How One Consultant Turned Curiosity into Conversations, Content, and Clients
- Susan Tatum
- 2 days ago
- 22 min read
In this episode, Lisa Carmichael shares how a simple curiosity about AI evolved into 40+ conversations, new service ideas, a growing network, and valuable market insight. She walks us through how she got started, what she learned, and how independent consultants can use curiosity and conversations to build visibility and opportunity - without needing a master plan.
Notes from the Show
Start with curiosity, not a plan. Lisa didn’t begin with a strategy; she followed her interest and let the insights and opportunities emerge.
Conversations create momentum. Talking to nearly 40 peers opened doors to content ideas, new services, and potential clients.
Use the right tools. HubSpot (free version) helped her track outreach, follow-ups, and stay consistent in her networking efforts.
Validate and shape your point of view. Even if others are talking about a topic, your perspective is valuable and often missing.
You don’t need to monetize it upfront. Let your interest lead, and commercial opportunities will often follow.
Quotes: “I’m not a person who usually starts something without a plan. But this started with curiosity and it grew because people wanted more.”
“If you’re passionate and curious, that’s enough to get started. Communicating that energy draws people in.”
What’s Inside:
An AI tool for organizing networking.
A unique perspective on AI and its use in the change space.
The culmination of research, information, and an expanding network.
A guide for consultant curiosity.
Mentioned in this Episode:
Transcribed by AI Susan Tatum 0:00
Welcome back. To stop the noise. I'm Susan Tatum, and today I'm talking with Lisa Carmichael, an organizational change expert who recently did something that a lot of independent consultants know they should be doing, but aren't. She got curious about a topic AI and how it's being used in her field, and she started reaching out to people to learn more. 40 conversations later, she's got insight, visibility, a growing network, new content, a new service, and potential business opportunities. In this episode, Lisa walks us through exactly how she did it, how she started, how it grew, what she learned along the way, and what it's opened up for her, whether you're feeling stuck, unsure of what to talk to your market about, or just looking for a spark to get moving. This is a conversation I think you'll really appreciate. Let's get into it.
Susan Tatum 1:00
Lisa, thank you for being here today with me.
Lisa Carmichael 1:02
Oh, you are so welcome. I've been looking forward to this for quite a while now,
Susan Tatum 1:07
this is the third time that we've tried to make this happen, isn't it? And I'm really excited about this, because what you've done is is just near and dear to my heart, and what I think really works in getting out into the marketplace. So I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna start, start you off with a question and and we'll go from there. So what was it, I know you got curious about AI, and what was it that puts you out there talking to folks to find out what was going on, what was going through your mind? Then,
Lisa Carmichael 1:39
well, that's interesting, because what wasn't going through my mind was getting out there and talking to people. I got curious myself about it, and started using it personally. And then I started drifting into my work, doing a little bit of research, things like that, and I got curious about how my change management friends were using it. So I have a group of close colleagues. And so I started to ask them. We had a lunch, you know, when you guys doing about it? And there was some interest and some use of it and some not. And they said, you know, you should ask this person and that person, and eventually, the group of people that I spoke with, it's at almost 40 right now. So I made the decision to keep going just based upon people's interest.
Susan Tatum 2:25
You started with your with the folks that you know, and then how did you keep it organized to know who you talk to, because this is, like, who you talk to, who you need to follow with all of that good stuff.
Lisa Carmichael 2:38
Yeah. So I first was a spreadsheet, and that only took me so far. So I looked, started looking into CRM applications, and I decided to use HubSpot, which has helped that a lot. I still use it for all of my client relationship management and networking outreach. I will say it's definitely worth it. I use the free version that's works for me, and it takes time investment to get it set up right. There's a lot of importing of contacts, cleaning up of things. It probably took me a couple weeks, maybe even a couple hours a day, of doing it and but I found it to be well worth it, and there's lots of good tutorials.
Susan Tatum 3:19
So what did you find to be worth it that time?
Lisa Carmichael 3:21
Well, I now use it for all of the tracking. So every time I talk to somebody, or I have a LinkedIn exchange or an email exchange or a meeting, so like for you, you know, I've got your HubSpot record Susan Tatum, and I can have it note and record. Every time we have a meeting, it just pops in to your record. Every time we have an email exchange, it can pop into your record. Now I can choose to have it not get tracked. But I love it, because anytime you and I are now going to talk, I just go back and quickly review.
Susan Tatum 3:53
Oh, yeah.
Lisa Carmichael 3:54
And, you know, it saves me having to, you know, do the old Gmail Tatum search and have everything pop up. Yeah, so I find it really helpful.
Susan Tatum 4:03
So does HubSpot itself record the conversation and then put it in there? Or are you having you record it through something else and move it to HubSpot?
Lisa Carmichael 4:10
So I don't record actually like this. I don't record transcripts and put it in HubSpot. It takes the actual email and lifts it and puts it in. I can set a follow up task. So I have all of my contacts on a regular networking follow up schedule. So, you know, three weeks, one month, two month, three month, whatever is appropriate for the type of network I have with that person, and it pops up in a to do list. Now I'm giving a lot away people I network with. I can be like, Oh, that's how she knows, but it's great. And you know, my commitment is to stay connected to colleagues and people that I'm meeting, and HubSpot ensures that I can do that.
Susan Tatum 4:49
Technology does make a difference sometimes, doesn't it? If we use it correctly,
Lisa Carmichael 4:53
it does. And it can be, you know, it can be over engineered. So I'm an over engineer-er, which kind of gets back to. Need to have, having turned myself into an AI nerd, and I have to resist the amount of time that I spend learning AI because a lot of it is way outside what I need to know for my work. I'm just curious about I can open an over engineer, anything. So I'd say that's a caution.
Susan Tatum 5:17
It is easy to get to lose a few hours when you're just because it's just easy to follow a trail of something that's interesting but not doing any much good. I understand that completely. What when you in doing the outreach and getting people to talk to you, what surprised you the most about that?
Lisa Carmichael 5:37
So what surprised me the most about the outreach and people's willingness was the amount of interest. When I started this, it was just because I was interested myself, and I figured I would talk to a few people. And it was, I don't know that commercial from a while ago, and I told two people, and so on and so on and so on. It was, I think it was a hair a shampoo commercial or something. And the same thing happened with this, and it just got to be a thing that I couldn't not do. And I'll go back and say, I'm not a person who does this sort of thing. And by this sort of thing, I mean starting something unplanned. Because I really didn't have a plan initially, I just realized that people wanted me to keep going and asking others, and I ended up with a plan and goals and things like that. But the initial impetus for it was I just found out I was interested, and wanted to know what other people were doing.
Susan Tatum 6:32
Oh, you, you mentioned on the before we started recording that you've gone beyond 40 interviews now, but you're not, you're not really getting any more information, new information, which totally makes sense, but you are continuing to do it for the networking value, expanding your network.
Lisa Carmichael 6:49
Yeah, and I get some nuance out of it, so I'm using AI to do the project. And every time I have a call on the topic, I record it and then have the transcript that I can compare what people have said and bump it up against the findings that I already have, and the themes are pretty consistent, and the interest from one or two or three more people really makes a difference. I I'll say something else about what I'm doing, and this just again, came out of people's interest, and then setting up, I don't know what I'm going to call it yet, a resource group or a networking group, because people I spoke with, almost to a person, have said, I want to learn more. I want to know what you find out. I want to know what other people are doing. So I bounced the idea off and said, Well, what if we kept it going? You know, have a monthly meeting and have a speaker of some sort, and people who are super interested. So have our first meeting in early June. And again, it's about creating value for a network and then just continuing to expand it.
Susan Tatum 7:50
That's awesome. You know, I want to come back to you several months from now and find out how well that's doing, and I'm particularly interested in how much work it takes on your part to keep a community like that going.
Lisa Carmichael 8:06
I've been thinking about that. And, you know, it's like a passion of mine. And so how might I find other people in the group who want to take on a meeting? right, or things like that that I think can help create a community as well as lighten the load on me.
Susan Tatum 8:20
I think that, you know, one of the things that I learned when I was interviewing last year, when I talked to like, 100 consult, independent consultants,
Lisa Carmichael 8:31
which is how we met, right?
Susan Tatum 8:32
And you would all come out of the corporate world or big you were with Deloitte, I think one of the big consulting firms, very different atmosphere and situation from them being an independent and one of the things that came up over and over again was a feeling of isolation and missing the teamwork. And so I think what you're doing with that community, I realize that they're not all consultants. Some of them are, are working inside the companies, but you're you have a hot topic you have, and you have a topic that we all need to know more about. Even the people that don't want to know any more about it need to know more about it. Well, I think that's that. That is, if we want to talk about business development and keeping your finger on the pulse of what's happening in your area, that's such a wonderful way to do it.
Lisa Carmichael 9:19
And I'll go back to say, well, yes, I had to put energy into it, and now it's a deliberate thing, but in the beginning, it really wasn't about networking, and it wasn't about that aspect of it. And what I'm kind of proud of myself for is when I saw the opportunity to do that, I took it, and so now I've started to grow it into something, but it all came out of curiosity and an interest in this new technology that I wanted to learn more about.
Susan Tatum 9:50
When you were you reached out to the folks that were in your immediate to the friendlies, I call them. And was that mostly other consultants?
Lisa Carmichael 9:59
Yeah, it was Independent change management and org effectiveness and communications and coaching consultant that I knew from Deloitte, and one of them was a client, and she's still internal, and the other three or four were former Deloitte external consultants, independent consultants, and that's what kicked this whole thing off.
Susan Tatum 10:19
You ended well, you did do, didn't you have a was it an email or something that you asked people to forward to help you start building the
Lisa Carmichael 10:28
Yep,
Susan Tatum 10:29
wasn't that you? Yeah, I remember getting that. How did that help?
Lisa Carmichael 10:31
It helped a lot. And that, when people said, this has been great, and then I would say, you know, I want to try to increase the number of people in talking to I have quite a few independent consultants at this point. Could you maybe recommend someone in an organization or in a consulting firm? And then I offered to send a blurb about my research and what I'm doing to make it easy for them, and I got quite a few people that way too. I also, in terms of cold calling, put some requests out on LinkedIn, I did a search for, you know, AI and change management, AI and org effectiveness, all sorts of keywords like that, and got back a long list of people. And think I probably sent out 20 or so cold emails and got about half of those people to be responding and agreeing to talk with me.
Susan Tatum 11:19
Oh, that's great.
Lisa Carmichael 11:20
It was a really high percentage. I was, yeah, it made, made a big difference for me to do that
Susan Tatum 11:26
make you feel good when they actually responded to you.
Lisa Carmichael 11:28
It did, you know, that little kind of charge?
Susan Tatum 11:32
Oh, yeah, yeah, like me. What was, yeah, it was a commercial about that. And so now you've talked to, you've talked to, to a lot of people in turn that are still internal as well. So you've got a well rounded view of what the consultants think is happening and feel that the answer solution to whatever the problems are, and then you've got the reality check of the folks that are experiencing that day to day. Now, am I? Am I correct in that? I know you're nodding, but people
Lisa Carmichael 12:01
Yeah, well, and I'll add to that yes, and it's, how are people using it? So the questions that I asked were, how are you using it? And themes like, that's my thought partner. And the phrase that came up a lot was, I use it as a colleague in the next cubicle, because being, you know, a lot of people work remotely, and a lot of us that are independent, we don't have that sort of reaching, you know, literally looking over the cubicle wall and saying, Hey, what do you think about this? And AI is really good for that, and creating content, doing research, and that's a lot of the curiosity is, how are people and what can I learn from my colleagues about it? And then how can I try some of those things out?
Susan Tatum 12:42
Is there any difference that you found between how consultants are thinking about this and using AI and the internal people?
Lisa Carmichael 12:51
Yes, so independent consultants are using it more frequently and for more things than people in organizations, and I think that's for a couple of reasons. The first is simply the amount of resources that are available. I mean, I'll speak for me, it's an army of one, and occasionally it's an army of a few more, if we get together and have lunch. But as I think through solving, you know, problems or projects for clients and doing my own marketing, I use AI a lot to think with and to do research with. And I think for folks in organizations who have a whole lot of resources around them, it's more targeted use. So I mean, I can give you an example. I have a friend who works in a company, and he thought, I'm gonna experiment with this, and he was looking to hire somebody, so he used AI to write a job description after giving it some information. And then he thought, Hmm, well, I know AI can hallucinate, and I know AI has inherent bias. So he read it, he made some changes, he showed it to his internal org effectiveness colleagues, and I said, Wow, this is good. And then he showed it to HR, and they said, this good. And then he ran it through a bias checker that they have at their company, and it came back saying no bias. So exactly. So he went by seeing that kind of Wow. He went from deciding to try to use it for something to ending up with a really good result. So that was like a point solution. And I think what's keeping people in organization from using it more broadly is, first of all, it's the overall organization's concern about security and governance, and how do we build a tool ourselves that's safe from, you know, incursion by, you know, an AI or whatever can get in and get our data. And then one thing I was surprised about is the organizations that decide they're going to put AI in, you know, either Microsoft, if they use it, they'll use co pilot, or Google, they'll use Gemini. And they're, they believe that it's intuitive, quotes intuitive, and so they don't really need to train people. And yet, you know, if you open AI and there's this window that says, How can I Hi, Lisa, how can I help you today? And. And it's like, well, I don't know. And you type something in, and you get back what you don't want, and then you close it. And companies aren't investing a lot in training to help people with use cases and things. And, you know, I see an opportunity there to advise companies on what you do actually need to help your people adopt AI and use it affectable.
Susan Tatum 15:21
Oh, the Microsofts and the the Googles of the world are not providing any training with it to speak
Lisa Carmichael 15:26
I think that's a I'd say that's an unfair statement, because I, you know, my my sample size was so small, one of the concerns of people in companies that I talked to was there's not a lot of how do you use it if we pilot it? Now, on the flip side, my former client that I spoke with, she's in communications for IT, and they've gone all out, doing training, creating use cases, creating a change network, and that's made a really big difference on adoption. They're now to the point where they're actually measuring how much time people save, and eventually she wants to start looking at what people are doing with that time saving. How are they're being more strategic in their work? So it's, it's both that are happening. I was just surprised by the by the finding that not all companies are doing that,
Susan Tatum 16:13
something that would seem obvious, but yet, when you think about it, it's kind of just, it's another tool. It's a very unique tool, but we don't always get the training that we probably should have to be to be able to make the best use of it. So just to stay on this track. What so in the time you, you started this in January, did you? You started your research in December? Your your research.
Lisa Carmichael 16:38
I talked to you in December, and then I really started in earnest the first week in January,
Susan Tatum 16:43
and more thing, as fast as this thing seems to move, were changes occurring during this time that you were talking to people
Lisa Carmichael 16:51
and AI is on a trajectory that every time it moves forward, it goes, I don't know what it's called a dog leg or, you know, the exponential development of AI is is incredible. So during the two months I was speaking with people, it advanced, and since I completed the conversations about a month ago, it's unrecognizable, the deep research that it can do, the oh, I keep learning things, the all of the agent work called agentic AI, where you can have a have an agent that does something. So for example, I have a tool that I use that flip. It turns on 15 minutes before I have a meeting, and it goes out to LinkedIn. It goes to the internet. It looks at my our Gmail that we've exchanged and will send me a meeting crap email that has, I know, right, that has all the information in it, and it does it automatically. So that's an agent. And all of the whole agentic AI is new since I started my research in January,
Susan Tatum 17:54
so I've tried a few of those. What is the one that that you're talking about, that you use? Is that an app that's on the market?
Lisa Carmichael 18:01
Yeah, it's called Lindy, L, I n, d, y. There is a free version, and there's a paid version. I will say, I did not find it intuitive, and I was really interested in how it worked, so I persevered with it.
Susan Tatum 18:14
You get it to do we wanted it to do?
Lisa Carmichael 18:17
uh-humm
Susan Tatum 18:18
You mean, yeah, one of the things that you said, I think that a lot of people were using it for brainstorming and as a thought partner, and you were interested in also how people are using the time that they are saving by using AI. And so a couple of things that came to my mind, Lisa was I had this feeling when I started using it, and I've been using chatgpt since it became available to people like me, so I think it was, it's been about two and a half years now, but I was very concerned about getting mentally lazy and letting it do all the thinking for me. And then I saw someone speak on one of Will Bachman's what is his intrex group? There's a, it's a McKinsey group
Lisa Carmichael 19:02
oh, Umbrex
Susan Tatum 19:03
yeah, Umbrex you may have even told me about is this presentation where this person was talking about, it's, it's not going to make you lazy. This is something that's, you know, people worry about. But I do think that there's that it just feels like there's that opportunity for us not to think things through as well. I know I do far less actual writing than I used to do because now I have chatGPT has worked with me enough that it knows my style and my tone, and I just give it. Here's what I want to communicate in this format, and it's pretty good.
Lisa Carmichael 19:36
What percentage of the way from start to finish does it get you
Susan Tatum 19:41
It depends on what day it is,
Lisa Carmichael 19:43
what day of the week,
Susan Tatum 19:44
because sometimes it can be almost perfect. Now, I've got you can't, you know? And to your point about people not getting the right training, that's a real if you just say, write me an article on this topic. Or write me a LinkedIn post on this topic, you're going to get generic crap. Got to tell it what your point of view is and what your idea is, and then just let it do its thing. So I do a daily email and
Lisa Carmichael 20:15
yeah
Susan Tatum 20:16
has some time
Lisa Carmichael 20:17
which is awesome, by the way. I love it.
Susan Tatum 20:21
It will do it can be almost perfect, like you have to go through it's it, you know, those M dash things that are in copy of and
Lisa Carmichael 20:28
it loves those, yeah,
Susan Tatum 20:29
I can't get rid of them. So you got to get rid of all of that, because that screams. You used AI to write this, but, and then there's other times when it just, it just gets it totally wrong. And and I futz around with it for an hour or so, and then I think I'm just going to start, I'm just going to go to a different conversation, start this over again. But it's, it is really quite good. And I think for the consultants, it's something that I've had some clients that this goes back probably a year, that were really like, I'm not using that. That's cheating. I'm not any part of it, but they run the risk of being left behind, because there are so many time consuming things that you don't have to do yourself anymore. I find that the time fills up very easily with more stuff that you can do, but it just changes. And it's just a it's just the way it is. We were going to say something.
Lisa Carmichael 21:21
I was gonna comment quickly on the idea about it making us lazy or, you know, less thoughtful. I every time I think it might, which sometimes I hope it will, like, just take this and do it. I'm disappointed, you know. So I'm writing my fourth article for LinkedIn based upon the research and Claude and I have been going back and forth for like five days, and finally I just said, Okay, I'm gonna take this and, like you said, I'm gonna do it myself and give it back, because it's just not clicking. Now, if it would always click, I'd be happy. But some of the things that does really well, like and this might might be of interest to to people listening when I when it came time for me to publish things that I was finding, you know, the AI space, the AI and change space is kind of crowded, not as crowded as leadership, but it's, it's got some, some people have some points of view out there. And I downloaded a lot of the points of view, you know, that were McKinsey and Deloitte and some other reputable organizations, and put them all in a document, put all of my research topics so like 500 different data points from my research, took that, took all the articles, stuck it in a deep research tool. It happened to be GPT 03 which highly recommend if people haven't tried it yet, and asked it, okay, where's the white space? What can I cover? Based upon what I found out, and based upon these 10 articles that haven't been covered yet, and it came back with 12 ideas so and I had to flush them out, and some were right and some weren't right. But I think that's the kind of thing for me that AI is really good at, is finding, finding ideas and data that I probably wouldn't be able to find on my own.
Susan Tatum 23:00
Yeah, it also, if it found, found you spots that are not all covered up with people saying the same thing over and over again, yeah. And the fact that you find you found them to be valid, yeah, really says something there. I think. I you mentioned Claude and I, and a lot of people tell me, and I, and I see it in the writings that Claude is the best thing for having as a writing partner for you, I've never I've not been able to get good results out of it. I haven't spent as much time with it as I have with others.
Lisa Carmichael 23:32
what I would recommend to get Claude to be a good writing partner is I have a project set up, which is a folder, essentially, and I've uploaded 15 or 20 writing samples that really represent how I want to write publicly. And Claude knows every time it writes for me to go look at those. And I often say, you know, what do you notice in these samples that would be good to incorporate into this next article? And it will list those out, and then I say, okay, draft it based upon what you just saw.
Susan Tatum 23:58
Is it samples of your own writing or other people's writing that you like?
Lisa Carmichael 24:02
No, it's all my own.
Susan Tatum 24:04
ok, It's all yours. Well, okay, so you'll have to come back and tell us how what you what you learn with how AI proceeds with this. But before I let you go, what can other consultants learn from your process and what you've been through and what challenges they might meet.
Lisa Carmichael 24:21
It's a good question. So I think one of the challenges is it's hard to get started. Like to doubt yourself, and I'll talk about me to doubt myself. It would have been really easy to do that, because I like to be an expert. I like to think of myself as, oh, I have it all together before I go out with something. And in this case, it wouldn't have worked to be any kind of expert, because what I want to do is get information from other people. So I think what I learned and advice that I would give to other consultants thinking about doing this is just be curious. That's plenty and communicating your curiosity is people get interested. And I loved that. And related to that. And then you can hear it in my voice, and we've talked about it before, is I'm absolutely passionate about this topic. And I think anybody, any consultant can have something, has something already that they're passionate and curious about, and that's worth putting out there. And you know, if, if it grows legs, if there's interest from other people great pursue it, and maybe it's not the right topic, but you learn that along the way, and I think that's worth the effort. There's one other thing, and this, this still kind of gets me, which is there's enough voices out there talking about AI and change management or AI and org effectiveness that I would think, Oh, I'm not finding out anything new. And a couple things about that. First is, the people I talked with said it's really great to be validated, so even if I didn't find anything new, to come back and say, this is the result, and to have them nod their heads go, Yeah, okay, I'm feeling that too. They really appreciated that. And the other thing is, excuse me, you'll have a unique point of view on this topic that you're curious and interested in, and that's what you want to talk about, is your own unique position. I was telling, I think, before we got on that, for example, the topic of leadership, there are 70,000 titles on leadership on Amazon, and people keep writing leadership book because there's more to say, or there's a unique point of view that an individual has that's worth putting out there. So I'd say, just keep going. Just do it.
Susan Tatum 26:29
Get started and keep going.
Lisa Carmichael 26:30
The last thing I'd say is don't figure out, don't feel like you have to figure out how to monetize it before you start. I luckily didn't get hung up on that and I but I could see how it's an issue, because there's this, right if I'm consulting and I'm delivering work and I'm making money on it, why? What's is it worth it to then invest some time to do something that feels like it might not make money either, and then what will I have gotten out of it? And my advice is, I wouldn't worry about that at the beginning. If there's a market for it, will show up like it has for me.
Susan Tatum 27:01
yeah. And I think you're, you're validating what it what really, it's a reality check of what's really going on in the market. And there's danger in thinking we know what that is without talking to people. And I think that you've mentioned, we already mentioned in this, this conversation, that you came up with ideas for services that you might provide that, may not have occurred to you.
Lisa Carmichael 27:26
No, when I started, I was just thinking, how would I use AI and change management? And I saw a need pretty quickly for companies that are implementing AI that need help with adoption. I mean, AI is perceived as this existential threat, right? Like, will it take my job? What will it mean for the future? And it requires a different approach, a real psychological safety type approach to change that I didn't hear really, is being widely used. So that was exciting to me. And I see an opportunity there.
Susan Tatum 27:58
You're creating content from it, and you've made some new friends.
Lisa Carmichael 28:03
Lots of new friends, yeah. Which is great. New friends, new colleagues, new collaboration partners in
Susan Tatum 28:11
a lot of opportunitites in there too.
Lisa Carmichael 28:12
Yeah, yeah.
Susan Tatum 28:13
That's awesome. That's great. Well, I really appreciate you sharing all this with us to hear hear things from somebody that's been out there and making that happen. So thank you very much for stopping by.
Lisa Carmichael 28:23
You are so welcome. I love talking about it. Susan, anytime.
Susan Tatum 28:27
and I know we've got listeners that, and maybe they're in the organizational change area. Maybe they're not, but if they want to follow up with you and and learn more about what you're doing, how's the best way to get in touch with you?
Lisa Carmichael 28:38
My LinkedIn profile. You can DM me there and my contact information. It also has an email address for me. So I welcome any outreach, any conversation. I'd love to be of help to people thinking about this.
Susan Tatum 28:52
Hey, fantastic. We'll put that in the show notes, and thank you again for sharing it all.
Lisa Carmichael 28:57
you are so welcome, Susan. take care.