Unleashed - How to Thrive as an Independent Professional

Laura Gariepy left a corporate job and set up as a freelance writer. Within a year, her income as a freelance writer matched her former corporate salary. Laura continues to work as a freelance writer and also serves as a coach to other writers seeking to make the leap to freelance. Visit her site at:  https://www.everydaybythelake.com/

Melanie Espeland is a McKinsey alum, independent management consultant, voice actor, and executive voice coach. In this episode, Melanie walks me through two sample voice exercises that she often uses when coaching executives - and you can follow along at home. If you are listening to this episode before September 24, you can register for a free Umbrex-sponsored webinar Melanie is leading from 12-...

Daniel Vasallo left a great job at Amazon in February 2019 with the idea of working independently. He thought about building a product, but decided that he first ought to build an audience, so he set out to learn Twitter.  From a base of a couple hundred followers 18 months agao, @dvassallo now has over 44K followers. He wrote a technical book on Amazon Web Services that generated over $100K in re...

Dan Daugherty is the Co-Founder and COO of Sounder.fm, a podcast platform for creators focused on growth and discovery. In this episode, Dan describes the features of Sounder.fm, including FREE HOSTING for shows with under 20K streams per month. Sounder provides in-stream audible search, soundbite audio share, basic transcriptions, and other tools not available with other podcast syndication tools...

Lemon Williams is a cyber security and operational risk management professional with extensive multi-industry experience establishing sustainable cyber security programs for the public and private sector applying leading industry processes and regulatory standards including Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX), North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP), Fede...

Sarah Preisser spent twenty years at Accenture, twelve of those in talent strategy roles. In 2019, Sarah founded Mindset Talent, which specializes in strengthening the organizational capacity and capabilities of business, public and non-profit organizations by igniting the power of their teams. In this episode, Sarah shares lessons about talent management that are useful to any management consulta...

Kit Lisle is a Partner at Acclaro Growth Partners, a research-based strategy consulting firm that serves private equity firms and their portfolio companies. In this episode, Kit shares insights on conducting commercial due diligence projects. Learn more about Acclaro Growth Partners at: https://acclaropartners.com/

Jeff Gothelf is a leading expert on digital transformation an business agility. He is a keynote speaker, consultant, and the author of four books. In today's episode we focus on his latest book, Forever Employable: How to Stop Looking For Work and Let Your Next Job Find You. Learn more about Jeff's work and sign up for his newsletter at: https://jeffgothelf.com/  

Avy Punwasee is a Partner at Revenue Management Labs, which helps clients develop practical pricing solutions that deliver sustainable revenue and profit growth. In this episode, Avy walks me through a detailed case study of a pricing project for an aftermarket auto parts manufacturer. Learn more about Revenue Management Labs on their website: https://revenueml.com/

Paddy Padmanabhan is the founder of Damo Consulting, which provides digital transformation advisory services to enable healthcare organizations navigate the technology-enabled transition to telehealth and virtual care. Paddy is also the author of two books: 1) The Big Unlock: Harnessing Data and Growing Digital Health Businesses in a Value-Based Care Era and 2) Healthcare Digital Transformation: H...

Dr. Diane Hamilton is the creator of the Curiosity Code Index, which helps you understand the things that might influence how much you embrace your natural curiosity. In this episode we discuss Diane's work helping clients develop action plans to remove the roadblocks to curiosity at work. Learn more about Diane's work at: https://drdianehamilton.com/

Trond Arne Undheim is a futurist, speaker, entrepreneur and former director of MIT Startup Exchange, based outside of Boston. He has accelerated four unicorns and helped launch over 50 startups.  In this episode we discuss his latest book, the 450-page Pandemic Aftermath, which he wrote between February and April of this year. Visit Trond's website: https://trondundheim.com/ Check out his podcast,...

Bethel Desmond is the Founder of The Content Corp and former Chief Storytelling at IBM Global Business Services. In this episode, she shares tips on how to use stories to engage customers. Learn more about Bethel's work at: https://www.thecontentcorp.org/

Hannah Berson is the Founder of SALT Collaboratory, a boutique consulting firm that relies heavily on the methods of design thinking. In this video episode, Hannah provides a introduction to Mural, a digital workspace for collaboration.  Mural is a powerful tool and their collection of templates is an amazing set of frameworks worth studying.  Learn more about Hannah's work at: https://www.saltcol...

Lee Frederiksen is the Managing Partner of Hinge, a branding and marketing firm that focuses on serving professional services firms. In today's episode, Lee shares key insights from the High Growth Study 2020 conducted by Hinge, which includes results from 1,000 professional services firms around the globe. An executive summary of this study is available free at: https://hingemarketing.com/library...

Rachel Weingarten is a marketing and brand strategist, journalist, copywriter, beauty historian, and - in her words, a 'skillionaire.' Read more about Rachel on her website: https://rachelsfaves.com/about-rachels-faves/ Follow Rachel on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rachelcw  

Kim Calichio is a chef and educator.  When the pandemic shut down NYC, she realized there were many New Yorkers who would not be eligible for government assistance and who would be going hungry.   She set up Lifelife Grocery, which buys groceries from wholesale restaurant suppliers and involves volunteers to pack and deliver the groceries to 700 families per week. You can support this effort and f...

Steve Wunker worked closely with Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen, who first popularized the concept of "jobs to be done." After serving for over five years as a Senior Partner at Innosight, the consulting firm founded by Christensen, in 2009 Steve started his own firm, New Markets Advisors. In 2017, Steve co-authored the book Jobs to be Done: A Roadmap for Customer-Centered I...

Sree Sreenivasan has been the Chief Digital Officer at Columbia University, New York City, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He is considered one of the most influential people in social media. We cover many topics in this episode, including the work of Sree's firm Digimentors, which produces world-class virtual events.  https://digimentors.group/ Sree mentions the course he developed for Muck R...

The Declaration of Independence Read by: Amada Soto Alejandra Bachman Sarah Sonnenfeld Naomi Soto Rosina Samadani Stacy Gilstrap Roopa Unnikrishnan Aparna Mukherjee Veronica Bachman Alejandra Campos Nancy Bachman Leah Burnett Esther Kim Surbhee Grover Julie Gupta Julie Mallozzi Maya Dijkstra Katherine Mechner Marissa Cherian Nayla Bahri Soyini Coke Lilly Minkove Evie Hantzopoulos Susie Chang DeVel...

Kwame Christian, the Founder and Director of the American Negotiation Institute, is an expert in mediation and conflict resolution, serving a range of corporate and government clients. Links: American Negotiation Institute: https://americannegotiationinstitute.com/ Kwame is the author of Nobody Will Play With Me: Using Compassionate Curiosity to Find Confidence in Conflict https://www.amazon.com/N...

Cyrus Massoumi is one of the three founders of ZocDoc, an online medical care appointment booking service that has raised over $280 million in funding and currently has roughly 600 employees. Cyrus has stepped down from his role as CEO of ZocDoc. In this episode, he shares the three pillars of his current activities: 1) Philanthropy 2) His efforts to solve the problem of "lost," manifested in a ne...

David Nguyen is the Founder of My Consulting Offer, a firm that helps experienced professionals and students get job offers from the top management consulting firms. In this episode, David shares his firm's process, and what explains how his firm manages to help 85% of its clients get an offer from a top firm. To learn more, visit: https://www.myconsultingoffer.org/  

Nick Kane is a Managing Partner at Janek Performance Group, which provides sales training, coaching, and consulting. Learn more about Janek Performance Group at: https://www.janek.com/

Srikumar Rao developed the groundbreaking course "Creativity and Personal Mastery" at Columbia Business School, which I had the good fortune to take in 2003. It is the only business school course in the world with its own active alumni association - including annual retreats for CPM alums. Srikumar has taught this course at other top business schools and delivered a program based on the course to...