Work, Your Way

Reinvent Yourself, Create the Life You Want and Thrive as a Consultant

Lisa Hufford

• Publisher: HarperCollins Leadership
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781400221066
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Careers
• Index: Business

Build your successful consultant life doing the work you love, on your terms utilizing the practical tips, inspiration, and straightforward advice from recognized new world of work visionary and thought leader, Lisa Hufford.

Professionals want freedom and flexibility in the work they do, and they have more options than ever before to create the work & life they want on their own terms. They want to make work fit their lives—not the other way around.

Lisa’s promise is that consulting is a viable alternative to traditional full-time employment, and you have everything you need to make it happen.

Equal parts actionable and inspirational, this is the definitive guide for beginner and experienced consultants. Lisa teaches readers how to successfully step off the corporate career ladder and transition to doing the work they love, on their terms. Grounded in Lisa’s experience trading a high-powered corporate career for the freedom and flexibility of consulting, building an award-winning consultancy, and helping thousands of professionals make the same switch, this book enables professionals to redesign their lives and create opportunity in the future of work.

This book will enable readers to:

• Understand the current future of work landscape, what consulting is, why people choose it, and assess whether it’s for them
• Build their foundation by defining their personal brand, identifying the work they love to do and their ideal client, and learning the art of the rate
• Create their flywheel by landing a contract, setting themselves up for success, delivering excellence, and taking time to reflect and refresh.

Readers who follow these practical, simple steps will learn how to discover their personal brand, identify the work they love to do right now, explore how to do more of that work, and ultimately, create a life with meaning and purpose.

PART I

The Future of Work and You

ONE

CHANGE CREATES OPTIONS

“If you change the way you look at things,

the things you look at change.”

—WAYNE DYER

I NEVER SAW IT COMING.

Early on a weekday morning, the plane descended into John Wayne Airport. The pressure of my breast milk built until it was ready to erupt like a volcano all down the front of my pressed white collared shirt. All I could think about was racing off the plane and into the nearest bathroom, preferably one with a little privacy and an outlet.

I hurried to deplane, the gigantic black breast pump case thrown over one shoulder and a black briefcase over the other. In the terminal, I got settled in a bathroom stall and plugged in the pump. (Airport nursing pods were unimaginable in 2004.) As I perched on an unsanitary airport toilet seat and pumped breast milk for my son, Jack, who was miles away at home in Seattle with his nanny, I thought about how crazy and unsustainable my life had become, juggling work and motherhood. Is this really what having it all looked like?

But I didn’t have much time to reflect. I had to finish pumping, rent a car, and arrive at my customer’s site in an hour to deliver a high-stakes presentation. Off I went—just like I had every day since I started working in Corporate America in 1993—except that day I began to feel a shift inside myself. A shift I didn’t see coming.

The part of me that wanted to climb the career ladder was starting to be eclipsed by the part of me that wanted to be present and engaged with my son. That shift was scary. I’d always worked hard, and I’d been rewarded for it. Now, with a baby and a career vying for my time and energy, I wasn’t feeling successful at work or home. But what else could I do? I knew that the stay-at-home-mom life wasn’t for me. Was there another option?

I have always loved working. Nothing is more fun to me than helping customers solve problems and manage partnerships. I have been grateful to work for amazing corporations where I learned every day from smart people doing important work.

Jack, my first son, was born in 2003. I kept up the pace of my work, though I knew it wasn’t sustainable. At that time, there weren’t many women, especially mothers, in executive corporate leadership roles. And I saw executives earning a lot of money, but often at the expense of their personal health and their families.

In the following days and months, that little shift I had felt in the airport bathroom became a constant thought pattern. That recognition of just how hard it is to juggle work and family. That pull of wanting to be a professional, and wanting to be with my kids, and wanting to not feel guilty in either moment. Something had changed in me. I realized it was my definition of success.

By 2005, I was pregnant again and exhausted. I took stock of where I was: stretched thin and laden with mommy guilt. Suddenly, I was back in that airport bathroom, frantically pumping before rushing off to a client meeting. How could I possibly do this with two?

Is my proverbial career ladder on the wrong wall? I wondered. I’d spent thirteen years of blood, sweat, and tears building a credible sales career and overseeing the strategic direction for huge, multinational partner engagements, and now I was questioning whether to quit my job to be a stay-at-home mom.

The only pace I knew was 100 mph. I needed to find something that was not that, but I didn’t yet know what it was. All I knew was that I wanted to use my experience to do great work that also gave me the flexibility to be present for my soon-to-be-two young boys.

When I went on maternity leave after the arrival of Ian, my second son, in February 2006, I knew I needed to figure out what was next for me. My team had to backfill my role because it couldn’t sit open for six months, and the new vice president assured me that we’d find the right job for me when I returned.

Becoming a mother set me on my path of purpose. If not for my boys, I wouldn’t have had the motivation or the reason to step away from my all-consuming career. I wanted to create a life for them. I wanted to be able to show them the world. And I knew that if I didn’t change course, I’d wake up one day and it would all be over, and I’d have missed out on moments I would never get back. I desperately wanted to create a path for myself that provided freedom and flexibility.

Between endless feedings, diapers, and naps, I searched for part-time or job-share roles, anything that would allow me to continue contributing and allow flexibility but not require travel. Sadly, I couldn’t find anything within my search parameters. So, I expanded them. I talked to anyone who had a job I perceived as flexible, from realtors and mortgage lenders to multilevel marketing leaders. I was open to anything. I wanted to find a way to leverage my professional experience and expertise, but none of these other career paths appealed to me beyond the flexibility. I felt like my only choices were either return to my previous role, outsource childcare, progress to the next level in my career (which would require long hours and plenty of travel), or quit and stay home with my kids. Neither option was right for me at the time. I needed to create another option.

We all need options, now more than ever.

In my work, I have met thousands of professionals who are looking for an alternative career option. Though their circumstances and life experiences vary greatly, I hear a common refrain: “I never saw it coming.” It could be that they were laid off or fired. Maybe the promotion they worked toward for years never materialized. Perhaps they had to quit their job to care for a child or aging parent. Maybe they’d always dreamed of climbing the corporate ladder but ended up stressed, burned out, and in search of another option. Life happens. You can’t predict what’s around the corner and how it will affect your career and income.

As I write this book in the summer of 2020, we are in the throes of a global pandemic that has caught the world off guard. COVID-19 has hit every industry, every economy, and every person’s way of life. The future of work is officially here, and the pandemic has accelerated it. According to Entrepreneur magazine, “No doubt about it, the way we work has changed dramatically, and we need to change with it. Before the pandemic, we may have thought that innovations like artificial intelligence and working remotely were things of the future. Look around you—the future of work is here, and the transformation is continuing to accelerate.”¹

Future of work? you may be thinking. What does that really mean and how does it affect me? You may not see opportunity now, but I am here to tell you that it is there. Shift your perspective. Open yourself to the possibility that there is more than your current definition of work and success. I hope that once you learn about the global trends impacting business and talent, you will see opportunity for yourself in new and different ways—like I did. I experienced this shift—it opened a whole new world for me and fundamentally changed my relationship with work. As my life evolves, so does my definition of success. The future of work—that is, the transformation of work—enabled me to step into this life. It can do the same for you.

After all, over the course of a fifty-year career, the average person clocks 92,100 hours at work.² We spend a huge portion of our lives working, so it’s no wonder we want to make it count. I wrote this book to help you close the door on a rigid career path that may no longer be serving you, and instead chart a path to greater meaning and purpose.

In times of great uncertainty and change, I remind myself that I have a choice. I can choose fear, or I can choose opportunity. I invite you to join me in the pursuit of opportunity. This book will give you the tools to forge a new path in the future of work. It will introduce you to a viable alternative to how you’ve traditionally viewed work. It will help you create and land a contract doing the work you love, and successfully do it again and again. It will help you articulate and achieve your own personal definition of success, not the one-size-fits-all definition that’s been impressed upon you.

In this chapter, we will look at where we are today, where we are going, and, most important, what all this means for you.

The Future of Work Is Here

Future of work means many things to many people, but I’m partial to this characterization by Deloitte:

Two powerful forces are shaping the future of work: the growing adoption of artificial intelligence in the workplace, and the expansion of the workforce to include both on- and off-balance-sheet talent.³

For the purposes of this book, we’ll focus on that second force: talent.

Traditionally, talent has been a balance sheet item and considered overhead and a fixed cost that impacts a public company’s earnings per share. But more and more companies are moving talent off the balance sheet and hiring external talent because these variable-cost resources provide the ultimate flexibility to manage expenses and limit employment risks.

Of the 57 million people in the United States who freelanced in 2018, half said that no amount of money would get them to take a traditional job. And many are seasoned experts: 64 percent of top professionals are opting for independent work, reports Upwork, a leading freelance platform.⁴

Fortunately for you and me, it’s not just talent who wants to work this way. Nearly 60 percent of hiring managers plan to use “some form of flexible talent” in 2020, and three in four organizations have growth-limiting skills gaps.⁵ Toptal, a global network of top freelancers, notes that 76 percent of organizations expect to increase their use of external talent.⁶

I often talk to leaders who are unaware of their talent options. I recently spoke with Gary, the CEO of a mid-sized company who wasn’t seeing the return on investment (ROI) and business impact with his team’s digital marketing efforts. His vice president of marketing had great traditional product-marketing skills, he explained to me, but lacked current digital marketing expertise. He had burned through four agencies over the last few years, spending thousands of dollars with no meaningful results. His frustration was palpable.

Just like Gary, many leaders are unaware of an alternative approach to hiring. They still try to achieve their goals by either hiring an employee or an agency. The advice I shared with Gary expanded his perspective and showed him how he could build a dynamic team. Fixed teams are the traditional, pyramid-shaped organizations where employees advance in a linear fashion based on tenure. Dynamic teams assemble a diverse group of people working on projects, a mixture of internal talent and specialized external talent.

Gary is an all-too-common example of a leader who needs a subject-matter expert to help him solve an important business challenge. That is where you come in as an expert. Leaders don’t always need to create headcount and recruit for a traditional employee, they just need the right expert to help them deliver on a specific area of expertise. Leaders have all sorts of business challenges and the great consultants help them solve their problems and add immediate value.

The traditional, full-time-employee model will always exist on some level, but it assumes that employees will stick around long-term, and the policies and processes at most companies still support that premise. In reality, the average employee only stays with a company for less than five years (even less for millennials).⁷ Nowadays, leaders are often better served carving out projects, like a surgeon with a scalpel, with outside experts rather than hiring fully burdened employees.

I predict that companies will increasingly move toward smaller core teams of employees and increase their access to on-demand talent and dynamic teams. Businesses can respond to change in a more agile way than the traditional hiring process, which takes months and is expensive. Managers can translate goals into projects, identify key skills and gaps, and bring in experts to add a fresh perspective, fill expertise gaps, and up-level their teams. When managers feel stuck with the team they have, I like to help them see that they can have the team they want by intentionally identifying what’s missing and creating projects in which external experts can contribute to solutions.

This is where you come in as the expert.

Traditional Hiring Is Broken

Here’s why the traditional human resources approach falls short in the new world of work.

It’s too slow. According to LinkedIn, only 30 percent of companies are able to fill a vacant role within thirty days, and those who do take as long as one to four months to process a new hire.⁸ In contrast, an on-demand expert can quickly be selected, hired—often in a matter of days—dropped in like a Navy Seal with a targeted mission, and add value.⁹

It’s too expensive. T...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Part I: The Future of Work and You
• Part II: The Foundation
• Part III: The Flywheel
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1: Frequently Asked Questions
• Appendix 2: Recommended Reading
• Endnotes
• Index
• About the Author