That first year after leaving corporate life can be tricky—do you say yes to most every opportunity or niche immediately and start saying no? Strategic communicator Jacqui Miller aced (by any measure) her first year as a Soloist and describes how she made it happen:

The surprising first thing she did when leaving her corporate job to start her expertise business.

Why she made the decision to niche right away—and then continued to niche down even more.

How she decides which clients to take on and which to refer (and why she’s a big believer in creating a circle of complementary professionals).

What to do when you hit an inflection point in your career/business where you’re “not practicing at the top of your license”.

The communication strategies that expanded her impact and relationships.

LINKS

Jacqui Miller Website | LinkedIn | On Thought Leadership

Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

BIO

Jacqui is a communications professional with over 15 years of experience in early-stage and high-complexity businesses. Previously, she led communications at PillPack, a digital pharmacy, from the first customer through its $1 billion acquisition by Amazon. She's also launched moonshots at Google X, and helped bring to market the first genomic tumor test for personalized cancer treatment at Foundation Medicine.

Today, she works alongside founding teams to take the long view on communications as an executive function. Her philosophy is that the best PR strategy is ultimately just running a thoughtful business.

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The Authority Code: How to Position, Monetize and Sell Your Expertise: equal parts bible, blueprint and bushido. How to think like, become—and remain—an authority.

TRANSCRIPT

00:00 - 00:23

Jacqui Miller: I had never in my in-house W2 career tried to grow a big team or even really have many direct reports. So it would have been a new thing for me to do to go and try to build a bigger team as a consultant. So it did feel pretty natural. And then Everybody would ask me, oh, are you starting an agency? Are you hiring people? Are you doing this? And I had to go through a little bit of a moment where I was like, is that what I'm supposed to do? Am I supposed to be hiring these

00:23 - 00:28

Jacqui Miller: people? And was able to come out the other side of that and realize I'm quite happy as a soloist.

00:34 - 01:19

Rochelle Moulton: Hello, hello. Welcome to the Soloist Life podcast, formerly known as Soloist Women, where we're all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I'm Rochelle Moulton, and today I'm here with Jacqui  Miller, who's a communications pro with over 15 years of experience in early stage and high complexity businesses. Previously, she led communications at PillPack, a digital pharmacy, from the first customer through its $1 billion acquisition by Amazon. She's also launched Moonshots at Google X and helped bring to market the first genomic tumor test for personalized cancer treatment at Foundation Medicine. Today, she works alongside founding teams

01:19 - 01:31

Rochelle Moulton: to take the long view on communications as an executive function. Her philosophy is that the best PR strategy is ultimately just running a thoughtful business. Jackie, welcome.

01:32 - 01:34

Jacqui Miller: Thank you so much, Rochelle. I'm really happy to be here.

01:34 - 01:56

Rochelle Moulton: Oh, I'm so excited. So 1 of the many reasons I invited you on the show is your powerhouse year number 1 experience as a soloist. So Why don't we start there? Maybe you could tell us about how you decided to leave your job and to go solo. How hard was it to exit and make that transition to owning your own

01:56 - 02:25

Jacqui Miller: business? Absolutely. So I do also have to say, Rachelle, I found your podcast early on and it has been so helpful to hear other folks who've made this jump. So it is really an honor to be here to share my story too. So I had a job, a full-time job, and you know, I'd been in the role for probably 6 months and I was starting to feel like this is not my genius zone. This is just not accessing the parts of my brain that I want. I don't think it's the right fit. So I had started

02:25 - 02:49

Jacqui Miller: thinking, what would it look like if I left? What would I do? I don't know, kind of poking around. And also feeling quite a bit of fear because I'd been there for just a short amount of time and obviously didn't want to kind of burn any bridges. And all of this was rolling around in my head. And then in the background also had, as you'd mentioned in the intro, I'd worked for a startup, had kind of a nest egg from that acquisition. So I knew I would be okay if it took me a minute to figure

02:49 - 03:19

Jacqui Miller: out the next thing. And 1 day I just, I had, I really frustrated. Something happened at work and I kind of had an out of body moment where I was like, you know, there's not that many opportunities in life where you get to make a decision based on your gut feeling and what you know is right for you. And this is not right for me and I'm gonna leave and I'm gonna figure out what the next best thing looks like for me. And so pretty rapidly, I closed up shop there and left everything in good shape.

03:19 - 03:22

Jacqui Miller: And the first thing I did, Michelle, was I went and I got a new headshot.

03:25 - 03:30

Rochelle Moulton: It's funny because that's the thing that everybody hates. They leave it to the very end. I love it.

03:30 - 03:51

Jacqui Miller: And as a communications and public relations person, I was like, you know what I think is going to make me feel confident about whatever I do next? It's having a brand new headshot on LinkedIn. So that Saturday after my last day at work, I went and I got my makeup done and got a new headshot. And I kind of just hung my shingle out in the proverbial sense on LinkedIn and started trying to figure it out.

03:51 - 04:00

Rochelle Moulton: So you didn't do the, oh, let me create this giant website and figure out the 2700 things I can do for you. You started on LinkedIn.

04:00 - 04:27

Jacqui Miller: I did. I think exactly what I did. I switched my role to working for myself. I was fortunate enough to have a couple of folks very early on who I'd sort of been talking to and they were like, if you become free, we have work for you to do. So I was fortunate enough to have that early on while I wrote my website and that sort of thing. And yeah, I just really started kind of putting it out there to folks in my network that I was available to do projects and would love to chat.

04:28 - 04:45

Rochelle Moulton: Okay. So, you know, I always ask people, you know, how long did it take to make your first 100, 000? And I know that you made over 100, 000 in your first year. So tell us how you experience like the financial side of your new business, especially compared to yourself as a salaried employee. Yeah,

04:46 - 05:19

Jacqui Miller: it's been wild. The pricing side was really intimidating to me at first. As an in-house person, I'd worked with agencies, I'd worked with a few soloists. I understood the value of what I could do. But putting together those earlier proposals, I was lucky to have a few friends who had kind of been here before me who were willing to look at them, but it was very overwhelming. But what I quickly figured out was when I'm doing my best work, it's very valuable to the companies. And in a full-time role at the level that I'd gotten to

05:19 - 05:45

Jacqui Miller: as a communications professional I hadn't been in a job for a while that was using kind of my full brain all of the time. So initially I was like oh is it okay to make this much money in a month? Am I overcharging? What am I doing? But I realized that the pricing structure as a soloist at a certain point in your career is really lucrative and fun because you're doing the things that You know at least for me that I find both the most challenging but also the most rewarding But that are also creating the

05:45 - 05:47

Jacqui Miller: most value for the folks I'm working with.

05:47 - 05:57

Rochelle Moulton: And it's funny that that would be a disconnect, right? Like I'm doing these things in my genius zone, they're worth a lot of money. Oh, I can charge a lot.

05:58 - 06:15

Jacqui Miller: Right, and I'm making 3 times as much as I was as a W2 employee, is that right? And when you think about it logically, it makes sense, but it was a strange realization for me. And then really exciting about what that meant for my earning potential and what kind of a lifestyle I could figure out while still having so much fun.

06:15 - 06:37

Rochelle Moulton: Well, and I just want to point out that, you know, mindset is so critical, right? And you just set a magic number, at least in my head, which is 3 times. So you got to a point where you were earning 3 times what you earned as an employee, using your full brain, doing what you love. Were you working as much as an employee, more or about the same?

06:37 - 07:01

Jacqui Miller: I will say I was working quite a bit more. Still, I would say in the first year, probably the biggest thing I need to still figure out is how to get to the number of hours I want to be working a week. You know, I'm not working. I have 2 small children, so they don't really allow me to work much more than maybe 35 or 40 hours. But I'd like to get to the point where I can just balance that a little bit better. So definitely working more, but I think also just feeling much more fulfilled

07:01 - 07:01

Jacqui Miller: by it.

07:01 - 07:04

Rochelle Moulton: Yes, it feels like a holistic approach to it.

07:04 - 07:14

Jacqui Miller: Absolutely. And just really excited to open my email and see what new things had come in and tackle the next project. I was just feeling energized in a way that I hadn't in quite a bit.

07:14 - 07:42

Rochelle Moulton: What a difference that is to be excited about the emails coming into your box. So when we first met, you'd already made the decision to niche, which in my experience is boldly unusual. Lots of folks spend that freshman year doing a little bit of everything and then regretting it in year 2. But you focused like right from the beginning. Tell us about that decision and how it played out where you decided to play in a specific niche.

07:42 - 08:17

Jacqui Miller: Yeah, it started out in part based on, you know, other communications professionals that I'd seen going off on their own. The ones that I was most inspired by, I felt like were being quite specific about what they were doing. Communications is a really broad field. It can fit into marketing. It can fit separate from marketing. It can be just public relations. It can be just internal communications. It's a very broad area of expertise. And as I kind of looked around at other folks who were doing this soloist thing or building small agencies, I was really inspired

08:17 - 08:46

Jacqui Miller: by the people who were saying, you know, quite specifically, we are doing this thing for this industry in this way. So I wanted to get to that as quickly as possible. And I also, you know, having been in house and running these functions inside of businesses for so long, I really had a good understanding of what makes for a good soloist consultant offering in terms of what sort of things you can have somebody like that take on successfully. So those 2 experiences helped me feel more confident and offering a tighter range of services when I first

08:46 - 08:46

Jacqui Miller: started.

08:46 - 09:03

Rochelle Moulton: Well, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but as I'm listening to you, it sounds like you've got a point of view, whether you've fully articulated in writing or not. Is that the case? Yes. Any point of view in terms of communications, in terms of how it impacts clients, the way that it works best.

09:03 - 09:37

Jacqui Miller: Definitely. I would say I'm very passionate about the idea that communications cannot be fully outsourced, nor should it be. I actually, as I've gotten further into this first year of business, I've niched even more than I think the first time we talked, into really thinking about engagements as working with very, very early stage companies who, you know, it's still the founder and a small team. And then there's kind of this valley where I think a lot of companies and startups especially, it was the majority of folks I work with are venture-backed startups, where they kind of

09:37 - 10:07

Jacqui Miller: try to fake it for a while on the communication side and they don't quite want to hire the expertise so they're trying to fill the gaps with somebody in marketing or a PR agency. I get really passionate about talking to those folks and telling them, just go hire someone who loves to write and has high judgment and bring them in house and let them work with you and trust them and give them the tools they need to really guide the business. We live in a world where reputation is everything. That person doesn't need to be super

10:07 - 10:31

Jacqui Miller: senior, but you do need someone who's looking out for the reputation of the business. It's a little ironic that that's my strong point of view, because then I'm here as a consultant. But I think having that point of view helps me give clients really good advice. And then I can tell them, they're like, OK, great. So what can you do for us? And then I can talk about kind of the range of things that I can do either before you hire that person to set them up for success or after you've hired them to be a

10:31 - 10:38

Jacqui Miller: thought partner and a coach and an extra set of hands when they need it, but mostly helping them figure out how to grow that role within the business.

10:39 - 11:12

Rochelle Moulton: Well, 1 of the advantages of taking that position is that you're doing 2 things at the same time. 1 is you're telling them to essentially get a trusted advisor that they hire to keep on staff. And the other is by saying the opposite of what many other people would say in order to get work, you have built more trust in that initial engagement. Yeah. So yeah, that makes perfect sense to me. So moving forward though, what do you see is the revenue potential for this business from where you are now? So where you are now, 3

11:12 - 11:24

Rochelle Moulton: times what you were making as an employee, Are you picturing that you can double your revenue, triple a much bigger multiplier? Where do you see the business going?

11:24 - 11:53

Jacqui Miller: Yeah, it's a good question. And I'm influenced by people you've had on the podcast before, and I'll name drop them because people should go listen to their episodes. But I remember Erica Goodie's episode, you talked to Heather Welpley and Katie Burkhart, and they all had these amazing points about how they make their business and their financial goals really work for their lives as a whole. And that's the thing I think I'm trying to figure out. And I don't know yet what that looks like for me. I think I'd love to kind of toggle the pricing levers

11:53 - 12:04

Jacqui Miller: and the services levers, and then what other things are important in my life to figure that out. But it has been a lot of fun, I think, in year 1 to just really go for it and see what I can do if I'm firing on all cylinders.

12:04 - 12:18

Rochelle Moulton: And it's also, it's a little unfair of me to ask you that question at the end of year 1. Right? But sometimes you just see a clear path ahead. Well, do you see adding employees at some point or have you become a confirmed soloist?

12:19 - 12:39

Jacqui Miller: I'm pretty sure I'm a confirmed soloist. I just don't get as much enjoyment out of managing people. And I've actually I've got a couple proposals out right now where I've brought in colleagues or peers who do similar things and proposing, you know, we can, we can work together to do all of the things that you need. But it's really fun to only report to myself.

12:40 - 12:40

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah.

12:40 - 12:51

Jacqui Miller: And for me, I think it helps me be more in my genius zone more often when I'm not also trying to delegate and figure out who's going to do what. And I get to focus on the projects that I feel like are best fit for my expertise.

12:52 - 13:08

Rochelle Moulton: I'm just curious, when you first left the corporate environment, did you know that at the beginning? Because sometimes people will say, oh, yeah, I was in corporate and I was managing a bunch of employees and I just realized it just wasn't for me Or is this something that kind of grew on you gradually as you figured out your genius zone?

13:08 - 13:40

Jacqui Miller: I've always known that I really enjoy being an executive level individual contributor And I think that's kind of a rarefied position. And I was very fortunate to be able to do that for quite some time, where I didn't have a team and manage people. And I got to sit at the table and have my thoughts and go and do my work. And I really...