Where to Start
The Sustainable Practice is my newsletter about going independent and staying that way: positioning, pricing, pipeline, and the rest of the work around the work.
The essays are where I sort through twenty years of accumulated lessons and test which ones hold up. The ones that do become the practice. This site is built from the conclusions. If you want the reasoning behind anything I claim here, the newsletter is where it lives.
And if you’re still deciding whether to go independent at all, start there rather than here. The essays are written for the longer arc, and plenty of readers never become clients.
Narrowing feels like closing doors. This is the mechanism for doing it anyway: inventory your expertise, form hypotheses, test them cheaply.
The Role of Luck in Landing New Business
Landing work looks like luck from the outside. Inside, it's a portfolio: steady touches, occasional long swings, and a cadence that expands your surface area for the lucky break.
What Nobody Tells You About Your First Serious Consulting Engagement
Your first real engagement runs on machinery nobody showed you: proposals, scope, the client relationship itself. This is the walkthrough.
The SOW Is Not a Selling Document
If you're still making the case in the SOW, the selling isn't done. This is the walkthrough of the document itself: the structure, the clauses that do the protective work, and the three places over-promising hides.
“What should I charge?” is the wrong question. The right one is what the work is worth to this client, and the discovery process that answers it.
Engagements rarely fail all at once. They fail one small request at a time. The four tools that catch the pattern before it becomes a conversation you're dreading.
What Five People Told Me About Going Independent
The research behind this practice: five senior operators on what the transition actually demanded of them, in their own words.
Read the rest, or subscribe.
New essays land in The Sustainable Practice first. If the longer arc is where you are right now, the newsletter is the right place to be.
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