Yesterday was session four of The Independent Actuary founding cohort. There are eight, so that's exactly halfway.
A confession first. When I opened applications in August, I had privately decided this was a one-time thing. One cohort, record the teaching, maybe sell the recordings later, move on. Ninety minutes of live teaching every Saturday, plus homework reviews and 1:1s, on top of a full consulting practice. I did not see myself signing up for that twice.
Four Saturdays in, I'm planning the second one. More on that at the bottom. First, what's actually happening in the room, because most of it is useful whether or not you ever join.
Who's In The Room
Seven credentialed actuaries across five countries: the US, the UK, Canada, India and Switzerland. Life and IFRS 17. P&C pricing and reinsurance reserving. Pensions and investments. One career changer.
Some are already consulting and want a pipeline that doesn't run through a staffing firm. Most are building alongside a full-time job, and not every employer knows. That is why rule one of the cohort is that the room stays in the room. So no names here, and nothing that identifies anyone. The ideas, though, are fair game.
What Four Saturdays Covered
Week 1: The Niche.
As an employee you had one buyer, your employer. The day you go independent you're working a whole map of buyer types, and recruiters aren't on it. They're a channel to buyers, not a buyer. "I do actuarial consulting" is a résumé with an invoice attached. Narrow is how you get found; broad is what you deliver once you're inside. I call it the narrow door and the wide room. My door is "appointed actuary for small life carriers and fraternals." The room, once I'm in, is valuation, pricing, budgets, system conversions and board presentations. Almost every first-draft niche I saw was a résumé line wearing a niche costume: a capability with no buyer attached. The fix is never to drop the skill. It's to name who pays for it.
Week 2: The Offer And The Price.
A niche is a position. An offer is something a person can buy: named, scoped, priced. Nobody wakes up wanting 40 hours of actuary. The pricing conversation came down to one idea, the channel tax. If you bill a US carrier $100 an hour through a staffing firm, the market didn't decide you're worth $100. It decided you're worth $150-plus, and the channel kept the difference. Credentialed consultants billing direct in the US typically land $175–$350 an hour. Same actuary, same work, different door. (US numbers; the ratio holds wherever you are.) Staffing firms are fine, and I've taken plenty of placements. Just know what you're buying: access and convenience, at a distribution price. The way out isn't negotiating harder with the recruiter. It's building the thing the recruiter owns, the client relationship.
Week 3: The Profile.
Your LinkedIn profile is not a résumé. It's a landing page. A résumé is written for a recruiter deciding whether to interview you. A landing page is written for a buyer deciding whether to message you. Those are different documents, and almost everyone's profile is the first one. We ran the eight-second test (can a stranger tell, in eight seconds, who you help and with what?) and rebuilt headlines and About sections live. Members who can't signal at work yet built an employer-safe version, expertise forward and no "open for projects," with a launch-day version drafted and waiting. One line I gave the room: a profile converts, it doesn't generate. It's where a referral goes to check you out before replying.
Week 4: The Content Machine.
Yesterday: how to be findable without posting daily or becoming an influencer. I showed the room my actual posting cadence and my actual numbers, not "post consistently" but the real schedule, plus the 50 posts that built most of my inbound, some of which cleared 60,000 impressions. Then every member left with two content pillars and a first post topic, said out loud. Same split as the profile: expertise content for the employed, buyer-facing content for the launched.
The Niche Scorecard (Do This Today)
This is the tool from week one, and it's the part I'd hand to anyone, cohort or not. Write your niche as one sentence, "I help [buyer] with [work]," and score it on four criteria, 0 to 2 each.
Proof. Have you done this work, recently? 0 never. 1 once, or long ago. 2 repeatedly, in the last few years.
Reachability. Could you write down 30 buyers who would pay for it, by name? 0 you can't name the buyer. 1 a buyer type exists but the list is fuzzy. 2 the list is enumerable.
Recurrence. Does the buyer need it again next quarter, or is it one-and-done? 0 pure project. 1 projects with repeat purchase. 2 a standing need.
Thin competition. Is the specialist seat empty, or are the big firms already in it? 0 crowded. 2 nobody owns it.
Aim for 6 out of 8. Below that, sharpen the buyer; don't discard the skill.
To show the room the tool is real, I scored four niches: the sentence most actuaries write first, and three I could have chosen for myself, including the one I actually did.
Three things the table taught better than I could have:
"Insurers" is not a buyer. The topic can be hot and the seat is still taken: the big firms already sell it, and you can't write down who is going to call you. Even with a 2 on proof, that sentence tops out at a 3. It's the one most of us write first, and it's the one the scorecard exists to catch.
Strong proof can't rescue a fuzzy buyer. I've built the automation; I run on it. But most small carriers don't have an actuarial department to automate, which is why they hire me instead. Great skill, undefined buyer, 5 out of 8.
A 7 with a recurrence caveat isn't a rejection. It tells you the strategy: use the conversion to land, the valuation retainer to stay.
Your homework, if you want it: write the sentence, score it, then list 20 to 30 people or companies who are that buyer. If you can't get to 20, the niche isn't reachable yet. That's information, not failure.
What Surprised Me
The value is in the hot seats, not the slides. The teaching I could have recorded. What I couldn't have recorded is a member scoring their first-draft niche out loud, seeing the number, and rewriting it in front of six peers who had just done the same thing. That happens every week now, and it's the part people message me about afterward.
The room got candid fast. By week two people were sharing real rates, real contract restrictions and real doubts. I think the confidentiality rule did that. Discretion turned out to be part of the product.
The honest version teaches better. Scoring my own trendy-sounding candidate, AI automation for small carriers, at 5 out of 8 because the buyer is fuzzy did more for the room than any polished example. Everyone was harder on their own niche after that.
I like doing this. I've given conference talks and guest lectures and written this newsletter for years. None of it felt like this. Teaching seven people who will use the material the following week is a different thing, and it's the reason the next paragraph exists.
Weeks Five To Eight
The first half built the position. The second half builds the pipeline. Weeks five and six are outreach: activating the warm network, cold outreach that actually gets replies, and the referral ask most actuaries never make. Week seven is proposals, engagement letters, pricing and closing. Week eight is operations and a 12-month plan. Everyone also gets a private 1:1 with me around now.
By December 5, each member leaves with a scored niche, a priced offer, a rebuilt profile, a content system, a live pipeline with outreach already sent, proposal and engagement-letter templates, and a plan for the year. Not theory. The homework is the building.
Cohort Two
The founding cohort is full and running. Cohort two will run in spring 2027, targeting an April start, same format: eight live Saturday sessions, 10 to 15 seats, a private 1:1, the book included, and the same rule about the room.
Founding members paid $997. They took a chance on a program that didn’t exist yet, and that’s what the price reflected. Cohort two will be $1,497, with a two-payment option, and the waitlist gets first access to seats before anything goes public. If you applied for the founding cohort and didn’t take a seat, you’re already on it.
If you want on the list, hit reply to this email and tell me one thing: where you are in the journey. Still thinking about it, building on the side, or already out and tired of the recruiter channel. That's all. I read every reply and I'll answer each one myself.
If you'd rather not reply, the waitlist form is here: https://form.typeform.com/to/bGYLfTPw
P.S. If you're never going independent, the scorecard still works. Score the niche you hold inside your company. If it comes out a 3, that's worth knowing on a Tuesday.
Looking for clarity on consulting, income, or next steps?
Read my new book, The Independent Actuary - a practical guide for actuaries looking to build more income, leverage, and career optionality beyond the traditional path.
Last week we covered Your Appointed Actuary Just Gave Notice: AG 55 and the "Bermuda Triangle": Why Jurisdiction Just Got a Price.
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💥 AI Prompt Of The Week
Meeting Notes To Action
Turns raw meeting notes into a structured record. Extracts decisions, open questions, action items, and any commitments worth tracking.
The Prompt:
Here are my raw notes from a [valuation/audit/pricing] meeting: [paste]. Pull out decisions made, open questions, action items with likely owners, and anything that sounds like a risk or commitment I should track.
