💡 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.
💡 Your expertise booth
Talk all you want. Or let your expertise talk for you. 💡 -Wes
💡 LISTEN: Make Your Thinking Visible on 'Female Fractionals'
About half my clients opt to deploy themselves as fractional executives (vs. project-based consultants), but 'fractional' in itself is not a niche or market position. You still need to narrow down what problem(s) you solve, and for whom. And then, of course, you need to telegraph your unique point of view to your selected corner of the market. So, I was happy to walk through all of this with Amanda Nizzere on the Female Fractionals podcast. We covered: Why fear holds people back from...
💡 Paranoia as a virtue
Yesterday I wrote about the pendulum of inaction vs. panic, with my suggestion that as soloists we tend to live in a constant state of reassessment. And rightly so. Not to be outdone (😉), BCG released this article along the same lines about the balance of complacency vs. paranoia in corporate leadership. It’s an interesting short read, citing examples from Intel to Amazon to Virgin Atlantic. The hook: only 17% of companies that significantly outperformed their sector were able to maintain...
💡 Inaction vs. panic
During a free consult last week, I spoke to a long-time solo consultant in the healthcare space. She admitted pretty quickly that she was a bit spooked about what she’s been seeing in the market. Regulatory uncertainty driving pullback on long-term investments Budget cuts shelving big projects A noticeable dip in VC/PE investment in her vertical Enough to drive understandable frustration, and questioning about whether she should be adjusting her niche or offers. Now, I don’t pretend to be an...
💡 In plain sight
Walking through the airport the other day, I noticed something odd. As I looked over to my gate…it was all men. Some of them seemed like co-workers, standing around and chatting with each other. Others were solo, headphones in, maybe scarfing down a sandwich. But all dudes. It made me think... Was it my destination? (El Paso, TX) Or maybe the day of week? (It was a Friday afternoon.) Maybe it’s more business travelers? Are we even still in an era where more business travelers are men than...
📸 The generalist bee
Sure, all those lanes seem attractive to you. But do you stand out to them? 💡 -Wes
💡 About to get crowded
An article from LinkedIn News made the rounds today discussing the trend of workers leaving the 9-to-5. The allure of gig work: Why more professionals are leaving 9-to-5 jobs behind There’s a lot of often-conflated terminology confusing the article a bit — gig work, side hustle, portfolio career, entrepreneurship — but one of the main points made is that this trend is bigger than people getting fed up with corporate roles and doing something different. Rather, the outlook of the job market is...
💡 WATCH: Niching Down for Soloists
If you’ve been on this list a while, you know I have plenty to say about finding your niche as a solo consultant. Pop quiz: Question 1: What are the five compounding benefits of niching down? Question 2: What’s the one overarching reason why we don’t? Bonus: What do you do if your niche suddenly becomes flooded? To use a lifeline, Lightbulber and independent content writer/editor Damian Ghigliotty invited me back to How Solopreneurs Operate for an in-depth discussion on the benefits of a...
💡 The summer freeze
This time of year as a solo consultant, it can feel like your pipeline is frozen. A big block of ice. But no melt. On the one hand you think -- let time do the work. Surely a few cool drops will trickle out. And some do. On the other hand you think -- let me speed this up. Crank up the heat. Maybe even pull out the hair dryer to turbocharge the thaw. Which might work, but also risks evaporating interest altogether. So where do we go from here? I find it helpful, regardless of season, to think...
💡 Stallone, robotaxis and niching
Image via Spotern One of my earliest guilty-pleasure movies was Sylvester Stallone’s Demolition Man. Released in 1994, but set in "San Angeles" in 2032, it’s a fish-out-of-water action movie where John Spartan, the old school cop, is frozen and brought back to serve and protect in the future. The film made some outlandish predictions about the state of the world (e.g. corporate consolidation has turned all restaurants into Taco Bells). And other predictions that are certainly well on their...
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.