Winter in a Nutshell
- Completed our platform intelligence project at Beyond Finance and documented it in a case study
- Reconnected with past colleagues and friends during business development efforts
- Created our first LinkedIn carousel ad and grew to 76 followers
- Wrestled with the ever-present feast/famine cycle of consulting
- Planned website updates and a fun Musicbox experiment for spring
Crossing the Finish Line at Beyond Finance
Winter saw us wrapping up our platform intelligence project at Beyond Finance. They were facing the classic scaling challenge: as their business grew, system quality issues became more costly, but they weren't sure where to begin addressing them.
We developed FeatureMap, a standalone Rails gem that maps product features directly to code, creating a shared language between business objectives and technical systems. This approach aligns with our belief in the importance of effective company culture - creating shared language and understanding that enables better collaboration. By implementing it as a gem rather than a service, we ensured no data left their environment while delivering a self-contained solution with built-in linting and validation.
One of our favorite moments came when their QA team used their new feature understanding to run targeted integration tests, significantly reducing testing cycles. As their SVP of Technology noted, our work helped them improve "technical planning and project decomposition, raising the quality of deliverables and making systems more maintainable."
We're particularly proud that Beyond open-sourced the library we wrote, and we're curious if other organizations might benefit from similar approaches to bringing clarity to complex systems. Throughout this project, we discovered that finding clarity within complexity isn't just about better tools - it's about creating a shared language for teams to understand their systems. You can read more in our case study or check out our new Platform Intelligence service page.
Finding clarity within complexity isn't just about better tools - it's about creating a shared language for teams to understand their systems.
The Business Development Shuffle
With the Beyond Finance project successfully completed and documented, we shifted into business development mode - that familiar dance of reaching out, following up, and planting seeds for future work.
We reconnected with past colleagues and friends, which reminded us how much we enjoy these conversations regardless of their business potential. It's unfortunate that sometimes a work-related reason is needed to reconnect, but these discussions quickly transcend their initial purpose. With Harrison and Truman's networks primarily in Chicago, we settled for virtual catch-ups, while Dan had the luxury of actual in-person coffee meetings. We continue to navigate the challenge of maintaining connections outside our immediate spheres - finding the right balance between accepting limitations and working to improve remains an ongoing puzzle.
The shift from client work to business development highlighted how different these skill sets truly are. Fortunately, our audience-building cycle had already sharpened our writing muscles, which proved invaluable for creating outreach content and crafting messages that resonated with our network. Much like we previously discussed in our post about building an audience, we found that consistency and authenticity were far more effective than chasing viral tactics.
On the marketing front, we experimented with LinkedIn advertising, creating our first carousel ad with surprisingly decent visuals. Our LinkedIn following grew to a whopping 76 people – not exactly "influencer" territory, but we'll take it! In a classic business development irony, the LinkedIn ads were primarily clicked on by sales people rather than potential clients, yielding essentially zero contact form submissions. Yet we heard from several folks that our consistent LinkedIn presence was what kept us top-of-mind for potential conversations. This experience taught us that marketing works in mysterious ways - sometimes your consistent presence matters more than your carefully crafted campaigns.
Marketing works in mysterious ways - sometimes your consistent presence matters more than your carefully crafted campaigns.
Challenges and Patterns
The feast/famine cycle continued to be our most persistent challenge as a consulting business. We are incredibly grateful when we land projects that allow all three of us to work together, but the transition periods between these anchor clients remain tricky to navigate. This winter highlighted how quickly priorities can shift from "build great things for clients" to "find the next client who needs great things built."
We also struggled with balancing business development and our other Go Between initiatives. Our carefully structured cycle approach took a back seat as we focused primarily on biz dev while maintaining our publishing schedule. It turns out that "just add one more priority" isn't a sustainable strategy, even for a team that prides itself on productivity. The constant context switching between client work, business development, and content creation tested our ability to stay focused and effective.
These patterns aren't unique to us, but they're particularly pronounced in a deliberately small consultancy. We continue to develop strategies to navigate these challenges while maintaining the quality and thoughtfulness that defines our work.
Favorite Posts This Winter
Despite the business development hustle, we still made time for our publishing cycle. Three posts in particular stand out from the later part of this season:
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Pitching the Refactor - We tackled the challenge of communicating the value of system maintenance work. By reframing the conversation away from "technical debt" and toward business outcomes and future product velocity, this post offered practical language for technology leaders navigating stakeholder conversations.
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New Codebase Onboarding - We shared our methodical approach to mastering unfamiliar codebases, a skill we've refined through years of consulting. This guide transforms the overwhelming process into actionable steps that help product leaders contribute faster while building deeper system understanding.
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Scalable Web Scrapers - We explored various web scraping solutions from Diffbot to Apify, ultimately documenting how we built a cost-effective system using Crawlee.dev that costs just cents per execution. This practical guide quickly became one of our most referenced technical posts this quarter.
These posts reflect our ongoing commitment to sharing both technical knowledge and broader insights about building sustainable technology and fostering effective communication.
Spring Forward
Looking ahead to brighter days (literally and figuratively), we're planning to:
- Refresh our website with updated case studies and service offerings
- Experiment with turning Musicbox into a server-rendered Rails app just for fun
- Find new ways to share what we've learned about platform intelligence and feature mapping
One thing we've learned from these seasonal recaps is that public commitment helps us follow through. So check back in three months to see if we actually did any of this!
Thanks for following along on our journey. We'd love to hear what you've been up to this winter – drop us a comment below.
