The Signs That Your Consulting Business is Moving at a Rapid Pace You Can’t Sustain Forever
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.
Do you remember your first car, or even the car you learned to drive in?
I feel like I’m probably showing my age here. I learned to drive in my mum’s Peugeot 205. And then when I was first married we had an old Nissan Micra.
These cars, just like many of my friends’ first cars, did not do well under speed. When you drove on the motorway everything started to vibrate – the steering wheel, the dashboard, it felt like car parts would start to drop off if you kept it up for too long. You had to shout to be heard over the engine, and the faster you went, the more violent the shaking would get.
It can feel like that in a business that is moving too fast, when it isn’t designed for those kind of speeds.
Everything is under strain.
Decisions get made rapidly.
Even though you feel like you’re checking things thoroughly five times over, mistakes get made because you’re carrying the weight of so much in the business and you’re having to multi-task with everything all the time.
Your working days get longer. You start picking things up in the evenings because there wasn’t time to do it during the day and you have a client deadline in 24 hours.
And you start telling yourself ridiculous stories – and seriously, if I had a penny for every consultant who comes up with this one.
I do my accounts at the weekend. It helps me relax. I like doing my invoices. It would take too long to explain to someone else how to do it anyway.
I have heard every permutation of this one! And no, I don’t let my clients get away with those kinds of excuses. And I may have even said some of them myself – but it’s always a red flag.
Here are some questions you might want to ask yourself about your business and your working habits at the moment:
Are you able to stop work at the end of the day?
Are you able to focus on one thing and do it until it’s done?
Are you able to have the whole weekend off?
Do you take regular time out from your business?
Can the wheels keep turning while you’re on holiday or does everything grind to a halt unless you’re present in the business doing everything single handed?
Does your consulting business past the test? I’d love to hear how you’ve got on.
I’m discussing what it takes for women consultants to be able to Work Less and Earn More in this episode of the Seven Figure Consultant Podcast.
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.