The UX Consultants Lounge

Jeff Gothelf: Becoming Forever Employable

• Kyle Soucy • Episode 15

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In this episode of The UX Consultants Lounge, Kyle sits down with Jeff Gothelf, consultant, speaker, and author of Lean UX, Sense & Respond, Lean vs. Agile vs. Design Thinking, Who Does What By How Much?, and Forever Employable.

Jeff shares the story behind his leap into consulting, including launching an agency with Josh Seiden, the acquisition by Neo Innovation and later Pivotal, and the realization that the real asset he built was not the company itself but the reputation and ideas he developed through writing, speaking, and teaching.

Kyle and Jeff discuss:

  • What it takes to build a sustainable consulting practice today
  • How partnerships can work without sacrificing independence
  • Why building a personal brand through content marketing matters
  • How generosity and knowledge sharing create long-term consulting opportunities
  • Why consultants should specialize and “plant their flag”
  • Jeff’s writing discipline 
  • Why owning your audience through email and newsletters still matters
  • Jeff’s philosophy on pricing and why “people value expensive things”

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I can’t wait to have you back in the lounge for our next episode!

Kyle Soucy

Welcome to the UX consultants lounge. I'm Kyle Soucy, founder of Usable Interface an independent UX research consultancy. You can find out more about my work and the services I offer at my website, usableinterface.com. I'll be your host here at the lounge where I'll be providing a place for UX consultants to gather, share stories, and learn more from one another.

Introducing Jeff Gothelf

Speaker

Before we jump into today's conversation, I wanna share something special with you. If you're planning to attend the Information Architecture Conference this year, I've been asked to share a$50 discount promo code. You can use the code"uxlounge" when you register to save$50 off your ticket. Now, I've been attending IAC since 2005 and I've been running their career center since 2017. It's one of the most supportive, generous communities in our field. The conversations are deep, the people are thoughtful, and it's a space where consultants and in-house folks alike can really connect and grow. This year, the main conference of IAC will be held in Philadelphia from April 16th to April 18th. Sadly, I'll be missing it this year because of a family commitment, which breaks my heart a little. I'm not gonna lie. Um, but I truly encourage you to go if you can. It's a wonderful experience and I know so many meaningful relationships and opportunities have started there. Again, that code is"uxlounge" for$50 off, and the conference website is the iaconference.com. Now onto today's episode When I first had the idea for this podcast, there were people on my wishlist, and today's guest was right at the top. Jeff Gothelf is an incredibly accomplished consultant, speaker, and author. His book, Forever Employable, is the one I recommend most often to anyone that's considering consulting, or even for internal folks that are just looking to create their own personal brand. It's practical, honest, and deeply encouraging, and I'll admit something a little vulnerable here. In that book, Jeff writes that he'll never turn down an invitation to be on someone else's podcast, because that's part of the forever employable philosophy of just taking advantage of opportunities. But even knowing that, I was still nervous to reach out, I think we all wrestle with that fear of rejection, so I'm especially grateful that he said yes. In this conversation, we talk about how Jeff made the leap into independent consulting, how lean UX came to be, what it was like building, and then leaving his previous consultancy called Neo. How he thinks about partnerships and his partnership with Josh Seiden, how content marketing is a long-term strategy, as well as positioning and what it really takes to become forever employable. There's so much wisdom packed into this episode. I can't wait for you to hear it. Let's dive in. Please enjoy Jeff Gothelf.

Kyle Soucy

Hello Jeff. Welcome to the UX Consultants Lounge.

Jeff Gothelf

it's great to be here, Kyle. Thanks so much for having me.

Kyle Soucy

I'm thrilled to have you as a guest. Aside from being an incredibly accomplished consultant, I found your book, Forever Employable to be the book that I recommend most often to anyone that's looking for advice on becoming a consultant or even just to future-proof their career. But let me just begin by thanking you for accepting my invitation to be a guest and for writing that amazing book.

Jeff Gothelf

I'm, look, I'm thrilled to be here and that's, it's really nice to hear. And, it's nice to hear that it was that book that was inspirational. I'm really proud of that book. If you look at the books that I've written, it's definitely the different one. It's sort of the, the one that's not like the others. I hear relatively regularly that book was helpful to somebody, was inspirational to somebody that, that got them to try something new. that really makes me happy, I think, because it's been a good journey for me overall. And so if it gives back a little bit, I'm happy that it does

Jeff's consulting journey

Kyle Soucy

Oh, it gives back a lot. And I'm gonna talk about it a lot during this interview'cause I do have, so many things that I wanna discuss so many topics about consulting. but let's start at the beginning of your consulting journey. Can you fill the listeners in on how that started?

Jeff Gothelf

For me, my understanding was, that my, my life was going to go the way my parents told me it was going to go, right? You go to high school, you go to college, you get a job and you work your way up the corporate ladder for x number of decades and then you retire. and, and that's kind of the path that I was on for a while. the first.com bubble, threw a bit of a wrench in that we bounced around a little bit. The, financial crisis in 2008 through another little wrench in that bounced around a little bit there. but there came a point, this is 2012, right? So in 2012, I was 13 years into my career, I actually got a little bit of a late start. I, because I spent some time after college not getting a job like my parents told me, but rather, playing in a band and, touring the East Coast of the United States, as a broke musician for a bunch of years, which was really fun, really fun. and no regrets there. So I got a little bit of a late start then my, sort of, my cohort, right? Into the working world. But about 13 years into my career, I made the realization. And at that point I was married. I had two kids, a house. Yeah. all a couple cars in the suburbs. the whole thing. and it became evident to me right around that time that the path that I was on was becoming increasingly dangerous, from an employment perspective. Why? Because I, as you work your way up through the corporate ladder, by design, there are fewer and fewer jobs. That's the nature, of corporate organizations. There aren't gonna be more bosses. There are going to be fewer bosses and salaries go up. Right? So fewer opportunities, higher paychecks, which is great, but also it means, fewer opportunities. That was the bottom line. And that felt too risky to me.

Kyle Soucy

Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf

And so I needed to find a way out. Now, I was lucky because at that point in my career, I was fairly entrenched in both the UX design, sort of the design product and agile communities in New York City. And I was going to meetups and I was meeting folks and I was a part of the conversation at that point. And, I'd met Josh Seiden at these meetups, and he and I had, gotten to know each other. And so a third, person who I'd not met before had approached Josh about starting a consulting company on its own, as a new venture. He was an entrepreneurial guy named GIF Constable, and I didn't know GIF at the time. and GIF said, Hey, Josh, what do you think about adding this guy, Jeff? And Josh was like, oh, I've just met the, I've just met him recently. He seems like an interesting guy. And so the three of us met and decided to launch an agency in 2012. But I, I wasn't in any position to just quit my job, on a Friday and then the following Monday start working in an agency that wasn't gonna pay me money. We didn't have, we didn't have any clients. We didn't have anything. I was not in that. I didn't have the runway. I had maybe, I think generously six months of runway, probably three months realistically. and so what I needed was a bridge. I needed a bridge out. And so the, I said, look, I'll join you guys. Let's make this happen. But what I need to do is I need to find a consulting gig. I need to find a freelance gig, something along these lines that continues to pay me while we build this thing at the same time. And so I looked around for a bit and I managed to find one at this company. The company was called, they were called Gust, and Gust was a, SaaS product for angel investors, kinda a, an interesting niche product at the time. And they were looking for help with design and research, et cetera. I knew the VP of product there at the time, and so I managed to get a consulting gig there. And that was my jump. that was, so I scored that gig. I quit my job and took that consulting role at Gus, knowing it was temporary, knowing it was part-time with the goal of building, Proof Labs as, at kind of in the background and eventually building that company together with Josh and Gif

Kyle Soucy

Ah, so that wasn't, the, neo innovation.

Jeff Gothelf

Well, it is so, so Neo. So nine months into proof, Neo, came along and bought proof. Now Neo at the time was a, was a guy, it was a guy named Ian McFarland, who's, who was a lovely human being, who had met some investors from Japan, who had decided that they wanted to recreate ideo. That was the kind of the vision for Neo was let's recreate ideo. And they hired Ian and they said, Ian, here's a bunch of money. Go out into the world and buy a bunch of agencies and roll them up so that we can have, so it doesn't take us whatever, 30 years to get ideo. It takes us a year to at least get the personnel in place. And Ian was a friend of ours and he came to us immediately and he said, Hey, how would you like to be the New York City office of Neo? And we said yes, because we had nothing to lose at that point. Nine months into our agency, we didn't have that, it, it was an acquihire we didn't sell. Yeah. we didn't sell any, Book, book of clients or anything like that. It was more like he needed people that he knew and then he could trust in New York to run the New York office. So that became the New York City office of Neo. And then we had six other offices, around the world. And that was the beginning of that organization.

Kyle Soucy

And Gust, how long were you independently consulting for them?

Jeff Gothelf

I think it's hard to remember now. It feels like it was about six months maybe. I feel like that's about right in, in hindsight, because I, look, I needed to work, I needed the money, but I also needed some flexibility to start building this thing on, on the side as it were, until it could become the full-time thing.

Kyle Soucy

I'm curious about your mindset then. So you're doing your own thing. You've got a client, Gust, you've got some flexibility there. Were you wanting and actively seeking partners? Did you wanna not do it alone or were you hoping to go it alone

Jeff Gothelf

So, no, I was not actively seeking partners. I'll be honest with you, I never saw myself as an entrepreneur. it wasn't like, it just wasn't a thing that I considered myself, at all. I was like, okay, I, if you have a good idea, I'll help you execute it. But I never saw myself as kind of the entrepreneurial type. And so I wasn't looking for partners in that sense. I was happy to continue doing this on my own. but if we're going to start a company, I definitely did not wanna do that on my own. So I was grateful for the opportunity to join Josh and GIF on that journey, because I would never have done that. My own at that time

Kyle Soucy

Okay.

Jeff Gothelf

in my life

Kyle Soucy

And Neo, Neo Innovation was eventually acquired right by Pivotal Labs. Is that right?

Jeff Gothelf

ultimately. Yeah. So 20, 15, Neo ended up being sold to Pivotal Labs, which, is ironic because Neo's very first office was inside Pivotal Labs, New York. Then we knew them, they were friends, and they gave us a desk, a couple of desks to work at for a while. and then ironically, that whole organization was sold to Pivotal Labs in, in 2015. and that's officially when I set out sort of on, on my own solo. But it's important to call out though, that in the four years that we ran Neo, the work that I did there was brand building for the organization. And brand building for myself through content marketing. So while I did lead a few projects and I was a partner, in the business, I also ran my own small business unit inside the organization, which was focused on content and thought leadership. So I spent a lot of time on the road giving talks and speeches. I taught classes and workshops and seminars and webinars and that type of thing. Training and a little bit of coaching with the hope that all of that would lead to product design and development work for the studio. But at the same time that I was building a brand for Neo, I was building a brand for myself as well. And so when NEO ended in 2015, I already had this business that I had the luxury of spending four years inside Neo and eventually getting a salary. to build. So that when Neo ended all, I really did P Pivotal didn't want my little content business for them. It was little for me, it was significant. they didn't want it. So I was like, okay, can I have it and go? And they're like, yeah, you can go. Okay, bye. And and all I did really was I just changed the logo, right? So where it once said Neo, now it just said Jeff got health, and everything else was basically the same. The content, the ideas, the classes, the workshops, the, the speeches, everything was the same. And so I felt a lot more comfortable doing it then on my own, because I had those four years to ramp up that business.

Kyle Soucy

sure. and during that time, is that when you wrote Lean ux?

Jeff Gothelf

Lean UX came out in 2013, so I actually started writing it in 2010 while I was still employed at the Ladders in New York, because that's where we were doing the work. But because I was a terrible writer back then, and I had no idea how to write a book, and publishers don't teach you how to write a book, and they just give, they're like, you wanna write a book? You're like, sure, I'll write a book. And then they're like, okay, see you in six months with 50,000 words. And you're like. What, how do I produce like 50,000 words if, if the longest thing you've ever written is 750 words, which is probably the longest thing I'd ever written at that time, 50,000 words feels like Mount Everest. Like, how am I gonna climb this thing? So it took a long time to get that out into the world. And so it took, until really, until I began partnering with Josh Sein regularly, and he ultimately came on board as initially editor and then ultimately co-author, to help bring that book across the finish line. And with his help. We were able to launch it in 2013. So it became part of the whole, neo content marketing machine, right? We're the authors of Lean ux. Lean UX is very popular, right? It answers it, it provides answers to tough questions that a lot of companies are facing. so that was part of it. But that, and that, that really, like the success of that book really pushed the success of my little thought leadership business inside Neo and really gave me the momentum to take it out in 2015.

Kyle Soucy

I definitely wanna talk more about that book and just your writing in general before I do that, you mentioned The Ladders and I actually, did work for them. They were a client of mine in 2013, shortly after you left. And they were still singing your praises. They, there was, they talked a lot about you. So it was

Jeff Gothelf

Oh, good. I'm glad to hear there was still going on back then.

The moment Jeff stopped doing design work

Kyle Soucy

Yeah. Yeah. but I was wondering, okay, so Pivotal. Uh, is now you just, pivotal and you're on your own. Was it always the plan to stop doing design work and move into coaching and training design teams instead? Or did that happen later?

Jeff Gothelf

No, I was terrified about that. Terrified, really. Like I was really worried about it, right? I, A) I liked doing design work. B) I liked leading design teams. I liked that whole aspect of the work. And the more that Lean UX succeeded, the more that this content and thought leadership and business was succeeding. The less and less design work I was doing, I was kind of holding on by a thread by running one or one or two, projects here and there that were in the studio at Neo at the time. And so when that ended. I kind of, I had the opportunity to continue it and look, it was paying really well at the time, so hard to go back to just doing design work. But I remember reaching out to, Dan Saffer and I wonder if he remembers this conversation. I haven't seen him or spoken to him in a very long time, but at the time, I don't remember exactly how I reached out to him. Maybe it was like Twitter was fun back then, maybe it was through Twitter. It was a good design Twitter back in like the mid tens, it was really nice. Um, I miss it. but I knew Dan, from conferences and whatever. And so I reached out to him and I was like, Hey.'cause I saw him as someone who was ahead of me in that sort of trajectory. And I said, Hey, you've been doing this for a while. You've written some books, you're doing all this consulting and you. I know it's pulled you away from day-to-day design work. I'm really worried about that. I'm, my skills will atrophy. the technology's gonna change. What do you think? And he's look, this thing's going well for you. You should pursue it. He goes, if you ever decide you don't wanna do it anymore, it's not going the right way. You can always go back to doing design work. That's what he said to me. That's what, And I like, I felt that was pretty comforting actually. Right. Because you can always go back. and I think that's true. I think that, that is true. If I needed to go back, I could have gone back at any moment. And so, I pushed forward, but I was not particularly comfortable with letting that go because in 2015, late 2015, early 2016, I didn't have incontrovertible evidence that this business that I had built. Inside Neo, which again, I was getting a salary for, right? I knew how much money the business was generating as a whole, which was to be frank, a lot more than what I was getting paid. But I was really happy for my biweekly paycheck

Kyle Soucy

Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf

right? I had no proof that this was gonna work outside of Neo, right? and that was the biggest risk for me. So that was a big concern.

Kyle Soucy

And how did it go from being just, JeffGothelf.com to now you have this partnership with Sense and Respond with, Josh Seden.

Jeff Gothelf

So Josh and I, Josh, look, I'll tell you what, everyone should have a Josh in their life.

Kyle Soucy

That's lovely. I love that.

Jeff Gothelf

No, it's true. Look, we are so lucky. he just visited me recently. and he and I have been working professionally together, for 15 years at this point, in one capacity or another. and that partnership has only strengthened over the years. And, I can tell you, having been in the book publishing business for a little bit, if just writing a book with someone, one book with someone can be devastating to a relationship. Now, he and I have written three together, continue to speak on a daily basis. So, so that's a win. But, but look, he and I got to know each other in the sort of the primordial soup of the agile and design world of New York City. in kind of the late two thousands early, early 2010s, that type of thing. And then he helped me bring lean UX over the line. And we started this business together. when, when Neo ended and Pivotal started, I started my own consulting business. And then eventually he started his own consulting business. But there was no, we had shared IP there, there was no way to, to extricate my IP from his IP. And we didn't even try. There was no point. It wasn't like he was like, no, you can't talk, you can't teach my stuff. and vice versa. there was none of that. it was more like, Hey, I got this teaching gig. Do you wanna come do it with me? Hey, I got this workshop. Do you want to come do it with me? Hey, I'm. Doing a workshop, a half day workshop at this conference. I'm getting paid x I'm gonna give you, 10, 20% because look, I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it without your material in there as well. and so we've had this amazingly collaborative and honest, and transparent business relationship that's led to a very close friendship as well over the years where he would get work and pull me in and I would get work and he, he would, I would pull him in. And so, and we like working together. We like teaching together. it's easier with two and have highly complimentary, personalities in that, I speed him up, he slows me down, and that's all, all in a very positive way. And so, This had been going on for a decade, really this sort of, work. And then a couple of years ago we said, look, there's a lot of work coming in. You and I, can handle most of it, but it's a lot of work. and maybe there's an opportunity for us to scale here and build something bigger than just the two of us. And so we repurposed our sense and respond press brand, which was our book publishing business we had done along the way. So we'd done another business together along the way to get here. and and I said, and so we launched sense and respond learning with the idea of scaling our content through contracted trainers around the world. And that's what we're building right now. And so this is the third, I believe, business that Josh and I have started together. We've written three books together and, we're still friends somehow.

Kyle Soucy

Amazing. It's very unique and a very interesting arrangement.'cause I don't think I've yet to see a partnership where you can also have your own consulting, independent consulting thing going on the side.

Jeff Gothelf

Yeah, I'll give you an example. I'll give you an example. So recently, a, a Brazilian university reached out and they said, Hey, we love your content, we love your material. They reached out to me specifically, they said, we love your material. we want you to create a four hour graduate level course online course that we can, put as part of our program and here's what we'll pay you for it. And it was a pretty decent paycheck. And I said, look, all this material is mine and Josh's, can I bring Josh in? And for some reason they said no. I don't remember exactly why. I mean, they were nice about it, right? But I don't remember why they said no. I said, okay, fine. And And so I took the gig and then I just sent Josh a note. I said, look, I got this gig. I took the note. I'm sending you 20% right. Like this, because that's the right thing to do, right? This, again, this doesn't exist without his contribution. And to me, that's the key. The key, and I think we learned that, writing our first book together was that when there's tension, when there's something that makes the other person feel icky, is that a good word?

Kyle Soucy

It is a good word. I use it a lot. Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf

Yeah.

Kyle Soucy

Usually with sales.

Jeff Gothelf

exactly. bring it up, bring it up quickly. Don't let it fester. Don't let it, don't let it like simmer in there and make you angry or build resentment. Bring it up. And when we wrote the first book, we really. we had to deal with everything. We had to deal with creative decisions that where we disagreed, we had to deal with business decisions where we disagreed. We had to deal with ego decisions. again, like for example, I had been writing Lean UX for nearly two years when Josh joined the project. And he was my third or fourth editor, quote unquote, that had joined the project. And so when they, when O'Reilly finally agreed to publish the manuscript after Josh's help, I really struggled giving him a co-author credit initially, right? from an ego. So if you'll notice in Lean UX version one, he's, editor, I think gets an editor credit on that. And then since then, he's co-author, he's full co-author, right? So we've, we had to deal with all that kind of stuff and so. Building this business together and building this kind of side by side things together has been a lot easier because we've learned how to talk to each other, right? We've learned how to express, concerns and not let anything fester. and then ultimately the whole thing is much more worth it than the individual things on their own. So what, whatever has to happen is worth it.

Kyle Soucy

it's such a great story. it's an amazing, I think testament to your friendship that you can go through so much and still be together and still be so successful. I did, recently talk with Steve Portigal and Justin Dauer, who were teaming up to kind of experiment and play with doing something a little similar where they'll have some joint. Projects, some joint endeavors, but still have their own independent things, and I think that's a fantastic way to go about it, because partnerships can be tricky. Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf

they can. And look, it comes down, to sort of managing IP usage expectations, right? So, if you and I don't know each other that well, but we decide that we're gonna partner on something and then we partner on it, and then the next day you see me teaching your material. without having spoken to you about it, without having come to. That's where this gets really tricky and really, where it can, it has the risk of getting nasty. And so I think that's the key there Especially if there's kind of two very unique viewpoints that are coming together, Understanding what you can and can't do with it and when you can and can't do it or how to handle those situation, I think is, is crucial to those successes. I mean, I gotta tell you, look, I mean, we, I've seen so many partnerships, sometimes really longstanding partnerships break up when these partners try to write a book together, forget about building a business together. Like just try whose name goes first on the book,

Kyle Soucy

Ah,

Jeff Gothelf

right? my God, I've seen that. Kill relationships.

Kyle Soucy

Yep.

Jeff Gothelf

That's it's, to me, that's baffling. You want your name, put your name first. I don't care who cares. Like ultimately, right? But people do care, right? and it, it, so it's really difficult. I think there's, there has to be a level of transparency and, and honesty for partnerships like this to work.

Kyle Soucy

You know, I wanted, to transition a little bit to now, so where things are at now. This has been a tricky time for a lot of us. I've talked to all kinds of UX consultants. Some are, really big names that are very well known and others are just starting out, and there, there's a common thread amongst all of them, which is in the last few years, it's been really hard on business, with the economy and all the layoffs in tech. And I know my business has been negatively affected since research is often one of the first things cut from a budget and now democratization of these efforts have become increasingly popular. I was wondering, is this something that you are experiencing too, since I know training is often the first thing cut from budgets as well.

Jeff Gothelf

here's what I believe to be true. and, and seasonality aside, right? and technological revolutions aside for a second. What I like to believe, let's put it that way, is that training is an evergreen business. And here's why, right? If things are going great, how do we reward our people? we get them, exciting trainings and speakers and opportunities for professional development and ways to make them even more successful'cause we've got the extra cash and they're excited to do that and things are going poorly. How do we retain the people that we wanna retain, especially if we've got, we've gone through a couple rounds of layoffs and morale is, in the dumps,

Kyle Soucy

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Gothelf

right? Well, let's get them, let's get them a nice, a good speaker or a class that they'll enjoy or help them, kind of show them that we're still investing in them as well. So that's what I like to believe. I like to believe that training is an evergreen business regardless of how things are going. The truth is obviously somewhat different from that. It's the cycles, can be difficult at times. But I'll tell you this much, look, I've been doing this is guess the 11th year technically of doing this solo to some extent now with Josh. But, every December comes around and, everything slows down for the holidays. And I look at my wife and I'm like, this is it. That's the last time I'm gonna have to go get a job next year. No one's ever gonna hire me again.

Kyle Soucy

Yeah. The listeners can't see, but I'm nodding my head a lot.

Jeff Gothelf

Yeah. I mean, literally every December for 11 years, I, I do think that, I think I'm like, this is it. I'm gonna have to get a job next year. Go back to the corporate world after, gosh, 15 years or whatever, of not doing it. And and look, and then every January everybody comes back to work and everybody's motivated and they're ready to go. And so, look, there is work right there and there are opportunities. we had a good inbound January this year, right? To be perfectly candid about it. and I think it's due to the fact that we do, I believe a good job of staying top of mind and current in our conversations, I talk about this in Forever Employable, right? Like

Kyle Soucy

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Gothelf

the goal of all of this content creation and public conversation is to stay top of mind and to stay current, right? So really talking about the fundamentals and then how they relate to the current realities. and to me, I believe that is what continues to attract folks to Sense and Respond. Learning to Jeff, to Josh, to, to us in general.

Jeff's advice about specializing

Kyle Soucy

Absolutely, it works. The content sharing works, keeps you top of mind. And, in forever employable. You talk about planting your flag and becoming known for something specific and for the consultants listening, how narrow is narrow enough?

Jeff Gothelf

Yeah. that's a really great question. I think there are benefits to narrow niches if there's depth in that slice, right? So, for example, I'm gonna make something up. let's say that, like you do research, right? So, but it's research and you're gonna focus strictly on medical devices. Like medical devices is a thing that's not going away anytime soon, right? So that's, but it is a very niche thing. But if you're gonna plant your flag and say, look, I'm gonna be the research person for medical devices, companies, to me that feels like a good hypothesis, right? Because there are lots of companies in that space, they need researchers to, validate their hypotheses for. The need and the design and the, the distribution of these medical devices, of these solutions that they're building. And, and my guess is there aren't a ton of folks in that space. Those would be my assumptions, right? So to me that feels like a nice narrow slice that's deep enough for you to plant your flag and succeed there. So like, whenever anybody needs a researcher for medical devices, like it's Kyle, it's gonna be Kyle or whatever, right? I think the risk of course is that you cut the slice so narrow that, either there isn't enough work there to sustain you, or it's not deep enough or it's crowded, perhaps. I think those are the risks and that comes with a bit of research and a bit of, a bit of testing that marketplace as well. But I think if you go too broad, people don't really know when to bring you in, right? I'm a designer, okay, what do you, what do you make business cards, like what do you make? Right? Like, you make, you make you make cool coffee mugs. like there's gotta be more to that, right? And so, you're a designer of what, in what space? where's your expertise? and, I think that's, and if you can articulate that clearly, like for, for example, right? Maybe, let's make it a bit more modern, right? if you're trying to figure out how to, bring AI into a design team, for example. And you're a consultant, right? Maybe you're the consultant who helps design teams integrate AI to make them more valuable inside an organization. That sounds really interesting to me. Or you help design teams inside large enterprises, right? Make sure that they make themselves even more valuable to their organizations than they are today using these modern tools. Right? Something along those lines where it's it's very clear that you're combining these elements in a specific domain, right? And, I'll share something so, Josh and I have been building a strategy class over the last few weeks and a product strategy class. and one of our biggest inspirations for strategy work is Roger Martin. Playing to Win is his book. among others. He's super prolific and very generous in sharing his thoughts around it. And he is very successful, very well known. He is top guy when it comes to strategy, certainly top five, right? and he's got this very clear form. He wrote an article in Harvard Business Review in 2014 called The Big Lie of Strategic Planning. it's a great read. He totally gets, how to think about, the modern world strategically in a way that really embraces many of the same concepts that Josh and I have been promoting from design and product side for a long time. But in that article, he talks about two key questions for defining your strategy. Where will you play and how will you win. And you could apply those two questions to answer. The question you just asked me, how thin, Or what, where should you plant your flag? What kind, what's the scope of the area where you're planting your flag? And I think if you asked yourself that, like where will you play? Where will you play is a target market question. And you can slice that with any facet. You could slice it with industry, you could slice it with, geography. You could slice it with, company size, right? You could slice it with a specific target audience. You could slice it with a particular discipline, Whatever it is. So for example, where will you play? I'm gonna play, with, digital design teams in large legacy enterprises, right? Banks, insurance companies, healthcare companies. That's where I'm gonna play. How will you win? I'm going to help them integrate AI into their workflow so they become more valuable. That feels like a believable, a plausible strategic hypothesis. I don't know that it's true. I don't know that it's valuable, maybe. But the point is, that's a really nice way to kind of test where to plant your flag. And that's not in the book, right? This is, we've done more recently. but I think that's a really nice application of that here as well.'cause essentially you're making a strategic decision about your career.

Kyle Soucy

Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf

That's a really nice way to frame it. Where will you play? How will you win?

Kyle Soucy

I've heard you repeat often, from the philosopher Seneca, that luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. And I was wondering, do you feel luck is a necessary element of success?

Jeff Gothelf

Look, I'm not the guy who reads the stoics, I'm not the nothing's anything wrong with people like that. Read the stoics if it makes you happy. I know lots of people who do. It's not me, but I do actually really like this particular quote. like you said, luck is when preparation meets opportunity. I do think luck is important, but I think a lot of people miss their lucky breaks because they're not prepared. Right there, there's, things will pass them by and they'll be like, ah, it's not for me. Not now. Maybe later. I don't think I could do it all these doubts that arise. And I think that if you can position yourself in such a way mentally, really to say, look, I'm gonna prepare myself for whatever comes my way. And because I'm interested in growing in this particular path, anything that I believe will take me down this path I'm gonna take advantage of. I'm gonna exploit these opportunities. I think that's key. and the irony of course is that the more prepared you are, the more opportunities you generate, right? Inev inevitably, Preparedness means what is in our world of consulting and sort of personal branding and making yourself, known to the world. Preparedness means that you understand your space and your domain and that you are creating some kind of a platform that tells people that you're an expert in this space, that you help them deal with this particular problem. And so in the process of preparing yourself, you are actually generating more opportunities to come your way. So there's a real positive flywheel here that makes you luckier.

Jeff's retired podcast, "Forever Employable Stories"

Kyle Soucy

and I can't agree more with that'cause things may fall in your lap, but why did they, what was the work that. Brought them there. And what do you do with it once they do I remember listening, to your podcast associated with the book, forever Employable Stories and, Tendai Vicki, I think, said it a little differently. He said, you have to work your blessings. And I thought that was rather beautiful and true. I just love that. And, I do wanna plug that for a minute. I just have to tell the listeners a bit more about that retired podcast. I enjoyed it so, so much. It was just a fantastic mix of the most eclectic guests with inspiring stories about becoming forever employable. you had everyone from the guitarist, from White Snake and Transiberian Orchestra to a famous chef, a dog trainer, as well as people in tech. And I just, and each one had such an inspiring message. so I just encourage everyone to give it a listen. It was really, it was very well done.

Jeff Gothelf

Thank you. I miss it. I miss it. And just, and getting that white snake guitarist being the first guest was a big win for 15-year-old Jeff. so just,

Kyle Soucy

That's awesome. Yeah. Do you ever think you would revive it and put out another, season?

Jeff Gothelf

I would love to, strategically, it doesn't make sense for me right now because that's not the work that I'm pushing or promoting at the moment. I would love to come back to it. I did really enjoy it and the guests were really sort of all over the place. and really fun and quirky people. I appreciate you saying that. That was fun.

Jeff's writing

Kyle Soucy

Oh yeah. Yeah. And it's still so relevant even, today. I mean, it was done 2021, I think, and even now the stories are still great. and I got so much out of them. But, I do wanna transition a little bit to your writing. I mentioned I wanted to talk more about that. so all the books you've written, and your latest one, Who Does What By How Much? I mean, you've got countless articles out there. An active blog, a very popular newsletter called Continuous Improvement. So no doubt, you are very prolific writer. And my first question is, do you actually sleep? Like, when do you find time to write this much?

Jeff Gothelf

right. So look, I, it's, it has become a discipline to be totally fair, right? So I write the Monday blog post on Sunday mornings. And I block an hour. It's time boxed. It's an hour long activity. It's not designed to be a heavy editing piece. It's not designed to be a heavily researched piece. Normally it's designed to be an idea that I can capture in 500 to a thousand words and write and finish the whole activity in an hour. So that's the Monday blog post, is dedicated, has a Sunday dedication, and that's the way they do it. and it's a discipline. It happens every Sunday in the morning, not at the exact same time, but in the morning on Sundays so that it's done and it's ready for Monday. Honestly, the hardest part of that is just, coming up with topics and so as long, as, long as I have a topic going into it. I can get it done in an hour. If I don't have a topic going in into the writing session on Sundays, I will, I'll spin for, 15 or 20 minutes of that hour deciding what to write on. So what I like to do, what I've been doing recently, and this is a nice part of AI, is not having AI write the blog posts, but having ai, as a thought partner to think through gaps in the content that I haven't written so far. Or for example, I saw this amazing video recently that really inspired me from, Nate Jones. he's a daily YouTuber who talks about AI and I don't watch every day, but I saw this really nice, video of his, where he talks about how, AI tools are fundamentally changing the product development process, which is near and dear to my heart. And, and so I took his transcript and I took my work and I went into, ChatGPT and I was like, look. This is really interesting to me. Help me sort through this, to come up with a series of talks that combine his ideas with some of my ideas, right? And it came up with, eight, 10 different topics and I liked four or five or six of them or whatever. And it evolved it a few times. And so now I've got, an editorial calendar for the next six weeks and that keeps me going. So that's really helpful there. the newsletter, I write one of them once a month and I have a content marketing agency that writes the second one once a month. So half I do half of those. I approve everything. Everything is based on my work. Everything is based on my content. but they write one of them and I write the other one. So, again, nothing ever goes out without me seeing it or approving it or editing it, but, but that's how that happens. and they do a lot of the LinkedIn work that I do as well, and look on the books. but the book is a big decision to take on and we really have to have a thesis that we believe in and, the time to do it. So when we wrote Who Does What By How Much?, we had a clear thesis that we believed in, which is, human centric objectives and key results. And we had the time because we weren't starting a company at the time.

Kyle Soucy

Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf

I don't recommend writing a book and starting a company that's, a bit much. and so that was helpful. So, I don't have any plans for another book at the moment if inspiration strikes and we can build some bandwidth. So if we can get sense and respond learning rolling nicely, maybe, but that really takes a lot of dedication and commitment. So, so really it's discipline, a little bit of outsourcing and then just understanding the necessary time commitments to do good work. I think that's really important. And then making sure you have that kind of time commitment.

Kyle Soucy

Yeah. When you're, you mentioned time blocking, with the newsletter, is that something that you do as well when you're writing a book?

Jeff Gothelf

You kind of have to, right? and look, every book that I've written five books, but the three long ones, right? The longest ones, Lean UX, Sense and Respond, Who does what by how much? were written at three very different times in my life. And so for example, lean ux was written when my kids were super little and I was commuting back and forth to New York City, 90 minutes each way. And so at that time in my life, I literally wrote on the train, I had 40 minutes on the train one way, and then the rest I had to walk in whatever subways, and then 40 minutes, 40 minutes back. And then I would stay up late after the kids would go to bed. And then occasionally I would beg my wife for a weekend morning. I'd be like, look, can I just please Sunday morning? It wasn't, I didn't do it a lot, because the kids were little and they were a lot. and so that was the kind of, I kind of begged for that, sense of respond. Things were a bit more, stable at that point, and I was able to carve out clear writing times. I found myself, traveling. I was traveling extensively for work at that point in my career. I was consulting at that point and traveling all over the world. Airplanes or Terrific for writing, right? Hotel rooms in, in faraway places. Terrific for writing. So that was easy, as well. And then who does what by how much was written in the last couple of years where I've built a really comfortable work-life balance and I was able to build that time into. Into that balance. and so I was really, so it's become a lot easier over time. A lot having to do with my kids just kind of growing up

Kyle Soucy

Yeah. Being older. Yeah, sure. Now, you also have a Substack too, is that right?

Jeff Gothelf

So that's the email newsletter. Yeah. So,

Kyle Soucy

That is Okay.

Jeff Gothelf

moved over to Substack. Yeah. and that's been my email newsletter for years. And now we just recently moved the whole thing over to Substack.

Kyle Soucy

Now, in Forever Employable, you highly recommend starting a newsletter and it being six years later now, do you still think that is an absolute must?

Jeff Gothelf

the thing you have to do is you have to own your audience. I think that's the key, right? The risks that we've taken with these social media platforms is that they own the audience, right? You can't export your LinkedIn followers. You can't get their emails. same thing's true for Instagram or for, the site formerly known as Twitter or, you know what, whatever platform you use, right? And so really the only way to own your audience is either to is to write your own blog. And even then you don't really know who's visiting your site unless they're signing in, right? is to build a community of some kind or to have an email newsletter, right? And that's because with email, you own the audience. And I think that's key, right? Because that allows you to do what you want to do with that audience. And so people have been trying to kill email forever, but I think it's still really hard and I think it's still super valuable.

Kyle Soucy

Yeah. And, now nobody likes being at the mercy of the LinkedIn algorithm. It sucks, Twitter dying. It just, everything has changed so much recently. so I can see how that's true. I'm kind of sad though, I'll admit'cause I have not, I still over 20 years consulting. I still don't have a newsletter and I'm just staying away from it because it's a lot, it's a lot to add on to everything and I love doing other things like the podcast, but, yeah, I know it's facing me. I probably have to do that.

Jeff Gothelf

Yeah. and look, and I think part of it too is that initially it's gonna be a lot of shouting in the wind, you know? Right. I mean, not totally in the wind, but, but that's the point. I mean, you have to start somewhere and, we don't start with a million readers,

Jeff's process for business development

Kyle Soucy

yeah. right. I wanted to touch on a little bit about, business development for you. what is your process for building and maintaining client relationships?

Jeff Gothelf

I've joked about this forever and, my quote unquote joke is that I'm a one trick pony, right? I know one thing and the thing that I know is content marketing. And that may sound self-serving, and to a degree it is. I'm trying to build a business. I'm trying to, well now I'm paying tuition. I'm not trying so much to feed the kids, but pay college tuition. that's the goal. Yeah. but, but, and I do talk about this in forever, employable is, the trick, the one trick here is be generous. Be generous to the community. Just give it away, right? whatever the idea is, whatever the method is, whatever the process is, whatever the tool is or the format or the canvas or the methodology, right? If you look at the people who have done well. Who have built these kinds of, well-known, like Theresa Torres for example, right? Opportunity Solution trees. She doesn't hide that behind a paywall. Maybe you have to give her an email address. Okay. Whatever. It's free, right? you get it all. she's super generous, right? Melissa Perry for years has been super generous with her work. my friend Kate Lido, right? Who does product manager coaching, super generous, Andy Polaine, same thing. All of these folks are out there giving back to the community, right? That to me is maintaining the relationship with the community, and building client relationships. I just don't know that I'm doing it right. I don't know. there, there's, and this is the hard part, and this is the frustrating part of doing work this way, is you've no idea when those are going to convert into some kind of a business relationship.

Kyle Soucy

Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf

For example, I gave a speech at, mind the product, I think it was 2016 in London. Great gig. Like one of the best gigs that you can get, right? 2000 people. beautiful stage, right? you look great. Everyone looks great when it comes to credibility being on the stage, on stage at the barkin Yeah. it's hard to look more credible than that. I got off stage, some guy came up to me and he is like, Hey, I love what you said. Come talk to me. And ended up getting four years worth of consulting work from that one speech. and that converted like that, right? Conversely, I had a guy come up to me one time and he's Hey, I saw you speak at my company five years ago, right? And I've been following you ever since then, and I'm finally in a position where I can hire you. And to me that speaks to that continuous nurturing, that generous giving back to the community. So I was fortunate enough to give a speech or whatever I did at his company, and he was fortunate enough to be there, but he was not in a position to hire me. But by me maintaining sort of a passive relationship with him through giving back to the community when he found himself in a position where he needed some support, I was top of mind.

Kyle Soucy

Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf

that's, to me, that's the trick. that's like my one trick. that's all. It's all I seem to know how to do.

Kyle Soucy

I can absolutely relate. So I just recently, finally got approved on a project. The initial outreach was back in 2019, and there's been all this like starts and stops of yeah, we're gonna do it. Oh no, we're not. Da da. And it's like now that we are actually doing it, and I can't even believe it's actually finally happening, but sometimes these cycles are long.

Jeff Gothelf

Yeah,

Kyle Soucy

Yeah. but after you've had an engagement with, a client, they've hired you to do some team training. Do you have a formal process for staying in touch? Do you stay in touch or do you just let them come to you if they need you again?

Jeff Gothelf

I'm bad at that. That's the

Kyle Soucy

Me too. I am too.

Jeff Gothelf

is, yeah, I'm not great at it, there's a part of me. That really loves the part of the consulting that's like, okay, bye. Like I, there's a part of me that really enjoys, like that's one of the perks, right? One of the perks of consulting is you don't have to stick around. Right? Right. I can go, I'm going home now and good luck with everything. And so there's a part of me that really likes that. And, and so I, I'm bad at sort of undoing that and coming back and saying, Hey, I been a month or whatever, six weeks since we last saw each other. How are things, are things sticking around? So I'm bad at that. the good news is that I now have with Sense and Respond Learning, we have a couple of folks in our five person organization dedicated to doing exactly that. and so I've got people to do that for me now, and they're much better, much more motivated to do it. but yeah, I'm personally, I'm bad at it.

Kyle Soucy

I kind of on a similar, line here. I have a small group of consultants that I chat with and one of them was asking everyone about how they get feedback from clients on what the experience was like, with them working with you. And I was like, I really gotta do that. I don't do that. do you do that? Do you, have a formal process for getting feedback on the experience?

Jeff Gothelf

No,

Kyle Soucy

nah.

Jeff Gothelf

again, this speaks exactly to the answer from the last question. I really like leaving.

Kyle Soucy

it makes me feel a lot better if that, if that makes you feel better.

Jeff Gothelf

Look, and the way I see it, look, the way I see it is, if they liked me, they'll call back.

Kyle Soucy

Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf

Although I will say this, I don't know how long ago this was. This was maybe eight or nine years ago, I did a gig at rentalcars.com in Manchester, England. And the chief product officer there was this remarkable woman, who I've not seen since, unfortunately, I don't know where she is, he says, but she was truly remarkable. and she offered to give me feedback afterwards. She was like, Hey, I'd love to give you some feedback on how it was working with you. And I took her up on that offer. And it was a lot of tough love, and I really appreciate, and to this day, her words resonate

Kyle Soucy

Mm. with

Jeff Gothelf

me, right? Because for example, she said something like, it's clear to me which parts of your job you love and which parts you don't like.

Kyle Soucy

Oh

Jeff Gothelf

And then she listed them and I was like, you're absolutely right. I like this part and I hate this part. And, and she goes, it was clear to me from the interactions with you that this was the case, right? Stuff like that. and so really valuable stuff. And so I do feel it's valuable. I don't solicit it very often, but if it comes proactively, I will take it.

Kyle Soucy

That was a real gift she gave you. Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf

no, no doubt about it. And I remember her more than I remember 99% of my other clients

Kyle Soucy

Yep.

Jeff Gothelf

in a positive way.

What makes a consultant good?

Kyle Soucy

Yeah. Well, since we're towards the end of our time here, I just wanted to wrap up with some rapid fire questions here. in your opinion, what makes a consultant good?

Jeff Gothelf

I think it's a consultant who deeply cares about understanding the problem that their client is facing rather than trying to fit their solution to the gig.

Business advice Jeff received that he repeats to others

Kyle Soucy

Yeah. And what's one piece of business advice you've received that you now find yourself repeating to others?

Jeff Gothelf

People value expensive things. And honestly, I say this to myself all the time. I say to others, I'm an expensive consultant. I'm not the most expensive consultant. But I'm expensive and there are people who are much cheaper than me. and when I bid on a project and somebody say, well, I got this other person and they're a 10th of what you charge. I'll say, go ahead. Go ahead and work with them. and nine outta 10 times they'll come back. either they'll go with that person and then they'll come back. The bottom line is this, people take care to engage with something they paid a lot of money for. think about it. If I gave you free concert tickets to a band you'd never heard of, and you went to that show and you watched that band play and like a couple songs in, you're like, I don't like this. I'm leaving. And you leave, because I gave you free tickets. Now what if you paid$500 per ticket and you bought it, you spent a thousand bucks on a pair of tickets, right? Three songs And you're like, I don't like this. You're not leaving.

Kyle Soucy

Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf

People value expensive things. They engage with them or they give it a chance. I remember years ago I was teaching, a workshop in Boston at O'Reilly's offices in downtown Boston, and we hadn't sold enough tickets. We sold enough, but not a ton. And so they filled the rest of the room with some free seats they gave to, I don't know, to who. it was super clear to me as the instructor who paid and who didn't.

Kyle Soucy

Right. Sure. Yeah.

Jeff Gothelf

and so if you want engaged clients, if you want to get paid your worth, and you want people to respect what you do, be expensive.

Jeff's recommended consulting resources

Kyle Soucy

Great advice. And last, uh, question here, what consulting resources have been most helpful for you, whether it's coaches, books, podcasts, anything that you would recommend?

Jeff Gothelf

the legendary book, A Million Dollar Consulting, it's probably in, its like 47th edition at this point, right? but everyone should read it. and the author who wrote, I don't remember his name anymore, but, everyone should read it, number one, and everybody reads it for the same thing, the pricing chapter.

Kyle Soucy

Mm-hmm.

Jeff Gothelf

And he knows this. If you read the preface to the book, it'll say, I know you're here to get to the pricing chapter, right? And it's chapter eight or whatever. Go to it now and read it and then come back and read the rest of it. But Million Dollar Consultant, I think is what it's called, actually. that book is, it's highly relevant today. It doesn't change, in the face of AI or anything else. And it really gives you a clear sense of how to think about you as a business and how to position yourself, how to price yourself, how to negotiate. I think that's a big one. And I will say, actually, I just thought of one more now that I said negotiate. The other one is never Split the Difference by Chris Voss, very popular bestseller. I think he did a TED Talk. he was, an ex FBI hostage negotiator, and the book is about how to negotiate in business. But every chapter starts with a story from his career, which is fascinating and terrifying. And he demonstrates the tactic that he put out in, that he used in the field and then how you would use it in business. and so, so tho those two books have been, very important to me.

Kyle Soucy

Well, Jeff, I appreciate you sharing all this wisdom with us. It was so, so helpful, so rich and, I will be short to include links, to everything in the show notes. so thank you. Thank you so much for your time.

Jeff Gothelf

My pleasure. I'm glad you invited me. I'm glad to be here. This is a great conversation.

Kyle Soucy

I'm so glad. And where should folks find you? Keep up with everything you're doing.

Jeff Gothelf

Sure. I'm at, Jeffgothelf.com. Always a great place to go. you can connect with me on LinkedIn and then, senseandrespond.co is our company website.

Kyle Soucy

Great. Alright, well thank you so much again.

Jeff Gothelf

My pleasure.

Kyle Soucy

All right. That wraps up this episode. Thanks for joining me. So do you have a topic or a question that you would like us to explore on a future episode of the UX consultants lounge? Perhaps there's an anonymous consulting story you want to submit. If so, click on the link in the show notes to submit your story or question from the podcast website. Until next time, keep that consultancy going. I can't wait to have you back in the lounge for our next episode.

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Kyle Soucy

Host