Episode 23: How to grow your consultancy when you have no time?

A recent survey found that “a lack of time” was voted the biggest challenge HR consultants faced when trying to grow their businesses.

Which comes as no surprise.

As the driving force behind your consultancy at an operational level...

You struggle to find the time to work ON your business...

Because all of your time is spent working IN it and you've kind of trapped yourself delivering client work.

And there is no time or energy left to grow the business in a scalable way.

You've created your own glass ceiling and it's time to break free and give yourself the personal and financial freedom you wanted when you first started out.

Of course, I can't create more time for you.

But what I'm going to do in this main event, is talk you through some steps to help manage your consultancy a little differently...

Which will give you the time and energy you need to be the face of the business and get lots of lovely new clients.

So let's get started...

Step 1: Take a step back and clarify your life vision

When you’re a busy business owner, it’s really easy to get stuck on the treadmill and think that doing client work is the only way you’re going to make money.

That's why, in order to make change to how you're managing your consultancy, you need to take a big loving and reflective step back first.

Forget about your business for a second and think about your life, lifestyle, your family, your friends, your hobbies, balance and cash.

The stuff that brings you joy; the stuff that makes you the happiest.

And lock in a vision for how you want to live and enjoy life.

I can guarantee you that this doesn't include spending 50,60 hour weeks delivering client work and being stressed about having no time to do anything else.

Step 2: Clarify your goals for the business

Once you've locked in your life vision and reminded yourself what life is all about, you can then create some goals for the business.

You're business is there to help you achieve your life vision and you started your consultancy because you wanted personal and financial freedom.

But you're probably working every hour god sends delivering client work.

I call this creating a prison of your own design and you've trapped yourself inside delivering client work.

So I'm going to suggest two goals that you can work towards that will help you achieve your life vision.

The first goal is to stop trading your time and create subscription based packages.

The way you package up and sell HR is the most important thing you can think about as a consultancy owner because it determines your...

• Your business model
• How you work with your clients
• Your delivery burden
• Operational efficiencies
• Your revenue
• Profitability
• Personal income
• And, ultimately, your happiness

But HR is actually THE MOST difficult professional service to package up and there's 3 reasons why.

Problem 1: HR is really complex. There are so many different levels of service that you can provide.

Problem 2: Creating packages is really complicated. On top of being an exert HR consultant, you need to understand 3 tier pricing, buyer psychology and everything else that goes into creating great packages.

And problem 3: Selling HR to business owners can be really hard because they don't understand the strategic and preventative value that you can offer.

And because of these reasons, you find it easier to just sell your time.

But this isn't scalable. You aren't making as much money as you should be. An you're trapping yourself inside delivering client work.

And that's why you need to package your services up in a different way and focus on creating subscription based packages because recurring revenue is king.

To help you package your services up, please check out my flagship video programme "How to package up and sell HR to make more money"

In just 40 mins total watching time, I'm going to transform the way you sell HR helping you to stop trading your time, make more recurring revenue and free yourself from client delivery.

The second goal I want you to work towards is to DOA.

Which stands for delegate, outsource and automate.

As the owner of the consultancy, you should have AT LEAST 50% of your time free to work ON the business.

And I'm being generous to your clients there.

Really I want 90% of your time working on the business.

If you're an independent consultant, I strongly advise finding either a HR assistant or associate to delegate some work to.

And if you're an owner of a consultancy that already has associates or employees, and you're still spending a lot of time delivering client work, then something is wrong.

My advice is to look at the resource you have in place and re-delegate your clients to your team.

Your natural reaction is to hold onto this work, or say yes to clients when they ask you to do it.

But you need to stay strong, stick to your boundaries and give your team the work instead.

Because your job, as the face of the consultancy, driving it forward, is way more important in the long run.

You should then look at what else you could outsource and automate.

Take your marketing for instance, over 120 consultants have now signed up to the HR Marketing Box because it's a huge time saver and a thousand times cheaper than writing or hiring your own content writer.

So maybe you could sign up too if you haven't done already...

And then look at the other jobs you're doing in your consultancy and find people to outsource that too.

Like finding a book keeper to keep on top of your invoicing or a VA to manage all of the little admin tasks you have to do.

Freeing your time up is an intention and action in itself, which needs investing in.

So please give yourself the opportunity to do this.

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And then once your clarified your life vision and created goals for the business, you can move onto step 3 which is to give each day laser focus on your goals.

Your daily actions and habits will help you achieve your business goals and life vision.

That's why, every morning, you should look at your goals and ask yourself: "What's the one thing you can do today that will help you achieve them?"

You should then have time blocked out in the diary already, ideally first in the morning to work on those actions.

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Like I said at the start of this main event, I can't create more time for you.

But what I can do is guide you through some steps to help manage your consultancy a little differently...

So let's summarise those steps again.

Step 1 is to take a loving and reflective step back to clarify your life vision.

Step 2 is to create goals for the business that will help you achieve your life vision.

I recommend you get started with packaging up your services differently and delegating your workload to someone else.

And step 3 is to give yourself laser focus and the time you need to work ON your consultancy.

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Give it a try and if you do need a holding hand, I'm here to help you every step of the way.

Get in touch and let's have a chat.

The power of having a monthly recurring income target

In this thought of the week, we're going to talk about the power of having a monthly recurring income target which I think nicely follows on from what we were talking about in the main event.

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You probably started your consultancy business because you love what you do but you wanted to work on your own terms.

The most common goal I hear from my clients is that they’d like to be able to spend more time with the people they love.

They want to be able to take a three-day weekend.

They want the freedom of being able to choose when they work and what type of work they do.

And they want a decent income.

When I work with my clients, I help them achieve this life vision by following the steps we discussed in the main event.

The most powerful thing you can do is of course delegate client work to someone else.

But in order to do this, you need the monthly recurring income to be able to invest in your business in this way.

That's why, I think you should be asking yourself this question:

How many Peace of Mind subscription base clients do I need in order to achieve my goals? 

When you look at it this way, achieving your goals becomes a simple equation.

Things become instantly more-clear for you.

Let's say you need to find a part time associate or HR consultant.

We need at least 3 k a monthly to safely cover all costs and give ourself a buffer if anything goes wrong.

The average Peace of Mind package is worth £299 or there abouts.

So in order to pay for your new member of the team, you need 10 clients on your Peace of Mind subscription based package.

Selling your Peace of Mind package to 10 clients is a really achievable target.

And I think if you break your goals down in this way, it's going to be really easy for you to achieve them.

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If you need any help at all growing your consultancy, I'm here to help.

Get in touch and let's book in a chat.