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What separates a consultants proposal from a contractor's proposal.

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Why Alan Weiss says you should put yourself on call 24/7 (and why we disagree with that). Being on call 24/7 disrupts your work/life balance and exceeds boundaries. Unless you're working in a situation like DevOps, Backups, or it's a situation where Something Is On Fire And Costing The Business Millions, it isn't necessary. Links https://alanweiss.com https://www.thewhiskyexchange.com/p/4672/springbank-10-year-old

What constitutes a Minimum Viable Meetup? Once it starts to go well, how do you expand it out? How do you add things to it? How do you delegate out responsibilities? What happens if you want to stop doing the meetup (and pass it off to someone else)? Links https://ti.to/home https://www.chicagofriends.website/ https://design.football https://creativemornings.com/

How should you effectively schedule projects? (ex: no deadlines on a Monday) How do you best estimate a project length? How do you schedule work around a break (sabbatical, etc.) How do you ensure that client's respect deadlines? How do you 'reset' expectations if there has been a bit of drift?

What do our writing practices look like? How did we get started writing? How should listeners work on building their 'writing muscle'? Is it necessarily to write daily? Should you just write? Write and publish? Andrew Chen on Writing and Blogging Robin Sloan on "Stock and Flow" as it applies to the writing / publishing process Nick's Newsletter Kai's Newsletter

When should you say no to clients? What's the best way to give a no? How should you politely turn down small projects? How do you avoid making compromises in scope? How do you fire bad clients?

How do you have a good phone call with a prospect? How do you prepare enough? How long should the call be? Should you leave a buffer after the call? Should you prepare an agenda? How do you determine who is leading the call? How do you end the call?

What's a good balance between educational content consumption and doing the work? Time management Reading may just happen. Optionally: intentionally schedule time around it Implementation: when you finish a book, how do you decide what to read next? -- Tape flag ("This is a thing I want to remember") -- Highlighting -- "This is an interesting thing to know about" and then apply later Rereading to extract notes / directives

Subject of meetup People at the meetup Go to one before speaking If you don't have a good meetup, start one, but don't be the first to speak Good places to host a meetup Good places to announce a meetup Scaling/growing your meetup (as you grow, make sure there isn't an in-group and an out-group) Avoiding Groupthink in Meetups (Creative Mornings: Someone manages it for a fixed term and then passes it off)

How do you transition from being an "overthinker" to a "doer"?

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"Obviously there's a diminishing return if you hit specialization of 'There's one business in my region I can market to' -- how do you know when you've specialized enough" Know your target market, like Ecommerce Know niches within your target market, like Women's Fashion and Beauty or Every Day Carry Identify if there are 20-50 companies in your niche in your target market Identify if of those 20-50 there are 15-20 companies that are paying for consultants, have paid for consultants, or are looking for help solving a problem Iterate. Too many companies come out? Become a little more specialized, based on your research. Too few? Become a little less specialized ("SEO optimization for women's fashion and beauty stores selling $1,000,000/yr and based in New York" → potentially too specialized)