Episode 8: How to grow your consultancy without doing client work
Hello, James here and welcome to this week's podcast.
I got asked this question last week:
"Can I grow my consultancy when I don't have the time to do client work and if so how"
My answer is 100% yes you can and in this week's main event, I'm going to explain exactly how you can do it.
And in this week's though of the week, I'm going to ask if your to do lists are helping or overwhelming you?
I love me a good old to do list and I'm going to explain how you can super charge your productivity by managing your to do lists in a slightly different way.
So let's jump straight in.
Transcription below:
This week's main event:
A client got in touch with me the other day for some advice.
She's currently working a few days a week for a big company and the rest of her time is spent working on her own consultancy.
She's got a few clients that are ticking over in the background and her plan is to keep on growing her consultancy until there's enough money to pay her to go full time.
But, a curve ball has been thrown her way.
The company she's working for has some really big projects coming up and they've begged her for more time
And they've basically said name your price.
She's negotiated a great package and she'd be silly to not take the money.
BUT... she feels torn.
She knows that she has to take the money.
But she knows that by doing so, it means putting her big, long term goals on pause.
And this doesn't sit right with her either.
So she asked for a phone call and we had a chat.
The big question she asked was:
"Can I keep growing my business when I don't actually have time do any client work and if so, how?"
To which I replied "Yes, 100% you can"
How?!
Well... you'll be forced to grow your consultancy in the way that everyone should be doing it.
Whether you're working part time or full time in your own consultancy.
And whether you're a start up, independent consultant or consultancy owner.
Let me explain...
So in my 'business education'.
It's been drummed into me that you should grow your business in a way that doesn't trap you inside.
When it comes to growing your consultancy, you can either create a prison of your own design, or you can create a business that provides you with personal and financial freedom.
Your time should't be spent swallowed up delivering client work.
It should be spent driving the business forward.
And, if you wanted to take a few days out or a week, your business should be able to tick over just fine without you being there.
This is, I'm sure, the business that you all strived to create when you started out.
You probably started your consultancy because you wanted better work / life balance and you wanted to take back control of how you lived your life.
So, think about your own consultancy right now.
Have you created a prison of your own design?
Or have you created a business that provides you with personal and financial freedom?
It's an interesting question to ask yourself.
Sadly, most consultants I speak to have trapped themselves inside their business.
As the principal HR consultant, they're so busy delivering client work that they don't have the time and energy for anything else.
And this is already having an impact on their personal lives.
Isn't the dream to get the money coming in without having to actually do the work, or at least dip in and out as you please?
Well....
Whether you're growing your consultancy alongside another job.
Or you're working as an associate for a few days a week.
Or you're full time in your consultancy.
This is how you could be growing your consultancy...
Instead of thinking that you're the one responsible for delivering client work...
I want you to think that you're the face of the business and you're the middle man between client and delivery.
Think of yourself as the broker.
I know a few really successful consultants that have grown their business in this way.
They're taking around 300 to 500k a year.
They've pretty much worked off an associate model all of this time.
And they simply broker the work to other HR consultants and take the profit.
They hold the relationship with the client, but they simply delegate the work to other people.
Giving them the time to be the face of the business and drive it forward.
While still taking home a big chunk of revenue each month.
Sounds great, right?
So, how can you start working in this way?
It all comes down to what services you're offering and how you're packaging yourselves up.
HR is actually really difficult to package up.
It's not like accountancy where you have set deliverables.
The world of HR is HUGE and there are so many different levels of service that you can provide.
And most HR consultants I know go into a business and basically say
" Look, I can help you with anything"
And then you try and sell this big bulk of HR work.
Whether that's a big project, or a big monthly retainer.
This is how most consultants approach selling their services because they don't know any different.
Instead, I want you to think about how you can break HR down first.
To help you, I created a new framework called the HR service pyramid.
At the bottom you have admin, you then have advisory, management, director and specialist at the top.
You need to think about your services in the eyes of your clients, not necessarily how things are delivered.
So Admin is basically HR software.
Advisory is day to day advice - this is your advisory helpline kind of thing.
Management is the operational management stuff.
Director is the strategic management stuff.
And specialist is stuff like investigations, TUPE and all that jazz.
Now that you've broken HR down via the different levels of the service pyramid, there are four different revenue types that you can use to package them up.
The first is passive revenue.
The second is subscription based revenue.
The third is time based revenue.
The fourth is one-off revenue.
And the goal is to use all 4 revenue types to create a balance hybrid business model.
Each revenue type belongs to a different level of the HR Service Pyramid.
So admin, if you're focusing on HR software, is perfectly suited to passive income.
But as soon as you add in any sort of management, then this will become subscription based.
Advisory is definitely the level that is subscription based.
Management maybe subscription based, but most likely time based and you might like to get a retainer in here.
Director is time based / maybe one off work too.
And specialist is also time based and off work too.
And Instead of going into a business and trying to sell this huge chunk of work at management or director level... which so many of you try to do.
My advice is to start at the bottom of the HR Service Pyramid and to think about value stacking the different levels of HR on top of each other.
So for instance, you would go into a business to try and sell HR software first.
This is easy to market and easy to sell so you get your foot in the door fast.
You would then sell them your advisory helpline.
And then you'd upsell an HR audit.
Which is your gateway to offering customised work at management and director level.
This is how you should be selling HR.
And I am really confident that this is the right approach because my clients who are following this guidance are getting results and sales fast!
So let's just take a second to think back to where you're goals are...
Whether you're in your business part or full time, the goal is to sell work that doesn't suck up all of your time.
And you need lots of predictable monthly recurring revenue to pay for everything.
So thinking back to everything that we've just discussed, doesn't it make sense to start selling HR software and your advisory helpline first.
Money wise, these levels are packaged up as passive and subscription based revenue which is perfect.
You should definitely focus on generating this type of revenue as your first priority.
This type of work can easily be delegated to an HR assistant or another HR consultant and they'd do an awesome job at looking after the client.
And this type of work is much easier to market and sell.
You can easily broker this type of work along side your current committments to the point where there's enough money to pay you to go full time in the buisness.
So going back to the original question my client asked...
"Can I keep growing my business when I don't actually have time do any client work and if so, how?"
The answer is 100% yes.
Instead of thinking that you're the only one that can deliver client work, you can easily act as a broker instead.
And if you package up your services in the right way, you can actually build an awesome business that provides you with lots of cash and in a way that doesn't trap you inside.
If you're anything like me, you LOVE creating a to do list.
My brain is constantly swirling with ideas and things that I should be doing...
So, over the years I've learnt to dump everything into lots of different to do lists.
My whole life feels like one big to do list.
Sometimes it's annoying... because I feel like I can never chill and I kind of feel guilty if I'm not doing something.
But then I think my to do lists are cool because they're driving me forward in every aspect of my life.
Whether that's personal or for the business.
You probably feel the same way?
I've also learnt that I have to be very disciplined with how I manage my to do lists.
Otherwise, I can become very easily overwhelmed and lose sight of what my priorities are.
I kind of got to that point a few weeks ago...
And I decided to block out the morning to sit down with myself and get myself back on track.
And honestly, I felt awesome afterwards.
Like my brain had a spring clean it was great.
You know when you give your house a really good deep clean and organise all of your draws and stuff.
It feels great doesn't it.
Well, that's exactly how it felt and it inspired me to ask you this question:
"Is your to do list helping or overwhelming you?"
And in today's thought of the week, I'm going to share the process I've gone through to super charge my to do list.
Hopefully giving you some inspiration to do the same.
Okay so the first thing you need to do is align your daily actions with your big goals.
So the whole point of your to do list is to help you achieve your goals, right?
And in order to do that, you have to constantly prioritise the actions you need to do today in order to get you one step close to your goal.
So before you can start organising your to do list, you need to decide what your priorities are going to be.
At the start of each month, I create a small list of things that I want to achieve that align with my big goals.
And then on a weekly and daily basis, I can think of what I need to do to get there.
Once I've created my priorities, I then organise entire to do list via two headers.
Current priorities and then To Do backlog.
So I always work off my current priorities list because this the most important stuff that I need to work on.
Anything else that I need to do at some point goes into the backlog list.
This is the easiest way for me to safeguard my to do list from overwhelm and low priority tasks.
Within my priority to do list, I then break everything down in the tiniest tasks that I know I can get done that week.
There's loads of names flying about for this and I like to use the term micro-tasking!
Once i've broken down the job into tiny tasks, I then only list the tasks that I know I am going to do this week.
So when I was focusing on launching the HR Marketing Box in the US, yes there hundreds of things that I needed to do.
But I just listed the two things I knew that I needed to get done that week and kept my to do list for that goal super simple and clean.
By breaking my to dos down into the smallest of tasks and by keeping my to do lists very small, I am way more inclined to get started and it feels great to tick them completed.
This is another productivity hack for me and a great way for me to reduce overwhelm.
And then once you've got into the habit of working in this way, you need to checkin with yourself on a regular basis and give your to do list a good old tidy up!
So whenever I feel like overwhelm is creeping back in, I go on a to do list cull.
I go through it, reorganise it and reduce it down to the most important tasks I need to do next.
And then the biggest cardinal to do list I try to avoid is creating to do lists in lots of different locations.
As you're busy working away, or out and about, it's very easy to start creating to do lists where ever is quickest to write your thoughts down.
I was really bad for this and I ended up with to do lists everywhere...
On Basecamp, I'd email myself emails, the "my tasks" sections of the my Gmail, notes on my phone, my paper diary and my note pad.
This was really bad so I made a pact with myself.
I'd only ever use Basecamp, my project management software, to manage all of my to do lists for every aspect of my life.
And since doing this I feel way more organised and on track because everything I need to do is saved and prioritised in one simple place.
So let me recap...
To super charge the productivity of your to do lists and to overwhelm remember to:
- Be clear with what your goals are and create monthly / weekly and daily priorities
- Organise your to do list via current prioritise and whack everything else into a task backlog list
- Break everything down into the tiniest tasks possible and only list the things you can do that week
- And find one way to manage your to do list and stick to it
