August was a great month. I would summarize it as: “Slowing down to speed up.”

I was able to take some time off for the summer holiday, and during that time, let my brain slow down a bit which helped me to rethink, improve and plan the next six months, as well as acknowledge some recent achievements.

As I mentioned in my previous retrospective, July was an eye-opening month for me. So, August was the pilot phase of this new working format: an entire year of CTO coaching for a select few startups.

Starting my first coaching group in the beginning of August allowed me to fine-tune the format—reviewing the content as well as structuring the worksheet templates to help me and the startups collaborate better.

There is one more realization that I had last month. My role isn’t operational anymore, despite deeply knowing how things work and having the skills to develop or configure infrastructures myself. My biggest value is in analyzing the situation using my experience of working with almost a hundred startups—providing CEOs an action plan, giving clear instructions through video tutorials, and then coming back few days later to review how their team implemented things.

In other words, I already have more than enough knowledge to do things myself. I’m pretty good at teaching things, but most of all, I’m great at knowing what to do and when to do it. And that’s where I’m laser-focused right now: guiding the CEOs, training them and their team to do things right, and providing them feedback and helping them evaluate their own work to help them improve their tech management skills while building a highly successful company.

It’s been two years since I started creating video courses for startups. This allows me to provide an even better level of value—combining my one-on-one time and my teaching materials. I know you will be seeing great results from these startups who will be part of my 1-year CTO program.

If you want to know more and have a call with me to see if it fits your project, just go to: https://myctofriend.co/1yearcto-requestacall/

I’m looking forward to sharing with you how it goes (how the new group is going) by the end of September.

Project	This month’s results vs goals	Next month’s goals
Book writing	Review: As I’ve decided three months ago, this project is in standby mode but is still in the back of my mind.	Goal: Keep it in standby mode, but I’m thinking of taking a week off without internet connection to focus on it.
Email communication	Review: My follow-up sequence is now officially outdated. I’ve been changing a lot of the details on the 1-year CTO program, so it just didn’t make sense to adapt it.	Goal: Review the follow-up sequence.
Course creation	Review: I was set to prepare the plan on remote team management. Not done. Shaping and adapting my coaching program was almost my only focus during August.	Goal: This month I will prepare the content of my next course on “remote management,” which is also the topic of the conference I’m going to speak at in a few weeks. In the meantime, if there’s any topic that you would like me to focus on, let me know on: myctofriend.co/videos.
Course promotion	Review: Produce weekly videos and blog posts. Done. I’m very happy with the process that I have established. It’s smooth and not time-consuming anymore.	Goal: The main action I’m going to work on is to automatically share parts of my courses on social media.
Social media presence	Review: Plan posting regularly on social media even while I’m off. Done. But my automation system stopped by the end of August and I forgot to plan for new publications. Lesson learned: we are lazy with things we don’t like.	Goal: Review all my automation tools and the publication process to always have a good social media presence without having to worry about it.
Website improvement	Review: I wanted to publish my new About page with better pictures of me when I was young… I wasn’t able to find better pictures but I published it anyway. It feels weird when we share a picture that is almost 25 years old. It makes you think if where you are now is better than where you were, even though where you were was what led you to where you are now.	Goal: My current focus is definitely my coaching program. So the only thing I will do regarding website improvement is adding my coaching program page: myctofriend.co/1yearcto-requestacall.
Public speaking	Review: Plan a second talk for September. I was running late on this. I’m waiting for the dates of two events, but not sure if both are going to be for September.	Goal: I’m planning to travel to London in November. I will be reaching out to my contacts over there to propose a conference for an incubator or accelerator.
Unexpected achievements	Review: I realized last month that I was wrong working without a long-term collaboration, willing to provide my clients too much freedom that became a drawback. Indeed, CEOs do not have the tech skills to anticipate difficulties on the development side of things and need a CTO in their corner to back them up. August was when I started my first coaching group. The feedback has been great, and the results even better. Having me in the beginning of their project changed everything in their development process. The startups were able to accomplish what was planned, and the next months will be key in establishing them as stable companies.	Goal #1: Improve the way I coach my mentees, adjusting my coaching program formula according to the feedback.  Goal #2: Onboard a new group of four startups this September. If you are looking for CTO or want my guidance on your project for an entire year, just schedule a call with me here: myctofriend.co/1yearcto-requestacall.

Note: You can also find this article on LinkedIn here:
https://outoftech.com/amauryonlinkedin