Women Consultants Don’t Need Generic Advice – They Need To Build The Business That Is Right For Them
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.
Have you noticed a new wave of business advice programmes promising to help you ‘Recession-proof your business’?
The people who usually do the whole ‘hey want to know how to build an 8 figure business’ have all pivoted to talking about ‘recession-proofing your business’.
It’s become the new ‘build a Six Figure business in 30 days’.
These products follow a simple recipe.
You take the thing that lots of people want. Often it’s a 6, 7 or 8 figure business strategy.
At the moment it’s a business that doesn’t suffer the ill effects of a recession. A recession-proof business.
And then you create a simplified business strategy or formula business blueprint and market it as if this is something that is super quick and easy to do.
I don’t do one-size-fits-all business strategy OR planning, because it doesn’t work.
I know this because I have worked with all kinds of clients, and in all honesty, giving a simplified ‘this is how everyone does it’ business model, rarely helps.
And when the blueprint doesn’t actually work or improve the business, the customer, the business-owner who has paid for this magic formula has been trained to blame themselves.
Instead of going to the source and calling out bad advice, they worry that they failed because they didn’t take enough action, hustle hard enough, or they’re not cut out to have a business.
I have spoken to MANY clients who have gone through expensive, poor quality business programmes and still have nothing to show for it. And they think it’s because they’re rubbish at building a business.
I always want to say to them – it’s not that you aren’t good at business, it’s that you aren’t good at THAT model of doing business.
When I see coaches out there touting ‘just do what I did and you’ll have a fantastic business too’. I always want to ask: ‘But what about the people who don’t have the exact personality or skillset as you?’
In my world, businesses should be as diverse and unique as their owners.
And you should build the business that fits YOU. YOUR life, your experience. Your skillset. Your personality.
But there are some simple foundational principles you can build your business on – that ARE the same across the board.
These Six Elements are essential for every consultant to be aware of when building a Seven Figure consulting business.
Last Autumn I released a PDF report that gives a brief overview of the Six Elements of a successful Seven Figure consulting business – and it’s been my most popular download to date.
But to really dig into what each of the Six Elements means for your consulting business I’ve just launched a resource that takes the conversation to a whole new level. It’s called The Six Elements of a Seven Figure Business Video Series.
It’s for you if you’re a consultant building an ‘unscaled’ business – that means a business where you make money by selling hours of your time to your clients.
You agree a day rate with your client, then your revenue becomes your day rate x the number of days they book with you.
Only there’s a problem.
Once you’ve booked out all your hours each week, your revenue hits a ceiling and maxes out.
The only way to increase revenue with an hours-based model is to work more hours – but that will only take you so far before you feel exhausted. And routinely working evenings and weekends, plus being unable to take a vacation, gets old pretty quickly.
A lot of consultants also find that their health starts to suffer at this point too. And it’s frustrating. You didn’t leave your corporate career to work even longer hours. And where’s the freedom that being self-employed is supposed to bring you?
So you can build a team of consultants to increase the hours you all have available. But guess what. The same thing happens – you max out your team’s hours. And then you have the added pressure of paying their wages, eating into your profits and in a lot of cases, leaving your business barely scraping by.
When your business has hit a revenue ceiling because you’re running an unscaled business model -> it’s time to scale.
This means finding ways to build in additional income streams that AREN’T based on the ‘hours for money’ formula.
And it’s a total game-changer.
When I built a seven figure consulting business for the first time, the overwhelm was real.
We were on the back foot after the business initially covered our 4 year growth plan in the first year. And we had scaled to that point by getting everyone to work harder. It was exhausting for our small team, and on a day to day basis, it was chaos.
No one had time to communicate or take time off. Stress levels were high and the business wasn’t an enjoyable place to be. I actually thought about quitting more than once, because it just didn’t seem like the money was worth it!
But once we found the way to scale without putting more pressure on our people, everything changed.
We made better decisions, got more strategic about client acquisition and project delivery, and learned to stop running the business by putting out fires all day every day.
I’m not a super energetic person who only needs 4 hours sleep a night and has no commitments outside work. I’m a wife and mum of young kids, and I want more from life than just work and rushing around!
It’s not easy to build a business to seven figures, but the right help and support to learn and implement the right core principles makes all the difference.
You can’t possibly come into your business knowing everything there is to know about what lies next.
And that’s why I’ve created The Six Elements of a Seven Figure Business Video Series.
It’s a high-level resource that is easily worth £499. I could be selling it as a standalone course. But it’s important to me that it’s as accessible as possible, because I want consultants like you to have the right advice and not get side-tracked by the ‘snake oil sellers’ out there who are looking to enrol people onto high-ticket mass-sold programmes costing thousands of dollars.
So for a limited period you can buy this resource for just £39.
Don’t miss out on this great opportunity to start mapping out the next phase of your consulting business.
I’d love to hear from you – have you ever felt ‘buyer’s remorse’ after signing up for a big brand coaching programme that didn’t quite deliver what you hoped it would? What has been your experience of ‘one size fits all’ business advice? Did it work?
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.