Unleashed - How to Thrive as an Independent Professional

Sinisa Slijepcevic studied with Stephen Hawking, among other professors, while earning his PhD in applied mathematics at Cambridge University.  Sinisa is a McK alum and independent consultant and runs a firm called Cantab Analytica, which is based in the UK and Croatia. Sinisa’s firm leverages machine learning to help clients make better decisions and to focus energy on the right decisions. In our discussion, Sinisa provides several case examples to illustrate how machine learning can help make decisions in three ways: First: decisions that may be subject to unconscious bias, such as the investment decisions made by venture capital firms Second: decisions that are complex and also occur very frequently, such as dynamic pricing of hotel rooms. Third: focusing management attention on the most important decisions, such as figuring out which purchasing decisions are the most critical in a supply chain. You can learn more about Sinisa’s firm on the website: cantab analytica.com

Our guest today is Karen McGrath, who runs a firm of virtual assistants called Awan’s Assisting. If you are an independent professional and feel crunched for time, this episode is for you. Karen and I discuss why an independent professional should consider hiring a virtual assistant (a VA), the types of tasks that VAs are most commonly asked to do, how to find and screen a VA, and some tips on how to build an effective working relationship with a VA. Karen clearly knows her business, and you can find her firm at http://awansassisting.com/

Our guest today is Kenny Jahng, the founder of Big Click Syndicate LLC, a strategic positioning agency offering content marketing consulting & advisory to nonprofit, cause-driven & faith-based organizations and churches across the country. Kenny has an amazing list of clients that includes the Princeton Theological Seminary, California Baptist University, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, The United Methodist Church, & Wesleyan Investment Foundation, among many others. In our discussion, Kenny educates me on what content marketing is all about. The core of what he does starts with helping clients on their strategic positioning, building internal alignment on the mission and the vision of the organization. Often, this exercise has implications beyond communications and informs strategic decisions the client makes. We also discuss lead generation, and how Kenny helps clients build thirty or more custom landing pages that each focus on a niche audience, providing something of value to earn the right to continue a conversation with that visitor over time. I was incredibly impressed by the sophistication of what is going on behind the scenes, and we just scratched the surface.  If you are intrigued by what you hear in this episode, you can learn more about Kenny’s work at www.kennyjahng.com.

Sri Kaza, a former McKinsey partner who specializes in sales and service, left the firm to put his sales expertise to work as the SVP of Commercial Operations at Viking Cruises, and subsequently led sales for a company offering a SaaS-based solution to obtaining tax credits. Sri is now running his own independent consulting practice while also developing two separate SaaS startups. One of them is a tool to help companies hire the employees most likely to perform well and stick around, based on academic research and testing that looks at 70 personality traits. The other one helps companies optimize their incoming leads by routing that lead to the right sales person. Sri’s consulting is focusing on these areas, allowing him to better understand unmet needs.  So while he serves clients he is also doing market research for his startups. In our discussion we explore in some detail the concept of how to optimize incoming leads, and Sri shares some initial steps that you can help your clients with. Sri also mentions that he is happy to partner with other independent consultants, so if you are serving a client with a large number of incoming leads and more than, say, 10-20 sales reps, reach out to Sri to see if he might be able to help. Or if your client hires a large number of front line service personnel every year, Sri may be able to help your client reduce training and replacement costs with his recruiting solution.

Our guest today is Jason Korman, who entered the world of consulting via the wine industry. Jason is the founder of Stormhoek Winery, a South African wine label. While running that label, he retained Hugh MacLeod to blog and draw for Stormhoek, creating one of the the web’s earlier social media campaigns. Even if you don’t recognize the name Hugh MacLeod, you have probably seen his cartoons, which are absolutely distinctive. Hugh’s cartoons are generally about the world of work and marketing, and the drawings are beautiful and abstract, often resembling a cross between Rube Goldberg and Pablo Picasso. I've been subscribing to his daily blog for years and years – check it out at GapingVoid.com My hero Seth Godin is a huge fan of Hugh, and I think that’s how I first discovered him.  Hugh is also the author of the book Ignore Everybody, which I highly recommend. So Jason hired Hugh, and the campaign that Hugh developed was widely successful and won all sorts of awards – while the work helped sell wine, they found it was also helping people have important conversations. One thing led to another, and the winemaker and the cartoonist decided to set up a consulting firm, and the Gaping Void Culture Design Group was born. In our discussion, Jason tells me about how his firm helps corporate clients use art to drive cultural change. The firm is happy to partner with independent consultants, so if you are working to drive cultural change at your client, check out the website to explore if it might make sense to collaborate – visit gapingvoid.com

Our guest today is Ahmad Munawar, who helps boutique professional services firms build actionable marketing plans that generate more leads so they can win more business. He’s got a podcast that I encourage you to check out called “Forecast – Marketing for Boutique Professional Services & Consulting Firms” He’s also got a free video course on lead generation that you can take at fiveleadgen.com In our discussion, Ahmad walks me through the five steps that he suggests we take to build a marketing plan, namely: identifying our target market; developing our positioning; establishing what solution we’ll offer; building a marketing funnel; and creating an action plan. While those may sound like phases that our common to any marketing plan, we dive into what each step means for a boutique consulting firm. You can learn more about Ahmad’s firm at boutiquegrowth.com

On today’s episode, the tables are turned, and our guest, Sophia Dai, interviews Will Bachman. Sophia received her MBA from Kellogg and then spent the past two years at Boston Consulting Group. Now a Senior Associate, she’s decided to leave BCG, and independent consulting is one path that she is considering. Two or three or four times a week Will Bachman has a conversation with a top tier management consultant considering this option. This episode captures one such discussion.  In today’s episode , Will does his best to answer her questions  - including among others: why people decide to pursue the independent path, the first steps to take to start generating project opportunities, and the biggest mistakes people make when they start out.

Our guest today is Lisa Overton, a McKinsey alum and an expert on market research. Today Lisa is an independent consultant working on a range of strategy, marketing, and communications issues.  Previously, Lisa ran a boutique qualitative market research firm that offered traditional services such as focus groups as well as more innovative services including customer intercept interviews. In our discussion today we focus in on how to do those customer intercept interviews, and Lisa shares a range of lessons learned that you and I can apply in our practice. We discuss the incentives you need to offer the customer, how to approach customers, the best time of day to get a good interview, how to record responses, how much it will cost to hire capable interviewers, how many they can do per hour, and the types of questions you might want to ask to elicit surprising insights. We also do a role play in which I play a grocery shopper and Lisa interviews me about my grocery shopping habits.

Our guest today is Geoff Wilson, a McKinsey alum who subsequently served as the SVP of Corporate Strategy and Development at Milliken & Company, a privately-held, diversified manufacturing company headquartered in Spartanburg, South Carolina with 7,000 employees worldwide. Geoff left Millikin in 2014 and started his own consulting firm. Geoff wanted to keep living in South Carolina and keep long-distance travel to a minimum, so he has taken an intentionally geographically-focused approach to building his practice. In this episode, Geoff shares some tips on building a geographically-focused firm, and we also discuss his work on corporate strategy and business unit strategy. Geoff has been a good friend of mine for several years. We’ve worked together, he has given training at events I’ve organized, and he is one of the most capable consultants I know. You can read more about Geoff and read his blog at WilsonGrowthPartners.com

Our guest today is Umbrex member Amanda Setili, and we discuss her new book that is being published today: Fearless Growth: The New Rules to Stay Competitive, Foster Innovation, and Dominate Your Markets Amanda has been a guest on the show before, on episode 8, when we spoke about the Strategic Agility Think Tank which she established, and her first book, The Agility Advantage. In today’s discussion we dive deep into the content of her new book. In the first half of the show we discuss five strategic dilemmas that companies face. These dilemmas include tough choices such as: To what extent should we develop a carefully thought out plan vs plunging in and trying something new? and When new capabilities are needed, should we build them internally, acquire, or partner? Amanda’s book suggests that these five dilemmas require seven new rules, and we touch on each one of those in the second half of the show. If you work on strategy projects, this book is full of fresh thinking and well worth reading. You can read more about Amanda’s firm at www.setili.com