• 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.