Andy from Indielab tells me that the Manchester Un-Consultancy is all systems go.

An un-consultancy is a bit like a normal consultancy, but more grass-rootsy. A while back, I wrote a blog post that explains the origins of un-consultancies and the idea behind them.

Essentially, you get lots of good and targeted advice that’ll help you get to the next stage of your music business career – but as consultancy can sometimes be on the expensive side for independent artists and small businesses, this is a way to share that cost, but still get that one-on-one, face-to-face help.

If you’re going to be anywhere near the city on May 30th, it’d be really great to see you.

Unconsultancy explained
In essence, how it works is I make everything I do completely targeted to the needs of the people there. I start out by talking about the issues facing the group as a whole, and try to pick out some common threads.

We’ll talk through these issues – in marketing, branding, online and social media, business strategy, PR, revenue streams, etc – and discuss the key issues in independent music in a more general sense. Then I’ll take you through a kind of DIY consultancy system so everyone there can help each other out with that – while I work individually with each person for half an hour or so.

It’s £30 for the day, there are a limited number of places, and lunch, tea and coffee are all being laid on by the nice Indielab people.

And, of course, I hope you’ll consider sticking around town, because just a few days later, the wonderful Un-Convention is taking place.

Organise your own unconsultancy
Since Manchester is just a couple of hours up the road for me, this isn’t the full ‘sleepover’ unconsultancy. Those can be arranged.

If you want me to come to your town, and you live a little further away (or even a whole lot further away), get in touch and we can talk about how we can make that happen.

I’m looking at the possibility of putting a small North American tour together. The expensive bit is getting from the UK to the US, but if I split that cost over several unconsultancies, and I can sleep on couches as I move from town to town, I’m sure we can make the whole thing really affordable for everyone involved.

If you’d like to be part of that, or want to get a bunch of people together in your area – give me a shout.