💡 The Lightbulb
A daily email about monetizing and visualizing 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.
💡 RESOURCE: 30+ talks for Solos
The holidays aren’t quite here yet, but the folks at Lettuce.co just dropped a giant gift for any and all solo consultants. It’s ALL of the talks from last week’s Solo Summit, free and on-demand. And all of them from February’s inaugural Summit as well. They’re not paying me to say this, but I’ve yet to find a more comprehensive conference geared specifically at solopreneurs, virtual or in-person. Sessions from our community’s top voices on: Generating referrals Building partnerships Setting...
💡 Very niche: Dazed and (not) Confused
In this week’s installment of Very Niche!, meet Richard Linklater - the filmmaker of cult-classic Dazed and Confused, who has since stumbled into a niche of longitudinal projects. That is, films created over decades from start to finish. You might have seen some of them. The Before-trilogy of Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, and Before Midnight followed the same two lovers in films released in 1995, 2004 and 2013. Same cast throughout. Then came Boyhood, filmed annually for 12 years, finally...
💡 Free 'Practice'
Being a soloist is freeing and exhilarating. It’s also messy, frustrating and yes, sometimes lonely. Earlier this week, I took my friend and fellow soloist Brad Did up on his offer for a ‘Connect’ call. A free, no-strings, watercooler-type call just to chat and, well, connect. As much as I like to tout the benefits of fleeing the corporate cage and the baggage that came with it, what also often gets tossed are these types of impromptu conversations that used to happen in the lunch room, in...
💡 In-the-wild: Rookie vs. Future-maker
I caught author Ben Angel’s session at today’s Solo Summit, put on by Lettuce.co - the topic was AI That Actually Works: Tech Investment for Solos Ben had a lot of fresh insights to share about how AI will undoubtedly change the type of work we’ll do as consultants. He’s even written a book about it, The Wolf is at the Door. With my eyes always peeled for unique visuals, I found this rather understated framework to be quite an effective framing for his talk: Essentially, he’s saying you can...
💡 Listen to your fellow Lightbulbers
A few Lightbulbers wrote in after yesterday’s note on podcast guesting. Some were podcast guests, some were hosts, and at least one Lightbulber does both prolifically! Check out their recent appearances as both explorations of interesting topics and as inspiration for getting yourself in front of the mic. Thanks for those who submitted — awfully grateful to have such a bench of fascinating ‘talkers’ on this list. 🙏 Kymm Martinez Founder of Wilder Marketing Group, fractional CMO for...
💡 Notes on podcast guesting
A few notes on podcast-guesting today, as I’ve found it to be one of the highest-leverage activities out there to: Attach a human side to your digital persona Get your message out there in an in-depth format Reach pockets of folks you may not be able to reach on your own Never been on one before? Check out #238 💡 2-Hour Task: Podcast appearance kickstart for a short primer on how to start getting yourself invited and prepared. Getting ready for a podcast interview? Just last week, I shared...
💡 Very niche: Expert witnesses
(Disclaimer: this post contains discussion about hourly rates. Reader discretion advised. 🫣) If you ever wanted to put a dollar value on your domain expertise for objective comparison vs. others, this chart might make your day. Hubspot published an interesting peek into the world of expert witnesses and the eye-popping hourly rates and annual revenues an individual can rake in by offering their unique lens to a high-stakes trial. The highest rates on the chart are in the medical field which...
💡 Even if it's just for you
Prepping for an interview, a podcast, or a sales call where you won’t be sharing visuals? Doesn’t mean an impromptu Headshot can’t help. I was getting my thoughts together for a podcast interview earlier this morning and was feeling a bit more nervous than usual. I didn’t have much reason to be — I’d been on this podcast before, I know the hosts, and I’d just be talking about my own experiences. But two things were different: I was asked on to talk about a specific part of my business journey...
💡 'In-the-wild': A powerful scribble
Strategyzer's take on the explore-exploit continuum You might have heard of the ‘explore-exploit’ continuum. Cited and applied by thinkers in all types of domains for decades, it’s the idea of balancing the messiness of finding new potential opportunities and the value-capture of concentrating on proven opportunities. That's my paraphrase anyway. The idea originated in 1991 by late Stanford Professor James March, defining the two activities as: “Exploration includes things captured by terms...
💡 Correcting your clients' shortcuts
Photo credit: Michael Coghlan A recent episode of 99% Invisible took a closer look at how libraries weed out books to make room for new ones. Something you’ve probably never thought of, but it’s understandable that they’d need to. Turns out there’s a trusty framework librarians use to decide whether to toss/donate a particular book. And it’s called the MUSTIE framework, because of course it is: M - Misleading (inaccurate or out-of-date) U - Ugly (physically banged up) S - Superseded (by a new...
A daily email about monetizing and visualizing 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.