Michael Ashley

A practical way to decide what to work on first, when everything on your list has a real claim on your time: Elizabeth Greenfield described feeling scattered — content, speaking development, client work, all legitimate, all competing for the same hour. Then she named the question she returns to. Her words: "I try to get centered and ask myself like what step today is actually going to help me serve more women one-on-one." Some days the answer is a business-development task. Some days it's serving a current client better. The question doesn't choose for you... it makes the priority visible. And it only works when you're clear on who you serve and how. Without that, every option feels equal, so you spread yourself across all of them and end the day busy and behind. Write down your version of that question, tailored to your practice. Then answer it before you open your task list tomorrow. Want to hear how Elizabeth put it? Link in the first comment. #Coaching #IndependentConsultant #Solopreneur #Positioning …more

Saeed Amidi's one filter for founders: what's your Plan B? A good one, he passes. Coaches and consultants still half-in on your practice... half-in is a strategy for half-results. Hear him: https://inspiringfounders.com …more

A question worth answering before you touch your copy again: is your data even real? I spent weeks rewriting my homepage. Changed the headline, changed it back, moved things around, sure the words were the problem. I kept treating the copy as the thing that wasn't working. Then I found it. My own browsing was being counted as real traffic. The reports were telling me people were showing up, when a lot of "them" was just me. The signal was corrupted before I ever read it, and I wasn't getting enough genuine human visitors to draw any conclusion from the copy in the first place. I used Claude in Chrome to get Google Analytics configured properly and my reports set up right. After that I could finally see where people actually came from, what they did on the site, and which campaigns were working. The reframe I landed on: the first question worth asking isn't "is my copy working?" It's "is my data real?" I'd been working hard on the wrong problem the whole time... and working hard on the wrong problem just gets you busier. I watch coaches and consultants do the exact same thing to their own businesses. What's a number on your own site you've been trusting that you've never actually checked? #Coaching #IndependentConsultant #Solopreneur #ThoughtLeadership …more

Is getting visible actually worth the effort, or just more noise? A practitioner I work with 1:1 asked me a version of that before we started. Brilliant at her craft, mission-driven, the kind of person you'd want in your corner. And almost invisible to the market she wanted to serve. It looked like a visibility problem. It was really a clarity problem. So we didn't start with tactics. We started with her voice and her offer: who she serves, what she actually helps them do, and how to say it in plain words. Once that was clear, consistency did the rest — showing up, in her own voice, again and again. The change was real. More of the right people found her, and they engaged, because the work was finally legible. Yours won't look identical. The clarity is what travels, not the numbers. #Coaching #IndependentConsultant #Positioning #GoingIndependent #CustomerDiscovery …more

Radi8 got accepted into the Claude for Startups program this week, and our Radi8 connector was approved for Claude's directory. Add it here: https://claude.ai/directory/radi8 I'm a little giddy about this one! Here's what it means if you're running a practice on your own. You can add Radi8 to Claude from the connector directory, and the chat you already have open becomes the place your social happens. Ask Claude for a LinkedIn post and it already knows your voice, your audience, your strategy, and what you've posted before, because Radi8 hands it all of that. Then it drafts the post and schedules it, mid-conversation, without opening another tab. Nothing publishes without your approval. That part doesn't change. We built Radi8 connectors so you can do social in chat. We have one for ChatGPT too!! …more

Chat + Radi8 = 🥰 Took me a while to admit it. I've spent 25 years around software, and most of it asks the same thing of you first: learn the tool. Find the right menu. Remember where the setting lives. Click through four screens to do one thing, then get to the actual work. Then I started using Radi8 inside ChatGPT and Claude, and something flipped. I stopped learning software and just... said what I wanted. In a sentence. And the sentence was the interface. That sounds small. It isn't. For a coach or a consultant, the quiet problem with most tools is that they hand you a second job: you were great at the work, and now you're also supposed to master the software to do the work. The tool becomes one more thing standing between you and the client. Describing an outcome is a different act than operating a machine. "Help me write a post to promote my next workshop" is a request you say in chat... No dashboard required. It's the game changer... honestly, I can't imagine doing work any other way now. #IndependentConsultant #Coaching #Solopreneur #AIforBusiness #ThoughtLeadership https://www.radi8.com …more

Here's a practical way to handle customer input without being led around by it: treat what you hear as raw material, not instructions. I built a feature in Radi8 to surface the real questions people were asking online, so coaches and consultants could answer them publicly and get seen. I shipped it and watched it work. It worked, and it was wrong. The questions came back the wrong shape... too specific, too tangled in one person's context to actually build a post on. So I rebuilt it to generate questions from your own audience and positioning instead of scraping them. Under 24 hours from shipping to changing course. "Go talk to customers" is right. But raw input is raw material, not a spec. The skill is knowing which part of what you heard to build on. Ignore it and you're guessing; follow it literally and you build the wrong thing. Genuine question — what's something a client asked you for that you were right not to give them exactly? More on how we chew on this inside Inspiring Founders. Link in the first comment. #Coaching #IndependentConsultant #GoingIndependent #CustomerDiscovery …more

“I don’t have to learn how Radi8 works. I tell my AI what I’m trying to do.” Software has traditionally encoded the workflow into the interface. The designer decides there should be a campaign screen, a calendar, a composer, a settings page... and the user learns how those pieces fit together. AI chat reverses that. You describe the outcome. AI assembles the workflow. Old SaaS apps: learn my product so you can operate it. AI Chat apps: tell me what you’re trying to accomplish. If the second model works, software gets dramatically more accessible without becoming dramatically simpler underneath. That’s where I think Radi8 gets really interesting. AI chat handles intent. The Radi8 Plugin provides context, state and actions. You get results. That's the magic of Radi8 inside ChatGPT and Claude. All of the power of Radi8 understanding your brand, your strategy, your voice, your past content, your future content, and all of your channels... combined with the simplicity of ChatGPT or Claude, where you're already spending your day. …more

I just helped another customer fall in love with using Radi8 inside Claude. And this morning a new subscriber came directly from our new ChatGPT Plugin. They all say the same thing: Using Radi8 inside chat makes everything so much easier and more powerful. If you haven’t tried it yet, go to Radi8.com and create an account. Then install it inside ChatGPT or Claude. Let me know how it works for you! …more

I keep having the same conversation. Someone who's genuinely great at what they do, and brand new to getting seen for it. That's the part nobody ever taught them. So, an offer. Give me 30 minutes. Bring the idea you keep circling, the positioning you can't quite put into words, the page you've rewritten four times. I'll listen, tell you honestly what I think, and hand you a quick win or two and a few ideas for where to start. It isn't a scripted discovery call, and it isn't a pitch. Think of it as a feel for what working together is actually like. I've spent 25 years building things and figuring out the next step, mostly by learning the expensive lessons myself. Happy to save you a few of them. Grab 30 minutes... the link is in the first comment. Before you do, tell me: what's the one thing you'd want a second opinion on? #IndependentConsultant #Coaching #Solopreneur #GoingIndependent #PersonalBrand …more

We like to think clients can't feel the gap between what we teach and how we live. They can. Elizabeth Greenfield saw it in herself... coaching on stress while still in a high-stress hospital. Naming it is where change starts. More: https://inspiringfounders.com …more

Most coaches and consultants I talk to think visibility comes in two flavors, and they hate both. Flavor one: stay invisible. Do great work, keep your head down, hope the right clients somehow trip over you. Flavor two: become a "LinkedIn person." Hot takes, humble-brags, a carousel about your morning routine, everything engineered for reach. For a mission-driven practitioner, that's the nightmare. It feels like performing a version of yourself you don't even like. So they pick invisible. Because if those are the only two options, invisible at least feels honest. Here's the thing though. That's a false choice. There's a third option, and it's the one that actually earns trust: a body of work. Not reach-chasing. Not a highlight reel. Just your real thinking, shared consistently, so people can see how you decide before they ever reach out. And you already produce this thinking. Every week you're diagnosing a client's real problem, talking someone off a bad decision, spotting the pattern they couldn't see. That's not content you have to manufacture. It's work you're already doing in private. Making it visible isn't performing — it's letting the right people watch how you think. Performative posting optimizes for who's watching this week. A body of work is evidence that accumulates. Buyers don't trust claims. They trust judgment they can see demonstrated over time. You don't have to choose between hiding and turning into someone you'd mute. So I'm curious. What holds you back more — not knowing what to say, or not wanting to sound like a "LinkedIn person"? #IndependentConsultant #Coaching #GoingIndependent #PersonalBrand #ThoughtLeadership …more