so I could review them over the weekend.

The audio was…not great. I sent it to a couple of friends and said, “This sounds pretty bad to me. Can it be turned into an audiobook I would be proud to sell?” The answer was universally “No. You can’t use this.” I had wasted 14 hours over two days.

The thing is I think I knew that pretty early on, but I didn’t trust my instincts. I should’ve stopped after the first day.

I made several mistakes

Here’s a list of mistakes I made, ordered so the ones that could’ve saved me the most time and money are first:

  1. I didn’t ask for a sample of his previous work. If I had heard other audio from that studio, I probably would’ve just kept looking for something better.
  2. I immediately recognized the studio wasn’t set up to do voiceover work (tile floors, no sound dampening, dogs walking around with their nails clickity-clacking everywhere). I probably should’ve just parted ways as soon as I saw the studio.
  3. I didn’t ask for a sample of our work product after the first day. This could’ve saved me eight or nine hours of studio time if I had skipped the second day.
  4. The morning of the second day, I had concerns and thought about cancelling the session. I should’ve gone with my instincts. I even texted a friend about the situation, and he agreed. But I went in for the second day anyway.
  5. I still could’ve left a few hours into the second day. As we began the second day in the studio, I was thinking, “This isn’t going to be usable. I should just leave and save this time and money.” I should’ve trusted my gut.

So I made some pretty big mistakes. But! I did avoid one very common mistake that would’ve cost me a lot more time and money…

Fighting the Sunk Cost Fallacy

It’s hard to describe how exhausting this whole process was, but I was totally spent. I literally stood in a room, held an iPad and read aloud for about 14 hours over two days.

The second studio day was a Friday. So that meant I had the weekend to listen to the audio files we had produced, send them to some friends, and determine if they were worth editing or not.

I wanted to believe that those two days and hundreds of dollars weren’t totally wasted. But when I sent samples to my friends, I said, “Do not sugar coat this. If these files are unusable, tell me. I need to know and I don’t want to produce a bad product.” It was all unusable. I had literally wasted hundreds of dollars and two full days for nothing. I would have to start over.

But this is actually a great result, and I finally went with my gut and saved a lot of time and money. The editing and mastering process would take even longer (more studio hours) than the recording process, and would cost hundreds more dollars. Even worse, the result would’ve been a terrible audiobook. So by finally trusting my gut and getting help from my friends, I saved a lot of time and money.

This was the hardest decision of all because of the sunk cost fallacy: I didn’t want to waste all that hard work and all those hours. I wanted to get something useful from all that effort. And this happens constantly in business. It’s often called “Throwing good money after bad” or “Chasing your losses”. In my case, I didn’t succumb to the sunk cost fallacy and I saved a lot of time and money.

Starting over from scratch

The good news is I had seen the recording process in action, and heard the (bad) results. And I knew I could do better with my own equipment. So I set up a home studio in my hallway using equipment I already had, and started over from scratch.

It’s not much, but it doesn’t take much. And I’m able to get “dry” (no echo) audio, which is ideal for audiobook narration. I’ve already started editing some of the early chapters and it sounds much better. I’m proud of the product I’m creating and that’s not something that shows up in ROI calculations.

I hope to release the audiobook in the next few weeks, and I’m glad I decided to put the extra work in to make sure it’s a product I’m proud of.