Unleashed - How to Thrive as an Independent Professional

Outsourcing research tasks via Upwork is a superpower that every independent professional ought to master. In this episode, I provide a range of examples that illustrate the types of tasks that I have outsourced to freelancers on Upwork, and then I discuss tips and tricks on how to use the platform effectively.

For many independent consultants, staffing firms are an important channel for getting connected to project opportunities. This episode presents 45 tips for independent consultants on how to work effectively with staffing firms and become their go-to resource.

On the show today Julia Bunte-Mein is back. Julia, a brilliant and accomplished sophomore at Harvard College, spent a day with me on a Winternship. On our last episode, Julia interviewed me about the advice I’d give to my college-age self, and related topics. On today’s episode, I share the tips that I’ve learned on Getting (Some) Things Done. I loved David Allen’s classic book titled Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. His system was a bit too complex for me, and I’ll be sharing what I do in practice to get some of the things done that I want to do. Then in the second half of today’s episode, Julia takes over and shares her productivity routine, which I must say is more disciplined and robust than mine. One of my goals this year is to improve my own ability to focus and get things done, and if you have tips, send me a message on LinkedIn. So there’s no one right answer, and in today’s episode you get two sets of ideas to think about incorporating – I hope you find something in here helpful.

On the show today our guest is Julia Bunte-Mein, a sophomore at Harvard College, who spent one day with me over her winter break on a Winternship. I’m pretty sure that I learned more from Julia than she did from me over the course of the day. One of the things I learned was that if I were applying to Harvard today, I would have had a lot less chance of getting in, as the bar has been raised over the past couple decades.  Julia added real value on Day One. Little did I know, but she has deep graphic design experience, and she helped me dramatically improve a mailer I was designing that day.  Julia has worked as a Researcher-Writer for Let’s Go and had actual internships in Belgium, Spain, Australia, and South-east Asia. She is the Social Enterprise Director for Harvard Women in Business and all-around a very impressive person. In this episode, we turned the tables and Julia interviewed me, mostly about the advice I’d give to my college-age self, and related topics. It was a lot of fun being interviewed by Julia, and I hope you find it useful: maybe you’ll even share the episode with a current college student.

Our guest today is Chris Doig, who has thought more about enterprise software selection than anyone else I know. I’d like to thank David A. Fields for introducing me to Chris. Chris is the co-founder and CEO of Wayferry, a boutique consulting firm with a very tight focus: their entire focus is on helping enterprise clients select software.  The firm has developed its own proprietary software and processes to support enterprise software selecton. Chris is also the author of a book that was published in October and is available on Amazon: “Rethinking Enterprise Software Selection: Stop buying square pegs for round holes.” For me, the takeaway from my conversation with Chris is broader than what I learned about software selection.  He is a great example of how a consultant can build a successful practice by carving out a niche to serve one pain point. I know at least a dozen firms that provide a range of IT consulting services. But I know just one person with an exclusive focus on enterprise software selection. So the next time one of my enterprise clients is trying to select software, guess who I’m going to call?

Our guest today is Diane Mulcahy, a McKinsey alum and the author of The Gig Economy: The Complete Guide to Getting Better Work, Taking More Time Off, and Financing the Life You Want. Her book grew out of the MBA course at Babson that she developed titled “Entrepreneurship and the Gig Economy,” which was names by Forbes as one of the Top 10 Most Innovative Business School Classes in the U.S. Diane’s book is structured around her ten rules to succeed in the gig economy, and in this episode we discuss several of those, including #6: Take Time Off Between Gigs. Independent professionals almost inevitably have time off between gigs, at least occasionally, and in our discussion Diane details an exercise she recommends to develop a set of ideas on how to use that unbilled time productively. Pursuing the life of an independent professional requires us to rethink many of the assumptions that employed professionals can take for granted. Diane’s book is a great guide for getting us to think about the life we want to lead. You can read more about Diane on her website: dianemulcahy.com

Our guest today is Roger Lee, the owner of F1 Consulting. Roger provides remote IT support for independent professionals, home offices, and small businesses. He helps his clients with network design and installation, cloud services migration, remote monitoring, and offsite data backup and disaster recovery. One of the tools that Roger mentions in this episode is LastPass, a password manager. After Roger and I spoke I adopted LastPass myself and I strongly recommend it. Roger asked me to point out that he misspoke on the cost of LastPass – the monthly fee is two dollars, not one dollar. If you are an independent professional, you ought to have an IT professional like Roger on your virtual team.  I picked up a ton of useful tips in this discussion and I hope you find it helpful.

Our guest today is Jennifer Hartz, a McKinsey alum and the founder of Corporate Hartz. Jennifer has several focus areas including business-driven community relations strategies, nonprofit strategic planning, and personal philanthropy. Her philosophy is that generosity and profitability can, and should, go hand-in-hand. Her lessons learned from helping families take a strategic approach to philanthropy can be useful to all of us – you don’t need to have a $100 million fund to start a family conversation about giving. With the holidays coming up, and the tax year coming to a close, after listening to this episode you might be motivated to set up your own donor-advised fund. With a donor advised fund, you get the charitable deduction off your income taxes today when you contribute money to the account.  Then you can disburse the funds over time to approved charities.  You can start a fund at Fidelity with a minimum $5,000 contribution, and over at Vanguard with a minimum contribution of $25,000. In our discussion, Jennifer mentions her periodic newsletter, called Hartz and Minds – you can find an archive of all her past newsletters on her website, which also lists her very impressive set of clients and her philosophy on corporate philanthropy. Check it out at corporatehartz.com.

Our guest today is John Dranow, the CEO of Smart Revenue. John’s firm has hundreds of trained, vetted field researchers available around the world, and his firm can help you fill in the data white spaces. Big data can help us analyze in exquisite detail what is happening, but it is hard to know from the data what isn’t happening. How many people walk by a store but don’t look at the window display? How many people look at the window display but don’t enter the store? How many people enter the store but don’t walk down the center aisle? How many people walk down the center aisle but don’t buy your client’s product? John’s team has a range of tools to help fill in these white spaces.  In our discussion we discuss field interviews, vision tracking goggles, how Panera might study a customer standing in line to order, and much more. John’s firm does regularly work with boutique consulting firms as well as independent professionals – so if you have an upcoming project where this type of anthropological field work would provide compelling insight, check out his firm at www.smartrevenue.com

In this in-between-isode, Will Bachman shares four tools useful for any independent professional: 1) DocuSign - to avoid the need to print/sign/scan/email 2) Expensify - to keep track of your expenses.  3) ScannerPro - to create multipage PDFs with your phone 4) Rev.com - quick and affordable transcripts