Under a full procurement moon

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.