Going Independent

Which room are you the most knowledgeable person in? Passion isn't enough anymore. AI already knows the generalist version of what you know, and it answers instantly, which means the floor just rose for everyone. Broad knowledge is a commodity now, and the coaches and consultants who trade only on enthusiasm and general competence are getting squeezed between a search bar and a subscription. What AI can't replicate is genuine mastery. Saeed Amidi put the bar where it belongs: "you have to be the most knowledgeable person in the room for sure more knowledge than my and George's 150 people." Not the most passionate. The most knowledgeable... deeper on your specific domain than a large, capable team. That's the moat. Passion gets you started, depth is what a market can't get anywhere else, and it's the one thing you can defend. Want help sharpening exactly that positioning? Click the link in the first comment to visit my site. #IndependentConsultant #Coaching #Positioning #GoingIndependent …more

How much did you really know the first time you called yourself the expert? Saeed Amidi didn't know much. On his first pitch, he says it plainly: "I honestly didn't know business, but I said to Sabola, Saudi vegetable oil... if I get it to you the same quality or better at 680, would you buy from me?" He didn't arrive an expert. He landed in Jeddah, committed to one specific problem for specific buyers, and didn't leave until he understood it. The knowing followed the commitment. Today he exports $400M of polyethylene from ExxonMobil... all from that one first trip. I keep telling coaches and consultants who are waiting on more credentials: you don't wait until you feel ready. You go deep on one problem until the market sees you as the answer. Hear Saeed tell it himself: https://youtu.be/bb9n-CnDGVA?is=ozsXzdXjyqbYgj1L Then come build your reputation next to people making the same leap — join the free Inspiring Founders community at https://inspiringfounders.com. What's the one specific problem you could go deep on, even before you feel fully ready? #GoingIndependent #IndependentConsultant #Positioning …more

What did you actually keep from the last program you paid to be in? For me it wasn't the degree. Years after my MBA, the thing that still pays off is a handful of relationships I made there, not any single lecture. One of them started with a guest speaker. He came in, presented, and most of the room took notes and left. I introduced myself. Then I did the part almost nobody bothers with... I stayed in touch, for years. That one relationship went on to matter more to my business than anything on the syllabus. The curriculum has a shelf life. A relationship you actually tend can compound for decades. If you're building a practice of your own, treat the people you meet now as the asset. Positioning gets you in the room; the relationships you keep are what pay you back for years. That's the work I help with. See how on my site, linked in the first comment. #IndependentConsultant #Coaching #GoingIndependent #PersonalBrand #ThoughtLeadership …more

You think the thing holding your practice back is that you don't have enough. Enough budget. Enough network. Enough runway to survive a mistake. I've told myself that story too. Then I listened to Saeed Amidi, founder of Plug and Play. Early on, he flew to Jeddah with a borrowed suit, his father's credit card, and money for exactly one trip. No safety net. No plan to come home empty-handed. In his words: "I'm not coming back till I sell something." Having no Plan B didn't slow him down. It focused him. He stretched that one trip into 45 days and closed his first two deals. Comfort never makes you that sharp. Constraint does. Watch Saeed tell it himself here: https://youtu.be/bb9n-CnDGVA. It's the clearest case I've seen for why fewer resources can make you more resourceful, not less. What constraint have you been treating as an obstacle that might actually be your edge? #IndependentConsultant #Coaching #GoingIndependent …more

What's actually being evaluated when someone decides to hire you? It isn't your resume. A resume is a list of claims, and everyone's list reads impressive. What people trust is evidence... the posts, the talks, the work they can watch you do before they ever pay you. That's the part that compounds. A good piece keeps working a year later, sitting next to the next one, and the next. I learned this the slow way. For years I trusted the work to find me, because inside a company it did. On your own, nobody vouches for you but the body of work you've made public. If you're building a practice and you want to be in a room with people making the same leap, click through and see who's inside Inspiring Founders: https://inspiringfounders.com It's the room where the reputations get built out loud. Come start yours. …more

Smashburger with Marcelo today! Years of friendship, and somehow every story we tell starts the same way... a motorcycle. The crazy ones. The stupid ones. The ones we probably shouldn't repeat in public. And today there's a new one for the pile — Marcelo completed the Baja rally and came home with the King of the Cactus award. Congratulations, my friend! Here's the thing about Baja. You can't talk your way through it. You can't negotiate with the desert. You prepare, you show up, and then you keep going long after the fun part ends. (Marcelo was the only one to finish - out of 9 riders.) I’ve taken my moto all the way to the tip of Baja and it’s not easy. I've watched Marcelo do exactly that for years. And it's the same thing I keep seeing in the people I work with now — coaches, consultants, folks who walked away from a title to build a practice of their own. You don't get to control the outcome. You get to control whether you prepare, whether you show up, and whether you finish. Marcelo finished. King of the Cactus… and he wouldn’t even let me buy the burgers. Who's the friend who taught you what finishing actually looks like? #GoingIndependent #Solopreneur #Coaching #IndependentConsultant #PersonalBrand …more

Expertise stuck in your head, sold one custom project at a time... how do you turn it into an offer that compounds instead of a treadmill? Work it out with peers making the same leap: https://inspiringfounders.com …more

Who actually owns your reputation — you, or whoever has the password? When you go independent, your reputation stops being something the company vouches for and becomes the business itself. It's the asset that wins clients. So it's worth knowing where it lives and who controls it. Here's a small version of that question I see often. The practice grows, you need to post more, so you hand your personal LinkedIn login to an assistant or the team. Feels efficient. But now the most valuable thing you own runs on a shared password, and your identity and the company's posting sit in the same account. The root cause isn't a weak password. It's a growth habit built on a foundation you don't fully control. The fix is to separate the two: your team posts on the company's behalf while your personal account stays entirely yours. Durable practices run on systems you own, not favors and workarounds. Want a second set of eyes on where your visibility actually lives? Book 30 minutes and ask me anything — no pitch, just a clear next step: https://calendly.com/foclarity/30min #IndependentConsultant #Coaching #GoingIndependent #ThoughtLeadership …more

I'll be honest: I've never been someone who enjoys scrolling LinkedIn or crafting the perfect post. But I've built four companies, and I know that consistent visibility is not optional if you're trying to build pipeline without a big marketing budget. So a few years ago I stopped trying to enjoy it and started trying to systematize it. Here's what changed everything: I stopped thinking in posts and started thinking in presence. The insight is this — you don't need to post every day to build an audience. You need to post consistently on a rhythm your audience can predict. Two high-quality posts a week, every week, will outperform seven mediocre ones every time. Consistency at a sustainable cadence compounds. Intensity that burns out doesn't. My system: - One Monday morning session per week, about an hour - I pick a theme for the week (one idea, not five) - I draft all posts from that theme while I'm in "planning mode" - I schedule everything before I close the laptop - I don't touch it again until next Monday The key is separating thinking from writing from scheduling. When you collapse them into one frantic "I need to post something" moment, it feels hard every single time. How often are you actually posting vs. how often you think you should be? Curious what that gap looks like for people — drop it in the comments. …more

Tom Shen has spent decades building companies. When I talked with him, he said something refreshingly honest for someone with that kind of track record: "much of it is retrospective of having experienced the journey. If you interviewed me 20 years ago, I might have said something different." Sit with that for a second, because it reframes what your career is actually worth. The value was never in having the right ideas early. Plenty of people had smart ideas 20 years ago. The value is in having tested ideas long enough to know which ones hold up and which ones quietly fall apart. That's not something you can read your way into. You earn it by living through it. I think about this a lot with coaches and consultants who've gone independent. Many of them undervalue the exact thing clients want most. They worry they're selling opinions, so they hedge, and they price like it. But you're not selling theory. You're selling pattern recognition — the ability to look at a situation and know how it tends to play out, because you've watched it play out before. Clients don't just want smart. Smart is everywhere. They want someone who's been through it and came out the other side with a clearer read. That gap between what you believed then and what you know now isn't background noise. It's the asset. It's the reason to charge a premium instead of apologizing for your rates. Tom Shen sparked this one, in Episode 7 of the Inspiring Founders podcast. Worth a watch — link in the first comment. So here's my question: what's one thing you believe now that you'd have argued against 10 years ago? That gap is your IP. #IndependentConsultant #Coaching #GoingIndependent #PersonalBrand #ThoughtLeadership …more

For a month I've been sharing what I've learned about going out on your own — positioning, reputation, winning clients without feeling salesy. Here's the part that only works in a real conversation. So I'm opening my calendar. Book 30 minutes and ask me anything about your business. Your positioning. A stuck offer. Why the right clients aren't finding you. Whatever is actually on your mind this week. Let me be clear about what this is and isn't. It is not a discovery call in disguise. No pitch, no slide deck, no "and that's why you should hire me" at minute 28. You bring a real problem, I bring 25 years of building companies and a habit of finding the root fast. You walk away with a quick win or two and a clearer read on where you stand. It's for coaches, consultants, and advisors who are brilliant at the work and building a practice of their own. The people who were never taught the client-winning part, because inside an organization the work found you and the brand vouched for you. Out here, that's the part nobody handed you a manual for. Why free? Because a month of value earns it, and because the best way to know if we'd work well together is to actually work together for half an hour. No commitment beyond that. Book 30 minutes with me — link in the first comment. And if you're on the fence: what's the one question about your business you'd bring to a conversation like this? #IndependentConsultant #Coaching #Solopreneur #GoingIndependent #Positioning …more

How do you make your track record legible to the right clients without it turning into a highlight reel? You spent a career making good calls. Now you're out on your own, and here's the trap: a list of wins is a highlight reel, and coaches and consultants who go independent learn fast that buyers are suspicious of those. A highlight reel shows outcomes. It hides what a prospective client actually wants to see — how you think. Your judgment is what you're really selling. So show the calls, not just the trophies. The bet you made when the data was thin. The client you turned away. The problem you named before anyone else saw it. When you narrate the decision — the options, the reasoning, what you'd do again — a stranger can watch how you decide. That's credibility someone can verify, not applause they take on faith. Want help turning your judgment into a body of work the right clients can actually read? Start here: https://mashley.com #IndependentConsultant #Coaching #GoingIndependent #ThoughtLeadership #Positioning …more