How to Establish a Branded Consultancy Featuring Kevin Perlmutter

I'm speaking with chief strategist and founder of lympic brand evolution. Kevin Perlmutter, Kevin appeared on going solo in late 2020. He had just started his business at that time, following a long stellar career in corporate in today's episode, Kevin shares, why he wanted to create a branded business and how he did it. Stay with us to hear all the details. In today's episode, Kevin shares the importance of being a part of a peer advisory committee.

We created the smashing the plateau community, so that members would be supportive of one another's consulting businesses. That's why the comradery of supportive collaborative colleagues is the foundation of the smashing the plateau community inside the community. You'll also find a range of tools and resources to support your consulting business, access to experts and answers to your burning question.

Check out the smashing the plateau communities so that you can build a successful consulting business on your own terms, doing what you love and getting paid, where you're worth. Learn more@smashingtheplateau.com slash community. That's smashing the plateau.com/community. Now let's welcome, Kevin. Kevin is chief strategist and founder of limbic brand evolution, a brand strategy and newer marketing consultancy.

He loves to work with CMOs brand and business leaders who want people to feel more connected to their brand. Kevin has created the limbic sparks approach to brand strategy. He answers the question. Why should people care about your brand? And he supports the evolution of brand messaging service offerings. And experiences to spark brand desire with emotional intelligence. Kevin, welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for having me great to be with you again, David.

Yeah, David Shriner-Cahn: it's my pleasure. And, I'm looking forward to actually getting an update from you on how your own business has evolved. The last time you were on it, you aren't going solo. And in late 2020 and your business, had, at that point had been around for a year or so about then, You were off to a great start. And, maybe we should just start with an update. How have things been. I've been having a blast. First of all, I love what I'm doing. I'm never looking back.

I'm going to be in business for myself for as long as I can envision and businesses. Good. it's been tough with, the state of the world that we're living in these days, but honestly I would rather not be doing anything else. And the momentum in my business is picking up. That David Shriner-Cahn: is so great to hear. And particularly for other folks that are either. Desiring to go solo or maybe have gone solo.

And the beginning is always the hardest knowing that you can look forward and never want to be doing anything else. I think it's great for people to hear that. Yeah. It's, the trajectory that I'm on for the last several years and honestly, throughout my whole career, but with a major step of going independent in 2019, for me, it's always been about focusing on what matters most. I'm always looking to be in a situation where I'm learning new things.

I'm inspired by what I'm doing, where I'm on the edge of the frontier on, in the work that I'm doing. I come from, many years ago advertising and as the mobile internet evolved and online reviews involved, I moved into brand consulting and customer experience. And then I moved into Sonic branding and learning about neuroscience and the way the brain works. And now I'm focused on emotional insights and how they can create a competitive advantage.

And I always want to be on the edge of a frontier and focusing on the things that are important and emerging on the scene. But it's also about alignment with my personal values and my life and being independent gives me the opportunity to have control of my time, to work with the people who I want to work with, whether they're clients or collaborators. It allows me to spend time informing. Where I love to be, and nobody can tell me whether or not I have enough vacation days to go there. I do.

I'm a woodworker. I build furniture. I have a shop in Vermont and I have a shop in my home in New Jersey. I love running. And I'm also since, being independent, I've become a board member of a nonprofit. Called rise. It's a social services, nonprofit in central New Jersey, helping families who are in need. And, I do a lot of brand development work. just traditional volunteer work, handing out food at food drives, kind of work, with rise.

So I'm really focusing on what matters most in my life and in my business and focusing on what matters most is also how I help my clients evolve their brand. David Shriner-Cahn: That is so great to hear. First of all, congratulations on everything you've achieved so far. Thank you. And being able to integrate what's most important to you in your business and your personal life.

One of the things that I see professionals struggle with when they go from full-time employee in a corporate sense, To being independent as a consultant is in the beginning. It's all about getting enough business to just support your lifestyle.

Unlike going from job to job where your income may go from a hundred percent to zero when the job ends, and it goes from zero to a hundred percent, the day you walk into a job when you're building your own consulting business, it doesn't go from zero to a hundred percent overnight. It often takes time. So the beginning of people are trying really hard to. Maintain their lifestyle and get business up.

But one of the things that I see happen quite frequently is they create a business where the business model ends up being. I would say almost like a glorified job where you don't have a boss in the corporate setting, but your boss is your own business. So your boss is actually yourself, but you end up not having the kind of freedom that you've just described, where you can spend time in Vermont. You can spend time running. You can spend time working on, on hobbies.

You can spend time volunteering and also run a successful business to make enough money, to be able to support your lifestyle. They often feel like they end up having their business, run them rather than the other way around. And it sounds like you've done a pretty good job of running your business as opposed to having your business run. You. I feel like I'm doing a pretty good job.

like any entrepreneur, the head games gets you all the time and you're always wondering if you're doing things right. And you're always wondering if it's enough or if it's too much, or if it's about to be too much or it's about to be not enough. And all of that goes through my head and I think I am. I'm quite, my brain goes in a lot of different directions, like a lot of entrepreneurs, but the fact of the matter is that I'm playing a long game.

This is what I intend to do for a long period of time. I'm very driven to not only be successful, but also to, improve things as I do. That's also part of my DNA evolution as part of my DNA, my business is called limbic brand evolution, because I believe that there's always an opportunity to fine tune evolve and get better at something. And I'm constantly monitoring how it's going and looking for things that are working and building.

I have a, I'm looking at my wall right now, which I have filled with whiteboard paper and I have a big chart that says work. Not working try this. And I just keep that list updated. I focus on the things that are going and I evolve and fix and try things that might be new opportunities. And I just keep experimenting.

David Shriner-Cahn: Kevin, tell me a little bit about your business model, because when, again, one of the struggles, man, Entrepreneurs face when they go solo is creating a business model that, that supports what they want so that they can end up running their businesses, as opposed to the other way around. What have you decided to do in terms of your business model? let's start with what I do. I'm a brand strategy and neuro marketing consultant.

I help brands create stronger connections with the people who they want to reach. I help people feel more connected to the brands that my clients. And I do that by providing a brand strategy consulting. I am very wedded to emotional insights because emotion is the largest driver of loyalty for brands. It's the thing that matters most in the relationship that any business. B2B or B2C or otherwise has with its customers because, we instinctively gravitate to the things that we care about.

We instinctively move toward the things that make us feel good and move away from the things that make us feel bad. So what I'm helping my clients do is recognize what they're doing in the world to make people's lives better and express that in a way that'll be motivating to the people who they want to read.

And what I'm also doing is I'm helping them understand more about what makes people tick, the people who they want to reach, understand what their needs wants and desires are and how can they address those needs, wants and desires in a way that feels like it was designed for the customers who they're trying to reach. So my business model is consulting. I am doing a lot of investigative research. I'm doing a lot of qualitative.

Interviewing and qualitative research to help my clients get to a brand strategy. That's going to be emotionally motivating to the people that they want to reach and relevant to their lives. And then I'm providing support in how they activate that strategy and communications, the evolution of how they present their services, the customer experiences that they create and other business and marketing challenges that they might be trying to solve. That's what I do. My business model is.

That I work with clients on projects on a fee basis. I like flat fees. I know how long it takes me to do the work that I need to do. Within reason I can develop a fee estimate for a client based on an agreed scope of work. And over a period of time, I'm not very interested in. Having nickel and dime conversations with clients about, I don't work on an hourly basis.

These are not things that I care to get into, nor is it good for any business relationship nor does it represent the value of what I'm bringing to my clients? So the clients who I work with, we agree on a scope of. We agree on a fee proposal over a period of time, that includes a variety of deliverables. And then as the work evolves over time, we extend that scope of work if necessary, if needed, if desired. And we keep going some of my projects last for.

A month, some of them last for nine, 10 months with extensions of the original scope. That's the model that I go after. David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah, no, it sounds like a very healthy model, but one of the things that I have great difficulty with when it comes to business models for consultants, is it. Dealing with a time-based pricing model. The time is it doesn't necessarily have a relationship to the value that you provide to the client.

And in fact, I believe that there's a strong conflict of interest between the consultant and the client. If you're using time-based billing, because if the client has a problem to be solved, You want the client to, to communicate with you, if there's an issue, which is going to take time and you want to be able to solve the problem in the best way possible.

For the client, if it's a time-based business model, the client wants the number of hours to be as small as possible, which doesn't necessarily provide the best benefit. And the consultant wants the number of hours to be as high as possible because it's more financially rewarding for the consultant. Again, doesn't have anything to do with the value that. So I agree completely. I have no interest and I'm never going to work on an hourly basis for I'm reporting my time to a client.

I don't even necessarily, it's not important how many hours I plan to work or how I'm thinking about the value of those hours in my head. What's important is that my client feels like they're getting everything they need from me, that they have my full attention. Within reason during the period of time that we're working together and that they're getting the value that they're paying for in the deliverables and that I'm making sure that's what's happening. And to me, that works really well.

and all of the clients that I've worked with since I started my company have agreed to those types of scopes of work. And I've not had one client who ever felt like they didn't get value from her work. David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah, that speaks highly of you. And it also speaks highly of the relationship you're were able to develop with clients. And it, it also speaks to, did the fact that you have good clients who are respectful of your value and also of your time.

And it's important for me to have good clients. when I talk about focusing on the things that matter most, it's also about spending time with people who I want to be around the clients who I choose to work with. Look into working with me and who ultimately we agree to work together. These are people who I want to spend time with. I've had conversations with potential clients where I've not been very active in next steps because I just didn't think it was going to be a great working relationship.

I've also spent, time, a lot of time with the clients that have decided to work with me, and many of them were already or have become friends and we stay in touch on other issues. So it's really about, again, getting to do the work. I love with people who I enjoy being around. And that's how I focus my efforts.

And the other thing is I work independently, but I also occasionally will collaborate with other types of marketing services, providers, people who don't have my skills at their table and want to bring me into, or I want to bring into a project that we can do together for a client, which is more of a one-to-one partnership and a project. And there are also opportunities that I have to bring in freelancers to my work, whether it's design talent or something else.

And again, I choose to work with people who I enjoy spending time with, because we're going to get into it together. We have a good working relationship. We know how to, make each other's work better. And we have respect for each other's process and time and skills. and again, those are the people who I just love doing work with. There are partners out there who I just can't wait for the next project.

David Shriner-Cahn: Kevin, one of the challenges that consultants face, especially in the first few years of their business is lead generation. if you've been doing things for a long time, and in particular, you have established a reputation and people in your field know about you over time. They may be reaching out to you more than you're working on lead development, but in the beginning, often you need to work on getting those leads in.

What have you found has worked well for you when it comes to lead generation? There were a few things, when I started my business three years ago, almost three years ago, I made a decision off the bat that first of all, I was going to go out as a brand. It's my background. I have respect for brands. I think brands. I didn't want to be Kevin promo or freelance brand strategy consultant.

I wanted to be the chief strategist of a brand with a point of view and a specific way of working in a specific type of service. So for me establishing my brand and what it's all about was an important first step, because it gives me differentiation in the market and it allows people to know that it's bigger than just. The second thing is really about maintaining and connecting and strengthening the relationships with people, and trust and who know and trust me.

So for me, I don't know, I've had five or six jobs in my career working for other people and, Every one of them has come from a direct relationship that introduced me to that next employer. I'm not big into, believing that a lot of the tactics that salespeople use to reach people they've never met before are going to be as successful in my business. It might be for some products or services, but for my business, it's about relationships.

It's about building on the relationships that I've already had. It's about meeting new people and establishing strong relationships. It's about earning people's trust, getting them to know who I am and what I'm all about. I'm part of a, of a networking group called collaborate X, which I've been a part of for about a year and a half. I've met a tremendous number of wonderful people. And that's expanded my network of relationships from where it was when I started my business.

And it continues to be a wonderful way to, The part of a networking community, that is a pure advisory group. We support each other, we inspire each other and we also have the opportunity to, bring each other into work sometimes, or introduce ourselves to someone it's not heavy handed. Like some networking groups are in terms of passing leads. It's more about peer advisory, but it works both ways. And then the other thing is I'm very active on LinkedIn and I'm I write articles.

So I'm a featured writer for a branding bag, which is a brand strategy and a brand management online magazine. That's a, well-regarded around the world, in my field and among clients who are brand strategy type clients. And, I've for the past year and a half I've written. And published nine articles with them. We did a webinar last January, and we're going to do another one in a month or so on another topic. So writing is important to me.

I have my own podcast, let's talk limbic sparks, which is a podcast where I get to interview people who work on the client side, who work for companies for brands and understand how they are driving growth in their business. By turning emotional insight into a competitive advantage. So they're practically doing the things that I'm coaching my clients on doing. So I get to hear those real stories and on LinkedIn, I stay present. So people, in marketing, it's called awareness and familiarity.

I call it reminding people that I'm alive and that I, I'm the brand strategist you call when you want to, build emotional insight into how you're more successful. David Shriner-Cahn: Kevin, what do you think is the most important thing? To keep in mind when you're starting a consulting business. If you want to have a branded consultancy, like you've done. I think you need stamina. said, what's the most important thing to keep in mind. It's not going to be easy. have stamina.

You got to keep going every day, you got to wake up every day and keep pushing forward. Keep making connections, reconnecting with people who, you know, and like I coach my own clients. You need to focus, connect, and evolve. You need to focus on, the unit. And desirable, motivating purpose of your brand, what it is you're in the world to do, to make people's lives better.

You need to connect, which is strengthening connections with the people you want to reach by understanding what their emotional needs desires are and how they want to feel. And then you have to continue to evolve, creating communications and experiences and offerings, that address what people care most about and what they need. This is how I help my clients. And I apply my own thinking to my own business.

And again, I'm focusing on the things that matter most, and I'm helping my clients spark brand desire with emotional intelligence. David Shriner-Cahn: Well said, Kevin, is there anything else you want to mention before we close? I, again, I really appreciate you having me on the broadcast. I'm always thrilled to speak with you and I'm just happy to be here. Thanks. David Shriner-Cahn: we've covered a lot of territory, and in particular, A lot of focus on how you have built your business.

First of all, congratulations again, on how you've done it. Yes. Stamina is really important. Persistence is really important. Things like this don't happen overnight. If somebody wants to get in touch with you or learn more about. What you've done or your business or access any of the resources you have. I know that you mentioned that you have a podcast and you write regularly. If anybody wants to access any of that or get in touch with you, where would be the best place for them.

Certainly, people could certainly find me on LinkedIn, Kevin Perlmutter, but the best place to learn about all the things that I'm up to is that my website, which is limbic brand evolution.com and it limbic brand evolution.com. You'll find information on my, approach to brand strategy rooted in the limbic sparks approach that I've created. They'll you'll find an emotional intelligence blog where there are articles and podcasts that I've written.

Podcasts that I've been on and you'll find the limbic sparks podcast page where you'll see interviews with brand leaders that I've had the chance to interview over the last year. And you'll also find on every page in the top banner, a meet with Kevin link. And if anybody wants to set up some time with me, click that link. Find a slot. It sounds David Shriner-Cahn: great. Kevin, I want to thank you again for coming back and being a guest again. This time on smashing the plateau.

My guest today has been chief strategist and founder of limbic brand evolution. Kevin Perlmutter. Thank you again, Kevin, for joining us. Thank you so much. David Shriner-Cahn: When you visit the smashing the plateau website@smashingtheplateau.com, you'll find a summary of each episode, along with the links we mentioned on the show in today's episode, Kevin Perlmutter shares the importance of being part of a peer advisory committee. We created the smash in that plateau community.

So that members would be supportive of one another's consulting businesses. That's why the comradery of supportive collaborative colleagues is the foundation of the smashing the plateau community inside the community. You'll also find a range of tools and resources to support your consulting business. Access to experts and answers to your burning questions. Check out the smashing the plateau communities so that you can build a successful consulting business on your own terms.

Doing what you love and getting paid. What you're worth. Learn more@smashingtheplateau.com slash community. That's smashing the plateau.com/community. Thank you for taking the time to listen to our show. I'll see you on our next episode.