Unleashed - How to Thrive as an Independent Professional
581 episodes - English - Latest episode: about 1 month ago - ★★★★★ - 71 ratingsUnleashed explores how to thrive as an independent professional.
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Episodes
81. This midshipman has no excuse sir
July 27, 2018 09:00 - 4 minutes - 3.27 MBThirty years ago I stood at attention and, multiple times per day over the course of ten days, shouted "This midshipman has no excuse, sir!" What I learned from this experience at orientation before starting ROTC has proved to be a valuable lifelong lesson in extreme ownership.
80. Go. Set. Ready
July 26, 2018 09:00 - 2 minutes - 2.25 MBReady, Set, Go! is a great way to start a footrace. For any artistic or entrepreneurial project, not so much. When you have a new project in mind, there is no Ready. There is only Go.
79. Insights from a doorman's shoe
July 25, 2018 09:00 - 3 minutes - 2.42 MBAsking questions with the mind of a child can yield new insights. Here's a short episode on what a friend learned when his daughter asked a doorman why the soles of his shoes are so thick.
78. Master the tools of the trade - Excel edition
July 24, 2018 09:00 - 16 minutes - 12.8 MBYou wouldn't hire a plumber who isn't comfortable using a wrench, or a lumberjack who can't handle a chainsaw. A professional needs to master the tools of the trade. For independent consultants, a fundamental tool is Excel. For most, it isn't necessary to program in Visual Basic or write macros, but it is essential to master all the basic tools, including, for example, pivot tables, vlookups, if functions, date functions. In this short episode, I share some suggestions on how to sharpen...
77. Per Sjofors on measuring a customer's willingness to pay
July 23, 2018 12:21 - 36 minutes - 33.3 MBPer Sjofors runs a firm called Sales for Profit – they have developed survey tools to measure a customer’s willingness to pay, and the help their clients determine what marketing method is most effective in their market which advertising targets the company should focus on which product features drive the highest willingness to buy and the optimum price of a given product or service In this episode, Per gives an overview of his firm’s methodology and how they work with clients. One...
76. Eight steps to prepare to transition to independent consulting
July 22, 2018 15:50 - 8 minutes - 6.86 MBAre you thinking about transitioning to independent consulting? This episode provides eight steps you can take now to set yourself up for success when you officially launch your own practice.
75. 11 tips on how to interview experts
July 21, 2018 09:00 - 10 minutes - 8.45 MBInterviewing experts can be one of the most powerful sources of insight when learning about a company or a market. This short episode has 11 tips that I've developed to help get the deepest insights from these interactions.
74. Ten influence techniques to master
July 20, 2018 09:00 - 13 minutes - 10.4 MBMany of us stick with the 2-3 influence techniques that we are most comfortable with. Mastering the full range of 10 ethical influence techniques is a superpower. In this short episode I briefly describe each technique. My introduction to this range of techniques came during Initial Leadership Workshop at McKinsey, and I draw directly on a slim booklet that McKinsey provided called Interpersonal and Interactive Skills. That book isn't published publicly, but the author is Terry Bacon ...
73. Use Calendly to schedule meetings painlessly
July 19, 2018 15:50 - 6 minutes - 5.27 MBScheduling meetings over email is time consuming - I've spent more time scheduling a call than actually having the call. Last fall I found a solution: Calendly. In this short episode I share the basics of the tool. Check out the tool at: https://calendly.com/
72. Write down your goals to discover your goals
July 18, 2018 22:49 - 8 minutes - 6.07 MBYogi Berra said: "If you don't know where you're going, you might not get there." I like to step back and reflect about once a year and write down all my goals. In this short episode I describe how I approach this exercise, suggest a few variations, and the benefits I've seen. Would love to hear your thoughts, and any questions you'd like answered on the show.
71. Chad Oakley provides an executive recruiter's perspective
July 16, 2018 16:07 - 49 minutes - 45.3 MBChad Oakley is the CEO of Charles Aris, an executive search firm based in North Carolina. One of the firm’s practice areas is Strategy & Corporate Development – and they’ve completed nearly 600 searches in that space. Charles Aris publishes an annual strategy consulting compensation study which is available free on their website. So Chad is one of the most knowledgeable people in the U.S. about the market demand for alums of McKinsey, Bain, BCG, and other top consulting firms. In this ep...
70. Kevin Nedd on high-impact project management offices
July 09, 2018 09:00 - 44 minutes - 40.6 MBOur guest today is Umbrex member Kevin Nedd. Kevin is a McKinsey alum and independent consultant who focuses on running Project Management Offices, or PMOs. In our discussion, Kevin provides his perspective on when a company should set up a PMO, including examples of PMOs that Kevin has led the day to day work of running a PMO the tool kit used by a PMO, including templates and processes effective progress reviews PMO maturity levels We also discuss Kevin’s service as a township ...
69. Ian Tidswell on pricing excellence
July 02, 2018 09:00 - 57 minutes - 53.1 MBOur guest today is Umbrex member Ian Tidswell. Ian has a PhD in physics from Harvard. He did science for a few years but missed the human element and ended up as a management consultant at McKinsey. After McKinsey he worked at Vendavo, a software firm, and that is where he fell in love with pricing, which for Ian is the perfect mixture of the analytical and the human element. In this episode, Ian shares his perspective on pricing, including Why pricing is so important signs that a c...
68. Neil Booth on structuring an elegant financial model
June 25, 2018 09:00 - 51 minutes - 47.3 MBOur guest today is Neil Booth. In our discussion, Neil shares how he became a deep expert in how to build a really well designed model – he followed what could be termed the Benjamin Franklin method. Neil then turned that skill into a career. Neil also shares some modeling best practices – such as splitting up your formulas – do one step at a time – cells are cheap. We also geek out on cell styles, how to define constants, and whether you should include macros in your model. Neil is cu...
67. Scott Skibell on how and why to create your own videos
June 18, 2018 19:50 - 54 minutes - 50 MBOur guest today is Scott Skibell. I’ve heard from several people that video is the new thing, that video on LinkedIn gets much higher engagement, and that if you want to work on getting your message out, you need to learn how to do video. I took Scott Skibell’s course, LinkedIn Video Marketing, and I thought it was great, and so asked Scott to be a guest on this show, to discuss video in an old-school audio format. What I really liked about Scott’s course is his message: keep it simple...
66. Tim DeRoche, novelist and management consultant
June 11, 2018 09:00 - 51 minutes - 47.7 MBOur guest today is Tim DeRoche, a McKinsey alum and independent consultant who is also the author of The Ballad of Huck & Miguel, a novel published in February 2018 by Redtail Press. The Ballad of Huck and Miguel is a retelling of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in which Tim imagines that Huck is alive today and instead of traveling on the Mississippi with an escaped slave, Huck is living in Los Angeles and travels along the Los Angeles River with an undocumented immigran...
65. Susan Drumm on facilitating high-impact offsites
June 05, 2018 20:12 - 48 minutes - 44.7 MBOur guest today is Umbrex member Susan Drumm, a CEO Advisor and Leadership Coach with over 20 years of experience coaching entrepreneurs and executives. Susan got her start in consulting at BCG, and she is the only person I know who has graduated from both Harvard Law School and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Susan often facilitates off-site sessions for her clients, and in this episode she shares with me a set of best practices for making off-sites successful – including ...
64. Sunny Bates one of the master connectors of the 21st century
May 21, 2018 23:23 - 38 minutes - 35.9 MBSunny Bates is a legend and one of the master connectors of the 21st century. She is one of my heroes and it was really a privilege to have the chance to meet with her at her offices in Midtown Manhattan. Sunny is on the Board of Directors of Kickstarter, an Advisory Board Member at the MIT Media Lab, a Brain Trust Member for the TED Conferences, and an Advisory Board Member for the American Theatre Wing, which means she gets to vote for the winners of the Tony Awards. Sunny operates whe...
63. Celine Teoh on customer retention
May 07, 2018 18:45 - 42 minutes - 39 MBOur guest today is my good friend, Umbrex member Celine Teoh an independent strategy and marketing consultant in the Bay Area whose functional specialties include data-driven marketing strategy and execution, strategic planning and business planning. On this episode, we discuss steps firms can take to improve customer retention. We also discuss the benefits you can derive from journaling – in terms of productivity, creativity, happiness, and centeredness. Celine has been journaling acti...
62. Paul Millerd on the future of work
April 30, 2018 18:37 - 39 minutes - 36.6 MBOur guest today is a good friend of mine, Umbrex member Paul Millerd. Paul has experience at McKinsey and BCG as well as the Board & CEO Advisory Group at Russell Reynolds Associates, one of the top executive recruiting firms in the world. He currently has a wide portfolio of activities – he is a real Renaissance talent. He is currently an independent strategy consultant, a career coach, the host of a podcast, Boundless, an active writer who puts out great posts several times a week. ...
61. Whit Pidot on the travel industry
April 23, 2018 17:04 - 49 minutes - 45.2 MBOur 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 travel...
60. Joachim Fischer on lean operations
April 16, 2018 09:00 - 50 minutes - 46.5 MBOur 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 bea...
59. Tsavo Neal on consulting firm websites that generate leads
April 09, 2018 09:26 - 44 minutes - 41.2 MBOur 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 ...
58. Aner Ravon applies AI to market research
April 02, 2018 13:09 - 46 minutes - 42.7 MBOur 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 ...
57. David Topus talks to strangers
March 26, 2018 09:00 - 50 minutes - 46.3 MBOur 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 b...
56. Jonah Gruda on tax considerations for independent professionals
March 19, 2018 09:00 - 57 minutes - 53.2 MBOur 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 prof...
55. Rak Chugh on Byte Academy and edChain
March 12, 2018 13:04 - 1 hour - 59.1 MBOur 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 w...
54. Molly Leeds on finding healthcare insurance
March 06, 2018 00:41 - 50 minutes - 46.1 MBOur 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 tog...
53. Johnny Warstrom CEO of Mentimeter
February 28, 2018 01:02 - 33 minutes - 30.7 MBOur 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 ...
52. Josh Boltuch CEO of On Demand Ops and Fancy Hands
February 19, 2018 12:45 - 41 minutes - 37.9 MBOur 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...
51. How to outsource research tasks using Upwork
February 12, 2018 10:00 - 18 minutes - 17.4 MBOutsourcing 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.
50. Forty-five tips on working with staffing firms
February 05, 2018 10:00 - 28 minutes - 26.1 MBFor 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.
49. Will Bachman on Getting Some Things Done
January 30, 2018 03:28 - 25 minutes - 24 MBOn 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’l...
48. Will Bachman interviewed by Julia Bunte-Mein on advice for his college-age self
January 24, 2018 02:47 - 56 minutes - 52.1 MBOn 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 d...
47. Chris Doig on enterprise software selection
January 01, 2018 20:26 - 54 minutes - 50.5 MBOur 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 wa...
46. Diane Mulcahy, author of The Gig Economy
December 28, 2017 01:04 - 44 minutes - 41.3 MBOur 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...
45. Roger Lee on IT for independent professionals
December 21, 2017 01:32 - 33 minutes - 31 MBOur 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 t...
44. Jennifer Hartz on corporate and personal philanthropy
December 11, 2017 20:06 - 43 minutes - 39.7 MBOur 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 fami...
43. John Dranow on anthropological market research
December 04, 2017 12:40 - 48 minutes - 45.1 MBOur 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 peopl...
42. Will Bachman on DocuSign Expensify ScannerPro and Rev.com
November 27, 2017 10:00 - 8 minutes - 8.04 MBIn 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
41. Sinisa Slijepcevic on machine learning
November 20, 2017 10:00 - 54 minutes - 49.8 MBSinisa 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 he...
40. Karen McGrath on virtual assistants
November 13, 2017 10:00 - 45 minutes - 41.7 MBOur 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, a...
39. Kenny Jahng on content marketing
November 06, 2017 10:00 - 54 minutes - 49.8 MBOur 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, Ken...
38. Sri Kaza on building a SaaS company while consulting
October 30, 2017 09:00 - 57 minutes - 53.2 MBSri 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, base...
37. Jason Korman on consulting through art
October 23, 2017 09:00 - 43 minutes - 40.1 MBOur 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 marke...
36. Ahmad Munawar shares five steps to build your marketing plan
October 16, 2017 09:00 - 54 minutes - 50 MBOur 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 ...
35. Sophia Dai interviews Will Bachman on the decision to go independent
October 09, 2017 09:00 - 43 minutes - 39.7 MBOn 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 to...
34. Lisa Overton on customer intercept interviews
October 02, 2017 09:00 - 42 minutes - 39 MBOur 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...
33. Geoff Wilson on business unit and corporate strategy
September 25, 2017 09:00 - 52 minutes - 48.4 MBOur 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 ...
32. Amanda Setili on her new book Fearless Growth
September 18, 2017 09:00 - 49 minutes - 45.2 MBOur 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 discus...