• The summer of protocols - a funded research program from Venkatesh Rao and the Ethereum foundation weaving together ideas from Robin Sloan, Matt Webb and more. Looks great.
• Running a Membership Program: Four Years In by Craig Mod - the most thoughtful and honest look at an oddball membership program that is just wonderful.
• 3 thoughts on a decade of publishing books by Austin Kleon - I especially loved the riff on "all publishing is self-publishing"
• This twitter thread on why being an executive isn't all about decision making from Ben Kuhn. Excellent and right on the money.
• I really like this visualization of an entire career from Elena Verna - especially as it fragments into a million things by the end! The patchwork career of an indie.....

From my friends:

My good friend Howard Gray runs Wavetable - a learning studio that designs learning experiences that people give a s&*t about. Things like a kitchen arcade for DIG, or an accelerator program for NYC.gov. Whether you need to design an internal experience like an offsite or a training program, or whether you need to design a community/marketing engagements program, Howard and Wavetable are experts at designing experiences that bring people alive and make them lean in - better education, better marketing, better engagement. If real engagement isn't what every brand needs right now I don't know what is.

Anyway, that's enough for now. Hope to see some of you in the first Figma Thinkers cohort!

Much love and fever dreams,

Tom

Digital bricolage, the magic of small databases and a new Figma project. But first, who is this anyway? Hi, I'm Tom Critchlow - indie consultant, weirdo blogger and founder of the SEO MBA. You might know me through the color green, because green is the best color.

Poisoned computer! Courtesy of Roxy, age 6

When I look back at my career (?) I’ve always been remixing, hacking and tinkering with the web. Trying to ask questions like "what does the web feel like?",  "how do you treat the web as a texture?" & "what can you do with the web?".

This one's very much of the web with three things:

1. Digital Bricolage

I've been using the term "digital bricolage" to cover my approach to building stuff on the web without ever really becoming a real programmer and I finally wrote up a post about what that idea means to me.

→ Digital Bricolage & Web Foraging: An ongoing journey in using the web in new ways 

I'm always excited about learning new ways to use the web in creative, small ways. It's why tools like Replit and Google Scripts are so appealing to me. What's your go-to stack for digital bricoalge?

2. The Magic of Small Databases

Small libraries, poetic collections and indie archives are magical things. You stumble across some personal archive or collection and it feels like a treasure trove. But publishing stuff to the web in the format of a collection, library or archive is still kind of hard? I wrote up a post about why this matters here:

→ The Magic of Small Databases: Notes on personal libraries, collections and small indexes on the web

There's a ton of options here but STILL none of them satisfy me. If you're building a collection or working on tooling for this space shoot me a note!

3. Figma Thinkers

I've written before about how Figma has completely upended my workflows. As a blogger, course creator and strategy consultant I find myself using Figma in all kinds of ways that are not strictly "design" but still benefit from working on an open canvas.

I deeply believe that Figma is a powerful and creative tool for non-designers so I'm working on a course with my friend Nate Kadlac to teach Figma to non-designers. We're building the whole thing in public, live streaming our weekly working sessions (we've done 4 so far!)

→ Learn more about Figma Thinkers and follow along here
 

---

What are you working on? What feels alive for you?

Spring is around the corner - what colorful things will bloom for you?

Much love,
Tom

A family that gourds together, sticks together.

 

---

Elsewhere

Some things I'm recommending right now:

Cedric Chen is quickly becoming my favorite blogger over at Commoncog. Just banger after banger. His writing is about 50% open and 50% members only. The membership is definitely worth it. This recent piece on Process Improvement is Trickier Than You Think is excellent and highly recommended for indie consultants who have ever recommended improving a process to a client!

My friend Brian Dell launched a new little studio called Public Artifacts: "A social technology studio exploring community dynamics and public goods." what's not to like about that?! Their first little experiment is a thing called Codebacks - inspired by something I built a while back called Quotebacks. Lovely.

A buddy of mine Gabe Hudson has launched a new podcast called Twitterverse (itunes, spotify) in partnership with Lithub and it's quickly become my favorite listen. Gabe is a great host with plenty of soul and the conversation is at the intersection of twitter and the literary world.

If you write a blog, consider creating a little map of inquiry that shows people what you're into. I did this in text and then Matt Webb went and made an actual map! (well, node graph). Check it out - I wish every blog had one of these.

Of course, why have one website when you can reflect yourself across an infinite set of mirrors. Absolutely inspired by Chia's personal website-verse.
 

---

What are you working on right now? How is your identity holding up? Hit reply and send me something cool you wrote recently.

Or, better yet, send me a draft. I love giving feedback on drafts.

Let a million personal websites bloom.

Love ya

Tom
 

I've said before that being self-employed is a continual process of becoming. Holding yourself together is a balancing act between your time, energy and money.

But it's not a balancing act like a set of scales - it's a balancing act like the three-body problem. The three-body problem is a famous mathematical problem trying to figure out how three bodies with gravitational mass interact in space. It's about putting these things into orbits and trying to stay sane (here I'm talking about either the three-body problem, or an indie consulting career).

Time, energy, money.

The fiendish thing is that what appear to be stable orbits always have chaos bubbling underneath. You can watch these orbits gracefully rotate for 6, 7, 8, 9 rotations:


Until, suddenly - KABLAMMO - chaos explodes out of nowhere:

Same system, nothing changed. Just pure chaos. (Play around yourself with a visualization of your own career. Be sure to select chaos mode: three-body problem in Javascript).

Honestly, you could apply the same visualization to parenting.... Chaos, masquerading as stability.

Hi, it's me Tom Critchlow, your friendly internet weirdo / independent consultant / blogger / tinkerer / course creator. You might have signed up for this email a while ago - I don't send them very frequently. As always, unsubscribe links at the bottom.

Last time I sent out an email I was just entering unknown territory - having spent the last 7 years with 100% of my income coming from consulting, I launched the first SEO MBA course in November. 2021 ended 60/40 revenue-wise between consulting/courses.

I launched the second SEO MBA course (The Art of Client Management) a few weeks ago and 2022 has flipped - 60/40 courses/consulting.

I guess I'm in a different line of business now? My time/energy/money orbits are wildly different now. KABLAMMO - chaos.

Surfing the chaos of independent life requires a kind of optimistic, curious, playful mindset. You have to prize optionality above all else. It's why consulting has been such a powerful foundation - it's a route to "cash AND calendar" freedom.

Here's a blog post that has quietly turned out to be one of my most popular: a map for indie living. It's not THE map, but it's A map. It's the best articulation I have on why consulting is a powerful bedrock for any independent career - it's a great way to derive cash and calendar freedom while retaining optionality. Whether you're thinking of starting an independent consulting career, or if you've been doing it a while - you might dig the post.

Listen, I'm a weirdo, you know that. But I think there are two great economic engines for indies: consulting and blogging. Consulting, as a driver of time and financial freedom feels more obvious. Blogging, as "just writing on the internet" feels less obvious but it's no less powerful.

Writing on the internet is an incredible economic engine for individuals. It's a kind of force multiplier and serendipity engine. Blogging is a way to build your network, reach more people with your ideas, create connections and also stand out from the crowd. It's an unfair advantage with an activation cost of $0.

There's a reason that Stripe, a $10bn+ company, talks about blogger and walker Craig Mod in their annual "GDP of the internet" letter.....

Anyway - a few months ago I decided to start blogging weekly. This weekly streak idea was 100% inspired by Matt Webb (the bloggers blogger). I've written 19 blog posts this year. Here's some of my faves:

A map of inquiry lays out some of my various interest areas. Specifically, attaching active questions to each interest. This is a good signpost of where I'm going (if it's possible to even know where I'm going... watch out for the kablammo chaos). I went on to explore this idea of "questions as scaffolding" more directly in Building a Digital Homestead, Bit by Brick

Electric Tables V0.1: is a prototype I made at the intersection of internet research / URLs / web crawling / comparison shopping. I love tinkering with the web, what I call "digital bricolage" and this is a perfect example.

Notes on teaching and chairs lays out some reflections on building courses, creating a syllabus, teaching and falling asleep during lectures.

Some notes on executive dashboards looks at why executives hate their dashboards, but don't do anything about it. Most of my consulting work this year (oddly) has been around building better dashboards for c-suite execs so this is relevant to my interests...

Reflecting on things I failed to get done at Google is mostly therapy if I'm honest. This one sat in my drafts for 3 years while I plucked up the courage to publish it. My time at Google was a mixed bag but maybe we can learn some things from the way I tried to get projects off the ground?

Rejecting specialization just went up yesterday and is the second-to-last chapter in my book about indie consulting! I'm really hoping to turn this body of work into a physical book before the end of the year. With a bit of editing help and a following wind I think I can do it.

Anyway, this email is too long already for a summer Friday so I'll pause here.

Maybe I'll send the next email in the fall? In the meantime - how are you? Are your orbits stable or chaos right now? Much love to you either way

Tom

[Oops, just sent a version of this email with all the links broken. Sorry! Here's the same email with the links fixed]

I've said before that being self-employed is a continual process of becoming. Holding yourself together is a balancing act between your time, energy and money.

But it's not a balancing act like a set of scales - it's a balancing act like the three-body problem. The three-body problem is a famous mathematical problem trying to figure out how three bodies with gravitational mass interact in space. It's about putting these things into orbits and trying to stay sane (here I'm talking about either the three-body problem, or an indie consulting career).

Time, energy, money.

The fiendish thing is that what appear to be stable orbits always have chaos bubbling underneath. You can watch these orbits gracefully rotate for 6, 7, 8, 9 rotations:


Until, suddenly - KABLAMMO - chaos explodes out of nowhere:

Same system, nothing changed. Just pure chaos. (Play around yourself with a visualization of your own career. Be sure to select chaos mode: three-body problem in Javascript).

Honestly, you could apply the same visualization to parenting.... Chaos, masquerading as stability.

Hi, it's me Tom Critchlow, your friendly internet weirdo / independent consultant / blogger / tinkerer / course creator. You might have signed up for this email a while ago - I don't send them very frequently. As always, unsubscribe links at the bottom.

Last time I sent out an email I was just entering unknown territory - having spent the last 7 years with 100% of my income coming from consulting, I launched the first SEO MBA course in November. 2021 ended 60/40 revenue-wise between consulting/courses.

I launched the second SEO MBA course (The Art of Client Management) a few weeks ago and 2022 has flipped - 60/40 courses/consulting.

I guess I'm in a different line of business now? My time/energy/money orbits are wildly different now. KABLAMMO - chaos.

Surfing the chaos of independent life requires a kind of optimistic, curious, playful mindset. You have to prize optionality above all else. It's why consulting has been such a powerful foundation - it's a route to "cash AND calendar" freedom.

Here's a blog post that has quietly turned out to be one of my most popular: a map for indie living. It's not THE map, but it's A map. It's the best articulation I have on why consulting is a powerful bedrock for any independent career - it's a great way to derive cash and calendar freedom while retaining optionality. Whether you're thinking of starting an independent consulting career, or if you've been doing it a while - you might dig the post.

Listen, I'm a weirdo, you know that. But I think there are two great economic engines for indies: consulting and blogging. Consulting, as a driver of time and financial freedom feels more obvious. Blogging, as "just writing on the internet" feels less obvious but it's no less powerful.

Writing on the internet is an incredible economic engine for individuals. It's a kind of force multiplier and serendipity engine. Blogging is a way to build your network, reach more people with your ideas, create connections and also stand out from the crowd. It's an unfair advantage with an activation cost of $0.

There's a reason that Stripe, a $10bn+ company, talks about blogger and walker Craig Mod in their annual "GDP of the internet" letter.....

Anyway - a few months ago I decided to start blogging weekly. This weekly streak idea was 100% inspired by Matt Webb (the bloggers blogger). I've written 19 blog posts this year. Here's some of my faves:

A map of inquiry lays out some of my various interest areas. Specifically, attaching active questions to each interest. This is a good signpost of where I'm going (if it's possible to even know where I'm going... watch out for the kablammo chaos). I went on to explore this idea of "questions as scaffolding" more directly in Building a Digital Homestead, Bit by Brick

Electric Tables V0.1: is a prototype I made at the intersection of internet research / URLs / web crawling / comparison shopping. I love tinkering with the web, what I call "digital bricolage" and this is a perfect example.

Notes on teaching and chairs lays out some reflections on building courses, creating a syllabus, teaching and falling asleep during lectures.

Some notes on executive dashboards looks at why executives hate their dashboards, but don't do anything about it. Most of my consulting work this year (oddly) has been around building better dashboards for c-suite execs so this is relevant to my interests...

Reflecting on things I failed to get done at Google is mostly therapy if I'm honest. This one sat in my drafts for 3 years while I plucked up the courage to publish it. My time at Google was a mixed bag but maybe we can learn some things from the way I tried to get projects off the ground?

Rejecting specialization just went up yesterday and is the second-to-last chapter in my book about indie consulting! I'm really hoping to turn this body of work into a physical book before the end of the year. With a bit of editing help and a following wind I think I can do it.

Anyway, this email is too long already for a summer Friday so I'll pause here.

Maybe I'll send the next email in the fall? In the meantime - how are you? Are your orbits stable or chaos right now? Much love to you either way

Tom

• I've crossed the 7 year mark for being an independent consultant. I wrote up a long reflection piece here: 7 years on the road. 
• I launched the SEO MBA course - teaching business, leadership and consulting skills to SEO professionals

About 1/3 of my revenue in 2021 will be from the course - and it's clear to me that I could spend 100% of my time on the course in 2022, winding down my consulting practice.

But... is that what I want to be doing?

Some reflections from launching the course and dipping my toe in the creator economy:

1. It's not "passive income" - I can see how I could replace my consulting revenue with course revenue but I think it would take about the same level of work.
2. It actually requires consulting skills. The ability to negotiate deals, create contracts and structure custom training programs are all key skills that life in the consultant economy has taught me.
3. It's very narrative driven, just like consulting - you have to find a position and label that fits not just what you feel comfortable with but what your audience can understand.

• I've given my personal site a quick reskin. Still work in progress but check it out: tomcritchlow.com. In particular I'm trying out a new notes section hosted on Microblog for faster/looser writing and link posting. It's early days but I'm enjoying it so far.
• In case you were worried about my focus on consulting - if anything my focus on consulting is only going deeper. I read some academic papers about consulting and this was an absolute banger: "post-bureaucratic agents of change"...!
• This new microgrants program sounds very exciting (small new economic models!) but it's also just a great piece of writing reflecting on motivation, agency and intention: mothminds.com
• My partner Erin has art prints and copies of her book available to ship - perfect holiday gifts for loved ones, especially little ones: Erin's Etsy Page

Hey, it's me Tom Critchlow. This is my email newsletter that I send on a relaxed schedule - mostly about independent consulting with a dash of blogging for good measure. Here's my daughter putting together a jigsaw puzzle. Maybe she's trying to figure out her life too.

When we say things like "carving an independent path" or "taking the path less traveled" or "making the leap" we don't typically think about how active those expressions are. If we think about it at all we think of the herculean effort required to step out into an independent career. That first initial leap.

But remaining independent.... ah. Creating a sustainable independent career.... that's something else.

When you're free from the structures of full time 9-5 work you're forced to re-evaluate and re-assess your relationship to all kinds of things. And there's no validation or affirmation. You're forced to create your own identity (if you can believe your own BS). You're forced to create your own routines and rhythms. And this work is continually happening. There are no promotions, no career changes, no awards. There's no one to tell you what to do. Or who to be.
 

• Am I willing to turn down this client project in order to take a vacation?
• Can I really turn down this client project to work on my side project?
• After no clients for two months suddenly I’ve got three clients all kicking off next week!
• How do I find uninterrupted time for deep work when managing this client project means I have to be on-call?

• I accidentally tweeted the phrase "re-wilding your attention" in this thread which kicked off some lovely blog posts including this one from Clive Thompson. I've got some thoughts here that I'll save for a future post but I'm curious. How do you manage your digital attention? What would it take to re-wild your attention?
• My 7 year indie-versary is coming up soon so I'm thinking about these "year-notes" that I write. I've started a thread here gathering together some good examples but please @-me if you're an independent consultant and have written these year-note reflections!

Packing up the car for a life on the road, playing tetris with diapers and luggage under a full procurement moon. 

Welcome everyone who just joined the newsletter via Venkatesh winding down The Art of Gig. This is an infrequent newsletter, mostly about independent consulting from me, Tom Critchlow.

Today, three stories about procurement.
Here's a fun story. Last year I did a consulting gig for one of the big 5 FAANG companies. At least on paper it was the most lucrative project I've worked on by day rate. And yet, because I was an independent contractor  they couldn't hire me directly, instead they needed to bill me through a shell company.

Nothing quite so glamorous as a cayman islands company - but rather how this works is someone (often an ex-employee) starts a company and leverages their network to become an "approved vendor" at the BigCo - all set up inside their procurement system. In my case I signed a contract with the shell company and they paid me directly but I had zero interactions with them.

The only time I interacted with them was when they accidentally forwarded me their contract, not my contract which listed both my fees and the shell company fees. Turns out the "highest day rate I've ever charged" actually had a 15% markup on top for the shell company. The checks landed in my bank account on time and that was that. A blessed procurement moon.

We don't talk about procurement enough as indie consultants but it's a space that I think is ripe for disruption and change as does Bud Caddell from org design firm Nobl:


 
Rigid and kafka-esque layers of procurement are just one way that clients are bad at sourcing talent. Another way client are bad at sourcing talent is through being lazy. I've worked on three big projects so far in 2021 and each of them came via a warm intro, in each case the project closed very quickly and I don't think the client was talking to anyone else as part of the sales process.

These uncompetitive pitches are the gold dust of independent consulting: clients who are primed to work with you, and only you. This leads to good rates yes, but also great working relationships.

But as I reflect on this it strikes me that many clients are very bad at talent discovery - they underinvest in sourcing and vetting talent for projects. This excellent paper explains it a bit Superstars and Mediocrities: Market Failure in the Discovery of Talent.

Essentially - in industries where talent is revealed on the job, being "publicly observable" drives talent discovery, more or less regardless of actual talent:

"Intriguingly, industries with the highest and most skewed pay levels— entertainment and top management—tend to have largely publicly observable performance. The model suggests that this observability may be a key cause of high pay, and that fierce bidding for known top talent could indicate dramatic inefficiencies in the selection of individuals into these industries."

The idea here is that observability and known top talent drives inefficient talent discovery.
 
Sounds a lot like independent consulting to me! Sourcing clients then is a function of taking advantage of this market failure through being observable and known.
 
This is exactly what happened to me. I recently started a new training program the SEO MBA (leadership and business skills for SEO professionals) and I've been sending emails weekly-ish since it started. So far being visible has earned me 2 client projects.

I don't think this is a function of what's *in* the emails, so much as it's a function of simply being visible. Clients underinvest in talent discovery and the reminder that I exist by landing in a client's inbox is sometimes all it takes to trigger a discussion that leads to a working relationship.

This insight is essentially the same idea I explored in weak ties and strong intros about leveraging your network in smart ways to drive client intros but with a focus on the last idea: the most effective lead generation technique is not just to be visible, but to find a way to be consistently, sustainably visible.

It's not at all obvious how to do this - it makes many people uncomfortable to talk about themselves and discussing your own work is painful because it is intrinsically linked to your identity. Further, many people are uncomfortable with the idea of "marketing themselves". So perhaps it's useful to reframe this not as self promotion but rather taking advantage of the market failure of talent discovery. 
 
I've been busy this year and this email list has been slow but there will be more to share soon. Notably:

• I'm almost done with part 2 of the Chronos & Kairos consulting chapter! If you want to review the draft shoot me a note.
• My book (The Strategic Independent - theory & practice for indie consultants) is almost done! I've sent the first test copy to be printed. I'm still a ways off "finished" but certain this will ship this year.
• More reflective notes and thoughts from my experience teaching the first SEO MBA course.

The procurement moon idea through this email comes from a lovely little book of poems (spells?) called a wicked pack of cards by Marcus John Henry Brown (one of the most fascinating and unique indie consultant types out there).

I hope this email finds you under a full and blessed procurement moon.

Hi, it's me Tom Critchlow - I'm an independent consultant, blogger and jazz-lover. Last week I emailed you about my book chapter, this week a new project launch.

When I first launched my consulting practice I wanted to distance myself from the SEO industry. After working at Google for two years on things like Google Glass, quantum computing and VR it felt like a step backwards to do SEO audits.

The truth is that being a pure-play SEO consultant felt limiting. However what I was really struggling with was not being senior enough and not strategic enough. As I evolved my consulting practice I managed to work with more interesting clients on more interesting projects. And because most of my clients are content businesses at heart - everything touches and informs SEO.

SEO is inherently a cross-disciplinary activity and requires working across multiple stakeholders on a wide range of projects. That's set me up well to be a consultant - helping teach me how to operate cross-functionally and how to get things done.

I need to stop pretending that SEO clients cant be interesting and SEO clients cant be strategic.

Rather than hiding and disguising my work here I think it's important to acknowledge that some of my most interesting clients have involved some portion of SEO work. Yes, there's also product development, leadership, org design and such but there's SEO too. With this new launch it pulls my personal identity back closer to the SEO world but also opens up a strong theme of education and teaching (something I care a lot about).

One thing I've spent a lot of time doing over the past few years is hiring and helping clients structure and build teams. And it's clear that there's a big talent gap in the SEO industry for senior talent that can interface with the executive layer. Which is why I'm launching a new project: the SEO MBA.
The SEO MBA is a free newsletter and (soon) an online course. Designed to teach executive presence for SEO professionals. You can read and share the full launch announcement here, but I've also copy and pasted it below in full.

For those with an SEO-interest I hope you'll sign up and help share the new project.

Much love, Tom.
 

Welcome to the SEO MBA

“The top 5 failure causes all had something to do with SEO execution challenges.” - Aleyda Solis

“The average SEO at a big company has been waiting over six months for their highest priority technical change and doesn’t anticipate seeing it deployed for at least another six months” - Will Critchlow

• I'm launching the SEO MBA - a free newsletter focused on the business & leadership skills necessary for SEOs to succeed at the executive level.
• There’s going to be very little technical SEO advice. Instead I’m going to focus on helping you become a more confident and effective executive-level professional.
• In addition to the newsletter (which is free) I’m developing some online training programs to teach executive presence. Sign up for updates and more info.

What are we going to talk about?

SEO x Business

Consulting Skills for Getting Things Done 

SEO Careers

Q&A

• How do I make my agency the “McKinsey of SEO”?
• How do I actually convince this organization to implement my SEO recommendations?
• How do I get a company to invest millions of dollars into SEO initiatives?
• How do I structure an SEO team for success?
• How do you effectively manage an SEO team?

Yes, there’s a course coming soon

Orientation: I'm Tom Critchlow and this is my newsletter where I talk about independent consulting, blogging, content stuff and other hijinks. You likely signed up on my (bright green) website: tomcritchlow.com.

When you have small kids you tend to celebrate New Years Eve at... well, some time before midnight! If you live on the east coast 7pm ET is midnight in the UK - a perfect time to watch Big Ben chime midnight and see the fireworks on YouTube in real time with the kids.

Turns out deadlines aren't as important as you think they are.

This is a valuable lesson for consultants of all stripes - but especially so for indie consultants. Juggling multiple clients at once can be psychologically taxing and draining. You're constantly feeling like you're signed up for too much work and you're constantly trying to schedule meetings across multiple organizations. Burn out is a real danger.

Turns out deliverables aren't as important as you think they are either.

The key is to seek out the most effective valuable work at all times - and provide smaller, faster pieces of work instead of scheduled deliverables with deadlines.

This is about rejecting the Chronos time of full time work and embracing the Kairos time of independent work. It's about navigating by narrative time, not clock time.

Of course - there's nuance to this. And you certainly can't ignore deadlines and deliverables at the beginning of a client engagement.

All of that and more in the next chapter of my book: The Consultant Out of Time


Recommended listening for the piece - the new Time OutTakes from Dave Brubeck. This new rendition of Time Out is just electrifying.

⏳⏱️⏳

Some Links

• Data visualization and the modern imagination from Stanford. This section on time is especially relevant for thinking about new ideas about time.
• Fools and their time metaphors from Aaron Z. Lewis. Wonderful.
• Towards the Orthogonal Technology Lab, v0.1 from Matt Webb. Lovely musings on building some kind of modern research lab. I know a bunch of independents are thinking along these lines right now. The big challenge of course is the business model... How to fund such an enterprise? Pair with Reflections on 2020 as an independent researcher from Andy Matuschak.
• In defense of disorder: on career, creativity, and professionalism from Chia is a magnificent, passionate piece on creating for and with communities. Stay weird!
• Field Notes: 2020 by Vicky Gu - lovely reflections on her first year of independent consulting work (love the squishy illustrations!)

What's your time signature? How do you deal with feeling overwhelmed as an independent? I wanna hear from you!

I'll be back in your inboxes next week launching a brand new project - something entirely different... Stay tuned!

Much love,

Tom

 

1. Every independent consultant is unique and weird. Everyone finds their own path and I want my book to be a guide for finding your own path - not following mine.
2. The strange attractor is a chaotic map - an unpredictable system. And there's an idea that being an independent is to be an actor in the middle of fluctuating unpredictable networks.
3. There's a fluid grace and lightness needed - you need a Yes! And.... attitude and the ability to think on your feet.

That's why these book covers speak to me - they imply all three of these ideas. They imply uniqueness, interdependence and lightness all at once. But I'm still toying with them and will likely still hire a designer at some point (interdependence!) to clean up and refine them.

Permissionless Identities

Very much related to the power of networked writing - I wrote an issue of Little Futures exploring the power of writing as a driving force to rewrite your own identity and career. Relevant for independents and full-timers alike:

Permissionless Identities

(I'm having a lot of fun with Little Futures and am increasingly "all in" on the idea of inquiry over insight)
 

Why Voice is so important for Independent Consultants

I was a guest recently on the Hundreds of Ways podcast and we had a lively conversation that revolved around the power of "thinking in public" and in particular the value in creating a distinctive voice and style:

Listen to the episode here
 

The Economic Value of Real-time Chat Spaces

I've had more collaborations in 2020 than any other year in my consulting career. I wrote up some notes on why that might be and how transformative "the DMs" are to indie collaborations. So much independent consulting work is "just-in-time" and so real-time chat availability (slack, twitter DMs, discord etc) become crucial to forming these collabs.

The Economic Power of Real-time Chat Spaces

(as ever - if you identify as an independent consultant / freelancer / weirdo then ping me for an invite to the !& discord group)

Much love and thank you, here's to the next 4 years of whatever this is.

Tom x

PS - I've been really digging Sylvan Esso right now. They have a new album out tomorrow. For now: put this tuba in your ears.

Playing the Fool

This piece is important to me and explores the identity of indie consultants - from feelings of being an outsider to the fear of being an outcast. And ideas of generative destruction vs defensive destruction and how holding too tightly to your identity as an outsider can be damaging for clients.

There's even a 2x2 with yours truly on the graphic design 1s and 2s:


I'm excited to be done with the series and proud of this one in particular. Now I can finally move onto some other chapters and sections of the book!

I'd love to know what you think.

Much love. Stay weird and foolish,

Tom

WFH consulting has it's perks - like when your 4 year old daughter doodles in your notebook

​Hey - it's me Tom Critchlow - indie consultant, blogger, firehose drinker & now accidental organizer for a discord community for indie consultants.

Just a short note this week with some updates. The !& discord community (pronounced: Yes! And...) continues to provide stimulating discussions and connections with other indie consultant types. Open invites are closed but if you're on the tinyletter use this link to access.

Last week we hosted a discussion around "small group consulting" inspired by a set of articles and readings. We meandered to the point - but ended up with some interesting reflections around alumni networks - how powerful they are for indie consultants and how you might manufacture them if you're out on your own.

Read my writeup here: Generating an alumni network for indies

Perhaps this discord space might become almost like an alumni network?.....

Two Upcoming Salons This Week

• Tues Aug 11th @ 1pm ET: a "hire me" page group crit session. RSVP here.
• Fri Aug 14th @ 12pm ET: using Roam for indie consulting. RSVP here.

Some links

Here's some stuff:

• For media aficionados this NYT interactive art critique is sublime in both medium and message. If anything I think it's *better* on mobile than desktop. (Makes me think - how hard would it be to replicate this in an AMP story format?)
• Talking of custom essay formats - I have been collecting some examples in this Twitter thread. Ping me if you know of good examples!
• My friend Kyle Monson is starting to do some "thinking in public" for his agency and I think it's a great example of how being open can be interesting. Follow, subscribe, etc. Kyle is one of the good ones.
• Last week I pounded some ciders one evening and fired up a thread with some generic observations about business. People seemed to like it.

Next - look out for me finally finishing part 5 of the Yes! And... essay series, re-launching Little Futures with my friend Brian and a custom-essay-template-thing... What are you working on?

Much love,

Tom

The Next Salon with Matt Webb

Matt Webb is a fellow indie consultant - ex-BERG and all round fascinating human. I've admired Matt's work and his thinking for years. He recently wrote a great little meditation on generating consulting work during the pandemic: Sales pipelines, consultancy, and navigating the lockdown and I instantly invited him to come run a salon session in the discord.

It's going to be a presentation from Matt followed by group discussion around lead gen and surviving as an indie during these times.

Salon: 11am ET next Tuesday 28th

Add the event to your calendar here.

See you there

Much love

Tom

• It's going to be a freeform open discussion and collaboration
• Together we'll explore what a business model canvas might be for an indie consultant
• We'll each sketch out our own version
• Show & tell

• Firstly - I hope this session will help you understand your own indie consulting business more clearly
• Secondly - it'll offer a look at other people's indie consulting practice to share notes and insights

It might look something like this. Or maybe something like this? I haven't decided yet. Hopefully we'll figure it out together!

Note: this will happen in figma so if you haven't I encourage you to play around with it a little beforehand. It's free and you can use it in your browser.

This session is specifically intended for indie consultants but weirdos of all stripes are welcome.

Much love

Tom
 

• Fast & public: This is Twitter - functioning like a public commons
• Slow & public: This is my Blog - open to all, on a measured pace
• Slow & cozy: This is my Tinyletter - a measured pace and a cozy intimate stance
• Fast & cozy: This is a new space: Discord - a place for more intimate real-time experiences

 

Come Join my Discord

Discord is exploding in my circles - rapidly becoming the go-to tool for the coming wave of fragmented social spaces. Discord is quickly replacing Slack for this use case - and in fact Stewart Butterfield (Slack's CEO) said this is by design (behind Stratechery paywall):

Something interesting for me - because Discord spaces are free there are fewer power dynamics and I can feel free to make "my" discord space without imposing my power (and: importantly you create a Discord account, not a tomcritchlow discord account - so I can't read your DMs. A crucial distinction vs Slack).

So come join! Click this link to join the Discord space.

Using my Discord Space for Salon-Style Chats

One of the great features of Discord is the voice-channels where you can "drop-in" for audio chats. This interaction feels more fluid and casual than a zoom webinar. I've got two voice channels right now - #salons and #co-working.

#salons is going to be where I host scheduled sessions - on all kinds of things. Watch this space for more info.

#co-working is going to be where we can just hang and chat when we want.

Got a suggestion for a small talk? Want to pre-test an idea before it becomes a conference talk or blog post? Ping me and we'll set up a salon for it.

Salon #1 - Thinking in Public tomorrow @ 1pm ET

The first salon is going to be tomorrow (Tuesday) 1pm ET in the discord space! We're gonna fire up a figma file, gather round and chat. It's going to be fun and weird and experimental. Hopefully it'll be useful for all kinds of folks who are thinking about how and why to think in public:

• Hopefully it'll be useful for any agency / consultant types who are wrestling with "content marketing" and need a better way through
• Hopefully it'll be useful for bloggers / writers who are wrestling with finding an audience and figuring out their style.

There's no eventbrite or reminder - just show up in the discord at 1pm tomorrow. If you want a calendar reminder reply with your email address.
 

More Links

This email is getting long so I'll keep these brief.

From me:

• Quotebacks is finally ready for Firefox! If you've been waiting dive in and play around.
• I wrote the next post in the quarantined independent blogchain: can calendly unbundle NYC? (where I also share some stats about where my client work has come from over the last 6 years)

From others:

• Paul Millerd wrote a wonderful meditation about why you should be a creator online: We Need 100x More Creators Online
• Aaron Z Lewis wrote a magnificent piece: The Garden of Forking Memes: How Digital Media Distorts Our Sense of Time
• Toby Shorin wrote an also-magnificent *reply* to Aaron's piece: re: garden of forking memes
• Sean Blanda wrote a really insightful exploration: Our remote work future is going to suck

Some great blog posts recently. Let's keep it up!

Much love - I hope you'll come join my discord, whether to chat or just to lurk and join the salons. Both are equally allowed!

Tom

Quick reminder: I'm Tom Critchlow and this is my email newsletter where I talk about independent strategy consulting, blogging and more.

Back in December one of my posts hit the homepage of Hacker News: Yes! And... How to be effective in the theatre of work. That single post drove more than half of the subscribers on this email list (hi! welcome!).

Since then I've continued the series. Catch up here:

1. How to be effective in the theatre of work
2. Optimism as an Operating System
3. Blocking & Unblocking Clients

And yesterday I just published the fourth part of the series:
 

Navigating Power & Status: How to get things done inside organizations by understanding power potholes and status switching

The archetype of "consultant" is usually one of the intellectual - someone who walks into an organization and *solves problems by being smart*. In my own work however, and increasingly in my writing, I'm discovering that this archetype is flawed and counterproductive.

Instead of problem solving - we should strive for capacity building: creating new capabilities with clients. This stance is by default more collaborative, longer term and more foundational.

And - it requires being able to actually get things done!

But... Anyone who's tried to get things done inside an organization knows that undercurrents of power, status and influence dictate who is able to get things done, which teams have favor, buy-in and more.

So - that's what this piece is all about. It's about navigating power & status inside a client's organization. Sensemaking, listening, watching and ultimately engaging with status transactions across the org. 

It's long but I hope it's useful for you:

Read it here: Yes! And... part 4: Navigating Power & Status

This book project is picking up momentum. I just redesigned the book outline on my site (including listing all the unwritten drafts!) so if you're looking for the best place to "see" the book start here.

Maybe next email I'll be ready to walk through some of the publishing options on the table......

With love

Tom

Hey there. Reminder: I'm Tom Critchlow and this is my tinyletter where I talk about blogging, independent consulting, media strategy and a bunch of other stuff.

My interests right now consist mostly of: parenting, blogging & consulting - and this email is about all three! But first, the thing I'm most proud of - Roxy's first blog post

Roxy's First Blog Post

As you can imagine there's a lot of talk about blogging in our household - and my daughter (4) is old enough to over-hear and join in with those conversations. As such - she wanted to write her own blog post! We used a combination of typing (she wrote "Roxy's first blog post" all by herself!), Google Docs speech-to-text and embedded audio files.

Check it out: disaster!

Roxy wanting her own blog post is one small example of "visible knowledge work". Because everyone is working from home now the lines between work / family / parenting / housework are melting away. Previously invisible knowledge work is now visible and legible for the whole family. I wrote about that for the latest Yak Collective report: The New Old Home.
 

Quotebacks - A tool to quote the web

Over the past few months I've been working with Toby Shorin to build a small tool for bloggers. Toby and I are interested in exploring new models of networked writing and increasing the dialogue between bloggers.

It's a Chrome extension (Firefox coming soon!) that allows you to grab snippets of text from around the web and embed them on your site just like an embedded tweet. They look like this:
Read more about the extension in my launch post (or just download the extension directly).

Let me know what you think!
 

Executive Sparring & "Tenure" for Indie Consultants

If you're an indie consultant you really should be subscribed to Venkatesh's newsletter Art of Gig. It's one of the few meaningful sources of knowledge for indie consultants out there. So I was honored to get to write a guest post for Art of Gig - all about "tenure" for indie consultants and how the "executive sparring" mode of consulting fits in.

Read it here: sparring as tenure

I'm proud of how this piece came out - and I tease a few concepts that I'm going to be writing more about - namely the compound interest effect of thinking in public and how it's crucial for indie consultants.

--

Finally - these are troubled times, but hopefully times of change. My voice is a small one but I'll state it explicitly: Black Lives Matter. A few things I've found:

• This actblue link to donate to a bunch of bailfunds at once.
• This link of supporting black leaders running for office
• This thread on research-based solutions to stop police violence

--

Much love,
Tom


 

The Yes! And... Papers

As many of you know I've been writing a book over the past 18-months or so: The Strategic Independent - theory and practice for independent consultants.

Pre-pandemic I started a new chapter in the book that I was affectionately calling the Yes! And... papers. It's a series of writings around the idea of improv acting and how it relates to consulting work:

1. Chapter 1 - How to be effective in the theatre of work
2. Chapter 2 - Optimism as an operating system
3. Chapter 3 - Blocking and unblocking clients

I hope you'll queue them up and read them - I think they're some of my best writing (and I was lucky enough to have chapter 1 at the top of Hacker News for a few days - which is where a lot of my new subscribers came from! hi! 👋).

There are two more chapters in this series waiting to be finished - but I've been interrupted twice now. Firstly by the birth of my son in December (hello Indigo! 👶) and then by a global pandemic.... Which leads me to:
 

Consulting "After Peacetime"

I put my Yes! And... papers on hold and... for a while didn't write anything. Until I realized that the mission for my writing about strategy consulting work for independents is to help independents in their consulting work. And indies are suffering right now.

So - I dusted off a new blogchain and fired up some faster, looser, more urgent writing around consulting through these weird times. The Quarantined Independent - so far there are 4 posts:

1. Introducing the Quarantined Independent blogchain
2. After Peacetime
3. Collective Narratives & Sensemaking in Uncertainty
4. The challenges of remote consulting (⚡ this one is the most interesting I think...)

These posts are questions more than answers - it's me feeling my way through ~all this~ and trying to navigate it somehow gracefully. I hope this writing helps - and I welcome comments, feedback and ideas.
 

Domestic Cozy Blogging

I've realized that I've become quite the crazy person. Blogging has become a core part of my identity - and fiddling with my blog has become a hobby and long-term interest for me. This.... will likely be no surprise to those of you who are close to me but it took me a while to realize.

When the pandemic started - I retreated into the domestic cozy world of fiddling with my blog and doing some internet trickery (honestly what I do is not coding, I prefer the word trickery). Some things:

• A proposal for a library.json bookshelf format for bloggers (📚this one was very widely shared - watch out for the followup soon!)
• New blogging 3: Blog Patterns (where I install site search on Jekyll and reformat how side notes work)
• Tiddlyblink on Glitch (know about Tiddlywiki? even though it's 15 years old it might end up out-pacing Roam! lots of fun experimentation here right now)

Oh - and there's a totally top secret new project I've been working on specifically for bloggers. Want early access? Ping me.
 

Public Work

I'm usually pretty cagey about the clients I work with - high level strategic work helping clients build new capabilities is often slightly uncomfortable for the client and I tend to bias towards being discreet. I don't have case studies on my website for example.

But recently I've had two client projects bleed out into public (is this a consequence of the pandemic? unclear) so I thought I'd share:

1. I'm working with HomeAdvisor on a strategic re-factoring and re-investment in SEO & content. As part of that I'm leading recruitment for a VP SEO based in Denver/NYC. I wrote up why it's so challenging to hire a VP-level SEO over on LinkedIn.
2. I'm working with Google's Area 120 team on a new project called Keen, advising on product strategy and growth - it's an early product aimed at helping you expand your interests. Think of it like are.na with a personalized recommendation feed for every channel. I wrote up how I'm using it to follow some blogging trends.

Attaching my personal identity to consulting work in public is an odd experience, and likely one I'll blog about at some point but both projects made sense to blur the boundaries so here we are. Hope it gives a peek into my consulting work.

Music

I've been finding solace in these uncertain and often confusing and stressful times in some lovely (new to me) African music. Some favourites:

Nomalanga - Caiphus Semenya
Not yet Uhuru - Letta Mbulu

And - this live song from Valerie June is very life affirming.

I hope they can bring you a small amount of hope in these times.

--

Forgive the lengthy email - it's been too long. I'm going to get back on a roughly ~monthly schedule going forward.

Be well, stay safe, look after each other.

Write back? How are you?

Much love,
Tom

Hello everyone,

Just a quick reminder - I'm Tom Critchlow. A strategy consultant, blogger, art/tech weirdo and lover of the color green. You probably signed up for this on tomcritchlow.com

A few updates on what's going on - some interesting links and more. Let's dive in.

Portals

My latest writing in The Strategic Independent series is all about workshops - but actually it's not about the kind of workshop you're probably familiar with. Instead it's about creating a portal inside a client's organiztion so that you can bridge the outside/inside problem of consulting.

Workshops as portals - and how to create clarity in consulting work

I've had some great responses to this post so I hope you enjoy it. And - if you're digging the consulting writing I do I've collected all the posts into an Are.na channel here: the strategic independent.
 

Podcasts

Do you know Mark Pollard and his podcast Sweathead? You should! Mark is one of the best podcast interviewers around - I especially love how every episode just launches into it. Usually you're hearing the conversation in under 10 seconds. Contrast that to so many podcasts with the long meandering intro, the music, the about, the, the, the.... Ugh. Just get to it. Mark doesn't mess around. Love it.

Mark was kind enough to invite me on the show and we talk about bouncing around, making leaps, finding work and how confusing being an independent consultant can be sometimes.

Ok - but if you like podcasts you should also check out The Tension from my good friend Howard. They're playful, 4-5min episodes that are fun, weird and make you think.
 

Punk

Did you catch my post from a little while back on Blogpunk? This idea of keeping it weird and letting your personality shine through in your writing continues to excite and interest me. This is another little doodle from a recent chat with my friend Howard (the same from the podcast above):

What is this image all about? It's a 2x2 on blog vs book / fiction vs non-fiction. It maps the spectrum of writing choices you have (loosely, weirdly). I'll explain later in a post soon.

I hope you're finding ways to let your blogging be a little punk?

To that end - two things that I'm doing that are a little weird but very fun:

Little Futures is three issues in:

1. Business Time - every company has a clock
2. Learning - every company needs to learn
3. Language - language is a problem

My blogchain with Brendan on Networked Communities is a few posts in and getting exciting:

1. Brendan: weaving a public web
2. Tom: blogging as a social act
3. Brendan: sidewalk spaces & positive gatekeeping

I've got a very exciting fourth post to add to this blogchain and.... it's going to be very weird! It's not quite ready to share yet but it might introduce a new way to hang out together online....
 

Links

Few more interesting things I saw recently:

A zine all about sharing your work:

In my opinion writing is a public act, we must learn (even the most introverted of us) to share our work with a readership. See our work as worth sharing, our voices as worth hearing. It doesn't have to be a huge public gesture; it could be 10 copies among friends. Share.

This super weird essay on the computer mouse (best on desktop)

a scrolling lecture on the computer mouse

Counting the future - a weird thing that's hard to describe but worth the click.....

Counting the Future is a visual history of prediction; a collection of attempts to predict the future from data. It focuses specifically on the diagrammatic nature of statistical prediction and puts predictive diagrams in relation with each other through time, across disciplines and domains. The resulting epic meta-diagram aims to provide a new way to access the history of prediction: a subjective and incomplete map which invites multiple readings.

A sewists statement -from Nozlee Samadzadeh an artist's statement about sewing, nothing and everything:

It just turns out that MAYBE my artistic practice isn’t simply the production of clothing, it’s a long-term performance piece about labor that happens to produce clothing as artifacts of the performance. I’m kidding—kind of—

That's all I've got for now.

The next post in my strategy writing is all about "the jigsaw of independence" - it's about managing time, managing energy and staying sane as an independent. Ping me if you have thoughts or ideas here.

Much love.
Tom

Personal branding, especially for (gasp!) a marketing consultant is terrifying. How do you escape being that arrogant person while still appearing professional and capable of well-paid work? How do I avoid putting a ferrari or a photo of me skydiving on my about page?! (The answer it turns out is remarkably easy - you just don’t put a skydiving or ferrari photo on the page).

Enter Little Futures

Little Futures 01 - Business Time

Links

A few other goings on:

• I started a blogchain with Brendan Schlagel on "Networked Communities". We're three posts in and I'm really enjoying the conversation. Start at the beginning.
• As a relatively new dad (soon to be dad of two!) this piece from Craig Mod destroyed me. "my father taught me not one single thing"
• I've really enjoyed following James Greig over the years - he's written some great things about independence but his most recent one is about going back to a job and it's a great little meditation: The unexpected pleasures of returning to employment from freelance life

I've been out on my own for almost 5 years now. The first two years or so of consulting were spent finding my feet. The basics of figuring out what my approach was, how to talk about it, how to find clients and so on.

But more recently I've spent the last few years trying to deepen my understanding of *how to be an independent consultant*.

In the course of this introspection and research I uncovered a critical flaw in the way I approach consulting. It's all about frameworks. They're highly effective tools but for too long I've been trying to bring off-the-shelf frameworks to client work and failing.

Instead I realized that I need to roll my own..

Here's my 5,000 word exploration of my own failures, theory of frameworks and 4 case studies from my own work:

How (and why) to roll your own frameworks in consulting engagements

For those new to this tinyletter (hi! thanks for subscribing!) this is part of an ongoing series of writings that will hopefully turn into a book-ish object later this year, working title: The Strategic Independent.

What do you think? I'd love to hear your experience with consulting, independent work, frameworks, co-creating mental models with clients and doodling. Leave a comment on the post or hit reply here!

(Aside: if you identify as an independent consultant you should really check out Art of Gig - it's a newsletter from Venkatesh Rao of Ribbonfarm fame all about consulting and it's delightful. $5 / month and worth every penny.)

In other (blog) news

Here's what else has been going on in the feeds:

Hello there to my little corner of the republic of newsletters!

Firstly - welcome to all of the new subscribers. Quick background and refresher for those who are new:

I'm Tom Critchlow, independent strategy consultant in Brooklyn, NY. This newsletter is mostly filled with musings on media, consulting, digital art and whatever else is interesting to me right now. I do a bunch of blogging over here: https://tomcritchlow.com/ and that's probably where you signed up. Welcome! (and of course, there's an unsubscribe button at the bottom).

This newsletter has no real theme or direction but there's just been an accumulation of *things* that I feel add up to a "thing worth sharing" but it's mostly just a list of links I've enjoyed recently...

Consulting Fiction - novels about consulting are pretty few and far between in my experience so it was a delight to stumble across Venkatesh Rao's old story The Art of Gig. This fast-paced adventure starts with a 2x2 and quickly dives head first into Structured Conversation Operations™.

This prompted me to make a (short) list of great works of fiction that appeal to the life of a consultant: stories about consultants.

Indie Consulting - what is indie consulting anyway? Venkatesh (again!) posted a deeply interesting and navel-gazing speculation on some different types of indie consulting in a twitter thread here. (Can you locate yourself on the 2x2?)

Oh - and Venkatesh just started a $5 / month newsletter for indie consultants specifically, called - you guessed it - the art of gig. You should subscribe right here - the first email goes out this week and it should be excellent.

Diagrams & Mental Models - a coffee meeting with a friend the other day blew my mind when he showed me a *new type of diagram*. Why is diagramming and doodling so powerful for consultants? I think it's because the unit of work is the mental model. Creating, challenging, clarifying mental models is the essence of a consultant (I think). Anyway - I've got a whole blog post brewing here but I'd love to hear from you: what diagrams and visualizations are your go-tos? Who have you learned from here? I posted a thread on Twitter and there's already some great responses. Add yours too!

Narrative & Consulting - Narrative arc is important to any consulting relationship. Controlling how the organization sees you and your work is very important and can make or break a contract renewing. My friend Arnold posted a really fascinating post managing the narrative arc where he links to a podcast from A16Z with Brian Koppelman. They explore the concept of "Showrunner" which was a new one to me but really feels like a great analogy to CMO (or consultant) within an organization. Have a listen and read Arnold's post and let me know how you think about managing the narrative arc in your work...

See also: I really *love* seeing independent consultants actually show their work so this post from buddy Elan Miller was wonderful to see. Real work! Real slides! Real thinking! Love it. Narrative-drive product development.

Book writing! - I've been writing about independent consulting work a bunch over the past 6 months and I'm starting to explore turning that writing into a book. Working title: The Strategic Independent. After my last post (called the strategic independent) and the positive reactions to it - I've started to consider finding an agent/publisher for this book. I've got ~20k words posted on my blog and another ~20k in draft so I think I have enough to talk about with an agent/publisher! Any intros or suggestions send em my way please.

Also - if you enjoyed my last post I recorded a podcast all about that post where I explain some of the thinking in more detail (and hilariously try and describe the diagrams with the podcast host!). Listen to the episode here on the Ditching Hourly podcast.

The art-business-consulting-made - This is an aside but as well as indie consulting I run an art business with my partner called Fiercely Curious and we have an art show in Manhattan this week May 1 - 5. More details here. Entry is $15 or something but I have VIP passes so hit me up if you wanna go! Erin does all of the curation for the show and I think it looks absolutely amazing.

Thanks for reading! As always - hit reply with anything on your mind. I reply to everything.

Tom

Writing a book is hard! I mean, I'm sure this is not news for anyone who's tried... but until you *try* it's hard to understand the demons you have to wrestle to do the work.

I've been on-and-off-and-on-again writing a book since the beginning of last year but only in the past 3 months have I carved out a deliberate writing schedule and cadence for writing to really move this thing forward and start putting shape against it.

Originally - the premise for the book was "a book not about consulting but about being a consultant" - mixing theory and practice of how to do consulting but also the inner game of consulting (how it feels etc).

That's still mostly what the book is about but the word "consultant" kept bothering me - it is a word I identify strongly with (see: 4000 words in my recent post I, Consultant?). But not everyone identifies with the word consultant...

Instead - the phrase "The Strategic Independent" kept floating around my head. That's who I'm writing this book for. But what is a "strategic independent" anyway? I had a pretty good idea in my own head so I wrote it down...


This post ended up at 4,500 words and includes a bunch of diagrams too!

The post itself is somewhere between a manifesto / philosophy / practical guide for doing independent work that is: well paid, interesting & effective.

But! The post is also really the foundational thesis and definition of audience for my book!

Anyway - hopefully you'll enjoy this one. I think it's a fun mixture of theory and concrete advice (with some personal stories thrown in too).

If you want to see the book outline as it starts to take shape I've been collecting and organizing here:

https://tomcritchlow.com/strategy/

And I've got a clear sense of at least another 3-4 posts. So watch this space.

As always - feedback is the lifeblood of writing so any ideas, comments, suggestions are more than welcome. Just hit reply and lemme know what you think!

Love

Tom xo
 

It's probably the number one concern for independents - how do you find work? And once you start finding enough work to pay the bills - how do you find work that you are actually excited about?

There are many ways to do this but for my own work they hinge on the notion of networks. How do you build these networks? Where do leads come from? Is it all random?

All of this is what I address in my latest post Strange Attraction:


Yes, I might have gone off the deep end with the analogies (chaos theory, seagulls etc) but hopefully this helps make the piece enjoyable.

As I mention in the piece though - there are a million different ways to think about generating leads because there are a million different types of independent consulting work (and consultants!).

What's your experience building leads and finding clients? Hit the reply button!

Much love

Tx
 

"The question of self-labeling as an independent is strangely vulnerable"...

Those aren't my words - Carson Mobley said them in response to my latest blog post but they really sum up the position well. How do you self-label as an independent? And why do the choices you make matter so much inside your own head?

Of course making up labels and language to describe yourself and the work you do matters to others - and it matters for clients and positioning etc. Of course. But it's in the inner game that is the strange one.

The headspace of trying to "live-up" to the labels that you yourself invented. The process of trying to "justify' their existence. It's an odd game. And sometimes a lonely one as an independent.

But there's hope - for one, once you realize that it's all poetry you can have fun with it! And you can invent multiple labels and identities for a variety of situations. Or you can choose a label only to shed it like a snake skin 12 months later. It's up to you.

All of that said - this inner game of labels matters! In particular, I've found in my own work that using a label like "consultant" or making a "consulting practice" helps relieve the pressure of invoicing and charging for my work (still to this day - every time I send an invoice I want to throw up).

Anyway - this piece is slightly dense and... I'm sorry-ish(?) for that but also I enjoy the depth and variety of rabbit holes that you might choose to follow:

I, consultant? - The struggle to define who you are as an independent and the promise of charging more for your work

Thank-you of course to Toby Shorin of Subpixel Space who helped edit and write this piece and provides some in-line commentary on the post. (and if you're not familiar with Toby's writing please you should dive in immediately).

What labels do you use? What struggles have you found in using them? Would love to hear your stories! Reply to the email or leave a comment on the disqus.

Thanks!

Tom xoxo

Hey bloggernauts!

It's been about four months since the last email - so I suppose I owe you both an apology and a celebration. Sorry you haven't heard from me - and/but yay for not taking up space in your inbox.

Client work has been steady and busy for the last 4 months so that's mostly what I've been doing. A little book writing as well - but oh my trying to write a book is hard work. Not so much the actual writing but the weight of carrying a (metaphysical) book on your shoulders all the time. It's a psychic load, that's for sure.

Anyway - this email brings us back to blogging. Or, more accurately networked writing. I've been very curious about the ways in which "internet-writing" is new, different and useful. So there's two things I want to draw you to:

Web-annotations

I wrote a post exploring the UX of web-annotations. Except - the title is a little misleading. UX is one (albeit important) part of the puzzle but more broadly annotations are an interesting and likely *new* part of the web. There's a new proposed W3C standards thing coming that I don't claim to fully understand but it involves annotations. But this piece breaks down some of the various solutions for allowing in-line comments on your own blog.

Be sure to stick around for the updates at the bottom of the post where I post what I think is a nice clean "standard" javascript script that anyone can use to embed annotations using Hypothesis.

Secondly...

I built a personal wiki

For some time I've been playing with three "modes" of information exchange on the web:

Streams - This is the fast-twitch flow that I personally use Twitter for. Plenty saturated at the moment.

Campfires - This is the blog (and more broadly the blogosphere that I read and engage with). Room to grow here but generally I’m satisfied.

Gardens - This is where there’s the widest gap for me personally. No place to store and evolve deeper longer-term thinking. Many of my friends have gravitated to Are.na but I just can’t get it to work for me.

So I went on to build my own solution using only text files and folders and published on the web using Jekyll/Github pages. There's a full writeup here:

Building a digital garden.

But - here's the semi-secret announcement for those of you on the email list, one of the folders of my wiki is my entire blog post drafts folder:


Be gentle, of course, these are my butterflies pre-flight! Fragile and delicate and almost non-existent in some cases. But maybe there's some that catch your eye? Perhaps encouragement is all that's needed to push some of them over the edge?

--

Because all of the above is about me I thought I'd throw in a few links I've enjoyed recently too:

- Blogging to exhale by Daniel Gray (a wonderful pairing to seeking inspiration? by Derek Sivers)

- The city is my homescreen by Dan Hill

- Nike x Architecture x Disaster Capitalism (032c)

--

That's all for now from this corner of the republic of newsletters. As always - hit reply with feedback, ideas or just to chat.

Tom


 

October 24th 2014 is the day I walked out of Google into the crisp autumn air of freedom. Which means today is four years self employed!

Editors note: ahem. You might notice that today is in fact the 25th of October. Well, due to a tinyletter snaffu I tried to send this yesterday with no luck. So here's to 4.0027 days on the road!

Every year I like to reflect on a mixture of personal and professional things that happened. I missed the first year (I'm not sure I realized I was in it for the long haul at that point!) but I've done it the years since.

Here's the latest installment:

https://tomcritchlow.com/2018/10/24/four-years/

This one ended up being quite long and meandering but the biggest revelation is basically this graph which shows the client work I've done over the past four years:


That cyclic boom/bust of client work is inevitable and actually a feature not a bug - it's what gives me perspective to reflect on work. It's the freedom to take holidays in the slow times. But it's also the fact that allows me to dive head-first into more-than-full-time work when the client work is flowing and well paid and interesting.

The best advice I ever received starting out was to embrace the busy times and the slow times and I've done both this year - from a relaxed vacation in Uruguay at the start of the year to working nights and weekends over the summer.

Anyway - I'd hope perhaps there's some useful nuggets for folks thinking of carving their own independent path.

Much love and thanks for coming on this journey with me.

Tom x

PS - my wonderful partner Erin is in the middle of writing and illustrating a kids book. If anyone on this email list knows people in the kid's book publishing world I'd love an intro! Thanks. More info on the book with some images here: https://tomcritchlow.com/2018/10/16/journey-to-the-end-of-the-night/

You know I used to think of blogging and my love for blogging as somewhat whimsical but it's starting to become a much more important and urgent issue for me. It's increasingly clear the social networks have, and are, failing us.

The web is an infinite library and the bloggers are its librarians.

So what? What next?
 

Mozilla Slab

I wrote up a blog post here outlining a little vision for how someone could step in to help - namely someone with a long time horizon, with the right funding model and the right approach to building consumer products.

My proposal for Mozilla Slab


(do know anyone at Mozilla you can introduce me to?)

It's interesting by the way that the older I get the more my energy and attention shifts to the infrastructure, governance and stewardship of ideas rather than just the UI and flash....
 

The Power of Labels

In other news - as always when I get a little bit of downtime between client projects - my mind wanders and begins to pick on that ever-present concern of naming.

Media Design has been resonating with me personally more and more but in this post I explore why naming is powerful and link to a few HIGHLY RECOMMENDED talks from Sara Hendren and Robin Sloan:

The Power of Labels

Until next time ethernauts.

Much love,

Tom
 

One of the curses of being independent, of being untethered from an employer or job title, is that you are doomed to constantly question *what* it is that you do, and *who* exactly you are.

These can be deep existential questions. But useful ones.

At the beginning of the year - rolling off a big client project and finding myself with some free time - I began this introspection in earnest. Partly trying to push myself to find more of the interesting work that would stretch and excite me - and partly just to try and find a language to use to attract more clients.

(Yes, dear freelancer, when client work ebbs and flows so will your levels of introspection)

I shared a Google doc with friends (titled: "defining my independent work"). That stirred up some emotions and provocations but also highlighted the fact that I didn't even yet know the right questions to ask.

I found a professional coach to work with (recommended!). That helped find some of the right questions to ask.

I noodled.

And, finally, I doodled.

I don't think doodling in and of itself is the answer - but as the pressure release for all of the above (and, perhaps, a little too much coffee) things all of a sudden started to.... make sense? This was the diagram:

Sure, it probably doesn't make a lot of sense on it's own. But this is the kernel of the idea of "Media Design" coming to life. A unifying idea to tie together the threads of my work.

What is media design? I'm going to get to that, but first let's talk about the S-word.

I'm going to be honest - part of this whole exercise is an attempt to get away from SEO. I dislike much of the approach that the typical SEO industry takes, disagree with some of the fundamental ideas and try and distance myself from much of the industry in-fighting. But.... I've spent over a decade now working on the web and either directly or indirectly involved in SEO. It's what a lot of people know me for.

There's probably a reason my coach started calling it the S-word. I have strong feelings about it. Best not to name the beast.

But.... here's the thing. It's not that I don't believe that "traffic from Google" is a thing. SEO is alive and well as a tactic and channel.

And SEO is often the bridge to clients and projects for me personally.

The thing is, I believe that all of the really valuable work for clients I've done over the past 4 years comes from a broader skillset. An informed understanding of SEO, sure, but driven from a place of branding, user insights, org design, strategy and more.

Hence the introspection about defining and describing the work I do.

And I think I'm getting somewhere! This notion of Media Design - my early stab at a definition here:

Media Design is the practice of designing effective systems of content within the overlapping ecosystems of technology, distribution, production and experience.

By it's nature, media design is anti-disciplinary. Purposely broad to encompass and keep in the field of view all the necessary components of successful marketing / content / growth. It's not a slight on SEO, or even distancing myself from the tactics of SEO. But rather it's a broadening of the horizon. A lifting of the head to see what the far line of sight might reveal.

Who knows where this rabbit-hole goes. I don't think the axes of media design are quite right. I don't think I've nailed the definition.

There are more diagrams to be drawn.

There are case studies to detail.

There are, I think, perhaps, a set of principles for Media Design.

We'll get to all of that. This is just the beginning.

For more words and a less personal story about what Media Design could and should be head over to the blog (and almost no mention of the S-word!):

https://tomcritchlow.com/2018/07/25/media-design/

That's all I've got for now. I'd love to know what you think. Hit reply with your thoughts. There's only 165 of you, I can guarantee a reply if you reach out.

Much love to my fellow freelance inner-cave-divers plumbing the depths of introspection.

Tom

PS - there's a bunch of new subscribers this week that came via a mention in Sentiers. If you came via Sentiers, welcome! I don't usually post such personal updates, usually there's a few more links. But also, I like to keep you on your toes. If you *don't* know about Sentiers then please, please go sign up! Lots of really good stuff.

PPS - what is is it about tinyletters that invite such personal comment and reflection? Maybe the clue's in the name. These things feel more like fireside chats. More sub-surface. More hidden (despite these things being public on the web....). Long live the intimate tinyletter.


 

I've been following Bryan Boyer for a while but without exactly understanding why. But when I listened to the podcast with Bryan and Jarrett Fuller on Scratching the Surface I was intrigued by the Helsinki Design Lab and I started digging...

And what a goldmine! The Helsinki Design Lab operated from 2009 - 2013 and was operated by basically a small team of superstars. One of which is Bryan Boyer.

The HDL focused on "strategic design" and documented and published a ton of content along the way.

I'm working my way through the archives and their published books and blogging as I go. Two posts about strategic consulting that I wrote up here:

Strategy and stewardship - A model for retained strategy consulting

High fidelity consulting - Ideas without details and details without ideas are both risky

Hopefully for those looking to engage with "strategy" and "consulting" (whatever those things really mean!) might find these helpful. But really - head straight to the HDL source and start digging through the archives and let me know what you find.

Much love,
Tom

Phew. I'm on several client sprints all at once which has severely reduced my blogging and tinylettering output. But! The internets must go on. So here's some of the best stuff I've come across recently:

#1 - City Everywhere (video, 43min) - I don't even really know where to begin with this. Part performance art, part dystopia, part conference presentation this exploration of the future/present we live in is incredible. If you know anything remotely like it please sent it my way!

#2 - A lonely isle (6 podcast eps, 2-3 mins each) - if the last link featured dystopia then this is the antidote. Soothingly narrated in British tones this is a wonderful little heartfelt audio project about a rock in the middle of the ocean. Again - hard to describe but worth your time.

#3 - A guide to agile communication (blog post) - from the ever talented Giles this little manifesto for how and why corporate teams should blog is really good. Like, really good. "Planning your communication in advance on a grid is largely a waste of time" - oooh. Love it.

#4 - After authenticity (blog post) - from my good friend Toby this is just masterful piece of writing tying together many different threads around brands, authenticity, hipsters and  - I'm not going to spoil it - but man there's a great payoff at the end of this piece.

#5 - A framework for thinking about systems change (image) - this single image packs a real punch. Ever feel like you're not actually getting anything done with an organization? Check out this little diagnostics tool. Frustrated? Probably lacking resources. Confused? Probably lacking vision.

#6 - The excellence dividend (technicolor PPTX) - with bauhaus design and no-holds-barred punchy thinking this presentation really stuck with me. What if the trick to getting things done is an execution-at-all-costs mindset? Provocative.

#7 - Atemporality of the creative artist (wired.com) - this is an olide that I got via Venkatesh but boy is it a corker from Bruce Sterling.

#8 - A Vision for Sidewalk Toronto (blog post) - if the future of technology and cities is your jam (and if it isn't.... wtf are you doing here?) then this is a real gem. Be sure to read the post but also check out the full PDF linked in the second paragraph. Lots of small smart insights.

#9 - Effortless Slippage (blog post) - a masterpiece of techno-aesthetics from Ingrid Burrington. It's a deeply fascinating piece and the language just pops off the page.

Me? I'm just plugging away. 2018 is all about working with media companies apparently - leading audience development here, building business models there. If you or anyone you know works in audience development or is doing anything "interesting in media" then hit me up!

Till next time.

I love you all.

Tom
@tomcritchlow

Here's the thing. I've been thinking a lot about blogging recently - which, frankly, is probably far more interesting for me than for you. As the blogger - I'm the one receiving the benefits of the networked writing! You poor souls are just getting the words stuffed in your inbox each time.

Sorry about that. I'm going to start writing about things that are not blogging very soon. But - one last post! And I think it's a good one...

Small b blogging

In this one I write about my philosophy for networked writing and attempt to demonstrate how powerful writing with and for the network is even with small audiences (and audiences sure have changed in recent years!).

BUT! There's more for you special folks on the tinyletter list. See, here's my typical writing and publishing process for blog posts:

1. Come up with a crazy idea (usually involving too much coffee)
2. Write out a draft as fast as possible leaving in the typos and the emotion
3. Send out the draft to a close circle of friends for candid feedback and suggestions for improvement
4. Go through the soul crushing process of editing
5. Publish

So you can see what I mean here - and so you can compare the original draft to the final piece - here's a link to the draft post complete with typos, comments, notes and more!

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iwaoMKpOE3BBGJSHKpcWU2IH0O4sHnPHxGA2MGtJ2m0/edit

There's something interesting here - namely that by getting a small trusted group to review an early draft I get the following benefits:

• A better post! Obviously, since I get feedback and suggestions
• I get a close circle of folks to give a close and careful reading of the post
• I instantly get a small group of "insiders" who then usually go on to help promote the post

For them of course they get to feel like insiders and I sure listen to their ideas and suggestions too! (as you'll see from the draft...)

This idea aligns so well with "small b blogging" - the idea of small networks sharing ideas. Maybe you can adapt it for your own style of publishing?

Ok. I'm done meta-blogging for a while. Time to write about something else...! Till next time fellow hyperlink-adventurers!

With much love

Tom

Hello there lovely people. It's been a few weeks since I last sent out a tinyletter. Hopefully we'll get back into a cadence for 2018. But I'm promising nothing.

If you only read one thing make it this:

https://www.mercatus.org/commentary/my-personal-moonshot

It's short - and I highly recommend it. It speaks to me because:

Networked writing is an unfair advantage.

(or, said another way - In the land of hierarchy, the networked individual is king).

There's an article by Venkatesh Rao called the Calculus of Grit which follows up on this idea. I tie it all together in this post: In the land of hierarchy, the networked individual is king.

The punchline is this:

"This might ultimately be the measure of the networked individual - to what extent do you populate ideas in the network? how easy is it to address and link these ideas together? and how often do you rework them and revisit them on the internet github/blockchain consciousness?"

Food for thought.

For the blog-nerds out there I'm also curious about how the medium shapes the way we write. RSS, wordpress, Google Docs, commenting, twitter. These mediums shape the message (McLuhan!). So how might these mediums evolve? How might *we* evolve them? I posted some idea-starters in this piece: experiments in networked writing.

Ultimately of course it's all just one big disappointment that we can't write everything in Google Docs. (Know anyone who blogs and publishes in Google Docs? I'd love to see that.)

In other, networked-living-news, the podcast I started with Sean -  The Malcontents - is up to 4 episodes. Listen here:

There must be a theory on the internet that any blogger left alone to their own devices eventually starts a podcast right? Or perhaps the theory is that *anyone* left to their own devices will eventually start a podcast? Either way - here we are.

I've started a podcast with my friend Sean Blanda. Sean is a great "content thinker"... ok, that came out wrong. I mean, he thinks deeply about content and what it means for the world we live in. If you don't know Sean then dive into his archives. (Yes! of course he's a blogger).

Anyway - this podcast we started together is called The Malcontents and it's going to be the two of us chatting about the digital landscape, the business models of content as well as occasionally goofing off about the web. Hopefully we'll keep it fun and informative. We've done two episodes so far:

Episode 1.

Episode 2.



We're using Anchor.fm to host and sometimes record the episodes which seems to be working ok and takes some of the headache away from us. You can subscribe hopefully everywhere you listen to podcasts:

• iTunes link
• Google Play link
• Anchor.fm link

I know the audio is a little rough here and there but it's genuinely fascinating how easy it is to get up and running with a podcast. Anchor let us record the first episode on the spur of the moment on my phone sat next to each other. Next, we'll see how easy it is to get the quality up to good enough! Come along for the journey.

Really keen for any feedback or advice on the show, what we should talk about, what we have talked about, or podcasting in general.

In other news - I wrote a little blog post this morning:

Some notes on blogging & resisting the hyperfeeds of BigSocial.

We're now up to 102 lovely Tinyletterer explorers. Deep in the internet jungle hacking through content hunting for treasure. Or some other analogy.

Anyway - thanks for sticking around and see you next time!

Much love
Tom

 

As the internet envelops us and seeps into every aspect, every minute of our lives there are some deep questions we're having to ask about the kind of society we want and the actors behind the scenes that are controlling this influence and power.

Obviously the entire debate around the election, fake news and the russians is the highest profile example of this. But I want to draw your attention to a piece by James Bridle:

Something is wrong on the internet

This piece is being shared by everyone I know on Twitter and rightly so, it's important. If you've already read it or seen the headline and dismissed it I want to ask you re-read it closely. The issue is not that these videos "aren't that bad" or that "it's a weird peppa pig thing" it's that this corruption of motivations is playing out all over the web in many different niches. From kids youtube to ethnic cleansing in Myanmar.

Thinking critically about this YouTube Kids issue the key piece in my mind is this:


It's never been more obvious to me of a situation where what users want (tightly controlled content for kids) is at odds with the motivation of the corporate entity Google (which needs an algorithmic filter).

James end's his piece with this:

Aside from the fact that "infrastructural violence" is a beautiful (and haunting) phrase there's something interesting here. We don't have tools to understand what's happening. What exactly is the issue? How big is it? How deep does it go?

This whole piece reminded me of a personal digital art project I worked on back in 2015 that I never published called Privacy Glitch. In this context of ways of seeing and understanding hidden networks I decided to publish the piece and you can check it here:

http://tomcritchlow.com/2017/11/07/privacy-glitch/

In particular, personally I found these images of Hillary and Trump (generated back in 2015) arresting:


The networked age is maturing and we're starting to see some weird structural effects emerge. It's a fascinating, if troubling, time to be working in the digital world.
 

Three years ago today I walked out of Google into the crisp autumn air of independence. My friend Jonathan Schnapp hosted a quit party for me at the Royal Palms shuffleboard club and I was suddenly out on my own.

(This is something I encourage everyone to do when they quit a job btw - quit parties are the best).

It's been three years of being self-employed and so far things have been great. A close friend recently said I haven't been lucky I've been patient. And... there's something to that. It's taken me a while to find my feet and find interesting work but it feels like the past 12 months have been filled with good work,

Three years on the road - go read the whole post. I also break down my five obsessions for the year ahead. It's personal but maybe you'll get something from it?

(Btw - if you want something that's not about me go and watch this video about machine learning, creativity, writing and text generation. It's simply the best thing I've watched recently.

Much love to all 97 of you. Till next time my tinyletter companions.

Tom

(As always - wanna chat? just hit reply)