Unleashed - How To Thrive As An Independent Professional

Show Notes: In this episode of Unleashed, Will Bachman discusses cold outreach with David A. Fields. David advises that cold outreach is a last resort tactic and should not be included in the mix of marketing strategies. Instead, he suggests that consulting firms should focus on the five marketing musts to build their network. Why Cold Outreach is Inefficient David emphasizes that cold outreach is remarkably inefficient for most consultants, as it is often slow to close and has a long sales cycle. He suggests that firms should experiment with cold outreach to find the best approach based on client feedback and experience. David also shares some historical insights about cold outreach. Cold outreach tends to respond better when closer to product sales when hardcore selling messages works better. David states that, when selling expertise and experience which is trust driven, cold outreach doesn't work well.   The Aggressive Reframe Approach Aggressive reframe, which involves asking for something rather than jus

Tish Baldez, a leading expert in management consulting, has worked with small and mid-sized consultancies and 20,000 professionals worldwide. She shares the trajectory of her career from an independent consultant to a managing partner and leader at  P31 Consulting LLC, a training program for professionals in management consulting, life science, IT consulting, finance, banking and more, and how they became a 100% referral-only business. The Foundations of the P31 Training Program Tish introduced the foundations for consulting skills program about a year and a half ago, which enables small businesses hiring new analysts, consultants, and engagement managers without formal structure training on how to do consulting or work in a consultative way. The program focuses on providing foundational skills, storyboarding, and teaching how to synthesize data and communicate it meaningfully for clients. The program is currently running multiple sessions a year in the US, UK, and Latin America. The P31 Academy offer to help

In this episode of Unleashed, Michael Rubenstein discusses the importance of organizational culture in mergers and acquisitions (M&A). Michael's expertise is broader than organizational culture; he offers a bird's eye view of an organization to help move it to the next phase in their evolution which includes: Strategy, M&A, Value Creation, People and Culture, etc.  It’s all about moving an organization to the next phase in their evolution and includes: Strategy, M&A, Value Creation, People and Culture, etc. He believes that culture is the key to a successful integration and that it often goes unnoticed. He suggests that when assessing a company's culture, it is essential to identify the culture elements of the current company and the target company, and identify any gaps. Key Points in Assessing Company Culture To do this, Michael recommends conducting self-assessments and assessments of both companies, as well as conducting interviews with stakeholders such as leadership, employees, customers, an

Lisa Carlin, founder of Future Builders Group, discusses her experience in consulting and the need for a more passive income stream. She has over 50 strategy execution projects and programs that focus on business strategy, project management, and change management. Lisa believes that achieving scale in these areas requires changing the focus of the business and execution messages to what is important to the culture. In this episode, Lisa talks about developing and running a membership community. Building a Subscription Business The TurboCharge Hub membership offers a platform for functional experts to learn how to develop and execute strategies. The group is currently launching its own website called TurboChargers.com, and she meets with members twice a month on Zoom. One of the biggest lessons learned from her experience is the importance of understanding the client's pain points and tailoring their solutions accordingly. As people join, Lisa learns about their ideal customer profile and their biggest pain p

Show Notes: Jeremy Greenberg discusses the AI-powered audience simulator built by the Avenue Group. The tool allows users to provide a set of custom instructions for different audience segments, like research or interviews. It allows users to ask questions of qualitative and quantitative nature, and within minutes, results from simulated respondents are obtained. The tool mirrors the sentiment of collective segments and audiences, similar to chats or LLMs on a one-on-one basis. This tool is useful for collecting the opinions of celebrities, for example, Steve Jobs, highlighting the immense power of LLMs in capturing the distributions of the underlying population. Creating an Audience Jeremy discusses the process of updating the front end and the first section of the tool. He states the importance of setting this to create an audience, which is the global population interested in a specific topic, such as Americans drinking Coca Cola. This audience is then used to create sub-segments within the audience, each

Show Notes: In this discussion, Professor Bryan Caplan discusses the science and ethics of housing regulations and the argument for housing deregulation, which he believes benefits everyone across the political spectrum, including lower costs and more equity.  Barriers to Radical Housing Deregulation Bryan believes that to achieve radical housing deregulation, it would require convincing a large audience of people that it is a good idea. He explains that most people don't see the connection between letting people build and low prices, and there is a hypersensitivity to the harms a building can cause. The conversation also explores issues of environmental regulations and renewable power, and opposing forces lobbying to keep current housing regulations in place, such as community activists and the construction industry.  Housing Developers and Zoning Laws The discussion turns to various types of regulation and barriers faced by developers, including zoning laws, which are often used to separate industry from co

Show Notes: Maria Isabel Rios discusses the importance of making a firm work for you, rather than working for your firm. She emphasizes that firm leaders often immerse themselves in their firm in service to growing the firm to make it successful. Maria Isabel suggests that a better way to be a firm leader is to make your firm work for you. This involves finding ways to evaluate your firm, add value to your life, and bring success into the picture. A Formula to Make Your Firm Work for You A formula for making a firm work for you includes identifying key areas of importance in your personal life, and looking at your consulting firm's purpose, values, and intentions. Then, you can look at how these elements can intersect. The formula should be tailored to your needs and preferences, and should be specific to your goals. For example, if you want to spend one weekend day with family, zero work, every week for the next 52 weeks, this can be a more specific goal. Another example is a firm leader setting their goals

Show Notes: Lindsay McGregor discusses her firm's focus on building high-performing organizations. She explains that the highest performing organizations motivate people in a specific way, unlocking play, purpose, and potential for the problem they're solving. The firm trains leaders to be inspirational and consults with organizations on designing their operating models. She shares a story about how the firm explained the deeper concepts of play at work and how implementing these concepts of play was worth millions of dollars to the fund's portfolio managers every year. Play is often seen as something we do during our hobbies, but when we feel engaged by what we're solving, we perform at our best.Utilizing Play Concepts for Growth ManagementLindsay talks about the tools used to facilitate the play process and shares a sample engagement with a client who was the founder of a tech company that had scaled rapidly and the former processes no longer worked. Lindsay shares examples of the challenges faced in managi

Dr. Ron Razmi discusses his book, AI Doctor: The Rise of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, which focuses on the applications of AI in various areas of healthcare. Ron talks about AI as a foundational technology that uses statistical methods to analyze data and understand its meaning. It can be applied to various areas, such as coding and documentation, and can create algorithms to analyze heartbeats and detect abnormal rhythms.   AI Use in Diagnostics In diagnostics, AI can be helpful in analyzing clean structured data, such as radiology files from CAT scans or MRIs. AI can be trained to identify bleeding or abnormalities on these scans, but it must be trained on specific abnormalities. Currently, AI excels in radiology due to the digitized and structured data, but it's not as effective in narrative formats. Ron states that AI's applications in healthcare are vast and deep, and while it's still in its early stages, it has the potential to revolutionize various sectors, including healthcare. AI Tools in

Show Notes: The Benefits of Somatics Divya Agarwal, founder of Vivekam, explains what somatics is and what the benefits are. Somatics is a term used to describe ​body-based techniques that can be used with the body to build more body/mind awareness, manage emotions, and respond more effectively. ​T​hese practices involve using ​techniques such as breathing, generating heat, and visualization practices to sense oneself better and improve self-awareness.   These practices can help individuals feel more connected to their emotions and be present in various situations, such as negotiations or job evaluations. Mindful presence, which has been emphasized in mainstream literature and coaching, is another way to be present. However, there is a growing trend towards using “embodiment” (the quality of being/feeling the body) as a way to enter presence. Some simply techniques to build embodiment involved breathing exercises, visualization exercises, and body scans. Divya explains that somatics works at the nervous syste

Kathy Hines, former Chief Marketing Officer at brands like Dickies and Vice President at brands like North Face and Kipling ,shares her experiences. She started her career in career management consulting at Bain and later went on to Nike, where she gained foundational experience in lifestyle and sports marketing. At Kipling, she led marketing strategy and E-commerce. She then led marketing and strategy for the North Face in Europe. After a four-year stint in VF Europe, she returned to the US and took on the role of global chief marketing officer for Dickies in Texas, where she was also responsible for licensing. Her experience at VF has given her a broad range of skills and experiences. Developing a Professional Marketing Plan Using a sports and lifestyles brand as an example, Kathy shares her process for developing a professional marketing plan. She begins by identifying the brand's aligned corporate strategy and working closely with the leadership team to understand financials and operational opportunities.

Show Notes: Dimitris Samouris discusses the development of a tool called Junior, an SaaS tool built on large language models and speech to text models. It leverages AI to help process primary research workstreams, particularly in the due diligence process, especially for primary interviews. How Junior Works - A SaaS Tool to Clean Transcripts Junior helps automate a significant portion of the administrative tasks associated with research execution, allowing users to focus more on the big picture answer rather than the execution side of things. The tool provides a highly accurate transcript of each call, including the name, segment, company, customer size, date and time of the interview, call status, and review status. The call tracker is a knowledge repository that displays the names, segments, job title, company, customer size, country, date and time of the interview, call status, and review status. The call screen is a customizable project management tool for running the call workstream. Junior has three par

In this episode of Unleashed, Ran Harpaz, founder of Lettuce, discusses the importance of an automated tax and accounting system for businesses and that Lettuce is entirely focused on independent consultants. Independent consultants who make over $100,000 per year often overpay their taxes by $10,000 or more. Lettuce is a FinTech software company that helps these professionals incorporate their business into the right S corporation with the IRS, open a business bank account, run bookkeeping, run accounting, predict and file taxes, all done automatically through software. The company offers two levels: Pro (300 dollars a month) and Premium (700 dollars a month). The service includes accounting, bookkeeping, tax preparation, and tax preparation.  Tax Strategies for the Independent Consultants  Ran explains how many independent consultants are often double taxed as sole proprietors due to the IRS's coordination on annual tax returns. He offers an example to demonstrate how this works. Ran also discusses the conc

Salah Zalatimo, former Chief Digital Officer at Forbes, discusses the history of magazines and digital transformation. Magazines have been around for a while, with many well-known brands being founded around 100 years ago. Technological innovations have enabled new businesses to launch, such as the Direct to Consumer (DTC) boom and the cheaper printing costs around the turn of the last century. A Short History of the Magazine Industry Salah talks about the background of Forbes, which was launched around the Great Depression, and goes on to why the magazine industry was much like VC Investing  today, and how it changed with the advent of the internet. The tension between maintaining journalistic integrity and separation was a challenge. However, the internet revolutionized the way magazines operated, leading to many magazines going out of business in the past 20 years. Integration with the Digital Media Space Salah started his career in 2001, drawn to the digital media space after experiencing the first broadb

Show Notes: In this discussion, Will Bachman interviews Henry Oliver, author of the forthcoming book Second Act about late bloomers. Oliver has a background in English literature and marketing. He worked for an MP and later in employment marketing.  Defining a Late Bloomer Henry’s interest in late bloomers came from his work in employment marketing, and during his research, he found a wealth of talent in an older demographic. During the course of his research, he found that cognitive ability is the number one predictor of job performance regardless of age.  A late bloomer is someone who is no longer expected to achieve anything significant. However, Henry states that many people start a successful career late in life. Henry’s book is structured as a series of short biographical sketches that illustrate themes such as the right people, networks, influence, being at the right place, the right time, and meandering career paths that many high profile leaders, including Margaret Thatcher, are prime examples of the

Show Notes Craig Callé talks about third party risk management (TPRM), with an emphasis on cybersecurity. TPRM is a subset of Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC), which aims to help organizations achieve their objectives, address uncertainties, and act with integrity. TPRM is crucial as over half of all data breaches occur through insecure third parties. Companies need to understand their third party relationships and monitor them more carefully, which requires a variety of tools and processes. Craig explains that TPRM can cover a variety of risks, including cybersecurity, but also financial viability, compliance with privacy, sanctions and other regulations, reputation management, supply chain issues, and alignment of ESG and sustainability objectives.   Defining GRC and Third Parties Craig explains that GRC is a broad category that includes TPRM, but also enterprise risk management (ERM), business continuity or operational resilience, policy management, controls compliance, privacy and ESG. ERM typical

Show Notes: In this conversation with Will Bachman, Ivan Oransky, a co-founder of Retraction Watch, shares his experience as a medical journalist and with Retraction Watch. Ivan explains that his friend and co-founder, Adam Marcus had uncovered a massive story about scientific fraud in Western Massachusetts, where an anesthesiologist had made up all clinical data. Adam, who was managing editor of an publication called Anesthesiology News got the scoop on the story, and Ivan, who was impressed with the story, suggested they start a blog about retraction notices, it turned out there were far more happening than previously thought.  13 and a half years later, Retraction Watch is still going strong and has a large audience. Adam and Ivan are volunteers but have four staff two of whom run a database of retractions that was recently acquired by CrossRef, a nonprofit that tracks scientific data and papers. The other two staff continue to contribute to the journalism work they started 13 and a half years ago, while I

Show Notes: Melanie Espeland, a TEDx speaker and executive coach with 17 years of experience in strategy, operations, and coaching, she’s former McKinsey, and in this episode, she discusses the importance of executive presence and how to achieve it. Communication in Executive Presence In this workshop, Melanie explains that executive presence is important because it provides access to insider discussions, meetings, events, and happy hours. Access is crucial for success, and influence is essential for those with a purpose or vision. Executive presence allows for a balance and integration of power, authority, respect, trust, warmth, and likability. Melanie also discusses the concept of compassionate authority, which she sees as a combination of power, authority, respect, trust, warmth, and comfort with the people you are speaking with. This external communication and ability to share thoughts and feelings are key to achieving executive presence. By understanding the value of executive presence and its impact on

Show Notes: In this episode of Unleashed, Alex Brueckmann discusses the concept of strategy and its importance in business. Alex states that strategy is defined as a set of integrated choices made to win in a chosen marketplace. It is not just about playing the game, but about creating value that convinces or influences customers to buy from the company. A good strategy should be cohesive and integrated, making sense together, and Alex explains what defines a good strategy.  Defining Key Factors in a  Strategy When discussing a strategy, it is important to understand what the company does, for whom, what they offer, and who their customer is. This information can help businesses define their niche, mission, and goals. The next piece of information should be a clear description of what the business will look like in the next few years. The end state of the business and the strategy cycle should be defined, with what will be achieved by implementing the strategy and what actions will be taken. By knowing what y

Show Notes: Karen Friedenberg discusses a project she worked on to design an Intelligent Automation Center of Excellence for a Fortune 500 medical supply company. The challenge was that the organization was initially looking to leverage robotics process automation (RPA) technology to automate repetitive and manual processes. This led to the development of Intelligent Automation, also known as hyper automation. Defining the Meaning of Intelligent Automation The first step in this project was defining Intelligent Automation and defining its meaning. The client wanted to develop a center of excellence to coordinate efforts across the company to take advantage of new technology and benefits quickly and in a coordinated way. The center of excellence would serve various needs and be a resource for the organization. Karen explains that the first step was to identify the pockets within the organization where people were learning about robotics, process automation, AI, and chatbots. She then interviewed stakeholders t