A Day In The Life Of An Independent Advisor
Mike's workday begins with "an hour of reading the news," followed by managing a high volume of communications across multiple platforms, meticulously planning the day around achieving "daily and weekly goals" to balance networking with productive work. The role demands significant time commitment, extending into evenings with frequent travel and client events.
Communication, Networking, Project Management, Time Management, Goal Setting
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Mike Sims
Advisor
Independent Consulting Company
Penn State University, 2020
Executive MBA, UCLA, June 2023
Economics
Consulting & Related Professional Services, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG)
Entrepreneurship and Business Owner
Veteran
Video Highlights
1. Mike works from home, providing flexibility in his schedule and allowing him to balance work and family responsibilities.
2. He emphasizes the importance of setting daily and weekly goals to maintain productivity and avoid getting bogged down in less impactful tasks such as emails and networking. This highlights the need for effective time management and prioritization in his role.
3. Mike's work involves significant networking and client interaction, both virtually and in person (travel, dinners, events). This demonstrates the importance of strong communication and interpersonal skills in his consulting career and the need for work-life integration given the long hours.
Transcript
What does a day in the life of your role look like?
I love it right now. I work from home, so it's a lot.
I wake up, get my kids ready for school. My kids are in high school. I feed the dogs and make some coffee. I read a lot of the news.
I subscribe to many mailers, but news is a big thing. I stay up on it, so I spend probably an hour reading the news in the morning.
Then I go through the email and mailers in my many email inboxes. I have Slack, Outlook, and Gmail. I also have WhatsApp, Signal, and regular text messages.
All of that comes in inbound, and I talk to a lot of people around the world. It's generally a lot of inbound. I also use LinkedIn, so I go through all of this.
This much is kind of how I structure my day about what I'm going to do. I have a giant whiteboard over here with way too many things on it.
I think the most important thing is that I've set daily and weekly goals, and I structure my day around trying to accomplish those goals. If I don't, I'll end up on the phone or just writing emails and never actually produce anything.
In my position, it gets really tricky. You can do a lot of networking and talking, but a little bit of production. So the management piece comes in. How do I minimize that? How do I shorten my emails or communications so I can actually produce for the people I'm working for?
Then, on the backside of that, I do a lot of traveling. I go to a lot of dinners and events, and I'm pretty much working every night up to midnight, seemingly.