Unleashed - How To Thrive As An Independent Professional

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

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

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 train

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 V

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://

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 form

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 f

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  

Our guest today is Ron Hubsher, the Managing Director of the Sales Optimization Group and the author of Closing Time: the 7 Immutable Laws of Sales negotiation.” Ron’s book is in print but not available on Amazon – he explains what happens when you buy his book from his website., and why he doesn’t sell his book anywhere else. Ron has a multifaceted business – he does consulting projects to sales organizations, he provides training programs, he gives keynote speeches. In some cases he delivers his training programs himself; he’ll also license the training program to a client and make money while he sleeps. In our wide-ranging conversation, Ron discusses several case examples of how he works with clients, and along the way I learn how a playing card in an Atlantic City casino is different than one used in Las Vegas. You can find Ron’s firm on the web at www.salesOG.com          

Our guest today is Michael Bendit, an independent professional based in NYC who started his consulting career as a principal at Booz & Co. Michael has two sides to his practice He runs a consulting practice, with a particular focus on strategy and pricing He also represents multiple software development shops, primarily focused on digital marketing agencies Michael has created a referral network in NYC that has been meeting every two weeks for several years. His group includes a range of independent professionals that all serve digital marketing agencies, with different specialties, and every two weeks they get together to share leads and look for ways to collaborate. Getting up a group like this up and running takes a lot of effort, but has been successful at generating a flow of work over time and is something that independent professionals might want to consider replicating. You can read more about Michael’s software firm at http://softdevresources.com/

Martin Pergler is Founder and Principal at Balanced Risk Strategies, Ltd., in Ottawa, Canada. Previously, he was Senior Expert in Risk at McKinsey, where he was a leader in their Corporate Risk and ERM service lines, based at various times in their Chicago, Prague, Singapore, and Montréal office. 

Soyini Coke is a McKinsey alum and independent consultant based in Atlanta, Georgia. She is also the host of CEO Exclusive, a radio show in which she interviews a mid-market CEO every week. In this episode we discuss how she has invested time to build her visibility and thought leadership, such that she now has CEOs reaching out to her to get on her show. You can learn more about Soyini's firm on her website: http://annonaenterprises.com/ And you can listen to her show at http://ceoexclusive.businessradiox.com/about/

David Burnie is a McKinsey alum and the founder of The Burnie Group, a boutique consulting firm based in Toronto. We discuss how we started as an independent professional and then proceeded to build a firm and how he has partnered with software firms to offer robotic automation. You can sign up for his firm's newsletter and read more about The Burnie Group at www.burniegroup.com  

Our guest today is my friend Julie Gupta, who has a Masters in Material Engineering from MIT and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Julie started her consulting career at Bain & Company, and after a series of roles in the tech industry she started her own practice, Gupta Consulting, in 2006 – so she has been a successful independent professional for 11 years. In our discussion, we focus on Julie’s pro bono work, which I find incredibly inspiring. She has done pro bono consulting work at fantastic organizations that include Guide Dogs for the Blind, NPR, the Girl Scouts of America, Boston Public Schools, City Year, the Humane Society, among others. Julie shares one question that has shaped her thinking and her life: “Are you optimizing your resume or your eulogy?” We talk about how as an independent professional to find those pro bono opportunities, and some best practices to make sure that you have impact and that your time is well spent.  We also talk about the unanticipated benefits – such as relation

In this in-between-isode, Will Bachman offers suggestions on 27 action items to consider as you set up your firm.