Women Consultants, Do You Aspire to Establish a ‘Beige’ Brand?
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.
Is your consulting brand a bit dry? And maybe even…. a little bit boring?
It’s easy to think your consulting business brand starts with you.
When you’re writing your LinkedIn profile or your website copy you think you need to tell your audience all about you.
As consultants, we want to prove our credentials.
This is what I’ve learned, where I’ve been, what I’ve done. These are my qualifications.
But that’s a self-centered approach. It makes us sound like an ego on legs.
And it’s not very interesting for our potential clients to read.
The other thing that can make us boring, is trying to be like everybody else – bland, corporate, formal.
We all do that, because we want to fit in and be taken seriously.
When you first set up your consulting business, it can be quite scary, and when you don’t feel confident about your marketing or positioning, it seems logical to look around and what other people are doing, and emulate them.
But the problem is you can’t stand out when you’re working so hard to be like everyone else.
You need to give your clients a reason to choose you. How can they differentiate you from your competitors if you all look, sound and promise the same?
You are a unique person. You need to show your clients what you bring to the table, the sparkle that you will add to their organisation.
You can’t do that by being generic.
You might have the same professional qualifications and similar roles in a similar industry as other consultants. But you’re providing a service, something intrinsically linked to you as a person, to your personality and your passion for what you do. You will be better suited to some clients than others. But those clients can’t find you if you’ve dulled yourself down to a generic shade of beige to fit in with everyone else.
When you give yourself permission to position yourself as authentically ‘you’, those clients who are best suited to your unique way of doing things will be attracted to you.
And then, when you can see how you are different to other consultants, they cease to be your competition, and can become collaboration partners. You can run joint workshops showcasing the expertise you both have in different areas, or work under the same brand as associates when the client needs more resources.
When you’re ready to be more yourself, and less like others, you and your clients benefit.
Tell me, have you found it hard adjusting to post-corporate life? Dropping the branding of your last employer, and learning to be more yourself?
Free Report – The Six Elements of a Seven Figure Consulting Business
I’ve created a free PDF report called The Six Elements of a Seven Figure Business. It’s my most popular free resource and in it I outline the 6 areas of unscaled businesses that need to change in order to move past being ‘booked up and burned out’ and shifting into that higher gear that gets you cruising again.
It’s the framework that helps consultant women like you find their feet and get back to leading the business, rather than being buried in client work and back-end business operations.
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.