When HR consultants come to me, it’s because they feel stuck in their business and need some help.

They can’t see how they can push the business any further. They’re too busy working in the business than on it. And they don’t know how to free themselves from the ‘day job’, without worrying about the stability of their income.

Even if you’re the owner of an established consultancy, or you’re just starting out, you probably feel the same way?

What’s caused this problem? I’ve found that most HR consultants are stuck selling their time for money. It’s how most of you started out, because it seems like the easiest thing to do.

But it often means that you end up in a stressful “boom and bust” cycle. One minute you’re super busy and marketing is the last thing on your mind and then the work dries up, but so has your pipeline.

It’s really difficult for you to scale your business working like this. You might be serving your clients and paying your bills, but you’re not actually building your business as a separate entity. It’s just you, working for one hour and being paid for one hour. And if for some reason you can’t work for that one hour, you lose that income.

This is a mindset shift that seems simple but can make a world of difference.

When you change your thinking to the idea of selling your skill set rather than your time, it allows you to build a business that is scalable and works for you, rather than you working for the business.

You can create a more sustainable business model where you have a reliable cash flow structure without having to worry about constantly hustling for that next sale.

By creating a plan or product to sell to your clients, you can move to a different business model which I believe is both easier to sell and easier to deliver.

Marketing and sales wise, it’s really easy to create a funnel for your chosen target industry that is specifically geared up to sell your plan.

And if your focus is on a particular industry, it’s easier to as you do the work once and make minor adjustments to tailor it to each individual client. Without having to learn different industries each time.

When you work in this way, your delivery can also be more automated. And it’s easier for you to delegate this to an assistant or associate, which frees up your time to work on the business, or spend more time with your loved ones.

For clients, plans are great too. They know exactly what they are getting and have the peace of mind of knowing their HR is covered.  

And you have the peace of mind of knowing you have a steady revenue coming into the business each month that is not reliant on you working for a set number of hours in order to pay your bills.

When you build your business in this way, it quickly becomes its own entity, building business value and EBITDA (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, Amortisation).

You CAN easily create a very sellable business using a retainer first business model.

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 without needing to make up that extra time elsewhere in the week. 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 put the structure and resources in place to help them achieve these goals.

This is typically achieved by delegating work in some way - either by hiring a member of staff or outsourcing marketing etc.

In order to do this, you need to be able to invest in your business; it needs to become an entity in its own right, separate from you and your hourly availability.

I believe the perfect way to do this is to ask one simple question: How many retainer clients do you need to achieve your goals?

When you look at it this way, achieving your goals becomes a simple equation: the figure your business needs to turn over each month or year, divided by the price of your retainer package.

Things become instantly more-clear for you: instead of scrabbling around to figure out how you’re going to increase your income, you can now see that you need X number of retainer clients in order to break even, Y number to afford that new employee, and so on.

Working in this way gives you a tangible target to work towards, and concrete goals where you can clearly see your path to achieving what you want.

The average retainer value is around £200. An associate or employee will cost around £3k a month, so you need 15 retainer clients.

Selling 15 retainer clients is a really achievable target. And it’s something I can very easily help you with.