174. How to Launch a Consulting Business in 10 Steps (PART 2)

So if you haven't yet listened to Part 1, which was last week, July 4th, Go ahead and listen to today's episode because they're very distinct and you can always go back and listen to last week's episode so that you've got all 10 steps to launch your consulting business. So that's what we're up to here today.

You may have heard me say this yesterday, if you listened to that episode, but we're Why this is really important is not only if you're someone who's at the beginning stages where whether you've not even left corporate chat or you've left corporate and you want to launch your consulting business. What I'm going to share with you today is invaluable in my opinion, in doing that.

but also if you're already an independent consultant with a business, whether it's been a few months or a few quarters, or even a few years, or even a lot of years, this episode. As well as last week's episode, this series can be really valuable for you because it takes you back to the fundamentals. So many of us get sloppy. I'll use the word sloppy with the fundamentals. And so then we start missing our, revenue targets. We start working more than we want it to work.

We start sacrificing our vacations again, whatever might be happening for you. could very likely just be a, situation where you've gotten a little bit sloppy about some of the fundamentals. And so today I want to take you back down to those fundamentals to help you put them in process in your business so that your business can be more predictable and repeatable and sustainable for yourself. And again, nothing wrong with getting sloppy. I do it all the time.

Even now after 12 years of being in business, I noticed so often where I realized, Oh, I got a little bit sloppy in that part of running my business and I just need to redirect. And so that's what we're doing here today, helping you to redirect so that you've strengthened some of those fundamentals. And as a result, have more predictable revenue, a more autonomy. over your schedule, more control over your schedule, and ultimately becoming and solidifying yourself as your own employer of choice.

So that's what we're up to here today. Before we dive into the agenda and the episode and the meat of it, I want to encourage you to go download the ebook that I created that goes along with this series, this two part podcast series. It is called the 12 Steps to Launch a Successful Consulting Business. So it focuses on the steps that I'm sharing with you on these two episodes, puts them in writing so you have a very clear checklist and more details against which you can operate.

And it also gives you a couple of these steps in more detail. So it ends up being 12 instead of 10. So it might just be a little bit of a curiosity to go find out what those extra two steps are. And also to see the four mistakes that you want to avoid when you're starting or, solidifying the foundation of your consulting business. Those four mistakes that you want to avoid. Avoid making as well. So that is the teaser. You can go download it at iclaunch.

com, which is the two letters for independentconsultantlaunch. com. All right, go download that. And then you'll have what we're talking about in addition to some more thorough checklist for yourself, and put this episode into action. Okay. So with that, let's dive into the agenda. And it's very simple today. We're going to review those last four. Steps to launch or relaunch your consulting business.

Before we do that, I'm just going to remind you what those 10 steps are so that you've got all of them in context. And then we're going to really talk about each of those four steps in detail. So that's what we're up to here today. Really straightforward. And the first thing that I'll do is just walk you through those 10 steps again. And so the first. Six steps that we went over last week. Again, if you haven't yet listened to that episode, not a problem.

You can always go back it's a natural break, so you can always go back to that episode after we finish here today. But those first six steps are number one, deciding you will succeed, Number two, setting your goals. I shared with you a four quadrant framework for that. Number three, putting basics in place. In last week's episode, I shared some of the basics. They're also in that, in more detail in that ebook that I recommended you download at iclaunch. com.

I also focused in on what do you want to avoid? What might be a time sink or an investment sink for you that is not as important as other things? So that was step three. Put the basics in place and avoid the things that might seem like basics that are unnecessary. Especially in the beginning. Then number four, create a minimum viable service offering. Number five, define your initial pricing. And I shared with you, ways to go about doing that.

And then number six, create your very minimum viable marketing assets. And, we talked through those. A very high level. That is the cliff note of last week's episode. And so today we're going to focus on those last four steps, the last four steps to launch your consulting business, or to really solidify the consulting business that you've already launched so that you have a stronger foundation. And those four steps are. Number seven, identifying potential clients.

So creating a pipeline for yourself. Number eight, landing your first or next engagement. Number nine, balancing delivery with running your business. I have some really important things to share with you around that and how important it is to focus in on it now. And then number 10, becoming a business owner. And I'll tell you more about what that means. doesn't sound, it's maybe not as simple as it sounds when I say it out loud, become a business owner.

You might think I'm already a business owner. I don't need to do that one. likely you may have overlooked some of the, um, components of that. So I want to make sure that that is a really important piece and really some bookends to what I shared with you last week, which is number one, starting with deciding you'll succeed. And then the bookend on the other end of the process is becoming the business owner that you are. All right.

So that is what we're going to be focusing on here today in this episode, the last four steps of the 10 step process to launch And or relaunch your independent consulting business. Okay. Let's start with then number seven, uncovering potential clients, uncovering potential clients. A lot of times we complicate this. We think we need some, really, complicated or sophisticated lead generation strategy.

Sometimes I'll talk with brand new consultants who think they need to work on SEO or some kind of ad strategy. or they think they need to talk to a thousand people or just take whatever comes to them because lead generation feels so mysterious. What I'm here to say to you today is that it's an incredibly simple process when you just Narrow it down to its basic components.

And by that, I mean, really what you're focusing in on when you're uncovering potential clients is that number one, you're meeting people. You're meeting people. It might be past colleagues. It might be past employers. It might be past clients when you were in corporate and had clients there. It might be people in your network, like your neighbor or your family. People you know from a board that you're on, whatever it is.

so those are examples of people you might be meeting kind of one on one, where you're, talking with people on a Zoom call or over a coffee chat, that kind of thing. You might also be meeting people through speaking. Or attending events. You might be meeting people by, talking with recruiters.

We talked last week about not kind of straddling that fence between full time and consulting business, but you certainly might be meeting recruiters who are looking for, consultants or hiring managers who might be willing to entertain. Engaging you as a fractional resource instead of a full time resource when they've got a job opening. Think about all the different ways you can meet people. As simple as that, meeting people. And then you're going to add value.

You're going to add value in the, maybe it's a conversation, a one on one conversation, or maybe it's a speaking event. And so you're adding value with the content that you're sharing. Maybe you're on a panel and you're adding value because of your participation in the panel. The second component of this, step number seven, which is uncovering potential clients is you meeting people and then adding value. What does it mean to add value in those contexts?

the simplest way for you to add value Might be really surprising, but the simplest way for you to add value is to ask great questions and listen. The simplest way for you to add value is to ask great questions and listen to their answers.

So often we talk with people and we're used to Being the recipient of this, where someone's talking at us, they're telling us all these things or telling us what they do as a business and wondering if we, have a need for what they do, or we can introduce them to what we do. In this case, flip it around, ask really powerful questions, get really good at asking powerful questions that help the person to Think about things they haven't considered. Help them to see their blind spots, perhaps.

The other ways you might add value is by sharing a resource of some sort. Or offering a diagnostic or a strategy session of some sort. Offering to introduce them to someone. Thinking about you're meeting people, you're adding value, and then finally you're proposing a next step. that next step might be the diagnostic. It might be a lunch and learn for their organization. It might be that you're facilitating a high level roadmapping.

It might be that, you're proposing a next step where they're bringing you in to do some small piece of work. It might be paid or unpaid. I'm not here to tell you you should be doing a lot of unpaid work.

But what I am here to tell you is that your goal right now, especially if you're brand new, or you're in the place where your pipeline is not as healthy as it should be, That you want to get really good at what I call this micro skill, this micro skill of meeting people, adding value and proposing a next step that they are willing to take with you.

And it might be unpaid for a little while where you're spending a couple of hours doing a diagnostic with them until you can get to the place where the diagnostic process is so well oiled that, that is something that you charge for. And then a company into the client zone. And then from there you're able to upsell them, but get really good at.

To uncover potential clients, which is the step number seven, you just simply want to master the ability to meet people, add value, and propose a next step that they are willing to agree to. And then you're adjusting and learning and pivoting as you go until that becomes second nature to you. That's how you uncover potential clients at the most simplistic level. So you want to put a process in place where you're able to do that for yourself and for your business.

Okay, then we move on to step number eight, which is landing your first client. If you're brand new to this, or landing your next client, if you've been in business for a while. And again, this is, a next step after those first three steps, right? First, we're going to meet people, then we're going to add value, and then we're going to propose the next step. And then eventually we get to when we propose the next step, it might be a diagnostic.

And from that diagnostic, we propose a next step, which might be a discovery meeting. And then we get to the place where we're proposing work with that company. So to land your first client or your next client, Think about this in most simplistic terms. You've met someone, you've added value, they got to the place where they're interested in engaging with you for some type of piece of work, with you as their consultant. You put your business owner hat on. At this point, you are a business owner.

You are someone who is responsible not only for running a business, but selling the work that then you will deliver. So first and foremost, get yourself into that headspace. when you know that you have enough requirements and enough understanding and alignment on what the scope is and what the goals are and objectives, you have a good sense of what might be out of bounds from a pricing perspective. You understand who the decision makers are and who the internal influencers are.

Then you're at the place where you can write a proposal and land that first client or that next client. Again, what I would really strongly recommend is when you get to the place where you've generating leads, then you move on to step eight, where you're fine tuning this very simple process of making sure you have all the details that you need.

In order to provide a proposal where, you know, that it's a formality that they're wanting to move forward to work with you and getting really good at this piece of your process. Again, we're not trying to bite off the whole elephant or eat the whole elephant. And as they say, we're just getting really good at focusing in on step number seven, which is.

Creating leads for your business and then step number eight, which is getting agreement with one or some of those leads to move forward, to engage you, to deliver the work. And you're going to want to come at this landing of your first client or your next client from a mindset of, Experimentation. So often we put so much pressure on ourselves. when we create a lead for ourselves, we think that needs to turn into a client. That you should do everything in your power to turn them into a client.

A consultant is, only good at running their own business if they close the deal. And what I want to encourage you to shift in the way that you're thinking about this is if you can get really good at creating leads, then you're not so beholden to any one of those given leads to become a client. And therefore you put yourself in the driver's seat.

You give yourself the ability to turn away clients when they don't fit your qualifications of what earns a spot on your client roster, and ultimately gives you a lot more mental power And autonomy over the types of negotiations that might come up during this process. So that's what you want to be doing is really focusing in on number seven, which is getting really good and adept at creating leads so that then when you get to step eight, you make your life so much easier.

You don't feel like you are at the mercy of anyone given opportunity. That you have so much more negotiating power and put yourself in the driver's seat where you're almost qualifying them to be a client for your business versus them, trying to talk them into becoming a client for your business. So that is the headspace and the process that you want to be leveraging for step number eight, which is land your first client.

Client before we move on to step number nine, I'll just share with you a quick story. I was working with a consultant the other day and we were talking about a few leads that she had in her pipeline and I was asking her a lot of questions about them. And at some point along the way with our conversation, she took a step back and I could see this sort of light bulb going off on her face. And she said.

Oh, I'm realizing now through this conversation that I was really planning to close every single lead that I had and feeling like I was a failure if I didn't close every lead that I had. And now with the types of questions you're asking me, which are really about qualifying, was this even a good client that she wanted to propose any work to. She realized in that moment how much more control she had over her business than she had been thinking about just subconsciously, right?

And so for you, we're not trying to get an A plus here in the sense of landing every single client that we create from a lead. What we're doing is creating so many quality leads that then when you get to the place where you're ready to advance those forward through the sales process that you get to pick and choose who you're working with and how you're working with them and, what the pricing looks like and having a lot more, of the upper hand in that way.

So again, the headspace and the process of landing your first client, which is step number eight, or your next client, if you've already been in business. Okay, so that then by now we've walked through eight steps. The first six are putting just a simple infrastructure in place in your business. The next two steps that I just walked you through on this episode, seven and eight are all about creating a repeatable, predictable process to generate leads and close The leads that you want to close.

And then we're going to move on to operating your business while you've got clients and also need to keep the business running at the same time. This is a place that makes a independent consulting business, one of the places that make them so unique that we essentially. are responsible for landing the business that ultimately we deliver. And there are complications and challenges that can come with that.

Primarily category of how to use your time really effectively, how not to go so far deep into your client delivery that you don't leave time or space. or mental space or energy to run your business. And so this is really important. And if you're newer to business, sometimes I hear from consultants, they say, well, just don't have that problem yet. I don't have enough clients, or I only have one client and the contract is, for the next nine months. So I don't really need to worry about this.

What I will say to you is, as an independent consultant, this is always something to focus on. Even if you have a client right now that you know is going to be in place for the next, several quarters. It is imperative that you create a process where you're investing time and attention. and mental energy into your business and not neglecting it while you're working on your client.

Otherwise if you do it where you just go all in on your client, you neglect your business, you keep kicking the can down the street thinking, Oh, I don't need to work on my business this week. I got a lot going on. I'll work on it next week or next month, whatever we do to procrastinate, you end up with a situation where you've essentially created a job for yourself. not a business and the job. Why would we create a job for ourselves?

If it's just one client or they're paying us hourly, we don't get the benefits of being a, an employee, you might as well go back to corporate. And I don't say that to you in the sense of, I know you can't do this. I know you can do this. If you're here listening to this podcast, I know you can do it, but it does require for you to.

Think about your business as a business and spend that time, whether it's two hours a week or four hours a week or six hours a week, to spend the time running your business in addition to the client delivery. Now, what does that mean? What does that actually mean? When I say that running your business, what that can look like is that you're spending just minimal time increasing your audience.

For example, it might mean that you're spending time building your reputation for this specific type of consulting that you do. it might mean that you're spending time generating leads for Really, quick to deliver type of work then those might turn into longer term clients. It might mean that you are spending time really thinking about your business in a strategic way. How can you maximize the amount of time that you're spending on delivery? How can you increase your pricing?

For example, how can you improve the quality of your leads? How can you improve the predictability of your leads? Like those types of things in terms of strategic thinking are just as important as taking the actions needed to fill your pipeline or keep your pipeline full or build your reputation. When I say running your business, those are the types of activities that I'm talking about. Put your CEO hat on, your business owner hat on, and think about if you were not delivering anything.

Any of the services in your business, what would you be doing to run a successful business that's hitting its revenue goals and poised for the type of growth that you want to set yourself up for, whether it's growing revenue or increasing the amount of free time that you have, or increasing the impact that you're making for your clients, whatever that is, that's what the CEO focuses on. And you've got to be able to carve out time on a weekly basis to focus on running your business.

Otherwise, you've just created a more challenging job for yourself. and then of course, you're balancing that with client delivery with things like following through with the outcomes that you and the client agreed to, providing advisory to that client, really fine tuning and honing your client journey. In addition to whatever deliverables are you're creating for your client. So the way I love to think about this is, and I think it's chapter 14 in my book.

We can put the link to the book in the show notes, but it talks about turning client delivery into an asset for your business. And so even though if you think about kind of two lanes that you're operating in or two silos that you're operating in, they don't have to be siloed off in that they don't contribute to each other. By that I mean, you've got your CEO hat on and you're running the business, you're focusing on increasing the value of your business.

in some form or fashion, whether it's revenue or the assets or the efficiency of how you deliver, when you're working with a consultant hat on and doing client delivery, you can also be benefiting both you and the clients. You can be benefiting the client in the sense of the deliverables and outcomes you're producing for them and, helping them to achieve while at the same time capturing that so that you can fold it back into your business and reuse it for other clients.

So those are the types of things that I mean when we talk about step number nine, which is balancing delivery with running the business. And especially if you're brand new, this is important to set up from the outset so that you're not trying to retrofit it later.

And if you're not brand new and you've been doing this for a while and you're struggling with this component, like start with a blank piece of paper and think about even if you are only carving out 30 minutes a week for right now, Because you're down in the weeds of client delivery, start somewhere. Don't keep kicking the can down the street thinking, well, I'll start balancing delivery with running my business as soon as something happens.

As soon as this big chunk of work for the client gets done or whatever it is. All right. This is an important habit. To create, from the outset, or to create now, whenever the time is now that you're listening to this episode. It's like that, saying, when is the best time to plant a tree? The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, and if you didn't do that, the best time plant the tree is now. I might've butchered that analogy, but hopefully you know what I'm saying.

Okay. So now let's move on to the last of the steps to launch your successful consulting business or relaunch your successful consulting business wherever you're at in the growth, life cycle. And that is step number 10, become a business owner.

Now, again, I hinted at this at the beginning, I touched on this at the beginning, which is, it might sound very obvious, oh, I'm already a business owner, Melissa, I made an LLC and I filed the taxes or whatever you did, but that's not what makes a business owner. You becoming a business owner and intentionally thinking about yourself as a business owner, and this takes repetition.

There are consultants that I've worked with that have been in business for seven or eight years, and they still have employee mindset that's coming into play and diluting their results. Creating income plateaus, creating income ceilings, creating a limitation on what they think they're capable of achieving. I don't want that for you. I don't want that for them either. That's why number 10 is so important.

when I say become a business owner, it means that you're putting in repetitive thought work. Mindset work to think of yourself as a business owner instead of whatever other label you might be giving yourself. I'm just a project manager. left corporate, my VP role, and now I am just a consultant. Or I'm an independent consultant. however it is that you're thinking of yourself, that's how you end up positioning yourself, and then ultimately, that's how other people see you.

You want to put in the intentional work to think of yourself and operate and carry yourself and position yourself as a successful business owner even before you have anything tangible. To prove, to have evidence for it. You have plenty of evidence from your overall career about how successful you are. We don't need to compartmentalize those and think about, well, this doesn't count. Because I, whatever you accomplished, you accomplished as an employee.

We want to take that entire body of work, that entire collection of experience that you have, and redirect it in the lens of, I'm a business owner. I'm a successful business owner. It influences how you think about yourself, how you think about the value that you deliver to your clients. It influences the reputation that you build for yourself and how you influence your potential clients and referrers to think about you.

I can tell you there are many other episodes that's very specific to this concept, but I can tell you that even though this is step number 10, it's incredibly important to focus on throughout not only launching your consulting business, but also growing your consulting business and strengthening the foundation of your consulting business. The more you think about and put your hat on of a business owner.

The more you come at problem solving from a different vantage point, the more you come at creating service offerings that are incredibly valuable to your ideal client, the more willing you are to specialize instead of just wanting to take any consulting project that comes at you because you're nervous you're not able to sell any other type of work.

The more confident you are when you're Establishing your pricing and helping clients to understand what that pricing is and why it's that way and why it's a benefit to them. And if they're not willing to clear the bar, then you've got other leads your pipeline that you're not. Beholden to any one given deal.

That's why it's so important to do the work on your headspace, on the way you think of yourself, on your self identity, that ultimately you think of yourself as a business owner versus as a former fill in the blank or an ex owner. Fill in the blank or just a fill in the blank that you are a successful business owner. And that's how you think of yourself at by default. And as we're wrapping up here, I will share with you. I have been a business owner for 12 years.

I did not think of myself as a business owner for the, at least the first five or six of those years. I thought of myself as just An extra pair of hands or just a project manager or just a whatever. I never thought of myself as a business owner. I love so much money on the table as a result of that. I miss so many opportunities for interesting projects because of that. I don't want that to happen to you. And even to this day, 12 years in, I continuously work on this component of my business.

Because, for most of us, there are so many ups and downs in terms of self confidence and self doubt and second guessing. We face a lot of rejection. We face a lot of ghosting. We face a lot of, successes and failures.

And so that's why it's so important to continuously focus in on this 10th step, and put in a process where you're repeatedly Thinking of yourself as a business owner and shoring up and strengthening those areas that feel shaky where you have less self confidence so that you can ultimately achieve the goals that you've got and make this process so much more enjoyable along the way. All right.

So as we wrap up here today, I want to remind you to download the 12 steps to start a successful consulting business. It's got a couple of bonus steps in there, as well as the four mistakes to avoid when you're launching your consulting business. And you can find that ebook at iclaunch. com. And Also remind you, if you haven't yet listened to last week's episode, go do that as well.

So you can catch those first six steps and ultimately have the full set of 10 steps to launch or relaunch your successful, predictable consulting business, which is, goes hand in hand with the ebook that I shared with you, iclaunch. com. Thank you for tuning in. And I look forward to seeing you again next week. Take care.