Recognizing and Developing Expertise
Recognizing and developing expertise are critical skills for entrepreneurs. Expertise is often a key differentiator for new products.
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Consulting Business
Navigating the Limits of “I’ll Know It When I See It”
At SKMurphy, we look for solutions that automate the insights and diagnostic skills embedded in “I will know it when I see it”.
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How Do I Find Clients For My Consulting Business?
Whether you are just getting started or have done consulting for many years, the best way to find new clients is through referrals. If you have been in business for many years, satisfied customers are a great source of referrals. However, if you are a new consultant, you may have yet to satisfy customers but
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Maintaining Your Professional Network
Some people are natural connectors. Sean Murphy is one of those. In this video, he shares one of his secret to network maintenance. He frames maintaining your professional network as counting your blessings. Your network is a long-term investment. It takes the time to nurture and grow your relationships.
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Angel Rampy on Influence Skills for Technical People
What skills do you need to influence the way other people think? Angel Rampy, business coach at Success Through Learning, covers the different levels from which we influence moving us from “telling” to “collaborating”. She shares tips for strengthen our ability to influence others. Here are a couple of interesting video snippets from her
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Essentials of Selling Your Expertise In a Webinar
The best webinar is more than one speaker in a lively discussion that includes interaction with the audience. Here are some practical tips for preparation, attracting the right audience, fostering lively interaction, and follow up.
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Carl Angotti on “How to Decide How Much to Charge for Your Services”
I interviewed Carl Angotti of Angotti Product Development on the topic of how much to charge for your services. Carl has spoken on this topic regularly and brings more than two decades of independent consulting experience to bear in his answer.
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Lessons From Working With Teams Who Speak English as a Second Language
Some thoughts on things we do to make it easier for teams who speak English as a second language to understand us.
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Q: Free Advice and Doing Business With Friends
Doing business with friends presents a number of challenges for entrepreneurs, as does setting limits on asking for “free advice” to know when to pay.
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Professional Services Innovation: Customer Insight, Expertise, and Technology
Professional services innovation requires deepening your understanding of customer needs and emerging problem areas, deepening expertise, and incorporating technology and specialized tools into service delivery.
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Sean Murphy Joins the LeanStack Mentor Community of Practice
Sean Murphy, a consultant with SKMurphy, Inc. has joined the LeanStack Mentor community of practice and will use the LeanStack toolkit as appropriate when working with bootstrapping startups.
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Managing the Work/Work Balance In Your Consulting Practice Talk Mon-Apr-17
I am giving a short briefing on “Managing the Work/Work Balance In Your Consulting Practice” at the South Bay Consultants Meetup on Mon-Apr-17 at 7:30am.
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How Do I Move From Being Capable to Offering Expert Consulting?
Offering expert consulting means developing a specialization and focus that enable you to execute with distinction. The phrases “finding the niche for your product” and “product market fit” are essentially equivalent. A key definition of a market is that members reference each other’s buy decisions and therefore building up a set of references lowers your
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Jerry Weinberg interview
An interview with Jerry Weinberg where we explore the applicability of his Fieldstone Method for entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs, the implications of Stewart Brand’s “How Buildings Learn” for Weinberg’s dry stone fence metaphor for creation, and managing a crisis as marker for an end of an illusion.
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Q: How Can I Maximize ROI and Minimize Risk?
You can only capture a share of the value that you create if you want to create a sustainable business. While you need to assess the likely return on investment from your efforts and your probability of success, you also need to look at any deal from the other side of the table. It’s as
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8 Tips For Bootstrapping A Service Business
Michael J. Riordan is a certified public accountant who has been in business in San Jose for more than 35 years. He gave a crisp briefing on “Bootstrapping a Service Business” at the Thursday Oct 8 PATCA meeting. He gave a great set of tips, here are my notes:
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Service Factory Conversation with Bruce La Fetra
I recently had a conversation with Bruce La Fetra of La Fetra Consulting on a “Service Factory” concept I have been working on. What follows is a 20 minute audio and edited transcript of some of the key points in our conversation. I have added some hyperlinks for clarity.
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Step Back To See Yourself In The Problem
Normally if you are not getting traction, if you are not able to reliably set and hit goals, then it’s a good idea to narrow your focus and take smaller steps. Zoom in for traction. This is a good rule of but you may need to take a step back and look at yourself as
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The Uncanny Valley of Email Automation
Trust is built over repeated interactions between people. If your business requires long term relationships then you have to make sure that investments in automation are not deployed in a way that undercut your ability to have real conversations. Unfortunately, some uses of email automation tools are pushing sales conversations into the “Uncanny Valley” because
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Customer Interviews: How To Organize Findings
Bruce La Fetra of La Fetra Consulting for a conversation on customer interviews. We compared notes on qualitative conversations versus quantitative surveys and exchanged tips and tricks. Bruce presented some great insights on how to organize findings and how to take best advantage of insights gleaned from interviews.
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