#11, the happiest you’ll be reading about problems, Hear Ye Hear Ye
Hello Friends and Colleagues,
Here are some fun facts about the number 11:
The First World War ended on the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.
There are eleven players on a soccer team, on an American football team, on a cricket team, as well as on a field hockey team.
(Shoutout to all the New Yorkers in the CoSolo community) New York became the eleventh state of the United States on July 26, 1788.
CoSolo has 11 new members! 😎
CoSolo is super pumped to announce that we have recently gained 11 new members! The tribe is officially growing. If you haven’t gotten a chance yet, head on over to Slack and read the new member intros in the intros_and_directory channel and introduce yourself! We’ve got some really interesting individuals added to the mix. If you’re still not as excited as we are, here’s a little sneak peek on how cool our newbies are:
A German native joined, herzlich willkommen! 👋
The youngest member EVER has jumped onto the bandwagon. 👧
A kick-ass strategic growth expert is now a part of CoSolo. 📈
A true ~creative~ is amongst us. 🎥
And that’s just skimming the very tip of the iceberg.
New members - we are so grateful that you have decided to join us all at CoSolo. Welcome!
To all of those who are a part of the CoSolo community, keep your eyes on that mailbox… Christmas might have come just a few months early.
By the way, we have room for 5 new members to fill out the rest of the teams. So, recruiting new members is in your best interest! If you know of any other lovely independent or boutique consultants like yourselves, give us a shoutout! Being the active members that you are, you are CoSolo’s best spokespeople. Please share your experiences/thoughts on CoSolo to your consulting buddies. Let’s keep growing!
If you are not a CoSolo member and want to participate in any of the below, sign-up here to start your free trial.
🎉Live Learning Event - Webinar and Q&A with David A Fields
Problems: we all have them. Specifically, Jay-Z has 99. You know who else has problems? Your clients. We are so excited to announce that David A. Fields, consulting firm expert, author, speaker and adviser to boutique and solo consulting firms, will be joining us on August 5th at 2 PM EDT / 11 AM PDT. He will discuss one of the biggest challenges consultants have when they are building their business, which is knowing "how to identify the problems that clients will hire you to solve." This will be followed by a long Q&A session, so please have your questions ready!
If you somehow missed all of our fanboy-ing praise about David (or have consciously tuned it out), give his website a visit: https://www.davidafields.com
If you are not a CoSolo member and are interested in attending the fire-side chat, please register for the event here. We allow guests to attend one event.
👨🏻💻Town Hall, Speed Networking and Virtual Coffee / Lunch
Last week, we had our first “Town Hall” where we shared CoSolo’s mission, what we are doing to fulfill that mission, community norms, and all of the services available to our members. We then did the world’s first Speed Networking event (not confirmed, but highly likely)! Video recording of the first 15 minutes is here, along with the deck that we used. For all of you who are too busy crushing it as consultants to check them out in full, we’ve included some highlights below:
CoSolo Mission: We support independent and boutique consulting business owners so they can enjoy the freedom and flexibility that comes with being small, yet still have the ability to outcompete the larger firms. We do this by bringing together top-tier independent and boutique consultants who support each other by sharing their resources, knowledge, and experiences.
Key focus areas: Accountability, Sounding Board, Knowledge, and Sales Leads.
Resources: Weekly virtually facilitated meetings that provide peer accountability and coaching, a buzzing Slack community, accountability dashboards, tools & resources, templates, videos of expert-led events, member directory, events (Super Focus Hour, Virtual Coffee / Lunch, Virtual Fireside Chats, Panel Discussions, In-person events).
Speed Networking: Each of the 18 members who participated talked to 5 other members for 5 minutes each, which resulted in 90 matches! “This was awesome” was expressed multiple times after the event. We hope to conduct speed networking events on a monthly basis.
We also had our first Virtual Coffee / Lunch weekly event this past Thursday. If Speed Networking sounds like a little too intense of an experience (meeting a lot of people in a very short amount of time, What do I do with my hands!), our virtual coffee / lunch is a much more leisurely networking opportunity. So how does it work? Depending on your time-zone, you bring your lunch or coffee and chit-chat with 2 to 3 other people for 30 minutes. On Thursday, we talked about Blockchain, the weather in San Francisco, sports, and more. I (Tony) also felt less lonely eating my poke bowl. :)