Unleashed - How to Thrive as an Independent Professional

Custom-made shirts and suits for men may cost a bit more than clothes off the rack, but are a much better value. Technical fashion designer Kazuki Kozuru-Salifoska explained the economics to me. For the last six years, I've bought all my shirts and suits from Latesh Kewalramani, who goes by Harry. He is making his annual swing through the United States to take measurements and orders for shirts, s...

Our guest today Nir Eyal, author of Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, which has been a huge bestseller and is considered a must-read book in Silicon Valley. Nir's latest book is Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life, which is being released on September 10. I've read a review copy, begun putting his recommendations into effect, and I highly recommend this bo...

The New York Phi Beta Kappa Association asked me to share some tips with recent graduates in the New York City metro area as a panelist at an event this evening. I came up with a list of 48 tips and figured I'd share them here first. Some tips are probably obvious; some non-obvious tips may also be not helpful. I hope the set of non-obvious + useful tips is non-zero. To get the weekly Unleashed em...

Our guest today is Rima Nair, a McKinsey alum who is a Principal at IRI, a leading provider of big data, predictive analytics and forward-looking insights that help CPG, retail and media grow. In this episode, Rima explains why the largest consumer packaged goods companies subscribe to IRI's information sources, and how the world of customer insights is evolving. You can learn more about IRI at ht...

Our guest today is Josh Spodek, who last joined us on Episode 25 of this show. I was very pleased that Josh agreed to return to discuss his new book, Initiative: A Proven Method to Bring Your Passions to Life (and Work). In today's episode, Josh shares some of the exercises from this new primer on how everyone can make change happen in the world. Josh is a busy professional: In addition to writing...

Umbrex member and BCG alum Ilana Grossman, a marketing consultant based in New York City. Her firm is called B2Both, since she works with both B2B and B2C clients. Ilana has been the Chief Marketing Officer at several rapidly growing companies, and we discuss The role of the Chief Marketing Officer, and how it is changing Key performance indicators in the world of marketing And what it is like bei...

Our guest today is Ray Carbonell, the CEO at Qnary, a company that builds out and grows the reputation and thought leadership of professionals. Qnary writes LinkedIn posts and tweets for busy professionals, typically senior executives, and then writes the replies to comments on those posts. In this episode, Ray shares how his firm works with their clients to identify the content pillars that the p...

Our guest today is Zbigniew "Spish" Rurak, who has served as a career transition coach to several thousand management consultants as they left top-tier global firms. In this episode, Spish shares observations on how to best prepare to transition out of a big firm and how to manage a successful job search. If you'd like to connect with Spish, find him on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/z...

Our guest today is Lee Frederiksen, Managing Partner at Hinge,  a branding and marketing firm specializing in professional services. We discuss Researching your target client Developing a go-to-market strategy Benchmarking your marketing against that of high-growth firms How to differentiate your practice Visit the website of Hinge Marketing to learn more – at https://hingemarketing.com/ Click on...

Our guest today is Adam Braff, a former McKinsey Partner who has held senior executive roles responsible for data and analytics, and is today an independent advisor to private equity firms, corporate senior leaders, and boards in multiple industries on how to extract more business value from their investments in data and analytics. In this episode Adam shares several case studies of how he has hel...

Our guest today is Jason Bay, the founder of Blissful Prospecting, a firm that helps B2B sales reps, SMBs, and nonprofits create sustainable revenue growth. In our discussion, Jason explains to me the REPLY method that his firm created to guide the writing of cold emails to prospects. REPLY stands for Results, Empathy, Personalization, Laser-focus, and You. The way I connected with Jason is that h...

Our guest today is David A. Fields, Umbrex member and the author of The Irresistible Consultant's Guide to Winning Clients: 6 Steps to Unlimited Clients & Financial Freedom. David advises many boutique consulting firms, and over the years he has seen partnerships thrive and partnerships fall apart. On today's episode, David shares some observations on how to make a partnership successful. We also...

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez is a thought leader in the area of project management. Antonio is the author of two books: The Focused Organization: How Concentrating on a Few Key Initiatives Can Dramatically Improve Strategy Execution And The Project Revolution: How to Succeed in a Project Driven World He has been awarded the title of Thinker of the Month by Thinkers50, and has presented on the topic of...

Our guest today is Christina Ungaro, the Executive Vice President of Corporate Development at JLL. In case you aren't in the real estate world: JLL is the second-largest commercial real estate services firm in the world, ranked 189th on the Fortune 500, with revenue of $16 billion in 2018. Christina was hired by JLL to build the corporate development group, and she has completed 32 acquisitions (m...

Our guest today is Josh Miramant, the Founder of CEO of Blue Orange Digital, a full-stack data science agency using machine learning to simplify business decisions. In our discussion, Josh provides several case studies of how his firm is helping clients improve decisions through better predictions, including one project for a hedge fund that analyzes a wide range of data on job applicants to help...

Our guest today is Stephen Redwood, who has been a Partner in the Organization practices at PricewaterhouseCoopers, McKinsey & Co., Oliver Wyman, and Deloitte. He is now running his own firm, Redwood Advisory Partners, where he helps clients develop a high performing organization and an exceptional employee experience. In today's discussion, Stephen explains what an organizational design project i...

Our guest today is Seiya Vogt, the VP of Growth at Boxed – where he is responsible for Marketing and B2B Sales. Boxed calls itself "the easiest way to stock up and save for your household essentials." In today's discussion, Seiya provides a behind the scenes view of the tools available to the modern marketer, and along the way he explains why direct mail – that's right – good old hard-copy mail –...

Our guest today is Tim Hughes, who has written the book on social selling; he is the author of Social Selling: Techniques to influence buyers and customers, as well as Smarketing: How to achieve competitive advantage through blended sales and marketing. As you'll hear from Tim, social selling is not actually about selling, or at least not about trying to sell – it is about building relationships....

Our guest today is Brian Hecht, who freaked out his family in 1994, just two years after graduating from Harvard College, by leaving a perfectly fine job to join an Internet company – before that was a thing. Brian went on to have a successful career as an Internet entrepreneur, and today he is a Venture Partner at a NYC startup accelerator called Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator. Check them o...

Our guest today is David A. Fields, the author of The Irresistible Consultant's Guide to Winning Clients: 6 Steps to Unlimited Clients & Financial Freedom.   David is leading an upcoming professional development program for independent consultants that I thought could be valuable for many of the listeners of this show, so I asked David if he'd share an overview of the Solo Practice Accelerator. Th...

Our guest today is Hi Leva, the SVP of Sales at Oasis Financial. In today's discussion, Hi shares key lessons learned from his career as a sales leader. We discuss recruiting a sales team, compensation, the importance of follow-up, CRM systems, how to get the most out of attending a convention, and other sales topics. You can learn about Hi's company at oasisfinancial.com And you can learn more ab...

Our guest today is Scott Friesen, the SVP of Strategic Analytics at Echo Global Logistics, a company which serves as a broker that connects companies who want to ship something by truck to the trucking company that will give the best rate, a non-trivial exercise considering that there are 40,000 trucking companies in the United States. In our discussion, Scott gives me an overview of the two major...

Our guest today is Liston Witherill, a sales coach and trainer who helps non-sales people sell more client services by staying curious and providing more help to their clients. Liston has a set of great resources available to download on his website, just go to liston.io and click on the Resources tab, where you'll find sales email templates, a CRM spreadsheet, a sales call checklist, a list of 32...

Our guest today is Logan Sachon, an insurance expert at Policygenius who focuses on life insurance. In this episode, Logan explains to me the types of life insurance, how to select a life insurance company, how to get a quote, and some thumbrules on how much coverage to buy. After our discussion, Logan emailed me to clarify one thing she said. I asked her the chance of a healthy 35 year old man dy...

Our guest today is Mark Metry, who started a YouTube channel when he was 13 that gained 35,000 subscribers, and who started a company when he was 15 that generated six figures of income and became the #1 Minecraft server in the world.  Oh, just a couple side projects. Mark, now 21, runs a marketing agency and also happens to host a Top 100 podcast, Humans 2.0, whose guests have included some of my...