Michael Ashley
Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach // Host of the Inspiring Founders Podcast
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I’ve spent the better part of 25 years trying to understand two things: which problems are worth solving, and what is the simplest way to solve them. That pursuit has led me to start companies, build products, teach entrepreneurship, coach hundreds of founders, and participate in four startup exits—one as a founder and three as an advisor. Along the way, I noticed a pattern. Founders are usually very good at solving problems. The trouble is that we’re often solving the wrong ones. What looks like a sales problem might really be positioning. A marketing problem might begin with not understanding the customer. An execution problem might simply be too many priorities competing for attention. I came to think of this as finding the problem under the problem. When you find it, complicated decisions get simpler, teams align, and a surprising amount of work disappears. Today I coach founders and startup teams around the world to do exactly that. Sometimes it’s a team scaling a company worth billions. Sometimes it’s one person turning what they know into a consulting business. The scale changes, but the work is remarkably similar. Find the problem worth solving. Find the simplest way through it. Then get on with the work that matters.
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Michael Ashley
Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach // Host of the Inspiring Founders Podcast
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
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Told 4 times, Jun 24, 2026 – Oct 4, 2026
· LinkedIn · Open
Why founder-led content isn't marketing.
At least not primarily.
For consultants, advisors, founders, coaches, and experts, founder-led content serves a different purpose.
It's reputation.
Every post is a tiny piece of evidence about how you think.
Your judgment.
Your experience.
Your perspective.
One post rarely matters.
But hundreds do.
Over time, people begin to recognize your name.
They understand your philosophy.
They trust your approach.
By the time they reach out, they've often already decided you're someone worth talking to.
That's not marketing.
That's reputation compounding in public.
The strongest founder-led content isn't trying to go viral.
It's helping the right people understand how you think.
· LinkedIn · Open
Most coaches and consultants I work with hate self-promotion. Good news: what actually builds a practice is something else entirely.
Self-promotion means making claims about yourself. I'm great, hire me. Nobody wants to write that, and nobody wants to read it. A reputation gets built on evidence instead — showing your thinking in public, consistently, until people can see how you work before they ever talk to you.
One is bragging. The other is teaching.
When you share how you'd approach a problem, what a client situation taught you, or the question you'd ask before a big decision, you're demonstrating judgment. The reader draws their own conclusion, which was always the only conclusion that mattered. People trust a pattern they've watched form far more than any claim.
So "I'm uncomfortable promoting myself" doesn't have to hold your practice back. The real assignment is visibility, and visibility runs on teaching, which you already do every day. If you can explain something to a client across the table, you can explain it in a post. Same act, bigger room.
The discomfort is real. I've watched dozens of brilliant people wrestle with it. Notice what it's usually attached to, though: a picture of marketing as boasting. Replace the picture, and the rest gets easier. Evidence, shared consistently, in your own voice.
What's one thing you explained to a client this week that would have been worth sharing with a hundred more people just like them?
#IndependentConsultant #Coaching #PersonalBrand #ThoughtLeadership
· LinkedIn · Open
Here's a way to start showing up when self-promotion feels like it's "not who I am."
Share one thing you already know. Then do it again next week. That's it... no big budget, no perfect plan required.
Most of the coaches and consultants I talk to aren't short on ability. They're brilliant at the work. That "who am I to post?" feeling might be less about whether you're good enough, and more about the title you set down when you went out on your own... the org that vouched for you, the name that said "she's the expert" before she walked in the room. Losing that stings. It isn't proof you're not ready.
Getting seen isn't bragging... it's just sharing what you know, consistently, until there's a body of work behind you. Evidence instead of claims.
I got into all of this on a recent podcast, worth a listen if you're wrestling with it. Link in the first comment.
So what's actually holding you back from posting?
#Coaching #IndependentConsultant #GoingIndependent #ThoughtLeadership #PersonalBrand
Elizabeth Greenfield reframed it for me: "everything internally and externally is giving us feedback on where we truly want to go." What looks like friction in your practice might really be a signal. Want to work through yours? https://calendly.com/foclarity/30min …more
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Michael Ashley
Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach // Host of the Inspiring Founders Podcast
When a Facebook Page connection failed in Radi8, my software told people the same thing every time: you don't have the right admin role.
It was right... sometimes. But under that one message were three different failures, and two had nothing to do with anyone's permissions. So the message sent people off to fix something that wasn't broken — and quietly told them the problem was them.
I went looking for the real cause. Now it names which of the three actually hit. Fixes like that land in hours, not release cycles.
This isn't really about software. When your process fails a client, whose fault does your language imply? "You didn't send the intake form" and "my intake form is confusing" are the same event described by two different people. Default blame is a design choice... usually one nobody examined.
Genuine question — where does your process quietly blame a client for something you could have made clearer?
Link in the first comment.
#IndependentConsultant #Coaching #Solopreneur #CustomerDiscovery #Positioning …more
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Michael Ashley
Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach // Host of the Inspiring Founders Podcast
It’s time for my daily dose of marketing caffeine. Today I’m talking about the customer journey and the theory of constraints. First, what is the theory of constraints? To keep it really simple, it’s a bottleneck that’s preventing you from achieving your goal. For example, if you want to pour soda from a bottle into your glass it has to pass through the bottleneck. You can’t pour it any faster because the bottleneck is small. But the interesting thing is actually how most people try to solve this problem. They get a bigger mug, they shake the bottle, they ask someone else to do it!! It doesn’t matter what you change, if you don’t deal with the bottleneck you can’t speed up the process.
Now what does that have to do with marketing and the customer journey?
Your customer is on a journey right now. First they need to become aware of your product or service. Then they can consider and compare you to arrive at a buying decision. If you’re a good fit you acquire them and take their money. Then they move to the adoption phase, they start using your product or service. If they’re happy they end up at the end of their journey in the advocate stage where they tell others.
This journey has a bottleneck. It’s different for each business, and only you know where it is. The key is for you to put all your energy into fixing the bottleneck, nothing else. If you’re successful the bottleneck will change and you can repeat the process.
Where people go wrong is they put energy into marketing that has zero impact on the bottleneck.
If nobody knows about you, it doesn’t matter how good your product is. …more
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Told 2 times, Oct 2, 2026
· Instagram · Open
A bigger mug won't help you pour soda faster. Neither will shaking the bottle. 🥤
The bottleneck sets the speed. Same with your customer journey: awareness → consideration → purchase → adoption → advocacy.
Find your bottleneck. Put all your energy there. Repeat.
If nobody knows about you, it doesn't matter how good your product is.
Where's your bottleneck? 👇
#Marketing #CustomerJourney #TheoryOfConstraints #SmallBusiness #Entrepreneurship #Consulting
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Michael Ashley
Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach // Host of the Inspiring Founders Podcast
Your credentials aren't what win the client. They help. They're just not the thing that tips the decision.
I learned this slowly, against my own instincts. My brain always wants to go to the facts and the data... and I miss the story completely. Every single time.
Nobody buys an outcome in the abstract. People buy themselves into a story they can see themselves in. A prospect doesn't need your framework first... they need to meet someone who started right where they're standing now.
The method is simpler than it sounds: ask a real client, with their permission, where they were when you started, what changed in the middle, and where they landed. Capture it in their own words. That's the most useful marketing you'll ever do.
Your data earns the trust. Their story is what gets someone to reach out.
If you want help finding and shaping that story, grab 30 minutes with me... link in the first comment.
#IndependentConsultant #Coaching #Solopreneur #Messaging #PersonalBrand …more
How to keep your practice from stalling: get as good at winning clients as you are at the work. Being brilliant in the room won't make payroll on its own... took me years to learn that. Full conversation: https://youtu.be/bb9n-CnDGVA …more
The 24-hour close made her cringe every time. Elizabeth Greenfield's fix wasn't a better script... it was trading selling for service: just helping someone see if you fit. Want to talk it through? https://calendly.com/foclarity/30min …more
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Michael Ashley
Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach // Host of the Inspiring Founders Podcast
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
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Michael Ashley
Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach // Host of the Inspiring Founders Podcast
Saeed Amidi calls parts of his story lucky.
The rug merchant who happened to offer him a room. The chance meetings that opened doors. He tells it like the breaks just showed up.
Listen closer and there's more to it. He planned to stay in Jeddah two weeks. He stayed 45 days. He put himself where the opportunity was, and he didn't leave until he understood the problem he was there to solve. When the break came, he was already in the building, ready to take the next step.
It took me years to really get this. Luck isn't something you schedule... but you can put yourself where it tends to happen, keep taking the simplest next step, and be ready to act when it shows up.
For first-time founders, that might be the most useful thing to know about luck.
What's one step this week that would put you in the room?
Watch Saeed tell it himself: https://youtu.be/bb9n-CnDGVA
#Founders #FirstTimeFounders #Startups #Entrepreneurship …more
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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
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Michael Ashley
Founder at Radi8 // Executive Coach // Host of the Inspiring Founders Podcast
The week you go independent, the paycheck stops. So does something quieter: the organization that used to put your work in front of people. For years the brand vouched for you and the projects found you.
Now there's a list. Website, offer, pricing, posting, networking, the newsletter you keep meaning to start... and all of it feels urgent. So you work on everything, and nothing really moves.
When coaches and consultants sit down with me, the first job is figuring out which of those things actually comes first. Usually that means finding the problem under the problem. What looks like a pipeline problem might really be positioning. What looks like a content problem might be not knowing who it's for yet.
So, an offer. Give me 30 minutes. Bring the thing you keep circling, and leave knowing exactly what to do next. No sales pitch. No scripted discovery grilling.
It took me years to learn that the simplest next step is usually the right one. Happy to save you some of that time.
The link to grab 30 minutes is in the first comment.
#IndependentConsultant #Coaching #CoachingBusiness #ConsultingBusiness …more
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