I spent twenty minutes tonight scrolling through my LinkedIn connections. All 614 of them.
I was looking for one person. Just one I could call and say: I have an idea for a consulting service, here’s the pricing, here’s the target client, is this real or am I flattering myself. That’s the bar. One person who could answer that question honestly and who I trust not to mention it to anyone in my current company by Friday.
I got through about 200 names before I noticed the pattern.
There’s Marcus, who I worked with for six years and who is now VP of Customer Success at a company that directly competes with ours. There’s Priya, who left two years ago but whose husband still works on my floor. There’s the four people from that Austin conference in 2019 who I connected with over drinks and haven’t spoken to since, all of whom sell to the same buyers I’d be pitching. There’s my former manager’s former manager, who retired last year and posts motivational quotes about leadership every morning at 6am. I don’t think he’s the guy.
Everyone I know exists inside the same ten-mile radius of this industry. Which makes sense. I’ve been in the same ten-mile radius for 24 years. You build the network you need for the job you have, and then one day you need a different network and you realize you forgot to build that one.
That’s not quite right. I didn’t forget. I never imagined needing it.
I kept scrolling. Sometime around the L’s I found someone. Terri Mendez. We worked together at my second company, back in 2007. She left the industry entirely in 2022, moved to something in operations consulting for healthcare companies. I remember when she posted about it. I remember thinking that was brave. I also remember thinking, without quite forming the words, that she must have had some reason I didn’t know about, because why would someone leave voluntarily.
I haven’t spoken to Terri in probably three years. Our last exchange was a happy birthday message she sent me in 2023. I responded with a thank you and a “we should catch up!” that we both knew was not going to happen.
Here’s what I’m thinking. Terri is outside the radius. She left. She went solo. She would know what it’s like to sell yourself after years of selling someone else’s product. And she has no professional reason to tell anyone at my company that Leigh Sutton is thinking about leaving, because she doesn’t know anyone at my company anymore.
But calling Terri means something. It means saying this out loud to a real person who will remember that I said it. Not the internet, where I can always tell myself nobody’s actually reading. Not a spreadsheet, which doesn’t judge. An actual human, on the phone, who knew me when I was 32 and grinding through quarterly reviews and not thinking about any of this.
I keep drafting the text message in my head. “Hey Terri, it’s Leigh. I know it’s been forever. I’m thinking about making a change and I was wondering if I could pick your brain about going independent.” Pick your brain. I hate that phrase. It makes me sound like every person who’s ever asked for free consulting over coffee and called it networking.
What I actually want to say is: I think I know how to do something valuable and I cannot tell if I’m right or if I’ve just been inside one company for so long that I’ve lost my ability to judge. Tell me the truth. Even if the truth is that this is the photography camera all over again, gathering dust in the hall closet by Christmas.
I haven’t sent the message yet. It’s 11:40 and I’m sitting here with my phone open to her contact, my thumb hovering over the text field like this is a decision instead of a two-sentence message.
Maybe tomorrow. Or maybe I need to figure out what exactly I’m asking her before I ask it. Because “is my idea good” is not a real question. And “am I going to be okay” is not something Terri Mendez can answer.