Solo Consultants: Managing Your Work
We talk about how solo consultants can mitigate the risks associated with erratic service quality and inconsistent project delivery. We examine the challenges posed by scope creep and the psychological burdens it places on consultants who feel compelled to overextend themselves in an effort to please clients. The metaphorical representation of 'swan feeding' serves as a poignant reminder of the potential pitfalls of unbounded generosity in client relationships, urging consultants to adopt a more assertive approach in negotiating the terms of their engagements. We address the balance between specializing in a niche area versus adopting a more generalized skill set. We encourage consultants to critically evaluate their work habits and client interactions, fostering a more disciplined approach to project selection that aligns with their core competencies and aspirations.
Transcript
Foreign.
Speaker A:Welcome to Consulting for Humans.
Speaker B:You're with Ian and with Mike.
Speaker A:And as you know by now, each episode we are exploring a new topic that gets to the heart of what makes consultants and people like them happy and successful.
Speaker B:Exactly, Ian.
Speaker B:On the Consulting for Humans podcast, it's our mission to add just a little bit more humanity to the lives of consultants.
Speaker B:And we also love bringing some of the skills and perspectives of consulting to human lives too.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker A:So if you're a consultant trying to be more of a human or a human trying to be more of a consultant, then welcome, because we, we think you're our kind of people.
Speaker B:And in the last two episodes we discussed solopreneurs, consultants who operate independent consulting businesses.
Speaker B:We focused first on how they manage themselves.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:And secondly on how they manage their clients.
Speaker B:But today we're talking about managing your work as a solo consultant.
Speaker B:We're going to share with you, for example, some of the things that often go wrong when managing work as a solo consultant.
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker A:We're going to dive a little bit into scope creep, especially the worst kind, the kind that we don't get compensated for.
Speaker A:The temptation that exists for us as solo consultants, especially to give work away.
Speaker A:That's going to be an important topic, Mike.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:We'll look at the tricky challenge of specialization.
Speaker B:How widely do we define our own skills and practices?
Speaker B:When should we bring somebody else in?
Speaker A:That's right.
Speaker A:We're going to address a topic that you and I, Mike, are far from expert on, which is systems and effective business systems.
Speaker A:A big hurdle for people being successful as solo consultants.
Speaker A:We can say a lot about what the consequences are of not having them and maybe just a little bit about the benefit of having them and what we've seen and learned.
Speaker B:Yeah, and I think all this funnels down, Ian, into erratic service quality.
Speaker B:You know, when we think about some of the things that really do us in as solo consultants, many of the things we've been talking about in the last two episodes and in this episode episodes all lead to erratic surface quality.
Speaker B:Boom.
Speaker B:Don't need that.
Speaker B:Don't want that.
Speaker A:Exactly.
Speaker A:Consistency is a big part of what our clients are hoping for.
Speaker A:And it's funny, Mike, I was just checking back against the list.
Speaker A:We had a long research based list of reasons why solo consulting businesses struggle.
Speaker A:And right there, there are four of the issues that we're talking about today.
Speaker A:Scope Creek without compensation.
Speaker A:A big issue affecting this sustained success of consulting businesses taking on additional work without adjusting fees.
Speaker A:Lack of specialization, trying to be Everything to everyone.
Speaker A:That's a big issue that we know affects consulting businesses.
Speaker A:Like we were just saying, ineffective systems.
Speaker A:The research says that small businesses and solopreneurs tend to rely on memory.
Speaker A:And we both know what the limitations of that are.
Speaker A:And inconsistency, including inconsistency that comes for good reasons like high workloads and demand and lack of systems.
Speaker A:That's a challenge for us as well.
Speaker A:So we're hitting on things here, Mike, that we're pretty sure are going to be important in the success of some of the solopreneur businesses that we're talking about here.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker A:So, Mike, let's get into the first topic here.
Speaker A:Scope creep.
Speaker A:It's a subject that you and I've talked about before, but you've had some experiences that really get to the heart of this.
Speaker B:I think it does, Ian.
Speaker B:And it's funny, I remember when the penny dropped for me.
Speaker B:I mean, always knew about Scope creep, always talked about Scope creep, always worked on SC Scope creep.
Speaker B:But one day I was sitting at an executive luncheon outside the IBM's big Bring in your top clients facility.
Speaker B:And we were eating.
Speaker B:We were eating this newly built out, decorated, gorgeous thing, had some of the top execs of some of our top clients.
Speaker B:And it was idyllic.
Speaker B:It was just beautiful.
Speaker B:There was, you know, a general breeze, fabulous chefs preparing, you know, great food, a beautiful pond there, and some gorgeous swans that had been brought in.
Speaker B:And I was watching at another table as some of the swans were gathering around one particular executive there.
Speaker B:And I was just looking as he was feeding these swans.
Speaker B:And, you know, he seemed to be having a good chat with the folks at his table, but he would turn around and this swan was becoming a little bit more demanding.
Speaker B:And he just kept feeding it until he finally had kind of had enough, turned back to the table, whereupon the swan attacked him.
Speaker B:And in attacking him, you know, it was just.
Speaker B:It was awful.
Speaker B:I mean, this guy ended up on the ground, swan beating him.
Speaker B:A bunch of IBM ERs running around trying to get the swan, you know, peeled off of this top client.
Speaker B:But this was the lesson for me about Scope creep without compensation.
Speaker B:That, you know, we keep saying yes, and we say yes, and we say yes, and then we finally sometimes say no.
Speaker B:And, I mean, this is what we get.
Speaker B:We don't get somebody who's very grateful for all those times you said yes.
Speaker B:We get somebody who we've trained that the answer will always be yes.
Speaker B:And now we're really in a pickle.
Speaker A:We really are the swan Bites back and we feel all like.
Speaker A:We feel aggrieved.
Speaker A:We feel the injustice of the bad behavior of the swan.
Speaker A:Oh, man.
Speaker A:It's hard to get perspective.
Speaker A:I think that's one of the lessons of solopreneurship.
Speaker A:It's great for so much of the time, but the times when it's not, it's really hard to get perspective and see that sometimes it's our behavior that's driving this.
Speaker A:And, Mike, I think the power dynamic sometimes gets a bit upset here as well, right?
Speaker B:Well, it really does.
Speaker B:I mean, I think that is part of what drives this.
Speaker B:I've watched you explain this a couple times, and I thought, boy, I love that metaphor.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Mike, it's about the difference between, what's your role for the client?
Speaker A:Are you the Sherpa who is just kind of grateful to have the work, to carry the heavy load up the mountainside and be all subservient?
Speaker A:If that's your mindset about yourself and your role, it's really hard to say no.
Speaker A:We feel almost grateful to be given the work.
Speaker A:We feel like our needs are taking the backseat.
Speaker A:And it's very easy for us to think that we're doing the universe a good turn by being so nice and willing and obliging us to take all this work on.
Speaker A:On the other hand, if we're the guru, if we kind of stand at the top of the mountain going, well, I'm up here, and you guys are all down there, and don't come near me with any work, then we kind of give ourselves the opposite problem.
Speaker A:We're always pushing away interesting ideas for extra scope.
Speaker A:We might actually be leaving something on the table.
Speaker A:But most of the time, I think it's the problem that we have with swan feeding lines up with the Sherpa mindset that we're talking about here.
Speaker A:Mike, it's good to have a perspective.
Speaker A:Like we say, it's good to have someone around who can remind us and challenge us.
Speaker A:Right?
Speaker B:Well, it really is.
Speaker B:I remember my founding partner for the consulting group at IBM, Ray Lamoure, used to say, well, Mike, you know, you can choose.
Speaker B:You know, if you keep acting this way with clients, if we keep engaging in this kind of dynamic, it's either a root canal in one hand or a sharp stick in the eye in the other, so pick your poison.
Speaker B:I was like, okay, right.
Speaker B:I'm really good with this here.
Speaker B:But this idea, I mean, it's tough.
Speaker B:It's one thing to think about Sherpa or guru, you know, when you're In a consulting firm, it's another thing when this is your daily bread and butter.
Speaker A:Exactly, exactly.
Speaker A:That's.
Speaker A:And most of the people that I've seen who've had really bad experiences with overload and with stress, or who've also had really bad experiences with like the anxiety of thinking and rethinking and overthinking how they're going to say no to a client.
Speaker A:This stuff lives in our brains rent free for too long.
Speaker A:And most of the times when I've felt like I've made progress on this, I've just said, okay, I'm either going to say yes to this and get happy with it or, or I'm going to say no to it and we're going to start talking about getting paid, about the work that the client is asking for and the number of times when I've said I'd love to do this, I need some more resources.
Speaker A:And the client has said, well, yeah, okay, let's talk about that.
Speaker A:You know, going through that experience once or twice has told me that I've got legitimate business interests.
Speaker A:I should think much more calmly about this scope creep thing and actually see it as an opportunity rather than as a threat to my livelihood and a threat to my well being.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:I think the magic catalyst for me always comes back to value.
Speaker B:Somebody's asking for something, something more, something out of scope, rather than get started on, as I've watched some solos do.
Speaker B:If you remember in the contract, item 43, sub B, sub 2 said specifically that we were going to deliver X.
Speaker B:Let's take a breath and say, hold on a minute, so you're asking for X.
Speaker B:Let me understand why you're asking for that and guide that conversation to establishing what's going to need to be done.
Speaker B:But first and foremost, what's the value in that?
Speaker B:Ask for the client.
Speaker B:Because if we can establish the value, we're not stuck on scope creep, as you say, we're stuck on, oh, hey, here's an opportunity presenting itself, a valuable opportunity to this client who is asking for good reason and has just tried to convince us why that's valuable, or tell us about why it's valuable.
Speaker B:And that gives us the opportunity to say, ah.
Speaker B:So basically they've just described the return.
Speaker B:Now let's talk about the investment that's going to be required to get that return and it takes it out of that, you know, oh, sorry, it's out of the contract, or this is more work or a lot of time, effort and energy for me.
Speaker B:Not their problem, not their Concern, Their concern should be about getting that value and what will it take to get me there.
Speaker A:So, and I can think of situations where I've worked in teams and we've been challenged by the client who wants more for the same.
Speaker A:And we jump into asking ourselves how, you know, oh, how are we going to meet this terribly unfair request?
Speaker A:If we stopped and thought, as you say, Mike, about why, then one possibility is we learned that there's a value attached to this, like you say, which we can get some recompense for.
Speaker A:The other actually really positive thing is if we learn from the client's response, that actually is relatively little value.
Speaker A:They're asking almost for the sake of asking for something that has very low or undetermined value to them.
Speaker A:And sometimes just getting them to say that out loud can convince them that they can just kind of rein it in a little bit.
Speaker A:What you're asking.
Speaker A:I'm asking you for something that I think is inconsequential, then that gives you the right, I think, to say no.
Speaker A:There's another scary prospect here.
Speaker A:Like if we jump in and do the thing, you know, work the weekend and do the scope creep thing and find out afterwards that it had no value, that's a heart sink moment.
Speaker A:Like, why would you spend your weekend exhibiting all this virtue of doing all this hard work for the client if you thought it was possible that it had no value to them and they were just asking out of habit or out of persistence.
Speaker A:Like I say again, I think it's all about us getting a bit of perspective here.
Speaker B:Oh, couldn't agree with you, Morgan.
Speaker B:I mean, there is that wake up call when you realize, gosh, that was a gatekeeper request and it was like, I'm not sure what they're going to want.
Speaker B:So rather than take my time to figure it out, I'm just going to ask you to do everything and you did it.
Speaker B:So we can find ourselves sitting there thinking about, oh my gosh, if I don't say yes, I might lose this client.
Speaker B:Oh, what are they asking for?
Speaker B:Oh, what, what kind of challenge?
Speaker B:You know what a sh.
Speaker B:Shakespeare said there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Speaker B:So let's not overthink this into challenge or opportunity.
Speaker B:Let's go find out and move from there.
Speaker A:Great.
Speaker A:So, Mike, we've thought about scope creep and how a fresh perspective on that might change the outcomes for us.
Speaker A:The other thing that we wanted to talk about today was specialization.
Speaker A:And this, I think has a very different feel when you're in a big firm with 50 or 500 or 5,000 fellow employees compared to when there's just you, right?
Speaker A:I mean, I've always felt this pull to try and be a generalist, to try and be something for all people, but there are some limits to that, right?
Speaker B:No, you're absolutely right, Ian.
Speaker B:I think we have to be known for, for something.
Speaker B:And like you going solo, my idea was, you know, I'm miles wide, but only several inches deep.
Speaker B:And so I can be a lot of things to a lot of different people.
Speaker B:But this lack of capacity to serve all these expanding levels of workload across different kinds of jobs and to do all that, I think that it's now putting much more on us.
Speaker B:And ultimately, if you are basically anything to anyone, you're really nothing to no one.
Speaker B:I mean, you've got to be known for something.
Speaker B:And in order to run your business effectively, you've got to have some areas that you really have down to be known and to know yourself.
Speaker A:It's absolutely right.
Speaker A:And there's a bit of a trap for us in the modern technology.
Speaker A:And the way that we work virtually means that we could feel like we can play almost every role on a project.
Speaker A:Like we can be, especially with AI, we can be the analyst and the technical writer and the project manager and the client relationship handler and the finance person.
Speaker A:So automation of some of those tasks makes us feel like we can do anything.
Speaker A:But actually that leads us to the belief that, like you say, Mike, we can be all things to all people.
Speaker A:It's a really important moment when you realize that to do part of your project work really well, you need competencies besides the ones that you have.
Speaker A:And improvising and using automation is going to help you so far.
Speaker A:But it won't go all the way, right?
Speaker B:No, no, absolutely not.
Speaker B:So, you know, you can't be that all things to all people for yourself in your own business, as we'll talk about some.
Speaker B:And you can't be all things to all clients and potential clients.
Speaker B:As a matter of fact, it might be a pretty good sign that you're general enough and good enough at a few things that the client says, you know, I built up a relationship, I trust you, I'd like to ask you to do some new things.
Speaker B:But even better.
Speaker A:Yeah, even better if when the client comes to you with a new kind of problem, you, you have the confidence to ask somebody else in.
Speaker A:And I remember that those moments coming in my career, like knowing who I was going to collaborate with and knowing the importance of that relationship and I couldn't take it for granted knowing that I had the confidence to say, okay, I'm going to go get Mike and he and I can work together on this, and he'll add to the quality of the work, he'll add to my reputation, he won't harm my margin, because we'll make sure that that doesn't happen.
Speaker A:Having the confidence to bring a fellow specialist in to collaborate with you on terms and in a way that reflects well on you, that's a really important moment.
Speaker A:And feeling that you can do that without it taking away your authority, or as I said, taking away your margin is a.
Speaker A:Is a good sign that you're mature enough to be more than just somebody in the gig economy.
Speaker A:On Fiverr, you're mature enough to say, I'm a professional problem solver, I'm a business advisor, and I can work with partners, and it's going to work out well for me.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think finding partners that are not zero sum but positive sum is really an amazing thing in terms of not only getting work, doing work well, making sure that we've got the competencies and the qualities there, but it also helps us with that severe challenge that solo consultants always have, that learning curve.
Speaker B:Isolation.
Speaker A:Yeah, right.
Speaker A:It's really easy to see our rate of learning slow down and even atrophy just from being ourselves.
Speaker A:Even if we are great at reading and doing a bit of scholarship and research and podcasts and stuff, actually being engaged in a conversation with somebody else, having a dialogue with somebody else about an idea is sometimes what makes you take the big leaps forward.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker A:Socrates wasn't wrong about this.
Speaker A:So having a colleague around to bounce ideas off of having a colleague around to validate approaches with is a great way of making sure that we're not stuck with suboptimal methods, making sure that we're making decisions in a way that would reflect well on, you know, on a whole team rather than just on one person.
Speaker A:Finding the right moment to bring a partner on board and finding that right partner, those are really important challenges, but also really worthwhile moments, and we're all going to encounter them sooner or later.
Speaker A:I remember when it happened, and I guess you remember it happening happily for you too, Mike.
Speaker B:Oh, absolutely.
Speaker B:And many different partners.
Speaker B:So we're not talking about a new person to add to the shingle on the door.
Speaker B:What we're talking about is partners who, you know, we can work together in different ways, sometimes on, sometimes off, sometimes with great time in between, but people who help us improve the quality, people who Give us access to different markets and us to them, where we together are working to increase the value that we create together and work in a way that shares that value between us, between other partners and colleagues with our clients, and that actually make us better at what we do over time, as well as give us the opportunity to do some learning, which includes what I like doing and what I don't, doing what I don't like doing, what I want to do more of what I want to do, less of a great thing.
Speaker B:And it helps us to really improve our self development.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker A:So it's interesting all the way along today we're talking about the tension between the desirability of being wide and the selective choice of being narrow.
Speaker A:And I was thinking about this about task, but also about relationships.
Speaker A:I think it's okay to be task narrow, like known for one particular thing, but relationship wide.
Speaker A:Like quite a few people know me for this.
Speaker A:What I think I want to avoid is being really narrow in the task that I do for my work and relationship.
Speaker A:Narrow, meaning I only have one or two clients for whom I do only this one major offering.
Speaker A:And I've talked about this before, the one client, one offering trap is really boring and like financially unrewarding as well, when you get down to it.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:So I think in this spirit, we've got to ask ourselves and hope you'll do this right now.
Speaker B:What are you known for?
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Who do you market to?
Speaker B:So you know, you've.
Speaker B:It's important to keep up this public profile with our clients.
Speaker B:And because that's important, it's essential that we have a reason to have something both narrow and deep that you're known for or something.
Speaker B:And maybe have multiple ones, perhaps even non overlapping ones.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:I mean, I can think of two or three non overlapping sets of clients and sets of technical work that I'm known for in the industry.
Speaker A:And I'm working on both of those in parallel.
Speaker A:It's funny, Mike, when you mention it, it makes me think about LinkedIn and I think of things that I consciously do on LinkedIn that are aimed at either one particular bit of the vertical or one particular bit of skill set.
Speaker A:And then another day I'm talking about something else.
Speaker A:I'm also aware that a platform like LinkedIn is full of people who are trying to talk about everything to everybody, all the time, social and the professional and the personal and even the ethical and political all at the same time.
Speaker A:And it really makes it hard to keep track of what I think of somebody and where they sit in my world and what my relationship should be with them.
Speaker A:So a bit of selectivity here is still going to help us, I think.
Speaker B:I think it really will.
Speaker B:I think going back to managing ourselves too, one of our first dive into this thing, thinking that way and being that way and having that growth mindset about ourselves gives us fuller lives as well, so that we don't become this one narrow business that we are, that we have a four thing.
Speaker B:But I'll leave us to go back to managing ourselves as we talked about in the original episode.
Speaker B:The other thing, you know, another thing we were going to talk about in is ineffective systems.
Speaker B:Ineffective systems as solo consultants.
Speaker A:Well, it's, it's, we've, it's come up a couple of times in passing and we should talk about it directly.
Speaker A:We said earlier on that it's possible to believe that with tools and software and automation you can do almost anything that you need to in your working life.
Speaker A:And quite a lot of that has been true.
Speaker A:It's also easy to see that certain platforms become favorites and then just get to swamp our lives.
Speaker A:And LinkedIn is a common one at the moment.
Speaker A:I'm a big fan of LinkedIn.
Speaker A:I use it, but I'm really aware that for some people it takes over like other kinds of social media as well.
Speaker A:So making effective choices about the systems that we're going to use and also making choices to have a system and to have the habits that go with it, I think that's an important part of the evolution of a successful solopreneur.
Speaker A:Most people, myself included, when we start out, we think, oh, this is great, I'm going to send a couple of invoices, I'm going to start to make money.
Speaker A:I'm free from salary, I'm free from my boss telling me what kind of computer I should have or what kind of software I should run.
Speaker A:And I accumulate a bill of a couple of thousand dollars on Amazon getting stuff and systems and subscriptions.
Speaker A:But actually that wave of enthusiasm has to calm down a little bit.
Speaker A:I have to get good at doing some of the basics, like tracking my hours, like figuring out what work has really cost me to execute, figuring out what happens when I outsource something, taking care of taxes, taking care of the decision making that I'm going to make about what am I going to charge, when am I going to accept the work, what am I going to go for and what am I going to turn down.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think these are all true.
Speaker B:I mean, we've mentioned a number of these throughout these episodes.
Speaker B:And I think they come back here.
Speaker B:Are we tracking, like you say, Ian, all of those things?
Speaker B:Do we know about what value our clients have gotten and are continuing to get from the work we do?
Speaker B:Do we have a post project follow up process or what is the basis for our ongoing relationships here?
Speaker B:So I think all the way from.
Speaker B:I mean, I remember my big thing was I am not a guy who likes to put together expense reports.
Speaker B:I wasn't as a corporate consultant, I wasn't as an individual consultant.
Speaker B:I was really into doing the work.
Speaker B:I was really into meeting people and working on projects and getting things done.
Speaker B:All that admin stuff, oh my gosh, you know, I really can't be bothered.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker B:But when it's your checking account, you really need to be bothered.
Speaker B:So, you know.
Speaker B:Yeah, and I kind of swung from one.
Speaker B:I just keep throwing stuff on the side of my desk and I'll get to that one day to, oh, I've got to find the perfect system to do all this.
Speaker B:And now I'm spending hours and days finding a system, tweaking a system, creating a system, using another system, finding out what systems other people like and going, that's not a real value add here.
Speaker B:So I've got to bring this together.
Speaker B:There are lots of people who already figured this out.
Speaker B:Yeah, maybe I could start there.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:This is funny, this reminds me because you and I keep talking about our history with big firms as informing our experience now as we are in small firms.
Speaker A: minds me of back in the early: Speaker A:Big companies, including big consulting companies, all were into knowledge management.
Speaker A:All the stuff that we know, if we catalog it right and we put it in a fancy IT system and we give it keywords and tags and all this kind of metadata, then only then will we have perfect intellectual access to all the ideas that have ever been created or stored or processed.
Speaker A:And it was such a money pit and it was such a time sink as well.
Speaker A:All the time thinking about what the structure should be and what the purpose should be and what the tool should be.
Speaker A:All these people with all these opinions and it actually stopped us from understanding very much about information.
Speaker A:It also caused us to lose track of some really important information.
Speaker A:How many times have I, Mike, thought to myself, oh, that, that topic.
Speaker A:Oh, yeah, yeah, I have slides on that somewhere.
Speaker A:Oh, hold on.
Speaker A:That was the project that I did like six years ago.
Speaker A:I don't need fancy project management software, fancy knowledge management software to help me with that.
Speaker A:I just need a bit of calm and organization about the way that I take care of stuff.
Speaker A:There are loads of ways of making sure that I take care of that kind of information.
Speaker A:Some of them are about it, some of them are about my habits.
Speaker A:I've worked with people who are really great advocates for systems like Asana and Trello, which are really great project management tools.
Speaker A:I've got members of my family who are great at using Notion as a kind of personal information manager.
Speaker A:I think maybe sometimes the short answer to this is have a system choose it and get on and get good at it and learn to live within its limitations.
Speaker A:Task management for freelancers today there are a dozen options.
Speaker A:I think we just need to choose one and accept it.
Speaker A:It's never going to be a perfect system, right?
Speaker B:And I think there's also this issue of having consistent time blocks for deep work.
Speaker B:And that's not a system per se, as a system that we work out for ourselves.
Speaker B:I'm always amazed watching others that I work with solo consultants.
Speaker B:Some people who are love the administrative task, love tweaking their systems, love doing quality control, but maybe miss some of that time block for deep work to say, ah, you know, when am I actually doing the thinking, when am I doing the analysis?
Speaker B:I mean, we all love to play with our toys, whatever our toys are.
Speaker B:So having good systems that take care of some things can also keep us from, from being distracted from that time that I absolutely have to put on the time and the effort and the thinking and what it takes for client development or, you know, you know, all the other tasks that are there, some of them will go too naturally.
Speaker B:The other ones we're going to use as creative procrastination, don't do that.
Speaker B:Be careful.
Speaker B:Oh, it's true.
Speaker B:Be careful.
Speaker A:It's fascinating.
Speaker A:I, I've said this to many groups of consultants in many contexts in my career, and it's still true.
Speaker A:You might think from looking at our behavior that clients are paying us to write PowerPoint slides and noodle on the Internet and maybe ride in trains and planes and automobiles, because that's what we spend our time doing, it seems.
Speaker A:But actually our clients are capable of doing all those things for themselves.
Speaker A:The thing that clients need us to do that they don't have the perspective or the time for right now is to think.
Speaker A:And that's the core thing.
Speaker A:We've got to give some brain power to the work that our clients bring us.
Speaker A:Whatever kind of solopreneur we are, whether you're designing interiors or know, launching satellites, your clients hoping that you'll give your best thought to the problem that they have and finding ways to make sure your brain gets, like you say, Mike, that deep time to think about understanding the problem, ideation, about solutions, and then thinking as well about ways forward for the next such project.
Speaker A:That's the kind of thinking that, you know, really makes a difference.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Well, listeners out there, you, Ian and I have talked a little bit about our experiences, but we'd love to hear more about yours.
Speaker B:Share your good practices, your tips, your downfalls and the walls you've come up against.
Speaker B:And if you've got somebody that you think would be a really good special guest who can help dig down deeper on this with us, we'd love that thought as well.
Speaker A:Absolutely.
Speaker A:You know how to reach out to us.
Speaker A:We'd love to hear from you.
Speaker A:Now, Mike.
Speaker A:The other thing that I think is important that we have to own up to a little bit sometimes is consistency of the quality of our work.
Speaker A:We know from research that it's an important factor in what makes solo consulting businesses successful or not.
Speaker A:But the inconsistent nature of the work, also the inconsistent nature of the workload presents us with the need to have not only systems, but good habits as well.
Speaker A:For example, one bit of inconsistency in our life is this erratic pattern that we have of supply and demand and of course, business development work versus on the clock work.
Speaker A:We get these feast or famine cycles when we have pressure to secure a new business and pressure to do the work that's in front of us.
Speaker A:And that I think can drive the kind of quality fluctuations, some of the kinds of quality fluctuations that we're talking about here.
Speaker A:And you know, we all feel noble about this.
Speaker A:I've got this desire in my heart to make sure that all the pieces of work that come in front of me might need to be done because they could pay for next month's grocery bill.
Speaker A:But also I need to do the work that clients have already paid me for that's in front of me right now.
Speaker A:And being good at that, I think means not only cloning ourselves and finding more hours in the day, not only being more efficient by using tools.
Speaker A:I think it also needs us to step back a little bit and be good at making decisions, decisions about how we're going to spend our time, especially our off the clock time, and decisions about how we choose what kind of work is right for us.
Speaker A:So Mike, let's get into that a little bit.
Speaker B:Yeah, I think that's brilliant.
Speaker B:Having a strategic work selection, it really speaks to quality, it speaks to who we are, it speaks To a lot of the things we've been talking about, to what degree do we actually evaluate projects or have some framework to assess the fit, the profitability, the strategic value of a potential piece of work.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:Even if it's just 10 minutes of reward yourself a coffee, maybe click into a call with a colleague and say, let me just take 10 minutes to look back at this thing.
Speaker A:I'm breathing a sigh of relief right now that the work is done and I sent the invoice.
Speaker A:But I also need to give myself 10 minutes to say, how did that all go?
Speaker A:As you say, Mike, from the financial point of view, from the personal enjoyment point of view, and from the strategic point of view, I think it's not only about considering projects that fit.
Speaker A:I think it's also at the next level up, about clients that fit.
Speaker A:Yes, it's interesting.
Speaker A:We recently had some work done by a coach 4p31, helping us to develop what we now call an ideal client profile, an icp.
Speaker A:And that really, by going in a disciplined way through who are the people that we like to work for?
Speaker A:Where are they?
Speaker A:What do they care about?
Speaker A:And why should they be interested in us?
Speaker A:This business of making a selection, I've also heard it called a Persona.
Speaker A:Like, what's the nature of the person who's going to buy our services?
Speaker A:Thinking about an ideal client profile helps us.
Speaker A:It doesn't help us because we are only ever going to work for clients that are 100% ideal.
Speaker A:What it does is it helps us evaluate the client relationships that we have and choose the ones that we want to develop that are at least going some way towards our ideal to give us some of that consistency, to give us some of that more reliable workflow and also more reliable quality.
Speaker A:And taking time, maybe once a quarter to sit and look at your portfolio of clients is just as useful, I think, as taking a look at your portfolio of project work and your portfolio of invoices that you have outstanding and your portfolio of hours that you have to bill next week.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I think this is going to.
Speaker B:Doing this kind of thinking, doing this kind of work is going to start to address a little bit of that.
Speaker B:How much time am I spending on delivery versus business development?
Speaker B:How am I doing those in the ways that we've talked about already?
Speaker B:And ultimately bringing that together for yourself, you're going to find that the work that you're doing better aligns with your expertise and your interests.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:For your clients, they're going to say, I love working with Ian because Ian is genuinely Suited to our needs.
Speaker B:And for your business, you're going to see steadier revenue streams, stronger positioning in the market.
Speaker B:I mean, this is a win, win, win.
Speaker B:This is a, you know, not zero sum.
Speaker B:This is positive sum.
Speaker B:Thinking and working.
Speaker B:That really brings so many of the things we've been talking about together.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And it's funny, having learned it for ourselves, we've recently added it to our coaching programs.
Speaker A:We did a session for coaches in one of our business development programs lately on how to work your own ideal client profile.
Speaker A:Together, we thought about it and adapted it a little bit for the solopreneur world.
Speaker A:And we found that the conversation boiled down to two things.
Speaker A:Making positive choices.
Speaker A:First of all, positive choices about the work that you like.
Speaker A:Getting paid is important, but realizing what kinds of work are both lucrative and enjoyable and feeling sincere about that and yet telling yourself that you're allowed to like what you like, that's okay.
Speaker A:That tells you sometimes something surprising about where you can look for new opportunities and therefore also which opportunities you can say.
Speaker A:I'll set that to one side for now.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I think it also helps us improve and increase our thinking about where work assignments and projects are coming from, the kinds of business trends or events that trigger the need for our services, where else those trends or events are occurring now, and who else you might have access to those through and with.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:And if we take ourselves away from the apparent need to kind of spin their hamster wheel and get revenue through the door, we realize that there are going to be moments, even in tough economic times, you might even say even more so in tough economic times, where what the market needs and what we like to deliver can come together.
Speaker A:And that's a great moment.
Speaker A:And I always challenge myself to enjoy that when those come along, because I should not spend any time worrying about I should have more of this kind of work.
Speaker A:I should just enjoy it when it comes, but then also let it feed into all the conversations I have with myself about marketing, about project selection, and about managing my network of relationships.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:There's so many things in terms of knowledge and attitudes for success that apply here.
Speaker B:I mean, I wish we had time to talk about different kinds of pricing models because I think sometimes we're so hourly in project based that we forget about things like retainers and value based something.
Speaker B:Ian, I know you've been spending a lot of time coaching folks with.
Speaker B:And you and Tish and Mafe in particular.
Speaker A:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker A:We ran some sessions on this at the business show in Miami.
Speaker A:We've had some coaching clients with us in the last few weeks who are at those events, and it's really been focused on how do you sell your value, not your hourly rate.
Speaker A:So, Mike, we've talked about the challenge of managing work from a few different perspectives.
Speaker A:We've talked about it from the point of view of how to be efficient.
Speaker A:We've talked about it from the point of view of how to deliver good quality and get control.
Speaker A:We talked about it from the point of view of strategic choices that we make and how we manage this tendency that we have to sometimes over deliver and find ourselves in scope creep.
Speaker A:So I like that you mentioned knowledge and attitudes.
Speaker A:Let's take a minute here to think about what might be attitudes for success and gather together some final thoughts.
Speaker B:So, Ian, we've covered so much here.
Speaker B:You know, thinking back for a minute, attitudes for success, what comes to mind for you?
Speaker A:Well, one of them goes all the way back to the very early episodes of the podcast where we talked about certainty versus ambiguity.
Speaker A:Actually, a lot of this has been about making decisions, but also adapting.
Speaker A:And I think to be good at this, to be good at managing work and also managing clients in the way that we've talked about, we need to be comfortable with ambiguity and alert to changing priorities.
Speaker A:Things that are happening in the life of our clients, things that are happening in our business, and to be willing to reassess and adjust systems.
Speaker A:And I can think of people who got into the solopreneur world who kind of got stuck in a pattern of working in the first year that really didn't suit them by the time they came to year five or six.
Speaker A:So to be comfortable with a little bit of creative change, you know, a little bit of grit in the oyster, I think that's a really good part of the solopreneur mindset.
Speaker A:How about you?
Speaker A:What have you seen and what do you think counts most here?
Speaker B:Well, it's interesting because one of the things that really has resonated with me is, as you've been saying about this willingness to regularly reassess and adjust systems.
Speaker B:And I think balancing that out is it's another both, and that's the discipline to maintain systems and habits, even when we're super busy, even when we don't feel like it, to have our protocols, to say what are the things that are most important for our success with what we do on our best days, on our best weeks and months, our best experiences, what are those things that we do that make them work well?
Speaker B:And when we're feeling good, when Everything's going good.
Speaker B:It's really easy to do that.
Speaker B:But John Wooten used to say, how do I work with my team members, my players, everybody in my organization so that they bring their very best when the best is needed, that we don't necessarily have to be our very best every day, but a lot of times we need to be our very best at the times when we feel least like it or most overwhelmed or distracted.
Speaker B:And that's when we break our protocol.
Speaker B:I've been really spending a lot of time with Brian Johnson and the Heroic app and this idea of what's your protocol?
Speaker B:What's your protocol?
Speaker B:What are those key things in, you know, he breaks it down to your energy, your work and your love.
Speaker B:You're kind of, you're just taking care of that asset that is you taking care of your work and taking care of your connection to others.
Speaker B:And this really has been fascinating for me just to watch in the big and little things as I think this would be important for everybody.
Speaker B:But particularly as a solopreneur, you know, we are it.
Speaker B:We don't have a big team necessarily to pick up the slack and to jump in for each other at the very side.
Speaker B:And for all of us, I think it's so easy, particularly as solopreneurs, to let the relationships suffer.
Speaker B:Let you know, perhaps things in our personal lives, things in our client relationships, things in some of our work do, and to say, hey, wait a minute, what are the things that are key and that discipline to maintain them even when we're not really up to it?
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And tell us the name of the app again, Mike.
Speaker B:Oh, it's the Heroic app.
Speaker B:Like becoming a heroic.
Speaker B:Brian Johnson is the name associated with it.
Speaker B:He I've known for some time in terms of his philosopher's notes where he's taking some of the best of, you know, kind of things all the way, going from ancient stoics and other great works to positive psychology to all the science based things that are done now to get at what brings us to be able to be our best like that, to define what that is and where we're going and what to do with it.
Speaker B:So yeah, a really great one for me.
Speaker A:Fantastic.
Speaker A:And then Mike, to wrap this all up for me, I think the attitude that stands out when I think of people who are good at all of these things, good at handling scope, good at systems and consistency, good as well at managing balance in their lives, I think it's about perspective.
Speaker A:People who are good at this and manage to make themselves healthy with Their work as a solopreneur in the long run have got that balanced perspective.
Speaker A:Balance between the short term and the long term, balance between their clients needs and their own needs and their family's needs.
Speaker A:Perspective as well, of not getting too hooked up on one issue in the short term that's immediately in front of us, being able to see things in context.
Speaker A:I think that applies to the work that we do for our clients as well.
Speaker A:I hope that if we're good at thinking for our clients, we'll have that balanced perspective, not just the problem as it seems to them right now, but the problem as it is in the context of the whole business environment.
Speaker A:So I think that perfectionism is a problem for us.
Speaker A:Sometimes a bit of perspective can help us balance that out with a bit of pragmatism instead.
Speaker A:So, again, that sounds like.
Speaker A:Not surprisingly, we're harking back to some of our earliest episodes about the tension between, like, perfectionism and being okay with imperfect.
Speaker A:But I think that is still, for solopreneurs, really at the heart of what makes us successful.
Speaker B:Well, it's interesting when you say that, Harken back to a woman who's been a colleague and a client for both of us, Kathy.
Speaker B:And Kathy one time looking at me and saying, mike, some things are better done than perfect.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I thought, wow, wow, this is one.
Speaker B:You know, I don't have tattoos, but if I did, I probably would go ahead and tattoo it because how many times I have to remind myself this part of it, better done than perfect.
Speaker B:Just get it done.
Speaker A:So, Mike, let's talk about what's coming next in our episode.
Speaker A:We're going to talk about something that's really current for all of us here at P31.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:We've been spending a lot of time, you've heard us.
Speaker B:We finish with one set of clients on an idea called a strategic partner.
Speaker B:There have been different business shapers, value catalysts.
Speaker B:This whole idea of working with others to really create and exchange value, and this is one that we're really pursuing, we're really thinking about hard.
Speaker B:We're actually working on a book about this now.
Speaker B:And the more and more we get into it, the more and more we're thinking, well, wait a minute.
Speaker B:As solopreneurs, this is what we do all day long.
Speaker B:And the skills of being a great strategic partner are in many ways overlapping and very much synergistic with the skills of being a great consultant.
Speaker B:Right?
Speaker A:So next week we're going to target those members of our community.
Speaker A:If you are trying to be an analyst, a leader, a problem solver, a partner in big organizations.
Speaker A:And if you'd like to think about the kind of skills around influencing and problem solving and personal effectiveness that will drive success in that area, we like to share a couple of the early thoughts that are emerging from our work in that area.
Speaker A:We're looking forward to bringing it to your mic.
Speaker A:I'm looking forward to the change of pace as well.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Humans who might want to be more of a consultant, please join us next time on the Consulting for Humans Podcast.
Speaker B:The Consulting for Humans Podcast is brought to you by P31 Consulting.
