Rick Denton: 0:05

You're listening to CX Passport, the show about creating great customer experiences with a dash of travel talk. Each episode well talk with our guests about great CX, travel...and just like the best journeys, explore new directions we never anticipated. I'm your host Rick Denton. I believe the best meals are served outside and require a passport. Let's get going. Starting a business isn't easy. starting a business as an independent consultant surprised me by how much goes into creating and running and growing a successful business. That's why I'm thankful for people like today's cx passport guest Will Bachman Will create Umbrex which creates opportunities for independent consulting members to build relationships with peers share lessons learned and collaborate amongst each other. What stands will and Umbrex apart from other groups is that sincere desire to share the best of what he's learned with the group. I know my practice and even specifically this podcast would likely not exist without the things I've learned from will and the Umbrex community. will also hosts a phenomenal podcast, unleashed, now daily filled with the tangible experiences, insights and tips that help the independent consultant thrive. I want you to right now hit your pause button. Search up unleashed. Mash that subscribe button. Then come back here and listen to wills greatness in today's episode. Will. Welcome to cx passport.

Will Bachman: 1:34

Rick, thank you so much. That's very kind welcome. It's great to be here.

Rick Denton: 1:37

I'm so glad to have you here. Well, your LinkedIn headlights, your LinkedIn headline says, What three words best capture what motivates you mine are curiosity collaboration community. What an absolutely unique approach. Tell me about those three words and why they capture your motivation.

Will Bachman: 1:56

Yeah, well, thanks for the question, Rick. So first, a little history behind that. My headline bit before that was a more straightforward, typical fishing line kind of summary of what I do. It was something like, you know, um, brax is the fastest way to find the right independent management consultant for your project. There's something like that, right, fairly straightforward. And then I interviewed Tim Hughes on my show, he wrote a book called social selling. And his LinkedIn headline is, should have played Quidditch for England.

Rick Denton: 2:39

I have seen that one. Yes. I love that one.

Will Bachman: 2:42

And so, you know, I was asking you about the LinkedIn profiles and headlines and so forth. And he said, Oh, well, look, he did I think the isn't yours is a little bit, you know. So 2012, or something. And, you know, a more interesting approach is have a headline that engages discussion. So I thought for a long time, okay, what what can I put that says something that is about you, and helps people get a better sense of your personality? So I eventually landed on that, like, what three words best describe you? And I can't tell you how many people have responded to my question and tell me like the three words that best describe them. It's, it's awesome. asking a question in your headline like that, it's, you know, I just, it gets a ton of interest, it gets a ton of engagement. So the LinkedIn headline is super important, right? Because some people will just have independent consultant. And that's like having a book on yourself that just says book or book, it's just, you know, it does not get you we're not going to pull that off the shelf as a library. So I do tell people that the headline is important. You want to make it so that if you comment on someone's post on LinkedIn, or if someone sees you in a search result that that's going to get their interest piqued enough that they want to check on your profile. So that's really the goal of a LinkedIn headline is just pique curiosity. And that's what that's the story guy.

Rick Denton: 4:15

I love that. And what I love about that is we've I've certainly heard that in your posts and your content that you create, try to shape a question in there so that you can encourage engagement to the comments and and the like. But you've taken it one step further gun all the way right at the top layer and ask that question in the headline itself. I think that'd be fun to suddenly get a an invitation from someone that answered those those questions. So love that approach. That is that's interesting. I am one of those that may have a little bit of a stale headline and I'm already getting motivated just talking to you now that it may be time to take a look at that and get a get a change there. So tell me why those three words and what they mean to you.

Will Bachman: 4:54

So I mean, curiosity is certainly a driver for me, right? So one of my Core felt missions in life is to, you know, seek to understand the world and share what I've learned. And kind of that's maybe the real driving force behind what to do. I mean, I'm a consultant, yes, I run this, you know, I do. But that's really kind of underlying a lot of my, you know, kind of a consistent theme in my life is really just curious about how the world works. So curiosity, collaboration, My belief is that is to think about having a five decade time horizon, on your career, and be looking for ways to create value, right to right, create value for the people work together with people, when it's more fun, you know, I enjoy doing work with people that I like hanging out with, and that are fun people that I get to learn from. So I think that that's really about collaboration and community, that's what I found is that you can't really survive alone, you know, we, you know, I read somewhere that maybe it's a little bit of an oxymoron, but it's a community of independent consultants, where, you know, what we're trying to do is create some of the benefits of being at a large consulting firm, you know, people that have been at a large firm with a good culture, you know, is that McKinsey for five years, and there was just this culture that if you called up the partner in Australia, who was the expert on the FinTech practice in Asia, or something, they would give you the time of day, and it's been 15 minutes helping, you know, helping you out, right, and there was the sense of kind of shared thing. So I'm trying to help foster that in the independent consulting world of people that are somewhat feel some commitment to each other, and are willing to pay it forward, within within this group. When it's more fun, people tell me that they appreciate belonging, even if, you know, even if they're not like reading every post, or going to every meeting, there's this sense of belonging. And, and, and that's, it's, it's kind of my mission in life to help help foster that, well.

Rick Denton: 7:16

And as someone who is a member of that group, I definitely can feel that because you can definitely feel isolated as an independent consultant. And it's nice to have some sense of community and be brought into that sense of community. So certainly, I'm glad that happened to be one of your three words, because I get to be the beneficiary of it, for sure. So I think about that, let's I want to think about that almost in a customer experience sort of way. And so we as independent consultants, have our traditional clients, but you through cambrex, because of this community, have another set of clients, the independent consultants like me, who are part of that group. So you've mentioned a little bit, but how have you gone about from the beginning, trying to build that great customer experience? For those clients, the independent consultants who are a part of your community?

Will Bachman: 8:00

Yeah. So we actually started with the community side before there was a business model. So okay, in 2008, I left McKinsey I started my own consulting practice, the Bachmann Drew, and I pretty I was reading this book tribes by Seth Godin. And he talks about, you know, organize your tribe connect the members of your tribe. So I said, Well, I don't see anyone else doing that. And, and I feel personally the need for it. So I'll do that. I was in a situation where I didn't know how to write a proposal statement of work, how do I find insurance? How do I get an attorney? I know I do all this stuff that I had no clue. I figured the best way to learn was to reach out to people that had left McKenzie before me and we're doing it. So I started connecting with a few people. That was very helpful to me, I thought it'd be helpful to have a community of other practitioners began reaching out to folks inviting them to come to me if we started doing events. And so it really started with the community. That's where the DNA was. along the way. Some clients found out that I was organizing this this community and began asking me for help finding, finding them consultants for their projects, but it really started there. So we really tried to try to focus on creating value for the members of the community. That's really almost our first goal, you know, customer, we, the way we do that a number of things. So we organize events, pre COVID, we would do about 40 in person events around the world. Every year, I would go to a lot of those across Europe, us. We would do social events, as well as one or two day professional development events. We will also now we're doing a ton of virtual events. Almost one a week. We have a online forum for our members to connect. It's sort of a private, kind of a Facebook thing. But it's a, it's a private. Let's see, we also have access to various resources for a member. So if access to a couple of the top expert networks, if you want to, you know, find an expert for an interview, there are a number of firms that will do that for you. But a couple of the biggest ones, they require an annual commitment of 50,000 or $100,000 per year, which is beyond the means of a lot of independent consultants. But we came to them and said, Look, we have over 1000 people in our community, together, we're going to be pretty material to you. So they said, and we're embedded in a set of consultants. And by the way, it's not like we're going to be customers, if you if you don't let us do this. So they agreed to let us come in. And now we're we are well above that threshold as a collective. So we have access to that we have access to templates, contract templates, you know, discounts to things recommended resources. So we're trying to, you know, create value, we also will connect folks with one another. And then we do offer, I mean, one, one benefit is access to project opportunities. Right?

Rick Denton: 11:19

Yeah, one of the things you said almost at the very beginning, when I was asking you about that you said you started by creating value for the members of the community, you've always had consensus in anything I read or have seen from you or listen to your podcast, you've got that sort of client centered or customer centered approach, be it your independent consultants, or even sort of the clients that you might serve that layer beyond the independent consultants. So tell me more about that client centered approach, it seems to be at the heart of how you go about things. I'd like to know more about your client centered views and approach.

Will Bachman: 11:53

Well, one reason Rick is I don't like sales that much. I mean, I don't, I don't, at least, I'm not a big fan of outbound, you know, cold calling type sales, right. So I'd much rather run a business that's referral based, and where people talk about you. And I think, if you are creating 100 units of value, you know, you may actually be able to capture 95 units of that for yourself. And that, you know, you can't complain about someone doing that, right, they're still creating a customer surplus. But if you say, I'm going to create 100 units of value, and I'm going to take five, right, then and 95 units gonna go to your customers, then that's something that people talk about, right. So, you know, my goal is to create something that is remark, a bowl that people will remark on and tell people about. So that's sort of the philosophy of I'd rather create something that people want to talk about, tell others about think it's, you know, really great value. And I think that applies to any of your listeners, in their business, whatever it is, is, is, you know, aiming to create something that people actually are going to tell people about that's different and distinct from what your competitors are doing. So just as an example of one different thing that we do is there are other intermediaries out there that are, you know, between clients, and independent consultants. And we thought we're going to be different because we're the only one that actually works to connect the talent with one another. And we're the only one that actually puts on our website, all of the members. So you go to a website, and you can see all independent consultants. So we're trying to approach it a little bit differently.

Rick Denton: 13:47

A little change of pace here, join me in the first class lounge, we'll move quickly and hopefully have some fun, Dream travel location from your past.

Will Bachman: 13:58

Camino de Santiago, and we had such an amazing time. So if you're not familiar with it, it's an ancient pilgrimage path, not just one single path. It's really more of a network from all across Europe, centering and going to come Santiago de Compostela. In Bolivia, and northwest Spain, I walked 500 miles of it. And wow. 2000 year 2001. And we're going back there this summer. So my wife and I and our kids, we're going to walk not the 500 miles, but we're walking about 60 or 70 miles of it this summer. So we're really looking forward to getting back there.

Rick Denton: 14:36

Wow, how long did that take to walk 500 miles? I know it's broken up over stations. But how long did that take?

Will Bachman: 14:42

Um, yeah, so I it's actually not so much broken up because unlike maybe more formal things you can there's really about a town every four or five kilometers, okay, so you can kind of go at your own pace. You don't have to go crazy. But I I did it in. I did that in 24 days. So I was well About 24 miles a day you know sidewalk about eight hours a day not super crazy pace three miles an hour. It hours a day was a lot of weight. It's hard to eat that many calories like if you if you walk 24 miles a day you're gonna you're gonna get the trim boy

Rick Denton: 15:19

I've done some hiking in the Rockies but not to that kind of mileage. Now, I don't know that the Camino de Santiago was offered up as a diet plan but it looks like it could be a side benefit of choosing that so yeah, so thinking of the future what is a dream travel location you've not been to yet Oh, wow.

Will Bachman: 15:34

Okay. Yeah, I've I've I've never been really to I mean, I've been to India but I've never really explored Asia much New Zealand sounds amazing. I'd love to explore Japan in a Bali in Indonesia just and I really should get to know something about China right so China is like you know what the world number two economy What is it right and I I've never been to China so I've been in India several times but that's it for Asia for me. Love to go there.

Rick Denton: 16:06

Love that and so so I'll categorize that as a dream travel locations have not been to yet you've got that same wonder less that I have what is thinking back to the food favorite thing to eat?

Will Bachman: 16:17

Wow, that is tough. A Dolly from from South India is amazing. You know vegetarian, fairly spicy, where you get all these different little dishes. That that's that's the one that comes to mind first, but we certainly we love to travel and my wife Margarita is really the heart of driving that it's been really important for her to expose our kids to travel. Yeah, we have three kids each of them had a passport within two months of being born. We've traveled with each kid before they were a year old. We typically travel internationally once a year often Latin America expose the kids to Spanish Europe India so we we and she's been great about that one thing I'd say for independent consultants actually did a short video on this is it's so important as an independent consultant to think about what is your going to be your commitment to taking vacation and to traveling and then to just book that way in advance because as you get closer to the date it's always easier to say oh well I really am you know I'm on a project I can't do it or I I'm not on a project and I need to find one so there's always excuses not to go so you just need to get it in the calendar and just book it and pay for it get non refundable tickets ways advance

Rick Denton: 17:39

boy I love that absolutely love that you were certainly singing my song with with travel and booking it and prioritizing that. Let's think about pivoting back to food again thing your parents forced you to eat but you hated as a kid.

Will Bachman: 17:55

You know? Oh definitely. It was the lima beans in the frozen mixed vegetables. I still can't stand those and only recently that I learned a lot of beans actually a pretty good if you cook them properly. Yeah, but they come in these little bags right? And they're super hard and nasty. That's probably definitely the worst.

Rick Denton: 18:14

Oh my gosh, I mean I can taste it right now I really have forgotten about that cuz you're right I kind of like lima beans, but the ones that came in that bag were atrocious. Oh, yeah.

Will Bachman: 18:23

Now we get them for the Veronica Clyde's will get the they call it he got this. They'll get these big lima beans and cook with tomato sauce are delicious and nice and stuff. But those frozen ones are pretty bad man is awful.

Rick Denton: 18:35

Nice. What is one travel item you will not leave home without.

Will Bachman: 18:41

I mean, if there was one thing that I will not leave home without I mean, this is so obvious. I can't even say that. I mean, okay, I mean, this is me saying your phone. That doesn't count. Right? I print I typically will travel with my computer. I mean, it's hard to leave that at home. One thing that I I will leave at home now. My wife would not accept this is when I was walking the Camino de Santiago. And I'll admit this year on the air even though I probably should, what I did was and my wife would have been no, my my even my kids be super bears. Right? What I did was, every morning I was packing super light. When you're carrying all your stuff, you've done some hiking, you notice that you start just shedding stuff, you say this is unnecessary. This is unnecessary. I can live without this. It really is a way of shedding your life of some material possessions and getting a sense of that when you're carrying it on your back. Even the guide book that I was using, when I would finish that stage, I would just tear those pages out and throw those away. Yes, but what I was doing was, I only I don't I didn't have a whole lot of laundry with me. I only had like four pairs of socks and I need two pairs every day and only a few pairs of underwear. So every morning I would wash my clothes from the day before in the sink at the hostel or hotel I was staying at and then I had this string and I had some binder clips and I would just had A string I tied to my backpack and binder clip things to my bag. So I had my laundry hanging out behind me as I walked, as it dried in the sun, that is something that I will leave behind. I'm not going to do that.

Rick Denton: 20:16

Let's stay with that travel for just a bit. You and I have interacted on LinkedIn for some of my nature posts and that type of travel Well, not necessarily the big global travel that you and I are talking about, is so important. Where do you travel to get that same sense of restoration?

Will Bachman: 20:31

Well, you know, one thing that I would say is, it's also important to think about traveling locally, right? So actually exploring your own neighborhood, you can be an exotic place if you are paying attention, so and if you really look for things, so I took this life changing course in college, from john stilgoe, who taught a tiesto teaches at Harvard, in the department of visual environmental studies, teaches landscape history. And so he really taught me to explore the built environment. So for example, here's one, there's a great book, the urban, I think it's the urban white weeds of the Northeast, right? Okay. And so, I'll take my kids out, and we'll go and look to identify the weeds that are growing in the sidewalk, just in our neighborhood around the block. Yeah. And normally, if you just walking by you just sort of parse them as weeds, just the weeds. But if you start paying attention, right, and actually learning to identify the different plants, then you start noticing which ones grow in which environments, and you start noticing the actual variety of it. And it just like adds layers of depth to that local lived experience. So explore your local your local built environment.

Rick Denton: 21:56

That is that is I like that there is the travel slow travel deep type mentality. I like what you're describing there of even just looking at the the weeds, and I would be guilty of just walking right by the weeds or trying to find the nearest roundup to get rid of those weeds. So I'm gonna have to check out the book and I will put that book in the notes for anyone who wants to check that one out to motivate them to travel a little slow. Now I know that you do have a place I believe it's in Pennsylvania, but kind of in a farm environment. But you also live in the city, right? or New York City to those of us who don't live there.

Will Bachman: 22:31

We split our time. Yeah, we split our time between our farm and Pennsylvania. That was my great great grandfather's property. Oh, nice. And and we live in Astoria in Queens.

Rick Denton: 22:44

So what's it like to call a place home that others have on their travel bucket list? Right, you and I were talking about the places that we want to go to will for a lot of folks in New York? Is that bucket list for some? What's it like to have that be home?

Will Bachman: 22:57

Yeah, well, some people, some people here say New York is a great place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit. I think that the difference is that if you're a tourist, you often feel obligated to see some of the tourist attractions. Right, right. So you see, going to Time Square and wandering around and saying what should I do here and so forth, and going to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and MoMA and so forth, the Natural History of the Central Park, and just hitting some of those things. My own thumb rule about travel in general, is that the, the quality of restaurant, so the, the, the tourist density is sort of related to one over r squared of the distance from the tourist attractions. So as you get away from the distance from the tourist attractions, you get much more into like local resident population. So really, when you go to any city, you know, particularly obviously, for restaurants and I know, for your listeners, this is straightforward, but you know, go run far, far away from the tourist destinations, you know, when you're eating and, and one thing when we travel, for example, is we love to go into the local supermarket, that's always one of the most, you know, insightful pieces into into how local people live. So I suppose I'm just I'm still discovering the city. I've been here for 20 years, and only just about three weeks ago that I finally get a city bike membership, and it has been transformative. It's so amazing. My wife has been telling me for years to do this. I finally got one and it's so awesome to explore a city by bike. I'm now I in this thing where I dropped my daughter off on the Upper West Side because their school is in this temper. facilities there. Yeah, so I take an Uber with my daughter, drop her off there. And then I get a city bike and come home. It's about five miles. And it's just so great. Go through Central Park, go across the East River cross rhinos Island, across the tribe, bro. Oh, man. So anybody coming to New York City, you will get more of a view of what locals experience. definitely get a day, pass a city bike, get a city bike and just cruise around the city. And it's just a great way to explore new york city,

Rick Denton: 25:30

I have I have taken advantage of the bike tour of certain cities, one of our fondest memories traveling as a family was doing the bike tour in Florence. And so it's not the same as just Hey, go wander, get on a bike. But it was so much different to be on a bike traveling through all the sites, and having it explained to you what you're seeing and those sorts of things. And you felt even while being a tourist, you just felt a different level of connection being on the two wheels, as opposed to maybe staring out of the window of a bus or something along those lines. So

Will Bachman: 26:03

one thing I love about Europe now is how many different cities you can rent, the bikes are unique, I use the donkey Republic app. And in Zurich, you can use lime. So almost every city there you can you can rent a bike with one of these apps, it's just a great way to explore cities,

Rick Denton: 26:20

such a great way to get around and just feel that depth. And even I have found that people find you more approachable when you're on a bike. I don't know what it is. But the conversations can start more authentically, when you're you're on a bike, perhaps maybe you just seem like you're more local as opposed to an outsider. Hey, let's come back and close out with the consultant discussion. And I am I'm not a fan of saying if you could say just one thing, because I tend to live life and more of a spectrum than sort of a binary it's one thing. But instead maybe think of if there are listeners here who really love customer experience, and are thinking about starting their own practice. So they're thinking about becoming an independent consultant. What are some of those vital points for someone going into that independent practice to consider?

Will Bachman: 27:06

So okay, so this is not my answer. But I'll set to the side, slightly, slightly self promotional, which is, I did actually put together a whole course with 90 videos on how to set up your own consulting practice.

Rick Denton: 27:20

I'll shout that out, too. Will, that course is phenomenal. so helpful. Indeed. Keep going. Sorry.

Will Bachman: 27:26

Okay, so thank you. So if someone's interested in that they can go to umbrex. om and look up the start your o n course, tab. So that I mean, t at's kind of my that's my t ree hour answer to your q estion. The shorter answer, y u know, probably the first p ace to start is, if you're t inking about starting your own p actice. I'll try to keep it to o e, maybe two or three. One is, w at are your objectives? What's y ur objective function of doing t is? You know, is it to make m re money left? Is it to make a c rtain amount of money? Is it b cause you want to have more c ntrol of your lifestyle? It's b cause you want to serve a c rtain type of client. So t at's one thing is just to get c arity around what your true g als are for doing it, because s me people just do without r ally thinking that through, I d say, another thing is think a out. Really get clarity on w at your fishing line is. It's a David fields term. And so and w at your strategy is, so what s ecific clients are you trying t serve? And what problems are y u solving for those clients a d getting clarity? So so many p ople, they have this problem o the raspberry jam, where they j st spread it so thin? You c n't taste it? Yeah. And you k ow, they say, Oh, I want to h ve a really big target. And l ke, Oh, I do operations and m rketing and finance. And I do T lecom, and I serve pharma, and i just forgettable, so be known f r something. And I'd say F nally, do what you're doing, R ck, you're really being a g eat role model here is have s me mechanism, some ongoing m chanism, that you will create c ntent, and also be able to b ild relationships, and learn s mething about your industry on a ongoing basis. You got to f nd some way to bake that into y ur schedule and doing what y u're doing here of creating a p dcast is a great way to do t at. Not the only way. But h ving some mechanism where on a ongoing basis, you're going t continue to touch the market a d have interesting c nversations, meet people build r lationships. It's very easy n t to do that. Very few people a tually go ahead and do it. But w ether you're interviewing p ople and writing a blog post a out it or doing a podcast or d ing a video series. I think t at that's supercritical as an i dependent consultant for your l ng term business development. S long answer,

Rick Denton: 30:06

no, but it's great. And I think those are three nuggets that people can absolutely walk away with. And I appreciate that. Well, it's been brilliant talking with you. I love getting to interact with you. And I love hearing the wisdom that you've shared in from the very beginning of reshaping our LinkedIn headlines. It's great to hear about curiosity collaboration community and how that weaves through everything that you do, I'm sure you get plenty of clicks off that headline. certainly enjoyed learning about the the, the travel that you and I will say when you talked about the Camino de Santiago, you mentioned 500 miles, there is a song that is now rolling in my head, unfortunately, because of that, but I don't have the rights to it. So don't worry, it won't show up in the episode. But your approach to just that slow travel and immersive travel, I think so much of that is who you are and what you bring to the business world and how you really try to build those authentic relationships with both the independent consultants and then your ongoing clients that you serve? Well, it has been an absolute delight talking with you. I've learned more today than I had known before. I think there's a lot to know I think people will benefit from going out to unbrick calm and learning more about you and your company. But thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me today. I have enjoyed every bit of it.

Will Bachman: 31:21

Rick, it was a real pleasure. I'm a big fan of your show. And thanks for having me as a guest.

Rick Denton: 31:29

Thanks for joining us this week on CX Passport. Make sure to visit our website cxpassport.com where you can it subscribe so you'll never iss a show. While you're at it, ou can check out the rest of he EX4CX website. If you'r looking to get real about custo er experience, EX4CX is availab e to help you increase r venue by starting to listen to our customers and create gre t experiences for every cust mer every time. Thanks for listening to CX Passport a d be sure to tune in for our ne t episode. Until next time, I'm ick Denton, and I believe t e best meals are served ou side and require a passport.