Unleashed - How to Thrive as an Independent Professional

Our guest today is Alexander Petersen. He is a McKinsey alum and a successful entrepreneur, having started a pet care business called Wagly. After starting Wagly, he was able to attract private equity funding to grow the company and hire a strong full time leadership team. He is now the owner of a boutique consulting firm focused on animal health, which I learned in this episode is a $50 billion dollar industry. Alexander has built a thriving firm by tightly focusing on an industry where he’s been able to get to know all the top players and build lasting relationships that continue on beyond individual projects. You can learn more about his practice at www.danashift.com

Larry Oglesby has been a close friend and mentor of mine for over a decade. I first got to know Larry when he was my Engagement Manager at McKinsey on a manufacturing lean operations project back in 2005, and we bonded over our shared service in the U.S. submarine force. Larry is a deep expert on operational transformation – after spending time in the Ops practice at McKinsey he joined the George Group – a boutique consulting firm focused on operations. After the George Group was purchased by Accenture, Larry stayed on and ended up as the Managing Director for North American Process and Innovation Performance Service Line. Larry has now started his own consulting practice, 440 partners – and we start our discussion with Larry explaining the name of his firm. A cliché in operational transformation is: To go fast, go slow. Larry has a different approach: To go fast, go fast.  In our discussion, Larry talks about the importance of speed in a successful transformation; he also shares how he incorporated into the transformation a book club with weekly discussions. To learn more about Larry, visit his firm’s website: Four40Partners.com 

Our guest today is Mike Figliuolo, a McKinsey alum and West Point graduate. Mike is the founder and Managing Director of ThoughtLeadersLLC, which provides training to corporations that is inspired by the types of internal training that consultants receive at McKinsey and other top firms. He is also the author of three books One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership  The Elegant Pitch: Create a Compelling Recommendation, Build Broad Support, and Get it Approved Lead Inside the Box: How Smart Leaders Guide Their Teams to Exceptional Results, which Mike co-authored with Victor Prince. I heard about Mike’s firm from several Umbrex members, who have helped deliver some training sessions for Mike, and I recognized his name because Mike was the very first person to interview me when I applied to McKinsey, seventeen years ago.  So it was nice to reconnect. In this episode, Mike gives an overview of his most popular courses and talks through lessons learned he has had in building a training firm. Lesson 1 – somewhat counterintuitive - don’t customize your training! I like the metaphor he uses to explain why: you need to be at the baseline or at the net. Mike shares the business model of how the fees get split four ways each time a session is delivered: one share for the person who wrote the course; one share for the person who sold that particular session; one person who delivered the session; and one share for the house. Do take a look at his firm’s website: thought leaders llc.com Mike is happy to write a check to consultants who help him develop new business, so if know some clients that could benefit from his firm’s services, he’d love to hear from you.

Our guest today is Ravi Rao, a McKinsey alum and neuroscientist who is the author of Emotional Business. Ravi has led sessions at several professional development events for consultants that I’ve organized, and he always gets fantastic reviews. Ravi was my guest on the second episode of this show, and it remains one of the most downloaded episodes, so if you like this episode, go back and check out Episode 2. In this episode, we talk about one really creative framework that Ravi has developed that helps you think about customer experience in a new way. I used this framework on one of my own projects right after I learned about it from Ravi, and the client loved it. I was really pleased that Ravi agreed to come back on the show to walk us through it. Check out the show notes for a link to download the framework. Please do use the framework, and please do include a source line that credits the book Emotional Business by Ravi Rao. 

Our guest today is Vivek Soman, a former McKinsey Engagement Manager who is the founder and Managing Director of The Ananya Group, which has completed over 300 projects since it was founded in 2008. Ananya is a Bengali word meaning “unparalled.” Vivek’s firm has a very clear focus: the client focus is large $1 billion revenue and up tech, media, telecom, and professional services companies  The service offering includes three types of projects: 1) competitive intelligence 2) customer intelligence 3) focused strategy projects Vivek has worked to standardize the process of doing competitive intelligence, and we discuss that as well as a couple practices I found interesting: 1) found that obscure tech journals in the Middle East and Europe – executives of large tech companies sometimes talk more openly about their product strategy that you can find in the US 2) developed a process to source 80-100 interviews, with very specific questions, just 3-4, You can read more about Vivek’s firm at www.TheAnanyaGroup.com Vivek is currently looking for someone to help with business development. If you are interested in that role, or just have other questions about his work, he invites you to contact him at vivek.soman@theananyagroup.com

Lauren Cole runs a boutique consulting firm specializing in strategy and operations for media-related businesses. Lauren got her start in consulting at Bain & Co. After getting her MBA at Stanford she entered the world of media and entertainment with a strategy role at Warner Brothers, where she worked for Umbrex member Steven Koltai, who has also been a guest on this show.  She had an impressive career in the media world, which included launching, investing in, and/or overseeing 35 cable networks around the world.  Then in 2002, she started her own consulting practice and has been a successful independent professional for the last 15 years, serving over 150 clients, covering everything from Broadway to sports to virtual reality. You can read more about Lauren’s firm, Cole Media, at www.ColeMediaLA.com

Our guest today is Josh Spodek, the author of Leadership Step by Step. Josh is an independent professional who coaches individual clients teaches leadership and entrepreneurship as an adjunct professor at NYU does speaking engagements runs online courses in leadership and entrepreneurship on SpodekAcademy.com For the show we met at Josh’s apartment in Greenwich Village, and in the first part of our conversation we discuss the blackboard in his room and the new course he is currently developing, which is sketched out in chalk. We also talk about what Josh has learned from blogging every single day since 2011, the impact on his fitness from doing 90,000 burpees over the past few years, and how he fits four months of garbage into one tote bag. Josh’s approach to teaching leadership and entrepreneurship is very experiential and organized around a series of exercises. We discuss several of these, including what you can learn from three raisins. You can learn more about Josh and take his online course at http://spodekacademy.com/ And buy his book here: https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Step-Become-Person-Others/dp/0814437931

Our guest today is Esther Kim, an independent consultant based in San Francisco who focuses on serving clients in the social sector, including non-profits, philanthropies, and social enterprises. After getting her Masters degree in Environmental Engineering from MIT, Esther got her start in consulting at McKinsey, where she worked with energy, industrial, and nonprofit clients. She then spent nine years at REDF, a venture philanthropy firm based in San Francisco. In 2014, Esther set up her own consulting practice focusing on the social sector. In our discussion we talk about the similiarities and differences between serving for-profit and non-for-profit clients We discuss what it takes to transition into the social sector, the difference in vocabulary from the for-profit sector, and how Esther tweaks frameworks such as the Business Model Canvas to apply them in her work.  She also shares an inspiring  story of a social enterprise Esther helped to establish- a staffing agency-  that has helped hundreds of formerly homeless individuals find stable jobs. You can find Esther online at www.estherkimconsulting.com 

Our guest today is Steven Koltai, the author of "Peace through Entrepreneurship: Investing in a Startup Culture for Security and Development" Steven has had multiple careers. he has been a management consultant at McKinsey, the head of strategy at Warner Bros for ten years, and a successful entrepreneur. His most recent career began as a senior advisor to the US Department of State under Secretary Hilary Clinton, where Steven conceived and launched the Global Entrepreneurship Program, based on the principles that joblessness leads to violence and unrest; and one of the best ways to reduce joblessness is to foster entrepreneurship in emerging markets. After leaving the State Department, Steven has continued to advance that goal, and his consulting practice has supported entrepreneurship in over 30 countries, particularly Africa and Latin America. We discuss advice for independent professionals interested in working in international development process of getting funding for such projects key success factors for projects to encourage entrepreneurship how Steven staffs up projects in these markets some case studies, including an eight-sided box that increased revenue by 700% For more on Steven’s work, go to www.koltai.co

Chris Fox, an alum of McKinsey and Marakon, has held executive leadership roles at Xerox and MeadWestvaco.  Since 2014 he has been operating his own consulting practice, Meridian Strategic Consulting, based in Richmond, Virginia.  In this episode, we discuss the range of Chris's practice, with a particular focus on strategy and due diligence assignments.  Read more about Chris on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/in/chrisjfox