It’s something most of us struggle with: how to achieve a healthy balance between your work and personal lives. Award winning consultant coach Melisa Liberman shared her four-part formula to create a work-life balance with Umbrex members. Here we delve into her process, looking at: Fundamentals of Balance: What balance means. Formula of Balance: 4 Steps to achieve and maintain your business-life balance. Your Personal Balance Playbook: For prioritizing, scheduling, and dealing with the seemingly endless changes and curveballs that…

How can you make your cover email stand out for project opportunities? Will Bachman shared his top tips on how to create and deliver a professional cover email in a recent virtual event for Umbrex members. “The goal of the cover email is to get you to the Context Discussion, to get you to stand out so that the intermediary, the staffing firm, or the client want to speak with you,” Bachman said.  It doesn’t need to say everything about…

As independent consultants, we want to connect with people and influence them in a positive way for the changes we want them to make. The question is, how best to do that? One powerful answer is to use storytelling. Edwina Pike, the creator of “Irrational Change,” has some insightful methods to share on the power of storytelling — and how to use it to help change people’s beliefs and behaviors in a positive way. At a recent virtual event for the…

What does your consulting firm really do? Can you communicate your consulting firm’s mission — who you serve and what you do — to your clients in just one sentence?  If not, you aren’t alone. Summarizing your business in just a few words can be an intimidating task.  Fortunately, consulting expert David A. Fields has created a way for independent consultants to do just that. He calls it your fishing line. What is a fishing line? According to Fields, a…

Pricing is always an important topic for companies, but in these days of high inflation and disrupted supply chains — as well as the uncertainty brought about by the pandemic — it’s become critical. Yet many companies are struggling, not having had to flex their pricing increase muscles for a few years.  “Pricing is a product-centric idea,” says Ian Tidswell, an independent consultant focusing on B2B pricing and the co-founder of Ideal Price. Pricing is usually set depending on how…

Having a solid content strategy brings a number of benefits to independent consultants. Here are the five types of content every consultant needs to utilize. Jake Jorgovan of Content Allies shared these five types of content for consultants in a Webinar for the Umbrex community. Before diving into the five types, he outlined just why content is such an important aspect for independent consultants — and why they avoid it. In his experience, when people think of content as part…

If you are looking for a new way to build your brand and reputation, consider hosting thought leadership executive events. Umbrex member Amanda Setili of Setili & Associates shared her process and tips how to plan thought leadership events with the Umbrex community in a virtual webinar. Setili began setting up such events in 2011 for four reasons: To save time. She was spending a lot of time calling clients, having meetings or lunch with them — a process that…

Corporations are beginning to change their operations and strategies to become more sustainable. This can seem like a huge undertaking for a company that is already long established, but some Umbrex and Veritux consultants are focusing on helping client companies become more environmentally sustainable. Nidhi Chadda, Founder and CEO of Enzo Advisors, says it’s often hard to know where to begin. “When we guide companies and investors in thinking about sustainability and how it impacts their respective businesses, we always…

Most people value creativity, but only one out of four feel they’re living up to their own creative potential. Fostering creativity in your business brings many benefits, professionally and personally. So says consultant and brand strategist Susan Meier, who led a virtual workshop on creativity in brand-building for Umbrex and Veritux women’s groups in April. Meier, who runs Susan Meier Studio where she acts as a brand consultant and conducts workshops on the topic, says that fostering your own creativity…

Winning projects is what independent consultants concentrate on most, but sometimes how you wrap up your work with a client is just as important as how you start the conversation, especially if you hope to win client recommendations. Best practices and tried and tested tips were revealed in Episode 287 of the Umbrex Unleashed podcast, featuring David A Fields, consultant and author of The Irresistible Consultant’s Guide to Winning Clients. Hosted by Will Bachman, the show finds its jumping off point…

The skill of persuasion is an important one to hone. Here we share some top strategies for building influence and persuasion. The Harvard Business Review did research that revealed the top personal — or soft — skills of successful entrepreneurs. The number one skill was persuasion. “The quality serial entrepreneurs displayed above others was persuasion, or the ability to convince others to change the way they think, believe or behave,” study results stated. “Persuasion for this study was defined as…

In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Umbrex launched a Stand With Ukraine initiative to provide support in several different ways. More than 130 members of our community have volunteered for a working group supporting Ukrainians impacted by the war of Russian aggression, and have raised more than $10,000 to go directly to Ukrainians. The working groups we have set up include: Sourcing: Reach out to businesses, governments, community groups to source donations of needed supplies. Distribution: Identify organizations…