Unleashed - How to Thrive as an Independent Professional

Our guest today is Umbrex member Whit Pidot, an independent consultant who was formerly a Partner in the Travel practice at McKinsey. His clients include the CEOs of some of the top travel companies in the world including airlines, rental cars, and hotels. Whit has been fascinated by the world of travel from an early age.  As a hobby, he has been running a travel agency on the side since college.  In today’s episode, we first explore some of Whit’s favorite travel hacks for business travelers, such as: For finding the best rates on rental cars, Whit likes Autoslash.com. For hotels, if you aren’t going to book directly on the hotel brand’s website, Whit’s current favorite sites are Upside.com and Rocketmiles.com. For all travel properties, ask what the Triple A rate is: sometimes the AAA rate is better than the corporate rate. Whit once had an entire McKinsey team get AAA memberships because the AAA rate at the hotel they were staying at was better than the McKinsey rate. We discuss Whit’s travel agency, and how being in the business himself with his own Sabre subscription has given him a pulse on the business that informs his consulting work. We also discuss Whit’s consulting work, which has a strong focus on loyalty programs. I love hearing Whit’s stories about the travel industry, and I hope you find this episode helpful.

Our guest today is Joachim Fischer, a mentor and good friend of mine who was an Expert in the Operations Practice at McKinsey when I got to know him a dozen years ago Joachim is the only McKinsey alum that I know who started his career as an apprentice cabinetmaker. As he explains on the show, the training he received as a cabinetmaker has been incredibly relevant to his career, probably more important than anything he learned in college. He still spends a lot of his free time building beautiful things with his hands, and that practical, craftsman knowledge informs his professional work driving improvement on the shop floor. Back in 2006, Joachim and I spent three days together on a quick operations diagnostic of maintenance workers doing A-checks on a 747 at John F. Kennedy airport, which has got to be one of the most fun things I did at the firm.  Joachim started his independent consulting practice ten years ago, and after I started my own practice I’ve regularly called him for advice, and I’m really grateful for all the counsel he has given me over the years. On the show we discuss Joachim’s three main areas of focus, including lean transformations, operational problem solving, and coaching and mentoring.  Over ten years, about 95% of his business has come from just twelve clients, and he offers a powerful example of building deep relationships with clients that last for years. I always learn something when I talk to Joachim, and I hope you find this episode helpful. To learn more about Joachim and get in touch, visit the website of Fischer Advisors.

Our guest today is Tsavo Neal, who has thought hard about how consultants can generate more client leads with their website. Tsavo has written dozens and dozens of posts on this topic and you can find all his work on his website, tsavoneal.com, which is a valuable resource. He’s got examples of best-practice consulting websites, dozens of specific ideas on how to raise your visibility, tips on how to convert website visitors into leads, and much more. Tsavo has  many valuable insights on marketing professional services, and I hope you find the discussion valuable.

Our guest today is Aner Ravon, Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer at Zirra, a technology company focused on market analysis, using big data and artificial intelligence. Aner and his co-founder recognized a real pain point for investors and anyone else doing research on smaller companies: it is very time intensive to search the universe of sources and pull together a basic set of facts. They thought, wouldn’t it be nice if we could use artificial intelligence to scan public sources and pull together the basic information, so that analysts can spend their time on processing the information and synthesis. And that is just what they built. Zirra’s main product is a company snapshot that is built by a combination of artificial intelligence and a human editor who provides quality control. The snapshots are created on demand and take about 24 hours or less to deliver. I’ve tried out the service myself and I’ve been very satisfied.  The report you receive looks like it was created by a human.  It draws on dozens of potential sources, such as LinkedIn for number of employees, Glassdoor for employee reviews, websites of the company and its competitors.  All the sources the report relies on are listed with live links. The price of this company snapshot depends on how many you are going to purchase. If you are buying only a handful, the price starts at $200. If you are industrial scale, the price can get down to $100 each. The ideal target to research using Zirra has revenue in the $5 to $100 million range.  For smaller companies, there probably isn’t much public on the web for Zirra to scrape.  And for larger companies you can probably find some Wikipedia article or analyst coverage to get you up to speed. The ideal time to use Zirra is right at the beginning of a project.  If you’ve already been looking at a company for a couple of weeks, you will probably already know most of what Zirra will tell you. The biggest value is using Zirra to quickly get up to speed so starting on Day 2 of your project you’re prepared to ask smarter questions as you pursue your research. You can get started with Zirra by visiting www.zirra.com, click on the Pricing page and submit an inquiry. Aner himself will read your request and make sure you are taken care of.

Our guest today is David Topus, who helps his clients turn reputation into revenue. I think that’s a pretty great positioning, encapsulating what David does in four words. And that’s what you’d expect from a professional who has been running a strategic sales messaging firm for over twenty-eight years. In the first half of our discussion, we cover personal branding, with a focus on how to enhance your LinkedIn profile. In the second half of the episode, we discuss David’s most recent book, Talk to Strangers, which is a guidebook on how to initiate conversations with strangers and includes dozens of examples of how David and those whom he has coached have turned conversations with strangers into business opportunities. I’m a bit of an introvert, and normally the last thing I’d do is to strike up a conversation with a stranger. But after my talk with David, and reading his book, I said, OK, I’ll test this out. Over a few days of skiing I went outside my own comfort zone and initiated conversations with strangers on the ski lift. Now, I never went so far as to actually ask for contact info – I was just taking some baby steps.  But I did end up having over a dozen fascinating discussions.  I met a woman who works as a ski instructor during the winter and during the spring and summer produces car commercials. Met the owner of a gas refinery, at attorney at Bank of America who works on credit derivatives, a woman in college who is studying to become a dentist and who plans to join the family’s 110-year old dental practice – she was helping with bite wings when she was eight years old. I met a professional rock climber, a woman who runs a business that checks on Park City condos while the owners are out of town, and the sales manager for the Western U.S. for one of the two leading printing companies. I hope you find this discussion valuable, and I hope you’ll test out David’s suggestion and strike up a conversation with a stranger today. Visit David's website: http://www.topus.com/ David's book: https://smile.amazon.com/Talk-Strangers-Everyday-Encounters-Business/dp/111820347X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1521748374&sr=8-1&keywords=david+topus

Our guest today is Jonah Gruda, a Tax Partner at the accounting firm Mazars USA, LLP. In this episode, we discuss a wide range of tax-related topics relevant to independent professionals. We cover differences between various structures including LLC, S-corp, and C-corp. Before our conversation, I thought LLC was the obvious choice for most independent professionals, but Jonah made me realize that there are many factors that go into the equation and you really want to sit down with a professional to figure out what structure is right for your situation. We discuss bookkeeping, how to hire a subcontractor, various deductions to keep in mind, and nexus issues you want to be aware of. We also discuss the implications of the new tax law: the short answer there is that it is going to take some time for the IRS to issue guidance to resolve some of the ambiguous or even contradictory aspects of the law. To get in touch with Jonah, you can visit www.mazarsusa.com. Here is a link for Jonah's contact info:  http://mazarsusa.com/about-us/our-people/jonah-gruda/ I hope this episode answers some questions you may have about the tax side of running your own firm, and raises awareness of important points that maybe were not top of mind.  

Our guest today is Rak Chugh, the Founder of Byte Academy and the Architect of edChain. We met in his office in Midtown Manhattan. Byte Academy provides training in python development, FinTech, Data Science, Quant Algorithms, and Blockchain. They have a full-time program with modules that last 14 weeks, and a part-time program designed for working professionals. Their students include recent college graduates – even some with Computer Science degrees – as well as mid-career professionals who want to switch careers or just broaden their skill set. They also deliver customized corporate training programs. My belief is that as independent professionals, we need to be continuously working to stay current and build our skills, so I was quite interested in hearing about what skills Rak sees as most in demand. Right now, blockchain is a blazing hot topic, and companies in all industries and scrambling to figure out the implications of blockchain technology for their business and how to seize those opportunities. You can read more at byteacademy.co In addition to running Byte Academy, Rak is also the architect of edChain, which is an open-sourced, decentralized library that allows the sharing of educational content across applications and organizations. In the second half of the episode, we discuss edChain. Rak explains that his goal with the technology is to lower the cost for educators to publish content while providing full attribution and facilitating monetization across platforms. A second goal is universal access, so that students can gain access to the best of breed courses in the world, wherever they are. A third goal is to unlock value by enabling content to stay connected to an educator. And if the content creator allows it, her content can be incorporated into the courses of other content creators, and the technology ensures that the first creator would continue to capture a fair portion of the revenue stream from products that incorporate her work. You can learn more about edChain at edChain.io I’ll also mention the social handles @byteacademyco and @edchainio, and you can find them on Twitter and all the major social networks.

Our guest today is Molly Leeds, a benefits account manager at Brown & Brown of New York. Molly helps  small and medium sized businesses to obtain the best package of employee benefits to fit their needs. In our discussion, we focus on healthcare benefits. If you are a solo, independent professional with no employees and no partners in the United States, your main option for getting health insurance is Obamacare, via healthcare.gov. But if you have at least one employee, or you band together with another independent professional to form a partnership and have at least two eligible members in your company, you can start looking at small group healthcare plans, which can be a better value in some, but not all, cases. Molly walks us through the various options for health insurance and we also discuss how to find and select a health insurance broker. Molly’s firm, Brown & Brown, helps clients with a wide range of products and services, including trade credit, business insurance, employee benefits, risk management, and more. You can learn more at their website, www.bbinsurance.com, where you can use their office locator to find an office near you.

Our guest today is Johnny Warström, the CEO of Mentimeter, which is a tool that can help you make presentations, workshops, and meetings more interactive. Here's a link: https://www.mentimeter.com/ The tool lets you take a live poll of your audience, and the results get updated real-time in your presentation. The audience doesn’t need any special hardware – just a phone or any other device connected to the Internet. When I interviewed Johnny, I had not yet used the tool.  I just got back from facilitating a professional development event with about 25 independent consultants where I tried Mentimeter for the first time, and it was a massive hit. Some of the attendees said that Mentimeter was their number one takeaway! We’d be having a facilitated discussion and presenting regular slides, and the attendees were engaged, but you could see the energy in the room starting to flag. And then we’d get to a place with a Mentimeter survey, and, Bam!, the room came alive. Out came everyone’s phones, and you’d see the responses coming in on the screen, and people were looking up to see how their response compared to everyone else’s – it was awesome. I can’t imagine doing a presentation in the future to a larger group without including a few Mentimeter surveys. I’ll also say the tool is incredibly easy to set up.  I had put it off for a week, because of the activation energy involved in learning some new piece of software. I shouldn’t have worried. If you can drag and drop, you can have a Mentimeter survey ready in about 60 seconds. One tip: while most of the survey templates are quantitative, do try out the “Open-ended” question type, in which respondents can type in free text. It is very cool to see all the responses popping up on your screen up in front. You might start a meeting by asking, using Mentimeter, “what are you hoping to get out of today’s session?” Or you might end your meeting by asking, “What is your key takeaway from today’s session?” or “What was most valuable to you from today’s session?” The tool allows you to export all the responses, in either Excel or PDF format, so you can use in later analyses or presentations. Mentimeter has 16 million users – I’m one of them.  I do encourage you to check it out and try it in your next meeting.

Our guest today is Josh Boltuch, the CEO of Fancy Hands and its subsidiary, On Demand Ops, and in this episode we talk about both firms. Fancy Hands is a network of thousands of U.S. based virtual assistants. You sign up for a set number of requests per month and pay a fixed monthly fee. Each request can be pretty much anything that can be done on the Internet or by phone – whether that is calling your utility company to complain about a charge on your bill, or researching the best BBQ joint to visit on your trip to Memphis. You don’t get a dedicated virtual assistant: each incoming request gets farmed out to the next available person who is a good fit for that assignment. On Demand Ops was launched by Fancy Hands in 2017 and is geared more towards the enterprise customer. A key service of On Demand Ops is large scale lead generation, for example. They’ll work with a client to develop and refine a script and a protocol, and then they will make thousands of phone calls that have the goal of setting up calls with qualified customers interested in hearing about the client’s project. They have sophisticated quality control and analytics that Josh describes in our discussion. As an independent professional you might not need this service for your own practice, but you may well have clients that are looking for a solution like this. For those who are interested in trying out Fancy Hands, Josh kindly offered a discount code to listeners of Unleashed. Use the code Unleashed when you sign up and you’ll get 50% off your first month’s subscription.