💡 The Lightbulb
A daily email about monetizing your corporate expertise. Give me ~1 minute a day, and I'll help you turn what you know into your most differentiated and lucrative asset.
💡 Q&A: Fractional exec engagements
As promised, here’s a bit of the fresh Q&A from my talk at Chief yesterday on the fractional executive consulting model: “How do you price fractional work aside from just converting an annual salary into an hourly rate? When do you use a retainer?” The most advantageous pricing approach for a fractional executive (and for the client as well) is a monthly retainer. This gets you out of the chore of time tracking, the pain of haggling over an hourly rate, and the perverse incentive of lower...
💡 Questions = feedback
During my time at Expedia, I built and taught an in-person course for fellow product managers about internationalization. Not globalization. Not localization. Not market expansion. A very technical engineering discipline called internationalization (i18n for short) that, in short, makes it easy for the same code to be localized into country- and language-specific formats. Sound boring? Depends on who you ask. The fun part, though, was traveling around with my manager Mark to different offices...
💡 One prank, two reactions
I hadn’t planned on using today's Lightbulb deconstructing a silly April Fool’s email, but you might find it interesting that I got two completely different reactions to yesterday’s faux “Lights Out” announcement. From folks on this list, I got a bunch of replies like: “I panicked!” “You scared me for a second.” “Thank god it’s April 1!” All in all, you got the joke. Later in the day, I cross-posted it to LinkedIn, where 10x as many people saw it, easily my best performing post this year....
💡 Lights out.
Well, when you know, you just know… Just a couple weeks shy of a full year of daily Lightbulbs, I’ve made the tough decision to call it quits. I set out on a simple mission to offer my humble take on the path of the solo corporate expert... A daily dose of clarity in the thrilling but uncertain world of indie consulting. And although it’s been a true labor of love, the deluge of praise and positive press has proven to be just too much to bear. To be frank, the fame involved with authoring a...
💡 Building your home-field advantage
In sports, you hear a lot about ‘home-field advantage’. This is used to describe the general trend that teams are more likely to win games or matches when played on their home turf. Some studies show aggregate home-team win rates of ~60% or higher, compared to the 50/50 split you might expect. You could attribute this to familiarity with the field itself, weather conditions, lack of travel fatigue, an engaged fan base… At least one study concludes it’s most attributable to referee bias. I’d...
💡 "Drowning in doubt"
Remember Kerry? The broadcaster-turned-on-camera coach I featured last week as a best-in-class example of a tight market position? As a reminder, she “turns video-shy lawyers into video-confident lawyers.” I applauded her for leveraging her unique expertise to create a high-value solution to a painful problem for a very specific client profile. Well, she chimed in and offered a glimpse of what went into that decision. And you may be relieved to hear that she, too, toiled with doubt over...
💡 You've been niching down all along
Cold feet about niching? You’re not alone. I work with solo consultants every day, most of whom have found that after a year or two in, they’ve hit a plateau. Their warm network produced a good amount of early work, but now inbounds are either drying up, or fanning out in multiple directions. When this happens, you have two choices: Accept what comes your way, prioritizing short-term conversion at the expense of focus and client quality Or define a strategic niche and become known for it,...
💡 First day of school + IP Builder pilot update
My high school in Dallas used to start our school year on a Friday. Sounds obnoxious, right? Like, why not give us one more summer weekend? Even worse, it was only a half-day. The hell? You’re gonna get us all dressed up in our shirts/ties (a Jesuit boys’ school) for a first day of school on a Friday, just to let us out at noon? The practice caused all the communal gripe and kerfuffle you’ve come to expect around Daylight Saving time. But by the next day, nobody cared anymore. And on Monday,...
💡 A+ Example: Positioning perfection in 9 words
I don’t typically gush over a stranger’s positioning and LinkedIn approach, but I’ve been getting served one consultant’s videos recently, and honestly, I think she’s knocking it out of the park. Her name is Kerry Barrett, a former news anchor turned on-camera coach. Do yourself a favor and watch just one of her many 1-minute vids and I’ll break it down. Note: I don’t know Kerry, and she doesn’t know I’m writing this, but I did reach out to congratulate her on a job well done. First, I’ll...
💡 The 'orphaned insight' problem
I’ve wailed the last two days about the trap of personal branding. The type that has you over-invest in looking the part, rather than simply sampling your expertise. The alternative, an insights-led strategy, is nothing to be afraid of — it’s just content marketing. Nearly every company with an online presence plays in this space. But don't let the popularity of the approach scare you away from it. Just keep in mind two critical factors: 1. The obvious one: Differentiation You know this one...
A daily email about monetizing your corporate expertise. Give me ~1 minute a day, and I'll help you turn what you know into your most differentiated and lucrative asset.