Trend report/analyst work: This is probably the most legible kind of indie consulting work, and is the most research-y kind of offering. It also has the biggest moat for indies since it takes serious time, effort, and network capital to produce, which means you’re most likely to get this kind of work via an intermediary analyst firm. Or you burn up

• He started by saying that McKinsey was not a business, and we shouldn’t think of it as business.


• McKinsey was a professional service firm, he insisted, and it’s goal was to serve others .

I felt like there was still a lot of room to create a consulting practice that was not just a coldblooded commercial thing, but had an intellectual curiosity to it, and that produced reports that were relevant to a general public, not just to clients. To use consulting as an information-seeking and research process, but not necessarily an art