Your 2025 action plan to grow your consultancy
Hello, James here and welcome to the first podcast of 2025.
In this week's main event, I'm going to guide you through a 7 step action plan to help you scale your consultancy and make 2025 your best year yet.
And in this week's thought of the week, I'm going to talk to you about micro addictions and what you need to do to knock them on the head.
So let's jump straight in.
Transcription below:
Main event:
Happy New Year everyone!
I have a feeling that 2025 is going to be an AWESOME year and I hope you have the same vibes for you and your consultancy.
As you may or may not know, I moved to Bali last year and I've fully embraced the lifestyle, culture and spirituality over here.
And to that end, I decided to spend New Years Eve a little differently this year.
Rather than going out to a party or something and getting drunk, we went to a traditional intention setting Balinese fire ceremony.
Think lots of bells ringing, chanting, offerings, flower petals and a very hot fire.
At the end of each year, I spend a lot of time thinking about what I'd like to achieve and how I want to live life and I work hard to create some very clear intentions.
It's definitely a process I go through every year and it can be really challenging but this year's planning was quite easy...
And at the ceremony, we had the chance to write our intentions down onto a piece of paper.
The priest then blessed our intentions before we threw them into the fire at midnight while literally thousands of fire works were going off around us from the surrounding villages.
It was honestly such a cool experience and it was great to wake up hangover free and feeling crystal clear and havingCLARITYwhat I want to do this year.
***
Since I started working with HR consultants, my mission statement has always been to help you get new clients and create a life you love.
And when I begin working with clients, creating clarity on what you want to achieve is always our starting point because it is so so important.
So, as we start 2025, I want to renew that commitment to you and help you start the year with crystal clear clarity on what your actions should be.
That's why, in this podcast episode, I'm going to share with you the steps successful consultants have taken to scale their businesses beyond 500k.
And I want you to include these steps within your 2025 action plan.
So let's get started.
***
Step 1 is to create clear goals.
Your life vision should always come first.
And your business is there to provide you with the personal and financial freedom you wanted when you first started out.
Your business should not trap you inside, working crazy hours and being underpaid for the work that you're doing.
Which is sadly where most consultants I speak to get stuck.
The most successful consultants I know have a very clear life vision.
They know what they want from life.
They know what they need from the business in order to achieve it.
And they do not allow themselves to lose this clarity.
Step 2 is to stop trading your time and create packages
Most consultants get stuck selling their time.
And they go into a buisness and try to sell this big chunk of HR on a retained basis.
But this is a really bad way to sell HR.
And this caps their earning ability and the scalability of their consultancy.
The successful consultants I speak to know that this is a trap.
They know they can earn way more money by packaging up their services in different ways.
They have HR software packages.
They have peace of mind packages.
They have recruitment packages.
They have HR Audit packages.
And they have a nice mix of revenue.
Passive, subscription, time based and one off.
They also know that they can value stack different packages on top of one another to increase client's average spend.
And they know that by creating packages, they can more easily delegate the work out to other people
Which leads us nicely onto step 3 and that's to create the right people plan for your consultancy.
As part of your day job, you've created lots of different people plans for your clients over the years.
But when was the last time you looked at your own consultancy to see if you've got the right people in the right places?
You sit at director level.
Yet you're maybe spending a lot of your time delivering work at admin, advisory and management levels.
This is massively reducing your blended rate.
And you aren't making as much money as you should be as a result.
The successful consultants I know understand this.
And they delegate the work to someone that sits at the right level.
Therefore optimising their blended rate and profit in alignment with the work that's coming in.
Once you've packaged up your services in the right way and you've got the right people delivering the work.
It's time for you to free yourself from client delivery and this is step 4.
This is one of the most important things you can do as a consultancy owner.
As this gives you the time and energy you need to be the face of the business and to drive it forward.
All of the successful consultants I know have done this.
As a result, they've been able to quickly scale the business.
While giving them the personal and financial freedom they originally wanted when they started all of those years ago.
Once you've given yourself the time to focus to work ON the business.
You can then focus on growing your consultancy's revenue.
And there are 3 ways to increase revenue.
The first is to get new clients.
The second is to get existing clients to spend more with you.
And the third is to get existing clients to spend more with, more often.
Getting new clients is the hardest way for you to grow revenue.
And that's why I always advise to get started by selling more to existing clients Which is step 5.
One of the first things you could do is increase your prices.
A lot of consultancies I know are massively undercharging.
So have the confidence to look at your prices and increase them to where they should be.
Another thing you could do is look at your pay as you go clients and get them onto your peace of mind subscription based package.
As a strategic partner, you should be meeting with your clients on a regular basis to consult with them on their goals.
This is a great opportunity for you to up and cross sell additional services to them.
Successful consutlancy's I know understand the importance of account management.
And they'll spend a lot of time account managing their clients in the correct way to increase average spend.
Once you're managing your existing clients in the right way, you can then move your attention to marketing.
And this brings us nicely on to step 6 and that's to market your consultancy on a consistent basis, even if you're super busy.
Why?
Because this keeps your brand awareness ticking over
And this keeps your pipeline topped up at all times.
The big consultancy's I know have learnt from their mistakes.
In the past they've been super busy.
They haven't done any marketing.
They then go through a quiet patch.
And they regret not doing anything.
This is where the HR Marketing Box comes in.
It's a online content library full of ready to use content and ideas to help you increase your brand awareness and get new clients.
It saves you loads of times, it's a thousand times cheaper than hiring your own content writer and it saves you the stress of writing all of your own content.
And now we can move onto our final and 7th step which is to get expert support.
You're an expert HR consultant.
Yet when you become a consultancy owner, you're required to become
A finance expert.
A marketing expert.
A sales expert.
A software expert.
You have to develop so many skills.
And that's why you need to learn from specialists.
One of the biggest hacks you can do is find guidance and mentorship from experts in their field and let them support your growth.
And that brings us to the end of the proven growth formula for building a successful consultancy.
So let me wrap up by summarising these steps again.
Step 1 is to have a clear life vision.
Step 2 is to move away from a time based model and package up HR in the right way
Step 3 is create a people plan for your consultancy
Step 4 is to free yourself from client delivery
Step 5 is to sell more to existing clients
Step 6 is to market your consultancy consistently, even when you're busy
And step 7 is to get expert help when you need it.
When thinking about how you're growing your consultancy,
I highly recommend that you review each of these steps and use them to create your very own growth plan.
Thought of the week:
In this week's thought of the week, I want to talk to you about micro addictions and how they might be stopping you from making 2025 your best year yet.
As business owners, you and I know that you have to be operate at a very high level of efficiency which most people don't understand.
And over the past few years, I've forced myself to look at my behaviours to see if they're helping or hindering me in life.
As someone with ADHD, this is even more magnified and challenging as we're constantly dopamine chasing...
And over the holiday period I read the book Dopamine Detox which is a really cool book actually, I'd highly recommend it.
It reminded me that we're all on the hunt for dopamine and in today's social media and tech world, it's very easy for us to develop micro addictions.
And labelling certain behaviours as such actually provides you with the wake up call you might need to break free from them.
***
Micro addictions are small, repetitive behaviours or habits that we do compulsively throughout the day.
They’re not as extreme as traditional addictions, but they operate on a similar principle: providing small hits of dopamine that keep us coming back for more.
Whether it’s checking Instagram every 10 minutes, snacking when you’re not hungry, or constantly checking your work emails in bed...
Micro addictions can suck up loads of our time, overstimulate us, heighten cortisol and turn us into unproductive moody messes.
***
So what do you need to do to stop this from happening?
Well, the first is to complete self enquiry (I LOVE that term) and recognise the micro addictions that you may have.
Are you constantly snacking throughout the day?
Are you constantly checking your emails?
Are you spending too much time on LinkedIn or other social media platforms?
Once you've highlighted the micro addictions that you're suffering from, you can then set boundaries with yourself.
So I completely deleted all social media accounts over a year ago now because I was spending way too much time on them and actually found them really triggering.
And after reading the book, I've also blocked daily mail from my phone (Yes I know... who reads daily mail but for some reason I was hooked on their terrible, fear mongering headines).
I've also set timers on my work emails and LinkedIn, so I cant scroll on them past a certain time.
I've also deleted Youtube because i was getting sucked into their short form content too.
Once you've created boundaries for yourself, you should then replace with micro habits that serve you.
So I downloaded blinklist instead which is like a book summary app - so when I want to take 20 mins out I just lay down, shut my eyes and listen to a book summary which I'm loving.
It's educating me, giving me fresh perspectives and giving me lots of content ideas.
And then I've also downloaded a journalling app which I'm loving.
I've always kept a paper grateful diary, so I've decided to digitalise it so I can add photos and videos to each day which is super cool and then I'm going to AI summary it at the end of the year.
***
So to summarise, maybe you have micro addictions that are stopping you from living your best life.
And I hope that this thought of the week will raise your awareness of them - allowing you to set boundaries and replace with micro habbits that will help you achieve your dreams.
