Today marks a big day for me: this is my last day at ChannelAdvisor, where I’ve been for the past nine years. I didn’t expect that I’d stick around that long. I also didn’t expect that my departure wouldn’t be of my own accord.
One Team Down
Late in Q3, CommerceHub acquired ChannelAdvisor. We weren’t sure what to expect but management impressed upon us (and customers) that there weren’t going to be any major changes in Q4.
Now that we’re in the new year, my entire team has been eliminated, along with a large number of employees. I had some excellent people working for me, so I have no doubt that they’ll land on their feet. I hate to see them get the axe as well, though, and I think the company lost some of their best employees as a result.
For the moment, I wanted to talk about what I plan to do over the next quarter or so.
Step 1: Sabbatical
The first thing I’m going to be doing is take a break. My initial plan was to take a few months off and get some of the reading and training work done that I’ve been putting off for a while. I don’t think I’ll spend nearly that much time before going to step 2, though, as I’d probably end up going stir-crazy.
In fairness, calling this a sabbatical is a stretch of the term, as it’ll probably be more like an extended 3-week or 4-week vacation rather than a proper half-year break from reality. Still, it’ll be nice to kick back and read some of the books piling up in my to-do list.
Step 2: Content Development
This is an area where I’ve been lacking over the past several months, as you can tell from the paucity of blog posts. I do keep Curated SQL going on a daily basis and occasionally have a book or something come out, but I’d like to get back into more frequent content creation, especially video content. I’m sure there will be more about this coming up, though I’d rather not spoil too much right now.
Step 3: Full-Time Consulting
I’ve had Catallaxy Services as a going business for a decade. Even when I started it, I had conversations with my wife about eventually going full-time. Now I have the opportunity, so I’m at least going to try the independent route.
I’ll save the advertising for a different venue, as well as once my sabbatical is finished.
36 Chambers - The Legendary Journeys: Execution to the max! 
I wish you and your team the best, Kevin. Thank you for the update. I look forward to working through your anomaly detection book “Finding Ghosts in your Data” soon. I have enjoyed the segments I have quickly read.