#12 Ongoing self-discipline (from “The 12 characteristics of successful consultants”)
There is a key theme running through all the 12 characteristics of successful consultants that we have been exploring here: it is self-discipline.
Reviewing the 12 characteristics, each of them requires a certain stalwart truth-telling (to yourself) and a willingness to embark on continuous self-improvement over time, no matter how experienced you may be in your practice.
- Expertise – to state your unique value
- Confidence, personal power, authority – to control your practice and your future
- Patience & Optimism – to keep going
- Back up Capital – to keep you safe
- Ability to pitch and close, network, work a room – to attract clients, prospects and referral sources
- Financial calm – to survive the up & down of revenues, the free fall
- Ability to speak in public – to attract clients, prospects and referral sources
- Ability to speak and write in short succinct style – to attract clients, prospects and referral sources
- Zen Distance – to allow your client to fail; to cut your losses; to move on
- Strong network of referrals – to attract clients and prospects
- Strong pipeline of prospects – to close new clients
- Self-discipline – to maximize your practice, your success, and your wealth
In my experience working with consultants, each one could overcome or compensate for any specific lack of skill in one area or another. But the occasional client who could not maintain the discipline of constantly refining and employing new skills to manage his or her practice did not succeed, in the practice or in our work together, both of which were short-lived.
I reviewed the notes on the prospective clients I had turned down over the past few years, as my practice is solely for maximizing already-successful consultants. In those notes, in each case, I sensed an eagerness to learn but a “yes-but” hidden in their commitment to “do the work” of the new disciplines we would be creating.
So, ask yourself with that stalwart truth-telling, and review projects you have started and abandoned: do you have the discipline to grow and manage your consultancy over time, starting now?
Publishing strategy for entrepreneurs and consultants: the key questions to start
Lots of entrepreneurs and consultants rush into social media networking without a strategy or a clear intention to implement that strategy. This is particularly true of blogging and other self-publishing efforts. There is no reason to spend the time creating content to publish without a plan.
This is true of all marketing efforts around products to sell: if you make content or online products to sell (eBooks, videos online or on CD, and so on) you must have a marketing strategy ready at launch, and then you must maintain the effort to implement that strategy. Otherwise, you have wasted your efforts in creating what you will distribute (for sale or for prospect outreach and credibility).
A plan would define what you mean to achieve by the effort committed (a return on that investment of time and effort), and allow you to measure it, however informally.
And blogging is not the only format that works: newsletter publishing to your opted-in list (do you have such a list? are you developing one? How rigorous are you are maintaining it– and using it?) is a different publishing strategy, and one which may take less time and produce more results.
Consider a plan that extends your outreach to broader distribution (re-publishing on other sites, conversion of various writing concepts to webinars for distribution through targeted media empires, and bundling many writings on the same topic, and so on).
To begin, ask yourself these initial questions:
- How often do you want to post/publish? (Thought leader bloggers post 2-3 times each week, each blog is 300-500 words.)
- What topics will you write on? List several.
- What impact do you want the writing to have, on what audience?
- How will you build that audience? Social media? Linkedin only? Twitter followers? Private development of your networking list? Local or worldwide?
- What results do you want to achieve from your selected audience? Conversion to customers for your products? Credibility in your professional community? Attraction of prospects for your services?
- For now, only focus on your original writing, not on aggregating content from other bloggers.
If you can identity what you want to achieve, from what market/audience, and how to reach that audience, and what content you need to create to pull in that audience, then you are on your way to using your time effectively in content creation. You may need help from partners: strategic guidance or practical implementation of the marketing strategy. That’s all part of the plan too.
I know it is exhilarating to launch into your most creative endeavors. But if you are building a product or service business, or a consultancy, then time and effort are you most valuable assets. So focusing only on the efforts that will bring you the best results is critical to your survival. For that, you need some objective thinking and planning before you begin.
Good luck.
Benjamin Franklin’s 14 lessons for taking action
Benjamin Franklin, writer, inventor and founding father, offered us 14 lessons for taking action. These are valuable insights and reminders for entrepreneurs, consultants and other independent spirits. Some have become proverbs in our common language:
- “Well done is better than well said.”
- “Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today.”
- “By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”
- “When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.”
- “All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.”
- “Never confuse motion with action.”
- “Do not fear mistakes. You will know failure. Continue to reach out.”
- “To succeed, jump as quickly at opportunities as you do at conclusions.”
- “Be at war with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better man.”
- “Diligence is the mother of good luck.”
- “There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self.”
- “Who had deceived thee so often as thyself?”
- “Energy and persistence conquer all things.”
- “Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.”
Excerpted with thanks from a post by Thea Easterby at BusinessInsider.com.
#7 Ability to speak in public (from “The 12 characteristics of successful consultants”)
For outreach to new clients (beyond client references to new prospects), nothing is more effective than an excellent and carefully-structured presentation to a room filled with potential clients. The ability to speak in public is key to attracting new clients and spreading your reputation across the world.
And now with easy-to-use-and-distribute video over the Internet, and recorded webinars, you can reach an even larger audience without even showing up!
There are key strategies to effective speaking, if you mean to attract your new clients from the effort. Here is a topline list:
- Research your industry trade shows and conferences to determine which ones are actually addressing your potential client base (the ones that can hire you). Do not bother with events where there are no prospects in the audience, unless this presentation is pro-bono work.
- Answer the conference’s “call for speakers” and find someone in your network to introduce you to one of the decision-makers. If possible, write directly to the decision-maker separately.
- Write an effective blurb with a compelling title, a brief summary of the issues and the “take-aways” for the audience.
- Make certain your short bio (less than 200 characters — not words) states clearly your unique value proposition and your URL.
- Show your expertise without telling your audience the tactics to achieve the results. Stay at the “strategic and results” level in your talk. Details will lose their interest and give away the value you are offering.
- Do not pitch for work from the stage. Not only is this against the understood etiquette of public speaking (and will result in your not being invited back by the conference coordinators), it undermines your “negative selling” approach to prospecting.
- While you must not pitch, you must ask for a direct connection with those in the audience who may want your services. This is done by inviting those with specific issues to speak with you after the presentation, or by offering some trinket you will send to them if they leave their card.
- Make certain all your contact information is on your opening and your closing slides. Speak your name clearly, and state your URL and email address as you introduce yourself, so the recording can capture it for audiences not in the room, and to reach those potential clients who cannot stay to speak with you afterwards.
- State your value proposition early on, and give examples, during your presentation, of one or two stories (presented as case studies) where you had success that addresses the pain felt by the audience on your topic. People love stories, so embed your successes as stories, particularly those stories with humor.
- Wrap up with your selected invitation(s), and leave yourself at least an hour or more following the conclusion of the presentation to handle those who want to speak with you.
- After you have presented your topic a few times, and received some feedback, refine the presentation into a webinar to be offered to online groups of prospects, and later archived and presented many times to a professional or media group’s membership base.
- Post your slides, video and/or audio presentation on your website (or the link to it on the conference site’s archives), and announce its posting to your database of clients, prospects and colleagues and through your social media networks.
This one-to-many personal, live connection to a group of prospects will attract both potential clients (who will feel they know you because they have watched you for more than an hour), and will create “buzz” among those who are not prospects, spreading your reputation into market spaces you are not even considering. The wide distribution of the presentation will attract folks you don’t know and couldn’t meet otherwise. As a prospecting tool for consulting clients, nothing is more effective.
Life is long — do you know where your money will come from to last to 100?
A new statistic on how long we live caught my attention recently, supporting my assumption that many of us, certainly Millennials and GenXs, and many Baby Boomers, will live to be 100.
We need to plan for this. That means we need to plan our finances around it, and our insurance strategies. All very dull, I know, and even meaningless to my younger clients. But true all the same.
Here is the quote — the reporter was addressing aging Baby Boomers:
“If you and your spouse are now 65, there’s a 50 percent chance that one of you will live to age 92 and a 25 percent chance that one of you will live to be 97,” says Weatherford. She adds that you should hold off as long as you can before dipping into Social Security because you could have 30 more years of life — and expenses — to look forward to.” (quoted from Shereen Marisol Meraji, Marketplace, 11.07.2012).
And my advice is simple, whether you are an entrepreneur, a consultant, or a normal employed person, of any age, of any health:
- Set up your retirement accounts as early in your life as possible. Not only does this give the principal longer to grow in value (and recover from unexpected downturns), it is deductible, so you pay lower taxes.
- Build the discipline of contributing to these accounts, even a small amount at a time, consistently, out of your gross income – -before you see it, and before you can spend it. You won’t miss it most years, and it will save you later.
- If you are not truly expert in investing your retirement (or other) monies, get professional help. Get personal recommendations to money managers from your colleagues, explore their success records, interview them, and choose one to work with whom you feel you can trust, and whose approach to the markets aligns with your own. Review the status of your accounts with them quarterly, meet with them yearly, and understand that your investment strategy will change as you get older (it will become more conservative as you get older and your needs shift).
- Do not rely on the government, the health industry, your family, or the future generations to care for you, whether you are ill or healthy, financially secure or not. There is no way to know what conditions will apply when we need the care, at any age. We do not control world economic conditions, natural disasters or unthinkable tragedies.
- As soon as you can financially do it, invest in long-term care insurance. If you are self-employed as an entrepreneur or consultant, also add disability insurance. See my recent blogpost.
- If you are a Boomer, and have long-term care insurance, investigate likely assisted-living facilities now, while you are healthy and calm, and advise your family of your first two or three choices — ones you prefer in your neighborhood, that you can live in on your annual long-term care benefits. This will give you the quality of life you want, and save your family untold stress trying to sort this out when you suddenly, in some emergency, must make such a move.
- Find, interview and work with consultants in your neighborhood who do all the research for you and set up appointments for you to see local assisted-living facilities, well in advance of your need for them — at no cost to you (they get referral fees from the facilities). These folks are usually very helpful and not sales-driven. Choose one who covers your preferred neighborhoods and represents many facilities.
- Remember that neither long-term care nor assisted living is age-dependent. You can become injured, ill, or need assisted living, at any age.
Sometimes I feel like the ant in the old fable about the ant and the grasshopper, when I was a fine grasshopper myself once. But this strategy has worked for me, and I urge you to take the necessary steps now to protect all you have invested in your life and health and business.
#6 Financial calm in the face of “free-fall” (from “The 12 characteristics of successful consultants”)
This characteristic of successful consultants may be the most difficult to learn and maintain, because it is an attitude and a way of life, rather than a skill or a tactic. Maintaining a calm and positive attitude in the face of “free-fall” — the rise and fall of your revenue over time, and the frequent inability to predict where your next nickel will come from — this is essential to success over the long term, and for the creation of wealth from your practice.
Trust me, the free-fall never goes away. You can work as a great success for years, with more work than you can handle, and your 15 minutes of fame can carry you along. But many forces are beyond your control completely, and they can hurt your practice. The economy can tank and your clients cannot keep you; technology can overtake and replace your expertise; your services can become part of a general price-reduction in your market sector, reducing your margins to nothing. Beyond these large-scale disasters, you can fall ill or become injured (remember insurance for disability and long-term care), or a force of nature like an earthquake or storm can destroy what you have built.
You can learn to remain calm, and practice a zen-like approach to business over time. It helps to have a positive nature to begin with, and confidence in your value and abilities, as well as a good dose of optimism.
Some steps to learning to live in this calm state:
- When the good times are upon you, always keep your pipeline filled with prospects, and keep moving them toward becoming paying clients. Letting your pipeline dry up because you are working is a sure way to lose your profits for the year, or your practice altogether (more on this in #10 and #11).
- As soon as possible, and ongoing, keep your back-up capital funds filled up. This will help to hold you through the down times.
- Do not assume your current success will apply to your markets in the future, no matter how much you are now in demand. Keep up with changes in your market sector, particularly technology and economic trends that may affect your client base and their needs.
- Adapt your services to what the market needs most, not what you have historically offered. You may need to adapt every 4-5 years to keep relevant (especially if you work in technology or an other rapidly-changing market). Embrace that change as a renewal — it will keep you learning new skills and fresh in your approach.
- When the down times comes, suddenly or over time from market and economic shifts, allow yourself a few minutes (not too long) to panic, feel sorry for yourself, get angry, whatever is your style. Get it out of your system. Then set to work.
- Assess the cause of the downturn, and address your next tactical steps to re-positioning, re-building, or re-inventing your practice.
- Take the time to figure out the real cause of the downturn. Whether it was your error or factors beyond your control, do not set blame on yourself or on others (useless waste of time, that). Just get active.
- Do not allow yourself to become depressed or frightened. Better to be angry than depressed. Best to be neither depressed nor angry nor frightened, but to be busy working to restore, to re-connect with colleagues, prospects and clients to learn what is needed to re-vitalize or re-establish your practice. Make yourself go out and see people. Make lists and accomplish them with discipline. All these tactics fight off the demons that paralyze your action.
- Pay attention to what you learn, what you do, what works and what does not work. The only way to re-invent or re-establish is to notice, then act on what you see. Then test to see if you are correct. Then re-adjust, and test again until you see positive results.
- While you are paying attention, ask yourself, “What’s the worst that can happen?” Then notice if that dread actually comes about. It rarely does. Something may happen but it is not usually what you anticipate. But if you don’t stop long enough to realize that your worst fears do not come true, you will repeat those fears and slow down your successful movement forward. If you regularly note what dread is in your head, and how it does not arrive (and what does arrive that needs addressing), you will strengthen your resolve to move forward (this is how courage is honed), and learn to put aside your fears.
This is the secret: to acknowledge your feelings (all of them), to put them aside so you can work and be sensible, and to notice that your worst fears do not arrive, and that you survive these downturns. Then, over time, this knowledge becomes embedded in you as a habit, and you remain calm in the face of the always-present possibility of a downturn.
Consulting as a life-choice demands this strength of character, and it can be exercised like a muscle, to keep you on course through good times and bad.
The ancient @ connects the modern world
Called “the snail” by the Italians, and “the monkey” by the Dutch, the @ symbol was first documented in use in 1536.
Our elegant @ has been inducted into the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.
In 1971, Ray Tomlinson was working at BBN Networks (where he still works) on developing a communication system (between programmers so they could be connected across their computers) for Arpanet, a precursor to the Internet. He needed a key on his Model 33 teletype keyboard which was not already in use by the programmers. And the @ sign was brought forward from its obscurity.
Here’s a gem from the Smithsonian Magazine online:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Accidental-History-of-the-at-Symbol-165593146.html
And here is a post from Ray Tomlinson himself on this first use of the @ symbol:
openmap.bbn.com/~tomlinso/ray/firstemailframe.html
I must say I am delighted to find these stories, and grateful.
“A definition of globalization”
This gem arrived in my inbox and gave me a laugh. I share it as I leave on a bit of a road trip up the Big Sur… will return to these writings soon.
A definition of globalization that I can understand and to which I now can relate:
Question:
What is the truest definition ofGlobalization?
Answer:
Princess Diana’s death.
Question:
How come?
Answer :
An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend
crashes in a French tunnel,
riding in a German car
with a Dutch engine,
driven by a Belgian
who was drunk on Scottish whisky,
followed closely by Italian Paparazzi,
on Japanese motorcycles,
treated by an American doctor,
using Brazilian medicines.
This is sent to you by a Canadian,
using American Bill Gates’ technology,
and you’re probably reading this on your computer,
that uses Taiwanese chips,
and a Korean monitor,
assembled by Bangladeshi workers
in a Singapore plant,
transported by Indian truck drivers,
hijacked by Indonesians,
unloaded by Sicilian longshoremen,
and trucked to you by Mexican illegal immigrants…..
That, my friends, is Globalization !
The value of a quick response, and tactics when you don’t get one
Strange, as connected as we all are now, with all our always-on devices attached to our bodies, that professional responsiveness can be so slow. The value of a quick and respectful answer or acknowledgment to a communication is the perception of you as a consummate professional. It makes people say of you, “That person always does what she says she will do.” It heightens their assumption of your capabilities as well.
I admit to having my grandmother’s etiquette, from which I cannot escape, and frankly, don’t want to escape. That means I respond in a respectable time frame with courtesy to all communications, including requests for my time and attention even from students and followers and others who will never be clients, from around the world.
It means if I accept a connection on Linkedin, I look at the profile and send a short message to that person as I connect with him or her.
It means I answer emails from distant colleagues, audience members and others as soon as I can on my priority list.
I am as busy as the rest of my professional cohort. So of course I prioritize: client and family requests come first, and everyone is asked to let me know the urgency of the request, prospects next, then colleagues and other professional contacts after that, and personal correspondence at the end of the day or week, if appropriate.
My clients tell me that their relationships with their virtual assistants, web techies and others often begin well (when they are new clients for these workers) and then the communication deteriorates. This is true even if a good working relationship has been established. I wonder at this (and yes, I have experienced it too, and I make strong relationships) and cannot find an understanding for this behavior, which seems just lax and counterproductive to me. Why ever would a freelancer alienate a respectful paying client?
Perhaps it is in the nature of virtual work, or a general lack of discipline among freelancers.
But it isn’t only these freelancers. To be efficient, I often offer a colleague or a prospect two or three days/times when we can connect (by phone, Skype or face-to-face), and I will sometimes not get an answer for a few days. Meanwhile I am holding open those times for this meeting, because I offered them. This makes a mess of my calendar and other planning.
So, I have started a new way of approaching this:
- If I do not get a response within 30 hours (this is a working day and a morning), I free my schedule and wait to hear back, then let the contact know what times are now available.
- If my virtual helpers do not respond within two days (for a non-urgent request), I ping one more time, and then move on to find someone else to complete my request.
- I keep several sources of support available at all times. I collect them, vet them, and stay in touch with them. It may be a hassle to switch teams, but the work gets done.
- I keep notes on how my various clients like to communicate, and I reach them the way they prefer — by email, by text, by Skype, by phone. One client only responded if I asked a single question with a yes or no answer in the subject line of an email. I learned this quickly and we worked together long distance for many years.
- When my husband’s kids don’t answer email, I ping them on Facebook and get an answer right away.
- Years ago, one of my (really old) elders remarked, “What could anyone possibly talk about for an hour between Boston and Los Angeles?”
The world has changed how it keeps in touch, and we each need to adapt to the all the options, the preferences, the generational differences, and the “not-so-good manners” of those around us. But we can set the boundaries that let us move on with our work and our lives.
The effective 6 or 10-minute speech (short form brilliance in public speaking)
In our fast-moving, sound-bited workplace, we are often asked to be really intelligent and cogent in a short amount of time, without much preparation. Panel presentations sometimes allow only 6 minutes to make your point, show your expertise, and encourage your potential customers or clients to speak to you after the event. Sometimes you get 10 minutes, or two opportunities of 4 minutes each. It’s a lot of pressure.
Here are some guidelines for short form brilliance in public speaking:
- The audience will only remember two things you say, so only make two points.
- Back up your two points with two supporting assertions or examples.
- Do not tell stories (an example is not a story) — the shortest story will take you 3 minutes to deliver, and you will run out of time to show your value.
- Align your two key points with your highest value proposition — the best two features of your products, or the best results of your consultancy. You want the audience to remember your best offerings.
- After you have presented your two points and two supporting examples, draw a conclusion.
- A conclusion is an assertion of the value of your offering (product or expertise) presented as key results of engaging with you or your product. Or it is a mild threat of the consequences of not engaging with you or your product. Both approaches are the final statement that reflects the self-interest of the audience to contact you.
Some simple preparation can make your few minutes of fame effective in getting to the next step — the only step you want from these presentations — interesting prospects seeking you out for more information.
Good luck.