Unleashed - How To Thrive As An Independent Professional

Show Notes: Vanessa Liu, co-founder and CEO of Sugarwork, talks about how this tool helps enterprises capture tacit knowledge by acting as a guide. Sugarwork helps companies capture specific information at scale and enables sharing, and guides companies to ask specific questions to elicit the required insights.  How the Sugarwork Platform Works Vanessa explains how the dashboard works and how it helps companies understand, leverage, and easily access their tacit knowledge for better decision-making and growth.  She introduces the scheduling section.   Vanessa shows how the Knowledge Share section acts as a guide that helps advance the discussion and gathering of key insights.  She shares a few query examples that guide questions that gather insights, including: Roles and responsibilities  Problem solving… Core Technical Questions Sharing Resources and Data from Meetings  Vanessa explains how scheduling meetings works and the integrations with several different meeting apps. Vanessa talks about the AI av

Show Notes: Ami Parekh discusses the business model and services of Included Health, a company that provides personalized healthcare. Included Health partners with self-insured employers and health plans to improve the way working Americans and their families receive healthcare.  Included Health Services  About a third of Fortune, 100 companies, and 10 million Americans have access to Included Health’s services. The company focuses on providing access answers and advocacy as people engage in the healthcare system. The company has nearly 3000 people, including 1000 clinicians across the country, including primary care doctors, specialists, nurse practitioners, and therapists. Additionally, hundreds of care advocates help patients understand the ins and outs of the healthcare system. Many patients come to Included Health because they can't get access to primary care and behavioral health, which can take one to two months across most of the country. The company aims to address this supply problem. Navigating the

Show Notes: Sarah Dobson, founder and creative director at Design of Brand, discusses their niche in helping founders of companies establish their brand identity. They offer a process that includes brand strategy, naming, and creating a visual identity system for launch or relaunch. She explains what a brand identity entails and provides examples of successful case studies.  Discovering and Designing a Brand Identity Sarah explains what the core of a brand identity is, how it is more than just a palette or a logo, and how she helps founders articulate that identity from developing the symbolic mark, word mark, and often, the name of the company through to the visual design elements of fonts and colours etc. She discusses her practice of collecting examples for design inspiration. She shares that he takes photos of various elements, such as typography, street signs, shapes, and color palettes, and banks them to find the right place in someone's identity. She also mentions that she started using Pinterest early

Chad Oakley,  CEO of  Charles Aris, a second-generation executive search firm, discusses their 55-year history and their focus on four areas. Charles Aris specializes in strategy and go-to-market practice, which places individuals into corporations, private equity firms, and portfolio companies. Chad explains their areas of expertise and mentions that the firm has a team of over 100 and has completed over 1,450 positions in this area in the last 21 years. They also have a finance and corporate development practice, which handles CFOs, FPAs, and candidates for merger and acquisition roles. Additionally, they have an engineering and operations practice that handles supply chain, CFO, and plant managers. The Changing Market for Consultants Chad, a former consultant, discusses the changing market for consulting in the age of uncertainty, and what the market is looking for. He traces back to April 2024, when consulting in the United States was down, particularly for top firms like Bain, BCG, McKinsey Strategy, and

Show Notes: Joe O’Mahoney is a part-time professor of consulting at Cardiff University and  a leading authority on the growth and sale of boutiques and small consultancies. He has spent 20 years researching consultancies and interviewing hundreds of owners and senior leaders. He has developed a growth drivers model, which includes factors like leadership quality, client relationships, and market positioning. He conducts benchmark surveys and interviews with leadership teams and clients. Joe then conducts a SWOT analysis, and estimates the valuation of the firm. He helps the owner satisfy their equity goals, and pull the levers. Joe typically focuses on two to three priorities each year to drive up the firm's growth. He shares three key factors in leadership and team management that are crucial to a successful scale up. Building a Sales Team for a Boutique Consultancy Joe explains that, in the long term, building a competent sales team is crucial for a firm's valuation. This involves promoting, training, mento

Show Notes: Chris Freeberg is the co-founder of deck.support, a company that brings some of the best tools for PowerPoint into Google Slides. Chris and cofounder Dimitri Limberopoulos recognized the need for increased functionality in Google Slides as more companies were switching from PowerPoint to Google Slides but wanted a larger variety of tools and functionality for projects. deck.support was launched last month in the Google workspace marketplace as an extension to Google Slides and provides a wide range of  tools to increase creativity and functionality that are available for PowerPoint. deck.support is an affordable and  essential tool for those who prefer working in Google Slides for client or collaboration reasons.     An Introduction to deck.support  deck.support lives within Google Slides and Chris demonstrates how to access the extension. He discusses the use of deck.support which offers various formatting shortcuts and alignment tools. These tools allow users to quickly align images, columns, a

Show Notes: Stephan Meier, a professor at Columbia Business School, is the author of the book "Employee Advantage." He teaches the business strategy core class, which is required for all MBA students. Stephan also teaches an elective on the future of work, focusing on how treating employees and labor interacts with technology and business strategy. Stephan conducts international trips to African countries, such as Ghana, South Africa, and Kenya, to provide students with international experiences and perspectives on businesses, strategy, and different environments. His focus is on putting workers first to help businesses thrive. The conversation turns to Stephan’s book and the concept of the workplace and business strategy. He mentions how the pandemic brought the workplace under the spotlight and technology use ramped up, while at the same time, Stephan was teaching a class on the Future of Work. The conversation turns to the concept of putting workers first as a key element of business success, and how the b

Show Notes: Dori Yona, founder of Simple Closure, explains the process of shutting down a company. The process is painful, manual, and bureaucratic, with an average time of nine to 12 months. It can cost companies thousands of dollars or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees. Many companies end up doing it incorrectly, leading to fines and penalties. The Multiple Moving Parts of a Business Shut Down Dori explains that the main difficulty in shutting down a company is the coordination of multiple moving parts, such as the state of incorporation, IRS, lawyers, accountants, payroll provider, vendors, service providers, investors, payroll, and state departments. The average shutdown for a venture-backed company has about 95 moving parts, and if any of them are missed or not done correctly, the process can drag on and on. First Steps in Shutting Down a Business Dori talks about three typical approaches for a shutdown of a firm, which they categorize into three main “buckets”.  The first bucket is companies

Show Notes Jacob Bank, founder and CEO of Relay.App, talks about the rise of AI agents, a type of chatbot that can work on your behalf in the background. He explains that AI agents can perform tasks similar to junior-level employees or interns.  How AI Agents Work An example of an AI agent working on your blog post is Chat GPT, which can automatically draft a blog post about a new recipe. The agent may ask for feedback and then publish it for you. This makes AI agents less of a thought prompt partner and more like an intern who takes on a mission on your behalf. There are two ways AI agents can take action on your behalf: making direct computer calls called API calls, or controlling your computer. API calls allow agents to make direct connections with tools like Salesforce, Calendly, Microsoft Teams, Google Calendar, and HubSpot. The second approach involves the AI controlling your computer, i.e., constantly looking at the screen and clicking buttons on it. Relay.App focuses on business productivity applicati

Nikola Lazarov is the co-founder and CEO of Eilla AI, a tool that provides AI workers for private market intelligence. Nikola is an AI engineer who started his career at a London-based hedge fund, Marble Bar Asset Management, where he worked as a quant. He realized the value of AI in structuring unstructured data for private companies and decided to start a company almost three years ago. What Eilla AI Does While Nikola mentions that their target clients are investors and investment bankers, Eilla AI's tool does various tasks, such as finding competitors, analyzing their USP, target market, and financials. It also offers a solution for finding comparable transactions and conducting valuation reports. By searching for similar companies, it can determine their multiples, revenues, and valuations. The tool collects data from various data providers, including CrunchBase Zero and PitchBook, and scrapes it on its own. One of the most exciting solutions offered by Eilla AI is finding comparable transactions and doin

Jeff Sinclair, a senior global leader at McKinsey, discusses the history of operations at the firm. The firm was initially known as a strategy firm and did some organization and marketing work. However, in the 1980s, clients began to draw more attention to operations, particularly in the automotive industry in Europe and North America. Operations became a strategic function for automotive OEMs and part suppliers, as they needed to serve their customers with high quality, cost-effective, and operationally effective services. Operations Practice at McKinsey When Jeff joined the firm in 1981, there were about 500 people in the firm. Today, it is estimated that there are 40,000 people worldwide. The firm started building its operations capability in the 80s by recruiting people with specific functional expertise, particularly in manufacturing. They started hiring people from Toyota Supplier Support Center, and creating a well-defined career path within the firm, which is the specialist path or expert path. The op

Show Notes: Anne-Laure Le Cunff, author of Tiny Experiments and founder of Ness Labs, shares her approach to understanding her own life and why she does things the way she does. Anne-Laure explains that self anthropology is a powerful tool for problem-solvers and doers to understand their own lives and prioritize their priorities. By embracing uncertainty and turning it into curiosity, individuals can overcome procrastination and achieve more in their lives. She emphasizes the importance of self-anthropology in helping people become anthropologists of their own lives by observing themselves throughout their daily lives and asking themselves why they are doing things the way they do. This allows them to understand what is happening right now before planning for the future. Overcoming Procrastination with Curiosity One example of how self-anthropology can be applied to procrastination is by focusing on the problem with curiosity rather than trying to beat it. Procrastination is often seen as a signal from the b

Show Notes: In this episode of Unleashed, Will Bachman interviews Harsh Sahai, CEO and co-founder of Bridgetown Research, a company that has built an AI tool and he talks about it in this episode. Harsh previously worked at McKinsey, where he focused on commercial due diligence. He also ran a machine learning lab at Amazon, where they researched sequential decision-making algorithms.  AI Pricing Algorithms and Convex Optimization Harsh talks about his work at Amazon where main use cases were pricing products, as people tend to remember old prices and make decisions based on what they remember. For example, planning the sequence in which to launch products or introducing new shows on Prime Video could be done in a multi-step planning process. Harsh talks about his background in convex optimization, which is a mathematical model that can be used to represent various outcomes. Convex optimization is often used to model price versus volume, and it helps in making more sequential decisions for more than just prici

Show Notes: Jim Ettamarna, a renowned expert in commercial excellence, defines it as incorporating commercial efficacy and efficiency. He believes that there are two key branches to drive down in this area, and it holds tremendous potential for clients and organizations. Jim's framework for commercial excellence is value creation, which involves understanding market demand, go-to- market models, market growth, and demand trends with a focus on each specific industry. A Six Sigma Lean Framework Jim uses a lean framework, starting with Six Sigma, to standardize the right work and ensure associates and employees are conducting the right activities and behaviors. He also emphasizes the importance of systems in psychology in commercial results, as it helps design standardized systems for onboarding talent, enhancing team engagement, and engaging with customers. In sales, motivation is crucial, and the human element of having a team is essential. However, dealing with complex buying processes can be challenging, so

Show Notes: In this episode of Unleashed, Will Bachman interviews Bart Sayer, an expert on the beauty industry. Bart worked for nine years at the Estée Lauder Companies, most recently as the International General Manager for one of its largest brands, Clinique, managing the $1B P&L. Previously, Bart was a partner at Booz & Company (now Strategy&, part of PwC), focused on strategy and commercial transformation in the Consumer & Retail sectors. The conversation focuses on understanding the structure of the beauty market and the main drivers of value creation.   The Beauty Industry Explained Bart explains that the beauty industry is divided into four main categories: skincare, makeup, hair, care, and body. The market is divided into luxury and mass segments, with luxury beauty expected to grow between six and 8% in the foreseeable future. Taking the example of the United States, mass brands are more likely to be found in drugstores, such as Walgreens and CVs. Premium brands are more available in

Rob Garmaise, VP of AI research at Info-tech Research Group, is at the forefront of Info-tech research, helping clients identify best practices across their IT operations. They conduct extensive primary and secondary research, speaking with industry experts and other clients to understand the drivers of value and proof that a given practice leads to better results. AI Vendors, Verticals, and Research Taxonomy Rob explains that the firm has a vast research taxonomy, with AI being an important part of it. They have a team in place to connect with thought-leading vendors and their leading adopter clients to gather insights on various functions, rules, verticals, and sub-segments where AI is taking root. The strength in the marketplace currently lies in the horizontal focus on functions and roles across organizations rather than the various verticals or lines of business. Most AI vendors aim to maximize their total addressable market which is difficult to do when focusing on just one vertical. The Market and Vert

Show Notes: Marilyn Lin, a customer support thought leader with over two decades of experience, discusses the importance of customer support in driving business success in the Software as a Service (SaaS) industry. She has led global Technical Support Teams that not only resolve issues but also foster customer loyalty, drive renewals, and inform product strategies. In today's competitive SaaS landscape, customer support is not just a cost center but a linchpin of retention and growth.   Customer Support in the SaaS Industry The conversation turns to the different terms for customer support, such as customer support, customer service, customer care, and customer success. Marilyn identifies the difference between terms. She equates customer success to the team focused on the health of a customer, focusing on how they are leveraging and using the product and solution, realizing value from their investments. They are more akin to the account management side of the organization, taking care to understand the custo

Show Notes: Scott Markman, founder of MonogramGroup, discusses his journey as an entrepreneur and the challenges he faces in the private equity sector. Scott kicks off the conversation with a quick introduction to his podcast, "Beer Stories for Private Equity," which focuses on issues related to the firms, companies they own, and consultants.  About the Agency Scott founded the agency, MonogramGroup, in 1990. The agency has evolved from a design firm to a full-fledged agency, with a focus on brand expertise and deliverables. Services include research, insights, positioning strategy, ideation around who or what is a brand today versus tomorrow, building out content, and creating a reservoir of assets. They also address the complexity of audiences, competitors, and going to market. For example, Starbucks has a single brand but must address specific needs for consumers, employees, coffee growers, Wall Street, and social media audiences. Scott talks about the agency’s work and how they serve their market.  Defini

Show Notes: Matthew Hunt talks about Demandii, a firm that helps busy B2B executives create snackable content for LinkedIn from a single monthly interview. Matthew explains that most clients struggle with time, and they don't know how to create content or want to do it. Demandii offers a structured approach where they interview executives privately, turn their one-hour interview into 40 hours of content in a variety of formats. They then work on it until they are satisfied, and syndicate it across social media, focusing on LinkedIn. Demandii Customers  The types of customers for Demandii include CEOs, founders, SAS owners, consultants, and small businesses selling high-ticket items. They help them create various formats of content, such as videos, audio grams, text pieces, and graphic or image pieces. The most impactful content for clients is usually video-based, as people can consume the whole view, see, hear, and feel the content, attracting their tribe. Demandii's primary channel is LinkedIn, as most B2B e

Show Notes: River Tompkins, a 17-year-old high school senior, started his own consulting practice in Austin, Texas, with five different clients. He provides services in the experimental education space, helping school owners implement systems and train teachers. His first clients were a group of schools in Florida, where he worked on implementing student government and learner-driven accountability. He has been at Ackman Academy for 10 years, a learner-driven off-the-beaten-path education, and now he is going to other younger schools to share his experience. Finding Clients as a New Consultant To find clients, River emailed schools in Florida to see what they were doing and potentially get a teaching job. They eventually invited him to visit for a couple of days to consult. He now seeks out clients with the primary goal of consulting. He targets schools in the Acton Academy domain, as his experience at Acton Academy is not applicable to the general masses. River discusses the unique approach to education that