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Are You Reading The Right Manual?

This was originally posted on my Seven Figure Consultant LinkedIn Newsletter. Subscribe today to get insights about how women are building powerful and impactful consulting businesses.


There can be all kinds of pressure to come up with heavy-duty new year’s resolutions at this time of year and I don’t know about you, but it has really been on my mind in these first days of 2020.

It’s not just a new year, it’s a new decade and we’re constantly surrounded by content around health, wellness and personal/business growth.

But so often – we listen to the warnings before we’ve understood if we’re the target market.

In the run-up to Christmas I decided to start my ‘new year’s resolutions’ a month early, and made a conscious effort to eat more healthily and get some good exercise in.

I was feeling tired and like I had fallen into some lifestyle habits that weren’t helping me to feel more energised.

So I did more reading on the topic of healthy living. I listened to some new podcasts I hadn’t listened to before.

The more I read and heard about the fact that I needed better sleep practices and a better diet, the more I felt anxious to do something about it.

But here’s the thing that really surprised me.

I was already putting into practice a lot of the advice without realising it.

I was reading books aimed at people who were starting much further back than I was.

And because my understanding of my starting point was wrong, it meant that all the steps I was reading about weren’t the right fit for me.

It’s not that I never get takeaway food or serve pizza for tea.

But I didn’t need to be persuaded of the need to eat fruit and vegetables.

Sure, I was in the habit of staying up too late in the evening for a lot of the Autumn.

But I already knew that my sleep goal needed to be an earlier bedtime allowing for more hours of sleep each night.

I had been telling myself that my diet and sleep were terrible. But when I started to track my food intake and sleep schedule, I realised I was telling myself things about my lifestyle that just didn’t match up with the data.

I was feeling anxious about all the warnings without realising that I wasn’t actually in the target audience.

And this is so often the case with our businesses.

I’ve spoken to so many women who regularly listen to podcasts and read online content about business problems they simply don’t have.

And this can especially be the case for women who work as independent consultants.

When you work for corporate clients at a high level – you can end up following business advice that is aimed at entrepreneurs who have no money coming in and no plans to change that any time soon.

People hustling their business around a full-time job to make ends meet.

People who don’t know what their ‘online business’ will be focused around, because they don’t have an obvious skillset or network of contacts yet.

People who need to do everything as cheaply as possible because there is no capital to invest in their business.

It can actually be a little like playing the game of ‘being an entrepreneur’, when in actual fact, you already have a business in place of a corporate job.

You have a direct and marketable skillset combined with training and expertise from your years of experience.

You have budget available to run, build and grow your business, so the cheap shortcut solutions aren’t as important.

So here’s what I want to ask you as we start a new year and a new decade.

Are you reading the right manual?

It can sound like a strange question, but when you stop consuming the content that ISN’T aimed at you, it can help you overcome a lot of the overwhelm that we so often experience in the online world.

Does this resonate with you?

Have you been worrying about building your email list when you should be setting up meetings with prospective clients?

Do you feel under pressure to get your website perfect, when in reality, you have more in-person interactions with your network?

And have you been playing the game of hustling too much for too long, when you could have been setting up your business to make money without you?


Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your feedback and future topics you’d like me to feature. You may also enjoy The Seven Figure Consultant Podcast, the show that takes you from booked up and burned out in your consulting business to THRIVING as the CEO of your 7 figure enterprise.