Start Your Own Consulting Business: A Complete Guide

1. Course introduction, 2020: Hello and welcome to this course on how to prepare, how to launch, and how to run your business as a freelance consultant, the world is right with opportunities for freelancers. And you might be seeing a lot of your friends and contacts and acquaintances start and run their businesses as freelance graphic designers or freelance web developers or freelance translators, or freelance copywriters, or freelance accountants, or freelance interpreters, or freelance yoga instructors or Freeland, You get the picture. But if you're sitting there wondering, is there a role for the freelance business manager, then you've come to the right place. This course is for those of us whose past experience is in strategy or management, decision-making and directing. We have found that our skills are in this slightly more abstract part of the business, which is making good decisions, laying out the plans, making sure that our businesses are on the right course, correcting a lot of assumptions that are being made in our businesses. How do we take that and turn that into a sellable product? This course is going to walk you through exactly that process. It is. We will be starting with how to take your past experience, abstract or concrete as it may be, and turn that into a specific sellable service will be looking at what you're good at, at what you develop at the value that you have brought to your organization in the past, and how you can take all of that and really package it as a very simple to understand product that you are selling as a freelancer. That is one of the biggest challenges for those of us who sell essentially abstract concepts. We will then look at how to take that and describe it and create your public profiles and explain what you do in a way that is accessible to others in a way that's easy to understand and that removes any mystery around what business consulting actually is and can do for your clients. We will look at the marketing side of your business and focus quite a bit on networking. How to create a network of contacts that will bring you to your next client and your best clients. And that will always be serving you in growing your business. This course will walk you through how to do all of these things and I remain as a resource for you. You can contact me via this platform. You can send me questions, you can send me comments and you can tell me about your experience, what has been working well for you. What new challenges have you come across? And I'm old. The keen observers amongst you will have noticed that I look a little bit different in this video than I do in the following intro videos. And that's because those were recorded a couple of years ago when this course was first created and uploaded to this platform. It's now August of 2020. This is an updated intro video for the times where people are entering the freelance world and a lot of cases it's because they've realized that being in the corporate world does not give them the security that they thought they once had. When you are an employee, you essentially have one customer, your employer, the person who pays you. And if you lose the one customer, you lose a 100% of your business. As a freelancer, you have different ways to in fact, heads your risks and to balance out where you're bringing in revenue and how you manage your business. This is an advantage to being a freelancer. It doesn't eliminate any risk in business, but it does change the nature of the risk. And if having that single client was a big risk issue, then freelancing might be a great option for you. But don't worry, the course does start with an overview of is freelancing write for you. So there's an exercise you can do to really determine why your freelancing, what the advantages are for you, how to make this the right decision for your business. I hope you enjoy the course. I do invite you to interact with me sending the comments. Of course, I also invite you to check out my other courses on this platform and I always appreciate a review. Those do. Thank you very much. And on you go to the next video. 2. Course Intro and Preview: you spent some years working in corporate, maybe even a medium size business, but something is starting to itch. Your wondered about other possibilities out there. Maybe you're thinking that you'd like to be serving small business clients and entrepreneurs working in that sort of world. Maybe you're thinking I'm good at my corporate job in moving things around, keeping this business running. I wonder if I could build my own business doing this and do it for myself rather than for a larger brand. Maybe you're just ready to branch out on your own. You're thirsty to start being your own boss, picking your own clients and really managing all aspects of the business yourself. But you don't create a physical product and sell that you're not manufacturing anything that you can then retail. You're also not making APS or software products that you sell forward. That's not the idea that you want to bring to market and you're not providing professional services. You're not an attorney or C. P. A. You don't do social media marketing or s e O. What is it that you're selling? You want to use the skills that you were using in your previous job on what were those skills? The skills were your decisions. You trade in ideas. You are consultant. How do you build a business that trades on ideas rather than things? Well, stay tuned for this course, because that's exactly what I did. I experience in corporate and small business, and I had extensive experience in a small business selling to corporate clients, and after many years I realized my favorite parts of the job, getting businesses up in running, sharing those ideas and creating procedures to help businesses run effectively. And I decided I would start my own consultancy. I would go into business for myself, select my client, select my methodology, and that's what I did in this course, will look at how you take a business trade that is based on ideas and turn it into something that you can easily communicate and sell well, look at creating your business model, your pricing structure, and then how you build and expand your network and maintain those relationships to build and then grow your business continuously. 3. What is in this course: welcome to the course and let me introduce the subject matter. First of all, we'll look at your specific service. What are you consulting in? And what is it that you provide? We'll talk about how to determine the value of that, how to sell an outcome rather than just trying to describe what you do. And then we'll look at how you can set that up in a feasible business model with good pricing. Then we'll look at how you start and grow your business. How do you become known? How do you let people know what you do? How do you create the difference from going from perhaps working in house or what you were doing before to now being a consultant? And then how do you maintain a network when you're working as an independent consultant? Your value isn't how people speak of you. We'll also look at some practical resource is, and throughout this course you will have exercises that you can perform in order to help you arrive at those answers because they'll be slightly different for everybody who follows the course 4. PreGame - What do you Produce: we're starting a consultancy. The first thing you have to do is defined your product. Understand for yourself first and foremost what you are very good at. You know what you're good at. That's why you're starting this consultancy. Most people start a consultancy based on past experience, a great place to start. Don't stop there, however. Remember that when you go out and start selling your service or product, you are not selling your experience. You're selling your skill. People are buying the value that you bring to them, and that's based on your skill, not on your experience. There's purpose your experience will serve is to prove that skill. It's a sort of proof of concept for yourself in your consultancy, but people aren't buying what you did in the past. They're buying what you're going to do for them in the future. How do you go beyond experience and define your skill? Ask yourself three questions. It's really quite simple. So what you're going to do is start by thinking back to those past roles that are influencing the jolt that you're doing now where you develop those skills that are gonna help you in the job that you are going to be doing as a consultant, They need not be the exact same job. That's fine. But there were skills or there were things that you did in that job that are going Teoh be utilized in your consultancy. Ignore your job titles. Ignore the Orc chart of that role. Ignore all of that and think just about what you did. No, start with literally what you did. What were the tests and activities for which you were responsible day in and day out? Start there, Make a list. Go through that next question, start to define what you were producing with those tasks and activities. So what was the purpose of all those tasks and activities and what was the outcome? Now, in some cases, this will be very clear, deliver balls that you produced, and it can't even a knowledge work. Even if it's an intangible, it might be things like reports, plans, training concepts, presentations, analysis, documents, those sorts of things. That's the product of what you were doing with those tasks and activities. Some of those tasks and activities may not have gone directly into that physical thing, or they might be certain steps in between. But that's why I wanted you to start with the tasks and activities because all of them must have had a purpose or you would not have been tasked with doing them. Think about the outcome of those tasks now. This is one of the areas where this this can get complicated because our accomplishments are not ours alone in the sense that in a particular environment, when we achieved a certain thing, there were environmental factors that contributed to that success. It might have been directly other people with their ideas of their assistance, but it also just might have been a good set of circumstances, the right clients, etcetera. So the difficulty now is to extricate all of that and leave it aside and really just focus on the value that you yourself were bringing. So it's the task that you did. It's the product from that, but then it's specifically your contribution to that. What was your thought process? What was your exercise? What did you do that other people would not have done in this role? And what can you point to in those areas that is specifically from your brain or from your tasks and activities that contributed to a beneficial outcome. So think of your tasks and activities. Think of what it produced, and then think of the effect of those. And this is where I want you to focus on what you did. So sometimes the effect may not have been what you desired, because what you are proposing was not taken to completion. But if you hadn't, I told you so. Moment. Keep it to yourself. But it's part of your skills. So think about the things in which you had a direct impact and which were successful in a project that was successful focused just on your part of that. Don't take credit for other people's skills because you don't want to sell a skill that you don't actually possess. So going very deep and isolating yourself out from those in those situations is really what you're doing here. I've put a worksheet here, so you've got these questions in some space to answer them, answer each question and then question the answer so at least three times sort of challenge what you've put on paper until you are sure that you've got the correct answer now The point is that when people say, What do you do and what is your past experience? And they will ask you that if your consultant especially early on, because they want proof that you, as I say proof of concept of the service that you are selling, tell them your experience. But when you focus on that experience, focus on the outcomes. Don't just say I work for 10 years in this industry. Say, In 10 years working in this industry, I delivered X or I grew the business by X percent. Or I brought in this number of employees and with zero employee churn, think about what it is that you did. And when you are giving your experience, give the outcome and explain the skill or the thing that you do that brought to this positive outcome, so prove it, not just when you're not just based on your experience, not just based on your task and not just based on your outcome. But all three of those tell the full story. And that way people know that that skill is a genuine skill of yours. 5. PreGame - What do you Enjoy: an important part of understanding what you're good at doing is understanding what you like doing in the working environment when we work for somebody else, there always some things that we have to do that we don't enjoy. That's fine. But we have to do them because they're part of our job. Maybe there even a smaller part of something larger that we do enjoy. So we do it not sober gradually, but we don't particularly enjoy it now. When you become self employed, it becomes even more difficult because there's nobody really breathing down your neck to do these things. When you are setting up your consultancy, you need to be realistic about what you enjoy doing and make sure is that you are not offering a service, which is 60% parts of the job that you don't enjoy. You'll be bad at it. You'll deliver badly. Your clients will be unhappy and you won't enjoy your work. How do you discover what you enjoy doing? Really? And again, it's all about questioning beyond just saying, What do I have fun doing? It's really understanding why and so those little things that are going to motivate you day and day out. The first thing to ask yourself is one initiating a project or beginning something new. What is the first thing you dio Also on what part of the project do you spend the most time ? What is your go to answer for doing things for yourself And what is the part that you actually get excited about? And so that question for yourself and then ask yourself Why? Why do you enjoy that part? Why are you good at it? Why do you spend time there or why is it your starting point? Why is it the first thing you think of when you're planning out a project? The second question to ask yourself is, What is it that you enjoy learning? What is the subject matter? Or the technical area that you enjoy studying, practicing and learning more about? Write that down and then ask yourself, Why do you enjoy learning this particular thing? What is it about this technical or subject expertise that intrigues you so much? How do you like to than usual eyes this information? Why do you like learning this thing? In the third question? To ask yourself is one working with other people. So when a group project or in a meeting environment, you come to the end of the meeting and you've discussed all these things and now it's time to designate actions. What do you naturally volunteer to Dio, or do you naturally volunteer your efforts? Write that down and then ask yourself, Why is it because of the value you can bring? Is it because of the value you extract? Or is it just because it's the shortest part? You don't like working on group projects? Be very honest with yourself. What part of a group project do you do you want to take ownership for and why? What do you like doing? What do you like learning? What do you volunteer to Dio? And then why? For each of those, ask yourself why three times get as deep as you can to really get to the underlying effect of what it is that you enjoy doing and make sure that you work that into the service 6. Define Your New Service as a Product: Okay, let's put those two pieces together. So you've got this list of what you have achieved in your previous life experience what it is that you enjoy doing so where you will naturally go and spend your time and efforts. When you are self employed and are really motivating yourself, the one plus the other equals what client deliverable. What value does that bring to a potential client? These two areas? It's a bit of a mind game because you're going from focusing strictly on you to focusing strictly on the client. You crack that, then you've got a strong value proposition. So this skill, this experience and this enjoyment of your work can create what physical deliverable. So again, think about what that was in your past jobs. Think about where you enjoyed presenting and what you were happy to bring to the table and think about the value that that brought in terms of actual outcome actual positive benefits to your previous roles and the people you worked with and that is your new client deliverable 7. Choose a Business Model: the last up in defining your product or service is to understand how you're going to sell it, so defining your business model. Now, one of the first challenge is that consultants new consultants run into is what should I charge If you're coming from a situation in which you had a wage or a salary, take that annual wage. Calculate what your hourly wage waas with that salary and then multiplied by three. When you're in self employment, not all of your time misspelled spent billing clients. You have to manage your business as well. So 1/3 of your time is spent billing clients. I'm oversimplifying there a lot of reasons why you calculated that way. But that's really the main one. Now, once you know what you should be charging in terms of a rate you can think about, how should you be charging? Part of the consideration here is what is the model of what you're selling as in. Are you selling advisory work, or do you have a system or a plant that you bring into a company and impose it on to their way of working? If so, you probably can work with a flat fee as well. So think about how exactly you're packaging your product or service in this case, probably service and what type of praise pricing that lends itself to. But your options really Are this their hourly? And we figured out your hourly rage retainer and not with a retainer you want to think of. How many hours per month are you spending on a client? And also, what does that mean? Are you on call for that client any time? Or is that retainer saying this is based on 10 hours a month? And if we go beyond that, we click into my hourly rate. Last but not least, is the flat feet. If you're selling project based work, then you can do a flat fee as well. At that point, what you want to think about is how do you invoice, do you invoice half upfront half of the end? Do you invoice 20% up front, and then of the remaining 80% 40% halfway through 40% of the end. You do want to get some sort of payment if not up front early on in the project. Okay, everybody needs to have skin in the game, stagger the payments out so that there is a continuous give and take in the relationship 8. Structuring client agreements: The previous lesson, I talked about business models specifically with regards to pricing. I also urge you to take a moment to consider how you will structure your client agreements. In particular, in terms of the time and ways in which you will work with clients. The two things you want to be thinking about here are the capacity that you have for number of clients and volume of work, as well as the scalability of your chosen business model. How easily can you add more business, add more hours and add more revenue? The decision you make in the first year of your business does not have to be the decision that you've made in the tenth year of your business. It's okay for these things to evolve. So go ahead and make a decision for something that works now. Knowing that you can always make changes to that as you grow in the future. But whatever decision you make for today, bear in mind that these two things they match or even in the early days of your consultancy, what are some things to think about when it comes to capacity and scalability? It's about how you're going to work with the client. How embedded, for example, are you with each client, do you become a defacto member of their permanent team? Are you talking to them every day of the week or most days of the week, how dependent is there work on you? Is your interaction with them very time-sensitive? The more embedded you are with the client, the less control you have over your time. And so the fewer clients you can have at a time, if you are fully embedded with a client, then you can probably have one or two clients at any given time. If that is the case, then makes sure that your pricing that accordingly. Another consideration is how much of your work is synchronous versus asynchronous. If you and your clients are doing work at different times, then you can be getting on with things while they're getting on with things, and then sharing the results. If the work that happens with a client has to happen at the same time, if you have to be at the table together, then what does that mean for your capacity, your time load, and any preparation and follow-up that also occurs when thinking about how many clients you can have at any given time. Also consider how many clients you want at any given time, do you prefer to be working with multiple clients at a time? Do prefer to go very in depth, are very into detail with just one or two clients, either option is fine, but know which one you prefer. And again, organize your pricing and the way you deliver your services accordingly. Are you responding to ad hoc queries are used, so to speak, on call with your clients. And does that on-call turn into longer answers, longer research, longer projects? Do you need to price for being available whenever they need you or can your work be organized and scheduled in advance into determined blocks of time or meetings or specific day's work through these considerations to decide what work looks like for you. What are the boundaries that you want to put on each of your clients projects in your own time. And don't forget that the time you spend serving clients is only part of the time that you're required to actually run a consultancy. An example of how to structure clients agreements. I made the choice that I want to have multiple clients at one time and I do not want to be deeply embedded with my clients. I want to work with them in an advisory role and an oversight role, but not in such a hands-on day to day role. So my work is all project-based. It is all scheduled in advance. A client can request my time anytime they want and we will put a meeting in the calendar. This means that I can work with multiple clients at a time. That works well for me. It gives me the flexibility that I want and it gives me the control and boundaries that I want. Another freelancer that I've worked with has a different structure. She is actually somebody who does like to get very in the weeds with her clients. She wants to be in there not just structuring the work, but doing the work. She has modeled her business on a retainer basis, based on a certain number of hours and structured with generally weekly meetings with the clients, but also additional hours of asynchronous work. Generally, she can have up to two clients at the same time. And so once again, sheets structures her boundaries and her pricing accordingly. Those are two examples of very difference approaches to client agreements that work for different reasons. Think about what is yours and don't forget, repeat business masters as well. How are you working with a client more than once? There is, of course, the issue of how long an agreement goes on. But even when an agreement comes to an end, how do you get the next agreement with that same client? Do you go from one project to the next? So would the next Agreement be a whole new project that you're starting? Do you have intensive work with the clients on a particular project and then go in for regular reviews or touch points. Do you plan your work in project phases and then you sell each phase individually. Or perhaps you can take your services to different parts of their business. And that's a way to get recurring business from the same client. What are the ways in which you can work with the client, not just over a period of time, but in fact more than once on multiple agreements. Remember that once you have a satisfied clients, it is easier to then do business again with that client than to acquire a whole new client. It doesn't mean that it will happen with 100% of your clients, but you want to encourage it as much as possible when building your consultancy and deciding what business model you want to have taken into account, how in-depth you want to get with each client, how much time you want to be spending with each client and how you're going to build a business that can scale, get repeat business and give you the boundaries that you need as well. 9. Why you need branded materials: you've defined your service and the value that it brings in. This section will talk about preparing materials to market yourself into gain exposure. We'll look at both your online presence and the physical materials that you can have to share with people. The importance of these materials is really validation of everything you say. It's an opportunity to show your branding to show your polish to perhaps share testimonials and materials and to generally share your story in your methods. The most important thing with all of these materials and for this whole section is consistency in your message. Consistency equals integrity. It's a promise that you make to your audience and to your prospects and clients about what you will deliver. Let's get started. 10. What is a brand?: I've received some questions about clarifying what a brand is. The lessons in this section of the course talk about the different places and ways in which you showcase your brand and the importance of being consistent across all these different media. Well, that's much easier to do when you understand how they are all serving the same purpose in presenting your brand. What's in a brand? Or more specifically, what is a brand? The variety of definitions you'll find tend to describe how people know and recognize your business. People will think of visuals here, whether it's a logo, a slogan they've seen written down a certain design, the colors of your brand. The visual brand is a symbolic representation of your company, but humans are complex beings and to every symbol we also connect an opinion. Your brand in reality is the opinion that people have about you. It is your reputation. And people form that opinion based on the things that you do. So when its simplest terms, your brand is everything that you do. Every touchpoints, every email, every phone call, every website page, every story, every product and every social media post contributes to your brand. The impression you give is your brand. It is how people think about you, and it's how they describe you when you are not in the room. Your business brand is everything that makes you, you for better or for worse. Remember that with each new communication and each new decision, you're always creating an impression. Make sure that impression is a good one. 11. Functional Brand, Personal Brand: Your brand has both a functional side and a personal side. Let's look at each of these in turn to help you understand what your brand really is comprised of. The functional side of your brand is all about what you do. It is the facts. When someone thinks about your business, you want them to think about the service that you offer and the product that you sell, and what it's going to cost them, and how the whole thing will work. Without that, no matter how well disposed a person is towards your brand, they're not even thinking of buying from you. Make sure people know what you do and what your brand represents as far as a product, service, or solution means to them. This is the functional side of your brand. But what about the personal side of your brand? When your friends describe you, where do they start? Now, unless they're giving the police and identity kits, they probably start with your personality traits. They will describe you as funny or smart or generous or carrying your personal branding is the personality of your business. What are the personality traits that people associate with your business? You can think of these as your values, the behaviors you exhibit, the mood of your business. Do people describe your business as prompt or responsive, or jaw cooler or leg back? Do you inspire an image of professionalism? Do you make people think of friendliness? How do you want clients to feel about you? And how do you want your clients to behave with you? Your brand will inspire an impression, an opinion, an emotion. Again, make sure that it is the right one. We're getting all of this together. How do you define your brand? Will start by asking yourself, what do you want people to say about you when you are not in the room? How do you want people to talk about your business behind your back? Now I want you to go back to your business and be honest. Is that how people would describe you now? How do you become that person and how do you become that business? And how do you manage your actions to always reinforce that impression? Consistency is everything, which is why your brand has to be a true reflection of who you are, not, who you want to be. If the brand of Giorgio Armani projects an image of elegance and sophistication of luxury. And then you walk into one of their boutiques and find it messy and disordered than that brand is not consistent and you'll probably never returned because you feel that you've been lied to be the same person always for your clients and for your employees and for your business partners. Be deliberate about your brand and be consistent with your brand. 12. Materials - Online Presence: your online presence. First and foremost linked in it is a social media platform, but most importantly, it's a business networking platform. Make sure you've parked your name there. Get a good profile photo. Oh, have it professionally taken. Get good lighting. Feel free to be creative with the positioning in the pose, but make sure that it's it looks good. You're smiling and it looks very professional. LinkedIn is fairly simple to fill out because you simply follow the form and it gives you an opportunity to add your work experience and education, but also things like volunteer experience, your certifications and awards, any papers and presentations you have given. So put all of that in there. A key area of LinkedIn is also your summary, so there's a free text area that will go in at the top of the page. You can use this to talk about what you do. I encourage you to use this to talk about the value that you provide. So think about the exercise we did in pregame talk about the value that you're going to give to your future clients, and you can add a few lines about perhaps your experience or what you've done in the past in terms of bringing that value to give you some credibility to give you that validation, you can also be creative with the title your title and lengthen. So think about what will attract the right sort of attention with consulting, especially if you're be to be consulting. I tend to encourage people to keep it professional. You can be creative, unprofessional at the same time. Second, your website now you think your wife said, is your most important online presence, and in many ways it is. But I put it after linked in because, as I say, LinkedIn is going to give you the information that you can use on your website, and it's easier to start with the form. Then with a completely blank page. I encourage you to at least get your u R L. So www dot your name or your company name dot com. It's not expensive to get a girl. It costs something like $12 a year, sometimes less so get it, park it and then build your website. There are a lot of free tools within those hosting companies to then build a one page website, so feel free to tackle this on your own. If it starts to take you more than an hour, then pay somebody to do it. Think about your hourly rate, how much time you're sacrificing to do this and the difference in quality if you pay somebody to do it. Not how you could make a decision as to whether you outsource this work, but at an absolute minimum. You need to have one static page with your professionally taken profile photo, and it's also an opportunity to expound a bit more on a personal level. Talk a little bit about who you are and what your background is. Help people feel that they're getting to know you by reading what's on your website. Also, talk about what you do so again, focus on value that you bring to people problems that you solve and use this opportunity to talk about. Maybe your approach, your philosophy, your methodology help people understand how you work and make it easy for them to work with you. Now if you are going to have content that is in any way interactive or updating over time, so things like a blawg perhaps, or If people can register to a newsletter, they're registering to events that will be hosted here on your website. So that's another reason to have a website. But even if it is just a placeholder, have at least one page make it look professional and give valuable information. Last but not least, social media Lichten has mentioned is social media, but I think it is essential the rest of social media is optional. Twitter can be a valuable platform if use it appropriately, but it does require a bit of time. However, you can see what other people are writing about. You can learn a lot on Twitter. It allows you to also gauge people's personalities where they are, what they're doing, what's of interest to them, and you can interact with them. You can respond. You can share your own opinion, and you can ask questions. Do get your Twitter handle for your name or company names, so at least you've parked that nobody else could be operating under your name on the platform, but then make a decision as to whether you are going to utilize it or not. At the very least, I would follow some key accounts. You'll hear of things about events, for example, people and news that will be of relevance to you. Google. Plus, I think most people would not encourage you to spend too much time on. I would get your name and park it there so that you can hold on to it. And actually, there are some good threads to follow their. So do some searches for your subject matter, and you may want to follow some topics, and occasionally you'll you'll get some good best practice there. Facebook, if you're in the beasts of the environment, is not essential again. Park your name. Park your company, but name on a page or company page. But think about if you're could get value from Facebook and if it is worth the time that you would spend managing it. Whatever social media platforms you use, use the same profile Photo that you haven't looked in in your website used the same keywords, and although your bio or summary information is shorter on these social media platforms, take it from your LinkedIn summary so that you are using the same words and you're providing a consistent message throughout 13. Materials - Physical Handouts: What about physical materials? Do you don't you? I'm of the opinion that it is good to have physical materials to hand out brochures, business cards, even giveaways. It's something to remember you by and again. It all goes towards strengthening your brand and your presence. Do people keep these materials? Is it worth it for you to get them printed if people just for them away? Yes, even if the recipients of these materials do just throw them away, they've still seen something, and it makes more of a lasting impression. They're more likely to input your contact information into their own address book if they get back to their computers, and they have somethingto look out with that information on it. It adds that, but more of longevity to your presence. Business cards. First and foremost, keep them simple. Use a standard business card shape for people who do keep business cards. They probably go into some form of Rollo Dexter business card book. And if yours is a strange shape, it's not going to fit. And that's just going to be frustrating. Then they definitely will throw away your card. A job title is optional. Don't feel like I have to have one on there. You can have different types of titles, like a brand title. You can just have a company description or a service description. You don't. I need a job title specific to yourself. What is on your business card? Your name. Some minor description. Even if it's just three words and your standard contact details, what do you want people to do in order to get in touch with you? Think about that, and that's what you put on your business card. Put your email address. Put your website. You are well. If you have a newsletter, perhaps right, subscribe to my newsletter, and when they go to your website, they'll be able to do that. Do add your phone number at an absolute minimum. Have your name some sort of descriptor, email address, phone number and you are Well, now, what about a flyer or a brochure again? I think that these can help strengthen your presence. The most typical format is a tri fold, so it's the size of a normal page, and you folded in three. You could also get a full page or half page on some sort of nice stock paper. So either something laminated or a bit thick. Think about the context in which you will be handing this out and the people to whom you're handing it out. Do they tend to have bags with them? What is easiest to carry, etcetera. What goes on to your flyer? A brochure. Your brochure should explain what you dio for whom you do it and how you do it, and that it should include your contact details. This is another opportunity to make it easy for people to hire you. So explain why they should hire you. And then how? Don't be afraid to put pricing on here. For example, at a minimum, explain how you work when your consultant sometimes this can be confusing. What is it that you do? You come into my office and then what? So explain how it is that you provide the service and then Ted people how to contact. You also use that professional photograph and put it on there for both business cards and brochures. There are so many online services where you can get these printed in terms of designing. You can get somebody to professionally designed them or once again, there are a lot of free resource is where they have templates. And if you use those and download the pdf, then you know that that will be a good format for printing. Last but not least, Brandon materials giveaways and things that people see some congee for yourself. So think about perhaps a pad folio or your laptop cover or your iPad cover whatever material you take with you that people see all the time, they can have your name or your company name and your tag line and then think about your give aways. Do you make people write a lot, then give them a note pad. If you make people brainstorm, maybe give them branded. Post it notes. Post it notes are a great way to brainstorm. Go beyond that and think about the services that you provide and what a clever branded giveaway might be for this sort of thing. I do advise working with a company with a consulting company that provides Brendan Materials. They have a lot of experience, and you'll be able to say, This is my audience. This is what I do, and they should then be able to give you advice on some objects that you might not have thought of on your own 14. Lead Generation - Friends & Family: where to start. The people you know, the people to whom you already have access make a list of all those people that includes family that includes friends and that does include previous colleagues and business context . But all of these people on the list and then prioritize them by location, by environment and by their own circle of contexts. Now, do be open minded about this because you never really know who knows whom and who knows what. Time and again I have seen useful introductions. Suggestions and ideas come from unexpected sources, but you do have to talk to a large number of people. So it's OK for you to find a way to prioritize that and go through in order that you think will be most strategic for you. What you want out of these people is for them to know what you're doing now to understand the value and the types of clients you're looking for, so that they could be introducing you to future contacts and potential clients. So start with your previous colleagues and your previous business contacts. The value of these people is that they have seen you in a work environment. They understand your work ethic. They understand your approach, how you are in the business place, how reliable you are so they will feel more confident, referring you forward as a business contact. So think about your previous colleagues and various places of work. Think about your business contacts and associates, those with whom you interacted, either his clients as business partners through business, networking those air good contacts for you. Start with those. Find a way to put them at the high priority on your list, in particular if they have access to people who are of interest to you, of course, and can share the sort of knowledge that you're after after colleagues and business contacts, family and friends. Now there's going to be a lot of value in your family and friends as well. So again, use that prioritization that you did previously to determine in what order to tackle them. In some cases, we can. These can be mass messages, be they mass emails or group chats to families or group of friends. But you do want to let as many people as possible. No. At the same time, you do want to encourage as many 1 to 1 conversations as possible. Certainly those of relevance. So where you think somebody might be a value suggests getting together for lunch or coffee ? Say, I really want to tell you about this new thing that I'm doing. I'd love to hear your feedback on it. Let's get together and catch up and let me tell you about my consultancy, Hear what people say to you and try to understand why they're making the various comments there making. Do they understand the work environment? Have they thought of something you've not thought of? Have they thought of something about yourself? Your personality and your resource is that you haven't thought of also pay close attention to the questions that they're asking you because thes air questions that others will probably ask you? Or that you should be anticipating anyway and answering before they're asked. So you're going to get a lot of good information from these encounters in these conversations. But other than that, it is, of course, a numbers game. At this stage, you're just starting out. You want people to know about your new business. You want people to understand what you do, and as much as possible. You want people to be talking about it with everybody else, Be strategic, but also be broad and let everybody know what you're doing. 15. Lead Generation - In-Person Networking: now you're ready to expand your network. The place to start is with in person networking. When you're consultant, people are hiring you because they know you because they like you and because they trust you. You have to focus on building those three levels with your network, and it's best done in person. You can do it much quicker and person, and you can communicate and relate to people in a way that is much more difficult and takes longer to do online. Also, as with the previous section, you're going to get feedback that is going to be useful to you every time somebody asks you a question. That's enough, Thank you. So grow your network and you want to be strategic about it. This means that you are targeted, you're organized and you're consistent. You've built up a system to do in person networking. No, First of all, where do you network where to start? Well, networking events come in a variety of forms. The simplest breakdown is that they're either educational or what I call mixers, and educational event is one with a speaker or a round table discussion on opportunity to learn or actively participate But there is a subject matter. There's a theme, and it's being discussed either by the attendees or by a select individual or group of speakers. And a mixer is more of an open event in which people show up and speak to one another. And the purpose is to create those connections above the educational element. Now, of course, educational events also have networking, and the purpose. There is two fold, but where do you find these events? Associations, organizations and groups of various sorts organized events? And that's where you're going to find thes event calendars. You can think of these different groups in three main ways. You have your trade associations. This is where you're gonna meet people who work within a particular trade or industry. As a consultant, you want to think about trade associations that focus on an industry that you're targeting . So think about where your clients would go to educate and network. Those of the trade associations that you want to be focusing on the's are associations that will have a trader industry name in their title, like legal financial, publishing, a retail or else they'll have job functions in their title. C p, a lawyer marketer, librarian, etcetera. Sometimes they'll be very targeted, and I'll have both an industry and a job function in their title, perhaps medical translators or software sales. If you know who you're targeting, then you can be strategic about what trade associations you choose to follow. Another type of group is a community organization. These might be things like charity based. They might be location based. Think of alumni associations, religious affiliations, thes air groups that rotate around a common cause or history. And the third is a business group. These will be your standard business chambers. Cities have chambers of commerce. Counties have chambers of commerce. There are all sorts of different chambers that you can that you can research and join or general business groups. For example, you might find things like particular women's networking groups. The point is that in thes business, focus groups, your job title and your history are not what connect you to the other members. It's merely the fact that you're all in business, perhaps in the same region or with the general similar economic interest. So researcher, trade associations, research, the community organization and research the business chambers in your area and look up their calendar of events. Select a few and put them in your calendar. Diversify your approach here. When you're first starting out, go to a zoo many events as possible and get to know as many of these groups and associations as you can and then pick two or three for consistent attendants. These are the ones where you really going to build up a strong presence. You might end up volunteering on the boards or different subgroups, and you're going to develop a tight circle of contacts. Once you've picked your two or three that you focus on, make sure you're still exploring at least one new venue, a group every month. So each month you should be attending at least one event. Where can you find all these? Well, there Bunch of resource is online. Meet up dot com is a great place to start. There are so many groups on meet up dot com, and a lot of associations also advertise their events on meet up dot com. So it's a good place to start to see what's available. Look at the people who are in the groups that you've joined in what other groups they are a part of and start there for chambers. Of course, you can research your local chamber of commerce, and that's a great place to start. They might also have subgroups or sub committees that are of interest. And then, beyond that, Google the right keywords. So thinking about the particular audience that you're interested in in terms of networking and making connections. Google that and say events, See what you find and then, of course, ask people, Look on LinkedIn. And every time you go to an event and you meet somebody new asked them worlds they go to network to build up your list. 16. Lead Generation - Online Networking: you want to both grow your exposure and network and interact with people that you cannot meet in person. But even if you only work with people who are in your same location, you can still get a lot from that. Virtual networking thes might be future business partners Referral partners You might end up doing some sort of projects together. Who knows? So consider online networking as part of your strategic plan. Now the nature of the beast is slightly different. When you're not working online in person, you're thrown into a room with a bunch of people and everybody is there to make contact. And so it's only natural that you would start conversations online. You have to create that opportunity. You have to have more of an excuse, so to speak, to make contact with people. So, first of all, where are these people? These people are on social media, first and foremost, so expand your linked in network. If you are using Twitter or other social media platforms, connect with an interact with new people. You can even ask for virtual introductions. Use your current lengthen network to connect to new LinkedIn connections. How do you create the connections. What are those so called excuses? Content first and foremost, share good content. You don't have to have created it yourself. If you're not writing block posts or reports or news letters and e books, that's fine. You can share others. People content, but tag people to whom it's relevant also tagged the original authors of that content. Now you're connecting with two people in one go offer your opinion or ask questions. That's a way that you can interact with content. That's how you can interact with information. There is value and also creating your own content. However, if you have the time and space for it, and it is something that will be valuable to your consultancy than started Blawg, it could be a written blawg in the traditional sense. Or it could be a vlog, a series of videos instead of written content. But you can write all sorts of things you can create infographics. You can write how to guides. You can write opinion pieces about what other people are racing. You can create polls to gather information and for research their old sorts of different ways that you can create content that will allow you to connect to new people. Now the important thing is to then interact with these people, effectively ask them questions, give them props, promote them to others and share directly with these people, be of value to them, be a value to somebody who could be of no value to you. That does end up paying itself forward. And there are a lot of ways to share interesting information. Asking an intelligent question has more value than sharing an intelligent opinion. It invites conversation. It shows that you're interested in other people's opinion, and it will create a longer lasting conversation and relationship. So get online, start connecting to people, use content, use questions and provide value however you can. 17. Building Relationships - Know Like Trust: your focus on relationship building should follow a strategy of no like trust. You may have heard of this before. Now remember, as consultants, you're selling ideas, not thinks not objects that you can pick up in touch. People are buying you and your ideas, so they need to know, like and trust you more than your product. What we've discussed so far is people getting to know you. It's introducing yourself. It's introducing what you do and having people begin to understand the value that you could bring to them. But that's not enough, even if I know you and I know your value. But I don't like you. I'm still not gonna hire you. So you have to be building relationships to move up the ladder of no like trust. So once you've gained that exposure, people do know you what comes next. How do you get people to like you? Think about those repeated interactions you want to be keeping in touch with People find reasons to communicate regularly, don't waste people's time but build relationships, have lunch with people regularly ask about their business, taken interest, share ideas, share points of relevance to them, let them know about events that they might be interested in. Let them know about researcher articles. Introduce them to other people that can be useful to them. In these repeated interactions. Show empathy, ask them questions show that you are interested in their work in their lives, interact in ways that are positive and have a contribution to make to them. If you can show an interest if you can provide some value, even when you don't extract any from this interaction, people will like you. And once people know you, once people like you, you need to get them to trust you. Before somebody gives you money, they need to trust that they're going to get a useful outcome. Nobody spends money for fun before people refer you forward to a contact your friend for that person to give you money. They also need to trust you because as the person creating in the introduction, it's their name that's on the line. Trust is fundamental to really sealing the deal, so once you get people to know you and you've built those interactions to get people to like you, how do you get people to trust you? I mentioned this in the section about your online presence. Consistency is integrity. Integrity gets people to like you. If you are honest with who you are and what you do and your consistent with that message, then people will trust you because they'll see it in all of your interactions. In an old of Ann in all aspects of your presence, be the same person all the time, Be true to who you really are. Don't put on a facade because that won't work. But if you promise something, deliver on it. If you say you're a certain type of person, be that person, manage expectations. Let people know that you're honest. Let people know that you're reliable and let people know that you're good at your work. As you're building relationships with people, you'll move up this ladder, first of them knowing you then of them liking you and beyond that of them trusting you. And then you want to maintain that trust. So as you're thinking about how to interact with people, how to build up that strategy to keep these relationships alive, always think of the no like trust ladder and make sure that everything you do is moving people up that ladder and keeping them firmly at that trust level. 18. Keeping in touch: so you need to keep in touch with people to build those relationships. And I mentioned briefly in the previous section ways in which you could do that. Excuses to communicate Here are three ways to keep in touch with people in a way that provides value and doesn't waste their time. The first is to make introductions, introductions that matter to that person. You could introduce them to potential clients. You can introduce them to potential business partners, and it's also fair to introduce them to people with whom you think they would get along and let them take it from there. Just as growing your network and having valuable contacts is useful to you, it is useful to your clients in your contacts as well. So think about what you would like to receive and pay it forward, giving that to others. Look out for opportunities for introductions and always offer to make the introduction. When you're speaking with somebody and they tell you a point of interest, say, you know, I know somebody who does that or I know somebody who has that problem, maybe you can help them. Would it be okay if I provide an email introduction. Also, feel free to insert yourself in the introduction, if appropriate, arranged through a breakfast, coffee or lunch meeting, so that you are also strengthening your role in those relationships. Introductions are always of value. Don't waste people's time. Be considerate and deliberate about what introduction you're providing. But if you've put thought into it, it will be valuable, and people will be thankful for it. The second way to keep in touch is to share relevant news Now. This could be news of your own. It could be industry news. It might be a piece of research or something that somebody else has told you about. The point is that it's news relevant to the recipients, the person to whom you're sending it, either because they work in this field or they have a particular interest in this field. Or it's just something that you think will make them laugh or go. Ah ha. So when you come across a piece of relevant news, share that with the individual. It's an excuse for keeping in touch, reminding them that you're there but doing something of value. 1/3 way to keep in touch is to share relevant events. Even if you yourself are not going now, if you are going all the better, you can say I'll be at this event. I think it would be useful for you to let's meet there. However, if you come across an event of relevance to a person, send it to them and say This looks like it targets your clients. Maybe you want to be there as well to network. Or this looks like a great educational opportunity in your area of business or innovation. Or you mentioned you have an interest in this sort of thing. Check out this event again. You see where you're doing, something useful. You're providing value. You're keeping in touch with a good excuse. And again, you're not just reminding the person that you're there, but also that you are thinking about them and are being useful and helpful to them. These could be conferences, for example. It might just be one off networking or educational events. It could be webinars or it might be an association. Perhaps you've come across the chamber association that you've never heard of before, and you can send it on to say, Hey, have you heard of this. I think you should check it out. So making introductions to people of value, sharing relevant news and sharing relevant events. These are three great ways to keep in touch. Whatever you do, do not be sending emails that say, Hey, it's been a while. Let's grab a coffee, Say something more useful even if you do just want to grab a coffee, have a topic of conversation. I'd like to ask your opinion about X or did you see this piece of news? Let's get together and talk about it. I'd love to hear what you have to say, or I'm doing this new thing and I value your input. Can we get together and shot? Have an agenda. But even when you don't have time for that face to face, these are great ways to drop somebody. Align and remind them you exist. I'd like to add a word on your CRM system or your contact management system. I keep a CRM that list old areas of interest for my contacts, so I list my contacts by their industry, their job function and then also their interests, who they're interested in meeting and topics that are of interest to them. So let's say I come across a full day conference about knowledge management. Well, I can quickly go to my list, filter it by people who work in or have an interest in knowledge management and send out a few messages saying, Hey, did you see this conference? It's happening in a couple months. Maybe you haven't heard of it yet. It looks like a good educational event. Check it out. I'll put an example of the contact management list that I used in some of the categories that I use. You can use that as a basis to build your own, but have a quick way to capture the information and to filter the information so that when you do find news people or events of interest, you can quickly identify those people to whom you should. For that information, 19. A good Client Experience: We've talked about creating new relationships, and then we've talked about maintaining those relationships and keeping in touch. Applying this to your clients. People who already are or have paid you merits its own mention. You may have heard. It said that reselling to a current clients is 75% cheaper than creating a new client. They're all sorts of statistics about that. But there's also the fact that a current client with a good experience is more likely to mention you and your services to other potential clients so your clients become your sales force. To that end, I always suggest thinking of all clients is very hot prospects. They know you best, so use that to your advantage. Keeping in touch with clients takes various forms. You have to make it about the client. As with the previous videos in this section, you have to be providing Found you. You can't just be emailing or calling your clients and saying, Do you have more business or do you have any other contacts who need my services? But they're also a fantastic resource for getting information about your services. How can you improve? What more can you do etcetera. So you want to do a bit of both. In this case, first of all, use feedback forms. Send these at appropriate intervals at the end of a project. Or if it's a long, ongoing project that takes more than six months, say then maybe a couple milestone points throughout the project. Use an online form. I think this tends to work best. You can build these very easily stunned them via email, and all your clients have to do is click on a link and fill them in. Now again, keep in mind the effort you're requesting of the clients and try to minimize that. Use multiple choice questions or ranking questions where all they have to do is click into a little check box, for example, to give you the answer. You can then also allow optional long text at the end of each or many questions. But the point is, don't force them to do that, however, at the top or bottom of your survey, and I would suggest at the bottom do add a couple long form question and answer options areas where your clients can expand. But further on what they do like particularly or the things that they would like to add or change in the service. General, If you put these at the end, you will extract the most value because your clients have been thinking about all the answers going through, and so ideas will have come to mind that they can then put into those long form answers. In any case, however, you construct your feedback forms, remember, make it quick. Make it easy. Do not ask too much of your client. What is the advantage to your client? Well, a lot of this is about presentation and the client understanding that you are collecting this information in order to continuously improve your service. However, do also ask for permission to use any quote so testimonials that will come out of this and we talked about business models. Whenever you can create a repeat or recurrent business model, you want to do so in those situations. You want to run service reviews. You do these again at specific intervals or milestones. If you have a client that keeps you on retainer than it could be temporal every six months or every 12 months. But if it's an ongoing project that it could be a particular milestones in the project. A service reviews a little bit like a feedback form, just that it's about the clients rather than about you. This is where you ask the client for at least half an hour of their time, and you receive feedback on this service that you have provided so far, you ask similar questions. But as I say, the focuses on the client's not on you and what you're doing. But what is the client doing? What more do they need? What more could they be getting out of this? What has been working well, Do they want more of what has been working well? Is anything missing, etcetera? So really, make these client focused that it is unexcused to sit down with the client and get that more direct feedback show that you care and you're paying attention and to demonstrate that you want to continuously improve what you're doing. It gives the clients an opportunity to give you that feedback to request more or or different things, and also just the opportunity to stop and think about what they're doing in better ways they could be doing it. It puts you in an almost consulting position with the client, and there's great value in that. It also gives the client something to talk about with other prospects for you. When they're in a situation where somebody mentions that they need the types of services that you provide. It is things like the service reviews that will stand out in the client's head. That works very well for clients who are ongoing or recurring. But what about clients who are once and Donahue's mandates have finished Run update meetings, depending on the service that you provide and the amount of time that it takes to deliver that service every 12 to 18 to 24 months is appropriate to call upon old clients and say it's been a while. Let's grab breakfast or coffee or lunch and see where you are with things. It's an opportunity to see how the consequences of your work with that client are playing out what has changed in that's client business, and is there something further you can do? Or even just an update to the service you had provided in the past? So update meetings with clients with past clients again very similar questions But what you're doing here is seeing if you can insert yourself once again and it might just be in a minor way. But just to continuously provide value and maintain a business relationship with that person, there are times when you will have those update meetings, and there is nothing that you could do, and that's fine. Don't be afraid to give some free advice right in that meeting. Say, Well, if you're working on this than do X or why a good place to draw the line is if you have to start looking at documents and produce, deliver Bols, then that should be charged. If it's just you giving advice extemporaneously in that meeting, then give that away for free now. Last but not least, apply the same strategies we discussed above. Treat your ex clients as prospects and is active parts of your CRM. So keep in touch with those same strategies, providing introductions, sharing relevant news and letting them know about events that would be useful to them. So your clients take on this special role within your business, where their clients and their sales people and their prospects and key contacts there's a lot of value in your client's. Maximize those relationships. It will help you continuously provide the highest level of service that you can, which is information that you can an input into your future client services, and maximizing these relationships is going to help grow your business organically. 20. Bonus - Admin Tools: I consider this a bit of a bonus section because it's not so much about building your business, growing it, building relationships and finding your product. It's more about managing your business. It's the task driven side of what you dio. I'm just going to mention a few tools that will help you manage your business effectively and for which you can find free or paid options online. First of all, is a CRM or a client relationship management system. I've mentioned this before in terms of tracking the people that you contact and connect with and remembering how to stay in touch with them and what's important to them. At its most basic function, a CRM system is an address book. The reason we say CRM instead of address book is for those keywords, relationship and management. A CRM system should allow you to keep more information than you would just in an address book, possibly track past conversations connected to your email, for example, maybe it connects to social media accounts, etcetera, so it helps to give a fuller picture of those contacts and how you are maintaining those relationships. Yes, there are free tools available online and also, yes, you can create your own. You can use an excel sheet, for example. It allows you to input a lot of information. Yes, it has to be manually updated, but it works just as well. So look for a CRM system. You can do some Google searches to find the free tools out there, or you can build your own. Just make sure that it is something that you will continuously update. So make sure it's something that works with the way you work on a day to day basis. Now, a second system that is very important is an invoicing system. Again, there are free invoicing systems. If you just google this, you will find plenty of freely available clients. Many of them also have freemium situation, so there'd be a free level and then you upgrade either based on number of contacts of invoices, etcetera, At the very least again, use an excel sheet or a spreadsheet of some sort to track this activity. Invoicing is one area where I always recommend fighting an automated system. You will be chasing invoices, and if you have an automated system, it is so much easier to do that Even if you do manual invoicing, I suggest creating a template and maybe emerged documents so that it is 1 to 2 clicks maximum to creating your invoices. What you don't want to be doing is spending a lot of time on building a one page document just to get paid. Getting paid should be as quick and as easy as possible. So in a good invoicing system, you've got your client names. You have their email address, their con accounting contacts. Pardon me and their mailing address. The information you need to put on there is, of course, what you are. Invoicing four. An invoice number and then your business or your own name and address and payment methods and payment terms. This is very important, say specifically, if you can. If you will be paid by check by PayPal, by Venmo or by any other system. Check these systems because while PayPal is free to register onto, there are certain payments for which there is a commission. So on your invoices. Explain how you want to get paid and explain the payment terms. Is it a net of 15 days, 30 days, depending on the amount and on the work that you're doing the short of the period, the better it is. And then stay on top of these. Send the invoice. Set a reminder at least halfway through the payment period. Chase it if it hasn't been paid yet, and then once a payment is late, chase it every single day by phone and by email. This is why an automated system will help you manage this. But what you don't want to do is fall flat on your invoicing system if you're freelancing. If you are working for yourself, getting paid is essential, and there is nobody else there to get that done for you. Project Tracking Again There are plenty of free systems out there, and again you can use your own. You can make your own using a spreadsheet, etcetera. Whatever works best for you. But do try to have us a way to track your clients, track your active projects and track the stages. Try to keep paper trails as much as possible. This is as important for us. It is for the clients, and when you are a consultant, when you are trading on ideas, then the only deliver bill you have is a summary of those ideas is the follow up from those meetings is the explanation of what you're working on and how you're helping that client. And that's why the paper trail is very important. So have a simple way to track those activities and make sure you go into each meeting with a client remembering what happened before and prepared for what's going to happen next. Last but not least, marketing tools. And of course, we talked about this somewhat because we talked about your website. We talked about social media accounts, etcetera. Think of everything that you need. If that's enough, if you need something else. Are you writing a blawg UNITA WordPress site or so? Or an equivalent? And if so, are using images also on social media? Are you creating some of your own? I guess again, there are plenty of free resource is out there to do that. But think about everything that goes into your marketing efforts. Make a list of the tools that you need now. Once you have researched and prepared these systems, make a full list, go through again and get rid of everything that is not essential. The other problem that you were screaming into here is having too many systems that you're trying to maintain. That's no good when you're working for yourself when you are self employed, so keep it tight, but make sure that you do have the things that you need again. That summary. The most important areas are a CRM system and invoicing system, some way to track your projects and manager clients and, lastly, marketing tools. 21. Running the Consultancy: Once you've launched your freelance consultancy and you've set up your online presence, you've defined your product. You've got your clients, and you have your networking strategy in place, and it's ongoing. Well, at this point, you have to run your freelance consultancy. In this next section, we shift the focus from what you do initially to what you do in an ongoing capacity to keep your business running. These are best practices. These are good general notions to follow at all times. Some of these are reminders of how to behave continuously throughout your business. Some of these will be tips and tricks for really running the business, understanding the details, keeping things fresh and always serving clients and ineffective as well as an efficient manner. This is one of those sections that will probably grow over time as and when I add new lectures. Expect email notifications to let you know that there's something new here to see and is always a welcome feedback. I welcome questions, and I welcome comments on additional lectures you'd like to see in this or any section of this course 22. Be Curious: a curious. This is important at the beginning of your consultancy, and it's something that maintains its important throughout the duration of your consultancy . At no point in your work, should you lose that curiosity and that desire to learn as much as you can about the environment in which your working environment in which you must serve your clients one of your ongoing messages. One of your mantra is, if you will, is too always be curious. What does this mean in practice? Ask more questions. You should always be asking questions and, in fact, more questions than you give answers. That's one way to think of that ballots. Are you asking questions of people? Are you learning new information? Are you always learning something new that you can feed it into your work, and that makes you even Beshir at what you dio? Let's look at some of the environments in which you can be learning the people from whom you can be learning and the types of information that you can be learning. First of all, learn from your clients. That is the most important place for you to be gaining new knowledge. These air, the people you are serving the best or you know them, the better. You understand them, their working environment, their concerns, their preferences than the best, or you'll be able to serve them, and nothing is static. Everything evolves all the time, and that's true for your clients as well. Sometimes these air all Pia's tangible, visible changes. Sometimes it's the more special things, and it's up to you. It is your responsibility to keep your pulse on what those things are. Talk to your clients and ask them questions continuously about things like new challenges that they face. What are some of the new hurdles that they're up against? What are some of the new roadblocks that they see? What are some of just the new challenges in general, things that are happening to them or to their business that they have to adapt to or overcome? Always be curious about the challenges that they're facing. Those may change from one month to the next from one situation to the next, and you want to be aware of that. Also, their projects. What new projects are they working on? In many cases, the projects that directly affect the work you're doing with them should come up organically. But don't limit yourself to that. Understand the other projects they're working on understand the context in which they need to be working on your particular project. What else is happening in their lives? This is to understand the additional pressures on their shoulders or other areas in which may be what you do can overlap with some of the benefits that they're getting there and generally to understand the environment in which they are operations. New ideas. What are the new ideas, the new concepts, the new innovations really dreams and aspirations that they're thinking of what's in their head? What are they thinking of? What are their goals? What would they like to see happen? Ask them about their ideas as well, not just the concrete things that are happening to them or that they're seeing, but also what are they thinking? And, of course, who are their partners? Who else are they working with who were the interacting with who else could be influencing their life in a way that will then directly or indirectly influence the work that you were doing with them? Understanding the whole context in which they work means also understanding the people with whom they work always know what is new for your clients, what is exciting, your clients and what's challenging for your clients. And you'll do that by asking questions. If your clients are the first place for you to learn new information for you to always be learning another place that you want to focus your attention on is your general trade or industry. Understand what is happening in your trade? Your business consultant. You still have a trade and that trade is business advice, professional advice, strategic consulting, Whatever it might be, you have to understand what's happening there. What does that mean For people who deal in intangibles, consultants, coaches, that sort of thing, it means understanding what is happening in that environment. What is shaping the thinking about your trade? What new developments Air coming out? What research? Where can you learn these things? Well, for one thing, at networking events, do you network within your trade? Do you communicate with network with interact with others who provide your service competitors, if you will, But other people in your trade, where do they get their learning at these networking events? make sure that you're connecting, not just with your potential clients, prospects, business partners, but also with other people who do what you do to understand how they are different in how they are the same in forums there plenty of online forums, chat rooms, workspaces environments in which you can participate and learn from other people. Cora is an example of this. That's a question caught form. It's a forum. You can see what people are asking about what is on people's minds, and you can also see what sorts of answers people are giving. And that gives you an idea of what is happening out there and what's important to other people. That should always be making you better at what's important to you. Also, read the journals, read the blog's Who Are the Thought Leaders in Your Industry Words. The research being conducted for business consultants, for example, the Harvard Business Review is a must McKinsey journal. There are a lot of places where you could be reading about what the latest thought leadership is in various areas of business consulting. Understand where the research is happening? Who's writing about it was talking about it be reading those journals and finally, educational events go to the lunch and learns. Go to the panel discussions. Learn from again your peers from experts in your area areas. Similar. Don't think that just because you do the thing you have nothing to learn from others who do the thing. Focus on your trade as well. Learn what's happening in your trade. The old new information to bash You're serving your clients and therefore your business. Stay informed with everything that is new. This is all relevant and important to you. And finally learn from your potential partners. The other people who serve your clients, the other people who will, in one way or another, influence your service and influence your world. Connect with those people and ask questions of them as well as everybody else you interact with, for example, who also serving your clients? What are the other service providers that interact with their clients regularly? Whether those interactions directly impact your service or not again, they make up the whole universe of where your client is operating of the different things that is on your client's mind. So understand the other people who are serving your clients and understand their business to a certain extent. How do they serve their clients? Why how do they come in? What difference are they making in your client's lives? Ask a bunch of questions about that. Also, find out where clients go to educate where they getting their learning. Find that out, figure out what it is and have at least a base. Knowledge about that. Understand how your clients understand. Thanks again, this is all about adopting your customer context, being able to operate with them in the context in which they operate. Day today. What do your clients read? This is similar to Where do they go to learn but were specifically what blocks do they follow? What books to their read? Also, what case studies might they be interested in? Where they spending their learning time there, reading time, where they capturing information? If your clients are reading something, do you have access to that as well? If so, he doesn't look. Give you once again a better understanding of your clients. Know what is happening in the world's that influence your world. You have to serve your clients anything that influences your clients, changes your customer context the context in which your clients reparation and therefore should or could change the way in which you operate with your clients. Be curious about everything all the time so that you're always a step ahead of your client needs so you can be proactively serving them instead of reacting to things that you know, cious may be too late you want. Always have your finger on the pulse of what is going to influence your world in one way or another, whether it's how you serve your clients, whether it's what you do for them, whether it's something that is specific to a client's, always be curious. Always ask questions. Make that a natural part of how you interact with people. 23. Be Consistent: be consistent. What does it mean to be consistent? It means that you create an experience that people come to rely upon. It means that you are the same person and you behave in the same way every time you meet with somebody and with everybody with whom you meet so that even when other people are talking about you, they know they're talking about the same person. You're essentially making a promise with every interaction. It's a promise you make in silence and you have to keep that promise. Think about it this way. If you go to a restaurant one day and you walk in, you're greeted warmly. Your served dishes on lovely plates with garnishes. You have cotton napkins, and people are continuously coming by your table to make sure that you have enough water and you have everything you need. Next time you go to that restaurant, you're expecting the same thing. If you walk in and nobody greets you and then they serve you your food on paper plates and give you paper napkins, you're gonna think something's very wrong here. This is not how they usually operates. And the third time you walk in there's no tables at all, and it's on Lee. Take away again. You're saying I'm never coming back here because I don't know what to expect. And when I come here, it's because they've created an expectation. That's what I thought I was going to get. It's the same with your business and your service. You have to create consistency. What does it mean to create consistency? It means that people know what to expect from you, and you maintain that expectation. It means that you are the same person every time, every time, every time you enter time you entrapped associates and so on and so forth. If you are the warm, friendly person that hugs people as soon as you meet them, you always have a big smile on your face. Then be that person every time people come to expect that of you. Whatever your natural behavior is, that's what you want to replicate. Don't try to be something that you're not, because it will be exhausting and at some point impossible to keep that up. But do be deliberate, deliberate about the person that you want to be and the behaviors that you want to show to your clients and to your business world and then be that person every time, create consistency of behavior and expectations, as well as treating people a certain way and always in the same way. If you are the person who has, uh, always says Good morning, how are you, then? Always say good morning. How are you? Don't say good morning. How are you one day and then the next day not say anything at all? That's a banal example. But the point that I'm making is that the way you treat people has to be consistent. This is similar to behaviors, but think about it specifically in the interactions. As I said before, everything you do creates an expectation, which is a promise that you're making to everybody with whom you interact, be delivered about that person and feed that into all of those interactions all of the different ways that you are treating people one way or another. Every time you answer the phone, every time you reply to an email, every time you speak with somebody or meet them or run into them by chance, all of those interactions are actually the way you're treating somebody so again, be deliberate about how you treat people and be consistent about how you're treating them. Keep the promises that you make subconsciously, everything you do sit substance sets up an expectation. It is a promise. And just because you haven't said the words, I promise, don't think that in the eyes of your customers it is anything less than that. You have to be consistent. You have to set an expectation. People have to know what they're going to get when they're dealing with you. It makes it easy to deal with you. It makes it safe to deal with you. It removes the mystery and any possibility of anxiety. What does all of this mean? It means you keep those promises that you've made. Subconsciously, it means that you have it answered the question to yourself of how you want to be known. How you want people to describe you when you're not in the room, how you want people to think about you figure out what that is. Make sure that it matches reality. Don't try to be something that you're not, and then feed that into all of the ways in which you present yourself and interact with people. Be deliberate, be consistent. Set a standard for yourself that you will always live up to. 24. Be Clear: be clear, and clarity is not about what is clear to you. It's about what is clear to your client. Are you speaking a language that resonates with your client? Are you speaking the language that they speak? I talk a lot in the first part of this course about building that network, asking questions, staying connected and maintaining relationships. And, of course, here we've already talked about being curious and asking a lot of questions again. At some point, though, you will also have to give information. I'll give you an example of this with a story, something that came up with a client of mine recently. There comes a point when a prospect will look at you and say, Hey, what can you do for us? And this happened to a client of mine, and he got worried about what is the correct way to answer that. He kind of went into a bit of a panic. So let's look at how he managed to turn that situation around and use his own clients language. When you're sitting in front of a prospect and the prospect says, What can you do for us? It is perfectly OK to answer that question with a question of your own, which is, what do you want to happen? What do you want to see? Occur? What is your vision of success? What is the ideal outcome? Ask them about their aspirations for the future. What they hope will happen, how they describe a successful outcome. Once they've given you that answer, go ahead and repeat it back to them. Say what you're hoping is that X y zed and make sure that you are both in perfect sync about what the expectation is. Also say that if the conversation so far has been about that successful outcome, and then they say, What can you do for us? Repeat it back before you answer. If you feel that asking the question again is redundant, then still don't skip the second step of repeating it back in your own words, so to speak. You want to be using their words, but the point is your understanding of their vision of success of their successful outcome . Repeat it back to them, get their not of approval, make sure that you are all on the same page and then speak to those outcomes. Tell them what I will do for you is these three things which will directly bring you to those outcomes. You do have to explain the work that you do. You do have to explain how you make a difference. But it has to be tied in with what they want to see happen. This is not about what you do. This is not about your expertise. This is about there. Outcome. This is about their success. So yes, explain your input. Explain what you're doing but connected to what they really want to see happen in any situation where you are unsure of the language to use or you're not sure that you've really captured your prospects. Attention. Think about clarity and think about what language they use. Stop. Ask a question. Gather more information. And then when you do answer questions, answer them in a way that is clear. That is concise. That is simple to understand. For the person with whom you're speaking, that's who it's about, not about you. So when you're being curious and when you're being consistent, don't forget toe also always be clear