Ditch corporate. Go solo.
Deploy your unique expertise.

Hi! I’m Wes Wheless

I help experts
distill their corporate expertise
into game-changing IP and
signature consulting services


First time here?

The best way to get oriented to my “IP-first” consulting & coaching methodology is to subscribe to The Lightbulb.

It’s my daily micro-email offering free tips and frameworks to get your hard-earned expertise out of your head and deploy it front-and-center of your consulting business.

You can jump in here:

— Jonathan Stark, host of Ditching Hourly and
The Business of Authority podcasts


Popular Free Resources

  • My daily micro-email: 💡 The Lightbulb

    • A lightbulb in your inbox every day, specifically written for fellow independent consultants

    • Yes, I write every day, and yes, subscribers stick around :)

    • Browse the archive or sign up to get your first tip today

  • Framework: The Consultant’s Expertise Loop

    • Understand how synthesizing your insights into unique IP can turbocharge your consulting business

  • Framework: Price Triangulation Mental Model

    • Identify three data points as reference points to price your consulting service

  • Framework: What’s Your Helper Persona?

    • Understand how you want to help your clients as a first step to building your business model

  • Framework: Monetizing Expertise Through Content

    • Understand the flow from stray insight to revenue

  • My e-book: “Debunking The Big Ick: Thought Leadership”

    • Coming soon


    • The consultant’s guide to quash the cringe and start sharing your expertise publicly with confidence

  • Case studies: Past IP Collabs

    • Recent examples of crisp codification of frontier concepts with some of tech’s brightest executives


About Wes

Hi! I’m Wes Wheless - I’m a coach for independent consultants and also what you might call an ‘expertise whisperer’.

I’ve spent the bulk of my 20-year corporate & consulting career synthesizing expert insights into monetizable IP for Fortune 500 companies, early-stage startups, and prominent tech executives.

This ‘captured IP’ has been deployed commercially as:

  • frameworks for corporate strategies

  • talks at industry conferences

  • premium courses priced up to $1,000+ per seat.

Past IP collaborations include execs and experts from Uber, Amazon, Microsoft, Twitter, Expedia, Adobe, Graphite, Persefoni, BCG and more


These days, I exclusively serve new & aspiring independent consultants, the segment of professionals I believe are chronically underselling their hard-earned expertise and losing engagements when they shouldn’t be.

Sound familiar?


Where are independent consultants going wrong?

  • As ICs, most of us rely too heavily on our warm network to source leads, and then lean on our experience to convert those leads to clients

  • This is
fine
for your first year. But it’s not a sustainable strategy

  • You will eventually exhaust your network, and perhaps surprisingly your experience alone is not a great differentiator — especially in today’s flooded talent market

Why isn’t our experience enough?

  • To be sure, clients appreciate an experienced consultant, but more importantly, they want a solution to their urgent problem

  • They care less about what you’ve done, and more about what you’ll do for them

  • If you’re winging it when describing how your past experiences can apply to their context, the client will notice, and they’ll move on to someone who can paint a clearer path to relief

What should we focus on instead?

  • The most effective consultants will take the additional step of organizing their experiences and insights into intellectual property, or “IP”.

  • A consultant’s IP typically looks like frameworks, processes, playbooks, and tools that you can readily apply to a client’s situation

  • By centering your business around your IP, you will attract potential clients based on your unique POV on their domain & problem

  • The benefits continue — an “IP-first” marketing & sales approach:

    • Demonstrates your domain authority

    • Focuses the sales conversation

    • Provides visibility towards a solution within a client’s context

    • Accelerates trust

    • Shortens the sales cycle

    • Elevates your achievable rates

    • BONUS: your IP can often even help structure the proposed project itself

Simply put:

IP is a consultant’s #1 marketing & sales tool.

It’s a tool that communicates your differentiated value and turbocharges your sales cycle.

For most consultants, that tool is stuck on a shelf in the back of your head.

I help you get it out and put it to work for your business.

Take a look around. Get acquainted.
When you’re ready, let’s talk about
deploying your unique expertise.

I believe in collaborations, not hard sells.
All strategy calls are focused on your business, not mine.
100% commitment-free.