Clever Counsel #32 - Interview With Mike Klein
I'm interviewing a handful of senior consultants I admire to capture their experiences and perspectives on the consulting journey.
For my third interview in the series, I want to spotlight Mike Klein, founder of the Changing The Terms consultancy and the #WeLeadComms recognition program. You'll find his insights below.
What made you say, “Screw it, I’m going out on my own”?
It was as much a necessity as an intention - I had left a full time role with a package and thought that going independent made sense at the time - I was in the Netherlands, the freelance market was buoyant (it was 2016), and there was increasing legislative pressure on companies to discourage them for using interim talent for long-term roles that was having the opposite of its intended effect, making it nearly impossible to get full-time roles. So, that's why I said "screw it, I'm going out on my own."
How did you land your first high-paying client?
It depends on how you define "high paying client." I've had three long-term anchor clients over the years, and I've had a number of interesting one-off research and consultancy projects. I also created an initiative, #WeLeadComms, a recognition program for communication professionals that now has regular sponsorship that makes it essentially another anchor client. How did I get them? One through an interim agency, one through a LinkedIn "easy apply" ad, and one through someone I worked with briefly while with one of my anchor clients. Despite doing a lot of thought leadership and industry leadership stuff, that rarely produces a lot of business.
What’s one thing you did that changed the game for your growth?
For me, moving beyond pure consulting and pure interim and turning #WeLeadComms into part of my business has been quite helpful. I'm more focused on longer-term sustainability than massive growth in my consulting practice - hence my move into publishing with Strategic Global, the communication leadership platform, which is where I'm putting most of my growth focus at the moment.
What’s a piece of conventional consulting advice you flat-out ignore?
Seeing online thought leadership and content generation as a means of attracting new consulting business. It does help my solicitation efforts slightly as it helps keep me visible to people I'm actively reaching out to, but it's been rare that business comes to me on the back of items I write or publish.
When have you felt like going back to working for someone else — and why didn’t you?
I did once, two years after starting my consulting practice. It offered a jump in title from my previous work and the salary was excellent. But it was far more managerial than I was inclined towards, or perhaps, that I was indeed capable of. It required me to navigate a new culture in a new country and a new internal vocabulary for which I received zero onboarding for. And, the company was consolidating its comms team at the time. I lasted for six months and never had any desire to try that again.
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Mike Klein is a former U.S. political consultant who has been in Europe nearly continuously since the 1990s. He's an MBA graduate of London Business School, an IABC Fellow, and Editor-in-Chief of Strategic Magazine. He also co-hosts the Navigating Disruption Podcast. He's based in Reykjavik, Iceland.
Mike is also a valued member at CommsConsultants.com, and I want to sincerely thank him for sharing his insights for this edition of Clever Counsel.
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