The 70-30 squared rule says that when you are in an initial context discussion with a client, the client should do 70% of the talking, and you should do 30%. And of the time you spend talking, 70% of the time should be you asking questions, and 30% of your 30% should be you speaking declarative sentences. Visit askunleashed.com to sign up for the weekly Unleashed email - summaries of each episode and bonus features.
Time to make your April Fool's Resolution.
A listener asked me if I recommend independent professionals get disability insurance, and this short episode is my response. Short answer: yes, I encourage independent professionals to get long term disability insurance. In this episode I discuss short term and long term disability insurance, six different aspects of coverage, and the process to expect to go through to obtain insurance. Links I mention in the episode: Show notes: https://www.policygenius.com/disability-insurance/#whatislongterm...
Use this episode for meditation or perhaps just as some white noise when you need to focus: ten minutes of the waves lapping on the beach at Chuburná, Yucatan, Mexico, where we stayed for a few days in July 2018. Ask me a question, view transcripts of past episodes, and sign up for the weekly Unleashed email at: askunleashed.com
That is Matt Johnson, who runs a podcast production agency. If you have thought about starting a podcast, but don’t want to deal with all the logistics and the marketing, his firm will take care of all the details so all you need to do is show up and share your wisdom, or interview the guests that Matt’s firm will book for you. To learn more about Matt, visit his firm’s website http://pursuingresults.com/ where there is also a link to schedule time to speak with Matt. Ask a question, download tr...
Our guest today is Kevin Stoneham, an independent consultant who is the former COO of PwC IT Services. Kevin's current focus, DigiServ LLC, focuses on digital transformation, and we discuss in particular Kevin's experience with robotic process automation. Learn more about Kevin at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevinstoneham/ Ask a question, download transcripts of previous episodes, and sign up for the weekly Unleashed email at: askunleashed.com...
Our guest today is Peter Winick, who runs a firm called Thought Leadership Leverage. His firm enables thought leaders, authors and gurus to monetize their content through books, keynote speaking, the creation of training services and products and consulting and assessment tools. In our discussion, we start with the mistakes that people most often make when they think about building a thought leadership platform. And then we go through Peter’s process step by step, from setting a strategy for you...
Our guest today is Matt LeMay, the author of Product Management in Practice and his most recent book: Agile for Everybody: Creating Fast, Flexible, and Customer First Organizations. In this episode, Matt discusses Agile for Everybody, which shows how to apply the principles of agile development from the world of software to the world of consulting and knowledge work. You can find out more about Matt on his personal website: mattlemay.com Matt is partners with Sunny Bates and Tricia Wang in a con...
That is Nick Sonnenberg, a serial entrepreneur, author, speaker, and consultant. Nick and a partner, Ari Meisel, founded Leverage, a high-end freelancer market place, and they built the business by using off-the-shelf tools such as Slack, Trello, and Zapier. Nick and Ari wrote a book about the experience titled Idea to Execution: How to Optimize, Automate, Outsource Everything in your Business. Nick now regularly consults with clients on team productivity and how to get the most out of team prod...
Our guest today is Dave Nelson, who, if you’ve ever listened all the way through the credits of this show, you’ll recognize as the audio engineer of Unleashed. Dave and I normally communicate by email, and this was the longest discussion we’ve had since we started working together 150 episodes ago. In this episode, Dave shares tips on audio equipment for podcasters and some process tips for working with an audio engineer. If you are looking for an audio engineer for your own podcast, Dave has ex...
March 4, 2019 was the 230th anniversary of the day that the United States started operating under the U.S. Constitution. Which seemed like a good occasion to do a reading, out loud, of the full text of the Constitution and the 27 Amendments, something I had never done before.
Our guest today is Tobin Slaven. Tobin helps entrepreneurs build email lists, conduct conversations at scale, and then monetize those lists. He is the host of a podcast that I’ve been enjoying: Stop Marketing Now, Do This Instead. Tobin emphasizes the importance of engaging in a conversation with potential customers and building a relationship. In explaining to me his approach to building remarkable, successful email lists, Tobin recalled his own sleepless nights, worrying about where his next c...
Our guest today is Greg Albertyn, an expert in data governance, risk, and privacy compliance programs. In this episode, we discuss, among other topics, aspects of GDPR that independent consultants should be familiar with. (GDPR is the General Data Protection Regulation enacted by the European Union) Among my questions to Greg was, “Can a person send an email to someone without their prior approval?” To learn more about Greg, visit his LinkedIn profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/gregory-albertyn...
I'm often asked about the setup I use to record phone calls for the podcast, so I recorded this video. There are plenty of tools to record a call on your computer - I wasn't able to find a good guide on how to set up equipment to record two separate tracks when using a phone, so I had to figure this out through a bunch of trial and error. Here is a link to download the page illustrating the setup: http://bit.ly/PodcastSetup
Our guest today is Amy Gross, a performance psychology consultant who runs a coaching practice called Pillars4Performance. Many of her clients are elite athletes, and that’s where we focus our discussion. In this episode we cover how to focus on the controllables (instead of fixating on things outside your control) how to using visioning exercises effectively how to identify and overcome self-defeating narratives how to identify your zone – and how to get into it To learn more about Amy’s work, ...
Our guest today is Umbrex member Kevin Terrell, a McKinsey alum and independent consultant based in Minneapolis St Paul. In addition to his consulting work, Kevin is the co-founder of Start Reading Now, Kevin read an article on how lower-income students tend to lose ground academically over the summer, and part of the reason is because they don’t read as much, and part of the reason for that is that lower-income households have fewer books in the house. In this episode, Kevin shares the story of...
Our guest today is Jonathan Stern, a former partner at Bain and the CEO and Founder of SnapStrat. SnapStrat builds tools for its clients to bring prescriptive analytics and machine learning to the tasks of regularly recurring strategic decisions. In this episode, he shares a case example of SnapStrat’s work with a top beauty products retailer, helping them use analytics to determine which free samples to give out. To learn more about Jonathan, visit his firm’s website: https://snapstrat.com/ To ...
Our guest today is Mary Kate Scott, a McKinsey alum who has been running her own boutique healthcare consulting firm, Scott & Company, since 2002. She has been a close friend and mentor of mine for years, and in this episode we cover a wide range of topics including: - Three things MK does before every proposal, including her five-factor rule for evaluating potential projects - The three phases her consulting practice has gone through over the past 17 years - Maintaining relationships with c...
Our guest today is Robin Albin, a brand strategist and brand sherpa based in the New York area. Robin has invented – or reinvented – over fifty brands for startups and major corporations across many categories, with particular expertise in cosmetics, health and wellness, and fashion. In our discussion Robin shares some case studies of how she works with clients to help them express the promise that the brand wants to make to its customers. To learn more about Robin, visit her website, www.insurg...
Our guest today is Jay Martin, who’s got over 25 years of management consulting experience, including time at Arthur D. Little and IBM Global Services and nearly 18 years as an independent consultant. Jay has done a better job than anyone I’ve met at maintaining an exhaustive list of all his projects – the document is 18 pages long and includes the details on well over a hundred projects. In this episode, Jay discusses how he started building this list and the benefits of keeping such a document...
Our guest today is Brad Clark, who is a former management consultant – he was a Principal at Oliver Wyman. Later, he was the Chief Marketing Officer at The Motley Fool, and he has now built a holistic financial planning and investment management service, where many of his clients are consultants. In our discussion, Brad describes the five financial planning tips he believes are essential for independent professionals: entity conversion, retirement planning, insurance, paying for college, and tax...
There are two types of products: Ones where we already know the story. Example: water. And ones where the customers needs to hear the story. Example: chicha. Are you selling water or chicha? The weekly Unleashed email includes a transcript of each episode, book recommendations, and consulting tips. Sign up at: https://www.umbrex.com/unleashed-podcast/
Our guest today is Michael Frankel who has an amazing background – he’s been a corporate attorney at Skadden Arps, an investment banker, a private equity advisor, VP level business development roles at GE, LexisNexis, CFO of two companies, and held board positions. Michael is currently the Head of the Deloitte New-venture Accelerator. Michael shares his perspective on a range of topics including how large consulting firms are setting up talent pools of independent consultants interim CFO roles h...
Our guest today is Fredrik Thomassen, CEO and Co-Founder of Konsus.com, an on-demand creative outsourcing service. Fredrik shared his ideas on the future of work (hint: he says that it’s remote work), as well as the way that he runs his own company using a hybrid structure where half his team is located in Oslo and the other half are based in San Francisco. We chatted about the tools he uses to coordinate his company’s activities, how remote work is going to change the employee evaluation proces...
Our guest today is Alisa Cohn, an executive coach, a writer, and a member of Marshall Goldsmith’s 100 Coaches. Marshall Goldsmith is considered by many to be the leading executive coach in the world, and Alisa shares the story of how she got to know him and get selected to join this exclusive group. You can learn more about Alisa through her website, www.alisacohn.com , and while you’re there you can sign up for her newsletter, which she calls a “barrel of goodness.” You can also reach out to he...
Today’s guest is Lindsay McGregor, McKinsey alum and co-author of the book Primed to Perform. She and her co-author and former McKinsey Partner Neel Doshi created the concept of Total Motivation – or ToMo for short. Lindsay and Neel founded a consulting firm, Vega Factor, that works with clients to help implement the ToMo principles they describe in their book. In this episode, Lindsay talks about her path to understanding what drives motivation, and the impact that it has had on her own life. L...
This episode concludes our six-part podcast miniseries on how to improve the client experience. In this episode, I share tips on how to provide a great client experience during the post-project Episodes 129-133 cover the five phases of a project lifecycle: The proposal phase Onboarding / kickoff phase Project execution Wrap-up Post-project I learned this five-part framework from David A. Fields, and encourage everyone to visit his website: https://www.davidafields.com/ If you subscribe to the we...
This is part five in a six-part podcast miniseries on how to improve the client experience. In this episode, I share tips on how to provide a great client experience during the wrap-up phase. Episodes 129-133 cover the five phases of a project lifecycle: The proposal phase Onboarding / kickoff phase Project execution Wrap-up Post-project I learned this five-part framework from David A. Fields, and encourage everyone to visit his website: https://www.davidafields.com/ If you subscribe to the week...
This is part four in a six-part podcast miniseries on how to improve the client experience. In this episode, I share tips on how to provide a great client experience during the project execution phase. Episodes 129-133 cover the five phases of a project lifecycle: The proposal phase Onboarding / kickoff phase Project execution Wrap-up Post-project I learned this five-part framework from David A. Fields, and encourage everyone to visit his website: https://www.davidafields.com/ If you subscribe t...
This is part three in a six-part podcast miniseries on how to improve the client experience. In this episode, I share tips on how to provide a great client experience during the onboarding / kickoff phase. Episodes 129-133 cover the five phases of a project lifecycle: The proposal phase Onboarding / kickoff phase Project execution Wrap-up Post-project I learned this five-part framework from David A. Fields, and encourage everyone to visit his website: https://www.davidafields.com/ If you subscri...
