How to start your own Consulting Business with Michael Zipursky

Very excited to bring Michael Zipursky of Consulting Success to the podcast. Michael has been helping people run their own consulting business for almost 15 years and has a huge track record of success. Michael came on the show and asked questions around:

What is the overwhelming scenario of people wanting to start their own consulting business? What are the first steps? How to overcome Imposter Syndrome? the Consulting Mindset The biggest challenge most people run into How to scale your business and not burn out

Transcript:

Jeff  01:11

Hey, there, it's Jeff. Thanks again for tuning in. I wanted to talk a little bit about the next episode a little bit different type of episode, but I thought it would be extremely valuable. Just as a side note, I got into a little bit at the intro, but with Michael Zipursky. From consulting success, a lot of people have asked me recently, probably once or once at least once or twice a month over the last year or so Hey, how did you go out? What did you do X, Y, and Z. And I usually point them to Michael stuff. I asked him to be on the podcast and he graciously said yes. And Michael's grave. He gets into the ABCs of everything. I asked some in depth questions, but he has so much material out there and he wants gives it all away for free as we get into a little bit. But anyways, hope you really enjoy it. Michaels awesome, it feel free to ask me any questions on this stuff as well, too. If you can send me a LinkedIn message. If not, send me an email off the website. But I really enjoyed the conversation. Michael is also a podcast Pro. So he sounds great answers questions great and everything. So I really hope you guys enjoyed this episode. And see you on the next one. All right, we are live on joined by Michael Zipursky. So Michael, thanks again. Super pleasure to have you on the show. First of all, because I'm a huge listener of the podcast. So for you to say, you know, yeah, I'll jump on yours just means a lot to me. So thanks a lot.

Michael Zipursky  02:53

And my pleasure, Jeff, thank you for having me. Yeah.

Jeff  02:56

So one of the reasons why I was super excited to get you on is that I think, you know, we've talked about this a little bit the past, I had been doing some side stuff for a little bit and then went out on my own, right in the middle of COVID. Or at the beginning of it all. And what I started hearing from my network or doing podcasts as my network to was after we stopped recording, like, hey, how do you how did you do all this right? And so I'm like, Oh, just go subscribe to this guy over here and read his books and everything. But you know, I do have a lot of listeners that I don't necessarily have that one on one communication with. But I definitely get these types of questions. And I just thought it'd be great to have a podcast, which is a little different, you know, just to reframe the conversation. I'm a professional services consultant for SaaS b2b people. And, and I have people that are just in the industry and like still doing it, right. We don't go through the autobiographical stuff as much as like, how do you do XY and Z, it's sharp talk for professional services, and SaaS people, Customer Success stuff. So, you know, a lot of my peers, we're starting to get to that point where we're like, hey, this would be a good thing to do. So I have some questions about that. But first, I just wanted to give you a chance to, you know, tell everybody, like when you made that move, when you were looking, you know, I was looking through your LinkedIn profile and the jobs that you had, and I've heard your stories and your your Japan trip and things like that, where you just said, You know what, I see something here. I'm gonna go for it. And I'd love to hear about that moment.

Michael Zipursky  04:30

Yeah, well, I mean, for me, this all started when I was really transitioning from high school into college, and my cousin Sam and I, who's my business partner at consulting success. To this day, we started a business together, and it was a web design development business. He did more of the or did all the design and development and I was really client management, communications marketing strategy. And I was applying at that time what I was learning thing from reading a lot of books on the topic of business and marketing and strategy. And so that was really how I got started in in consulting. And that business was a great experience. We started another consulting business after that, and several more after that, as well. And just to kind of fast forward on the story, what happened was, is through having quite a bit of success, running consulting businesses, both Sam and I thought one day, we were at a family barbecue one summer, and we were working on different businesses at that time, we said, we, you know, let's do something together, again, but this time, let's do it online. And this was kind of the early ish days, still, I mean, there's a lot of business happening online, but it was still relatively early, so about 13 years or so ago, let's say. And we decided to launch consulting success. And the idea behind it was simply because we didn't have a monetization plan. At that point, we thought, let's just figure out how we can share our experience of building consulting businesses. And let's be very open and transparent about what we found had worked, what we found didn't work. And so we shared, you know, The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly, of running, consulting businesses, and really kind of stories from the trenches. And so for the first year, or two, we were just putting out a lot of content with our experiences, and people were reaching out and kind of built a community around that saying, Hey, guys, like this is great content, do you have a course that can show us how to become successful consultants? And we said, No, but we'll, we'll create one. And so we did. And, you know, had some good success with that. And then many of those clients who were seeing success said, This is really great. You know, I feel clear, I'm making progress, I'm generating more income of ABA. Do you have coaching? Like, can I work more personally more closely with you guys? And we said, No, we don't have that kind of program, but we'll create one. And so fast forward to this day, you know, we've had now several 1000 consultants, and people go through our training programs to become a successful consultant. That's called momentum. And we've had now about 600, some odd consultants who have come through our clarity coaching program, where we really work closely with them to help them to grow their consulting businesses in in a meaningful way.

Jeff  07:17

Yeah, no, absolutely. And, Michael, of course, such a gentleman, he's not doing that huge sell that I will say, Michael program puts together this sort of like, made for you recipe, you have to do the work. But this is the work that you need to do is that is that a fair statement to say? Or?

Michael Zipursky  07:34

Yeah, I mean, our momentum program is really more for the early stage console, and the person who might just be you know, a year or two into the business, or someone who's looking to transition from corporate to consulting, and just wants a proven roadmap that they can that they can follow. And then click the clarity coaching program is where we customize a plan and really helps develop a strategy. And then there's a lot more accountability and support and coaching. But like any program, or any investment, you know, that anyone makes, it's, it's always going to be your success will be tied to how much commitment, dedication and work you put into it. So we certainly do our best to support our clients. And we see very great successes. But at the end of the day, it's always going to be about how much work and commitment do you put into what what you're what you're doing?

Jeff  08:21

Absolutely. Actually, you had touched on something I want to transition into it, which is sort of the scenario where people say, I'm gonna go into doing my own thing. And I'm always amazed by just the variety. And we've touched on this earlier, like the disparate verticals that you sort of cover, but above the vertical aspect, is it have you do have any sort of overwhelming trends of when people decide to make that move? As in, I got laid off? I'm sick of the corporate thing. I needed a lifestyle like a kid like regardless, like I didn't know, you know, your demographics? Well, so, yeah,

Michael Zipursky  08:59

I mean, the so probably the most common is people saying, I've been thinking about doing this for some time. You know, but I just was waiting for the right time. And then the right time, typically comes when either there's some big disruption, which might be, you know, let's call it a pandemic, or it could be an economic collapse. Or it could simply be company downsizing, they get laid off. But it can also just be in many cases, when people look at their career, and think to themselves, you know, what, I don't really see a path to continue going up. Or I don't really feel like I'm doing my best work. I don't really feel like I'm realizing my potential. I'm tired of office politics. I mean, you know, there's many reasons that can push somebody over the line. But most people will say, yeah, it's something that I've been thinking about for quite some time, or my friends or colleagues, you know, have been telling me that'd be really good at doing this. And they just simply get to a point where they recognize that and feel that it's time for them to kind of take their, their future and their destiny into their own hands, and they make the leap.

Jeff  10:11

Absolutely. You know, one of the biggest problems that I had was the sort of imposter syndrome aspect of things. And do you find that that's a big thing? And is that something that you help people out with? Or is, I was always like, no, like, why would people come to me and you know, they're going to delete all my emails, if I send them and things like that. So,

Michael Zipursky  10:33

yeah, I think, Jeff, you're probably the only person in the world that's ever felt that, you know, I don't think that anybody can say that they that they haven't experienced or felt that at some point in their career or in their lives. And if they say that they haven't, I don't know, if they're being 100 100% truthful. It's very common. And, you know, I think I believe that imposter syndrome is really a symptom of pushing yourself into new areas, you know, going beyond the zone of the of the known into the unknown frontier. And it's simply a symptom or a sign that you're challenging yourself. And you should, you know, the early stages for a new consultant or a new entrepreneur, that can be that can feel overwhelming, it can create a lot of uncertainty and fear and discomfort. But for the more experienced consultants, you learn to channel to harness you to recognize that feeling, and and you embrace it. And it's why so often at the early stages of, you know, any business venture, you will look at, quote unquote, failures as, as real failures, and they'll, they'll knock down your self esteem, they'll make you doubt whether you should be doing this or not. But as time goes on those exact same feelings, you recognize them very quickly. But you brush them aside pretty fast, because you know, that they're just gonna come like they're, you know, fleeting in the moment, and, and then they're going to be gone, and you keep moving forward. But I certainly had many situations, where I asked myself, you know, am I am I cut out to do this? Do I deserve to be doing this, and I remember, you know, early on, when I was in Japan, I'd opened up a branch office for our business over there, I was advising organizations like Panasonic and Dow Jones and Financial Times and Sumitomo, and Omron, a whole bunch of other like, you know, multibillion dollar organizations, and I was a 20 something year old kid, you know, I was a young guy, and I was walking into boardrooms with mainly men who were in there, in many cases, you know, 50s 60s 70s, at boardroom tables. And I felt, you know, a lot of overwhelming a lot of not even over one, I think a lot of could have been fear uncertainty, I wasn't comfortable. Not only was I surrounded by people who were much older than I was not only, you know, where they had a much bigger company that my company was, but I was in a completely different culture, different language. And I was the outsider. And so early on, that was that was certainly create a lot of uncomfortable situations for me. But as I started to really understand why I was thinking that way. And what I've done over the years that I've had feel has really benefited me, and I hope maybe benefits your listeners as well, is anytime that I'm confronted with a challenge, I try to think to myself, what's the opposite of that? Like, what is the what is the advantage? What is the opportunity here? And so what I recognized is that, you know, you can always look at a situation and say, the grass is always greener. So when, for example, you're younger, you could look at people that are older and say, yeah, they have the advantage. When you're older, you typically say Well, yeah, the younger people have the advantage because they understand technology, or they're more, you know, more full of like vigor and youth and energy. Or many people say, Oh, I'm in a small town, right? This is pretty cool. But I'm in a small town. That's why my business isn't doing well. And then someone who's in a in a big city says, oh, yeah, the reason I'm doing well is because there's so much competition here, right? So it's always easier to kind of find and to point to the grass is greener, but what I found to be really beneficial is to look at a situation so for me in Japan, I first said, I'm the outsider, I you know, my I don't speak Japanese fluently yet. And I was working towards it. And I'm younger, I'm smaller company I was seeing through the negative lenses, but instead of what I did, and as I started to flip it to go, well, what's the positive lens here? What's How can I see this in a positive light, and what I recognized was the reason I was at the table, and the reason why they were valuing and paying for my advice and expertise is even though sighs I didn't necessarily feel like it was much expertise was because I was giving them a view into English speaking markets. I was able to take and look at what their what they were doing and presenting and planning and tell them how that would likely play out to an English speaker or to North American and European marketplaces. And that sign that they didn't have. It didn't matter that they were a multi billion dollar organization didn't matter that they had 10s of 1000s of staff, it didn't matter they were older, or any of those things because they didn't have what I had. And that's why I was in that room. And so when people start to talk about impostor syndrome, I always encourage them to think about and to recognize that, you know, all those other things that might be causing you to feel that way, put those to the side, ask yourself, there's probably a reason why you're at the table is probably a reason why you're having that conversation. And that's what you should focus on.

Jeff  15:25

Absolutely. No, that was great. Thanks for getting into that. So if people have not seen your work, or read the books, or listen to the podcast, we both sort of subscribe to the same philosophy in terms of our materials that we put out, which is, let's give it away. Like, I'm gonna just tell you everything that we know. So one part, I'd like to hear your philosophy on that, but but that's sort of teeing up to I'm gonna ask you a bunch of series of questions that, like, you don't have to pay for the program to get the answers do with all on your website and everything. But, um, but if there's a sort of 360 view into that, because that's a big thing that I'm sure you preach to your consultants as well to, like, put your knowledge out there, right?

Michael Zipursky  16:08

Yeah, well, I just, you know, look at the data, look at history, and you the people that you typically recognize as being the most successful, those who are most visible in the marketplace, those who most, you know, brands and organizations, whether profit or nonprofit, tend to go to are those who, for example, have written books, or, you know, they get up on stages, or they, you know, they make videos, like, they're the people who are publishing and distributing their, their ideas, their expertise, consistently. And so, you know, there's a lot in a book, right, you know, you have 300 pages, 200 pages, whatever, however long it might be something much less doesn't matter, but the the length, but there's a lot in there. And so if that person is giving away their their knowledge and so much detail, right, you might think, Well, why would why would somebody need to buy and pay them for their expertise? Well, they're paying for their expertise, because the most valuable and kind of scarce resource that we all have is time. And so a savvy buyer, who actually has the ability and the desire to become a client. And I mean, somebody who actually would, you know, become a client, and a buyer is someone who recognizes that they're not, they don't have the time to do everything themselves, they don't have the resources to do it themselves, they don't have the skills to do it themselves. And therefore, when they find somebody who has the expertise that they need, then it only makes sense for them to go to that person, there will always be people out there who will take your ideas, and try and run with them and implement them themselves. But those people typically are the ones who would never be your buyer, they would never actually pay for your advice, or they're not ready to buy anytime soon. So there's no harm in them actually consuming and trying to implement what they learned, because in many situations, you know, they're going to not be successful, and they'll have to come back to you or they might be successful, and all the power to them. And they'll give a credit to that success, you know, from you. And they'll think to themselves, wow, if I got so much of that information, you know, or so much value from that information that was free. Imagine what would happen when I actually engage with that person and paid the money and made an investment, you know, how much greater success and how much greater level of commitment, I would have to taking action? Because I've actually made an investment into it.

Jeff  18:27

Yeah, absolutely. Or they could share it out to their network and like, hey, you know, I remember, you know, people get together, they're talking about business problems. In suddenly they're like, oh, did you read this blog, post it, you should check this guy out, he knows what he's talking about, or whatever, personal. And then it just kind of goes from there. It's just, if you put it out there, my belief is people will see it, they'll recognize you as an authority. And if they, you know, I always write in the end something like hey, this, you know, it'll help understand, like, give me a call, maybe I can help you out or something like that. So that's great. So let's, I'm curious. Do you find people are more scared about doing the marketing or going out in hitting their network up or actually like launching sales? Are all three of those 33% Each or

Michael Zipursky  19:16

not? I'd say it's everything right? The most people are experts in their area, they know how to do great work and they know how to deliver value. They have in some cases experienced promoting the company, you know, products and services of where they've worked in the past. But the difference is when you're building a consulting business, you are the product and the service. And so it's not comfortable for most people to to talk about themselves, and to make themselves look good because society teaches you that you shouldn't do that. Right? society teaches you that you should put the focus like if you do that, you know people call you a jerk or like your your ego is big. And that's very understandable because if you went into a you know, into a new party and tried to just talk to people about how good you are and everything that you've done, they're gonna think that you know, something's wrong with you. But in your business, you have to toot your own horn, because if you don't, nobody else will do it for you. And, you know, I've had so many conversations with clients over the years, who have so much expertise, so many wonderful accomplishments and achievements, and then they never talk about them. But if you don't talk about them, then how can a potential buyer know about that value that you've created or that experience that you've had, and if they don't know about that, they're less likely to actually engage you. And so it's important that you become comfortable with putting all of your, your brilliance and expertise out into the world, it doesn't mean that you, you start off when you talk to them and just say everything that you've done. But that's where marketing, that's where especially content comes in, is that you can use content, you can use, you know, the written word, or videos or audio or whatever the format is, because they can all work. But you can tell your story. And you can shine a spotlight on your expertise through stories through examples through you know, knowledge, that very clearly demonstrates your understanding and the value that you can deliver. So that people very clearly see without you even having to tell them, like wow, this person really understands this area, look at what they've created here, look at the depth for the detail or, you know, the understanding that that they have, I have an issue in this in this area, I should probably talk to them. That's how that dynamic works. And certainly people aren't comfortable doing that right away. But if you want to have a thriving business that can withstand any challenges in any economy, and really is going to be successful for you long term, that this is one of these skills and mindsets that you definitely want to develop and embrace.

Jeff  21:41

Oh, that's awesome. So it's fun. I had one of these conversations yesterday with somebody and and they're like, No, I absolutely. Well, I just need a year. And so I know some people, this conversation will spark that in their mind. So let's get let's go down that road. So we're putting some stuff together as the initial foundational elements. Where would you suggest people start doing like, Hey, I'm gonna go and create my google doc on how I'm gonna get my business going in the next year? What sort of Northstar would you point them towards?

Michael Zipursky  22:13

Well, so the first thing that I would say is, there's two typical paths to getting into the consulting business. The first is that you, you kind of nibble at it, right? You, you start to build a business on the side, almost like what some people call a side hustle. Right? Meaning that you still have, what's that?

Jeff  22:32

I did the same thing, but people were right. So you just help out over here and like, Okay,

Michael Zipursky  22:37

right. And for many people, you know, that's going to be the best path for them. Because maybe they're in a situation where they don't have a bunch of savings. And they're, you know, they are the sole provider for their family. And they just, they just either aren't comfortable with the level of risk, or they're not able to, they don't, they're not confident and able to just make that leap and go 100% into consulting. And so for those people, right, what they're gonna want to do is start to look at who in their network can they connect with. And, you know, and take on some small projects on the side, until they get their their revenue and their confidence to a level where they feel that they can now make that leap and go, you know, 100% full and but regardless of whether you do that, or you're now you know, no longer with your previous employer, and you've kind of put your shingle out there. And you know, science said, Yeah, I'm open for business as a consultant, the best place to always start is with your existing connections. We've worked with many clients who have been in that transition period where they're still working at their job, a full time job, but they now want to transition to becoming a consult. And what we've done in most of those cases, is actually help them to look at how their existing client can become, or sorry, their existing employer can become their first client, and their steps and ways to make that transition. So that'd be the first thing. The second thing is to really look at, you know, who is in your network, your colleagues, your past employers, suppliers, vendors, just relationships that you have in the industry. And this is what we call, we have a kind of a whole campaign around, it's called a network reactivation campaign, but the whole idea is to reactivate the relationships that you have, and hopefully, you've been building relationships and you've been, you know, creating value and you have connections with people. But that's always low hanging fruit is to start there. And for so many consultants, that actually becomes how they get their first clients without having to do a great deal of initial marketing through the right kind of network reactivation. When you say the right things, and you have the right message and all that kind of stuff. It's a great way to to start having conversations with people that can very quickly lead to them saying, hey, you know, now that you're not no longer working full time, they're like, actually, I'd love to get your help in this area. And so that's what I typically suggest that people do to begin.

Jeff  24:51

Yeah, and I just want to say, we didn't write the scripts out for each other. I follow those exact steps. And just for anybody listening, I have not done any direct marketing emails, it was all all done on my own for a year now. And everything is through network reactivation that Michaels discussing right now. And just letting people know you're open and available, I remember, you know, if you're in a good relationship with your customers, and you're just starting out, and you've got somebody in either asking you for 40 hours of work, or 30, to have that conversation with them. So you know, when to start looking for more. That's one type. And I know, you know, microfinance is about sort of, I think maybe we can talk about the next age about having a little bit more of a predictable, you've been out there on your own for a year. And in you want to not live project to project. So we should probably talk about that. That element, which is like your time, that's the only thing that you have, in ways that you find people are able to diversify their business in for more repeatable volume and transactional stuff.

Michael Zipursky  25:59

Yeah. So the this is really what I call the kind of the marketing maturity model. So once you're kind of beyond leveraging, and and reactivating, or activating your, your networking connections, the next step, and this is very important, because, you know, consistently, we have people reaching out who have either, you know, had some success, or in some cases had great success for many years. And they've just lived on the, on the back of referrals and their network. And it's gotten them to, you know, in some cases, even millions of dollars in revenue, and sales and so forth. But at some point, they recognize that they can't continue growing. And maybe it's somebody who's got to 60,000 a year and they but they can't get beyond that, or somebody's that half a million they can't get beyond the number doesn't matter. But at some point, you'll start to see that your what I call the referral, well, we'll start to dry up. And if you're wise, you will be proactive and taking steps before that actually happens. But even if you wait too long, the sooner that you start building marketing into your business, the sooner you'll start getting the benefits and results from that. So there's the marketing maturity models, essentially, kind of dictates or or states there's, there's two different big forms of marketing, you have outbound marketing, right, which is doing outreach, and you contact you reaching out to an ideal client, and you have inbound where an ideal client comes to you. And the Holy Grail that every consultant wants is just to pretty much have a business built on inbound, where ideal clients reach out to them consistently, because the fact is, no one really enjoys doing outreach, no one really enjoys having to, you know, knock on people's doors and, and, you know, introduce yourself and, and be the one to to reach out to somebody, everybody wants just to have to wake up and have emails coming in and phone calls coming in, right from people who want to build your business, the challenge is that to create enough inbound lead flow, it takes time, it's a long term strategy. And so if you are earlier stage in your business, you're gonna need to spend more time and a higher percentage of your time doing outbound and outreach. And when you do that, the reason why it's so important is because one way of doing inbound as an example would be you write a really valuable article, you put it on your website or on LinkedIn, or you do a guest post or, you know, things of that nature. But unless you have a website that generates a lot of traffic already, you could put that up on your website. And it could take months for you to actually start seeing the benefits of search engine optimization and getting enough people to your, your website where it really matters. But with outbound, I can literally go onto LinkedIn today or access some kind of a list. And I can find an ideal client and I can send them an email today, like I can call them today I can, I can take action to get in front of my ideal client today. And that's that's the power of outbound over inbound is it with inbound number one is you can't dictate or you can't control who is going to come to you right with that. And so even with with advertising, if you start an ad campaign, it's going to typically take, you know, one to three months, if not longer to really dial it in to make it work for you. Whereas with outbound, you can make a list of 510 5500 people who are your true ideal clients, and again, reaching out to them today, tomorrow next week. And so it's much faster. So the concept here is you start off with a higher percentage of your time doing outbound because it can start generating results for you faster. So and then you have a lower percentage doing the inbound stuff. As time goes on, and your lead flow increases and you have a stronger pipeline, you have clients, you're gonna be able to switch your percentage of time from doing outbound to doing more inbound. And then as time goes on, and your business is really doing, you know, well, and you have quite, you know, plenty of clients, then you won't really need to do much outbound at all, if any, because your inbound will already be the seeds will be planted. It'll be, you know, bringing you great results over time. And it'll just continue, you just can kind of continue to feed that machine. So that's the progression that people can kind Think about

Jeff  30:00

Yeah, no. And that's it's a couple of points on that, because I don't want people to feel overwhelmed. First of all, if, if you can correct me where I'm wrong, the experts, if you price yourself correctly, I want I want people to not feel like oh my god, I'm gonna be signing up for 60 hours a week to do this, it's, I've found, it's the opposite. If I priced my offerings fair bit correctly, in that I can work 30 hours a week, and spend 10 hours back into my business. And that more than covers off sort of the elements that we're talking about. Yeah, there's a little upfront stuff when I was putting the website together. But but there's that aspect. And then there's this other element of creating repeatable processes in items that you can that can get you in the door faster, or not have to be like, Oh, my God, I only have 40 hours to work. How am I going to do what I need to do?

Michael Zipursky  30:56

Yeah, yeah, no, I agree with I mean, you're getting to a really big topic here that we could spend days talking about pricing strategy, how are we going to get into the Yeah, but no, I think it's a really, really important topic, because very often people under price and under charge, right, and so they have low fees, which leads to them having to work a lot more hours. And, again, I'm not a big fan of working on an hourly basis. Because you're essentially just trading time for money, there's a lot of dynamics between the client and the console that don't really don't work very well. But even given that, if you're charging too low or too little, you, you end up having to work a lot more. And then when you're working a lot more, you have less time to actually work on your business. And so this is one of the things a lot of consultants run up against, you know, inevitably at some point in their business, which is they're too busy delivering working in the business, they have no time as Michael Gerber says right to, to work on the business. And then you're essentially just all you've done is create another job for yourself. And that's, that's an errant, you know, something that you want to be wary of. And so being very kind of, you know, intentional and conscious of, how do you want to price yourself, what makes sense, what doesn't make sense. And you might give yourself a little bit more wiggle room early on, to make some mistakes with that, because you don't always know right off the bat, unless you're getting some really good, you know, kind of guidance and experience around that. But it's okay to make some mistakes early on and learn from them. But But you certainly want to structure your business and your time, so that you always have time to work on the business and not only in it.

Jeff  32:25

That's right. And if people are looking for suggestions, especially since this is a big, professional services type thing, in terms of the people listening to this, there's nothing wrong with having a checklist, a consulting, basically starter agreement, where you get in and do some discovery, and do the research that you need to do in order to put together some more pricing and some more bounds around what's going on. And and you can then have this same format that you use over and over again, I'm going to guarantee that McKinsey and Bain everybody, they've got their template, and they do it but it's as long as it's successful, and you're providing value. I felt bad about that originally, like, Oh, I'm taking this client's thing genericized and rolling up to the next and I'm like, but it gets the job of what we need to do. Because if we're getting paid for our pattern recognition, then we're able to say like, I know, usually when I get right into the situation, I'm going to take the bias off. But I usually see these types of things. And I dive deep into them and everything like for me, people like oh, okay, your onboarding and implementations haven't worked? Well? Are you? You know, do you have project plans? Do you? Are you selling, you know, are you telling the customers in pre sales, what they're doing and things like that. And so there are ways that you can productize these elements, and you should not feel bad about them. You're being paid to be streamlined. And you're getting paid back to what Michael was saying on your experience. And that's what they're bringing you on for like, you can probably get out of 10 hours of research what it might take somebody else 15 or 20, because you've been around and you know what these, you know, where the bodies are buried usually and stuff like that. So awesome. Well, Michael shaking his head, so I'm glad we're in agreement on that one. So let's say we're about, you know, a couple more minutes into this a couple quick, rapid fire questions. Individual versus company, as in, I'm a solo person versus like, oh, no, I'm gonna get 510 People in the accounting and X, Y, and Z. Where do you usually caution people in those sort of areas?

Michael Zipursky  34:32

I don't caution them. I always suggest to people spend some time thinking about what's meaningful for them. What does success look like? There's there's three and a half business models that typically work really well for consultants. It's good for you to know which one is the right one for you. You can decide to be a solo independent consultant for the life of your business and do extremely well be very profitable, have a great lifestyle. But the opposite is also true, you could be a sole independent consultants feeling overworked and you just have a job and no time to enjoy life. And the same thing is true for having a firm, you know, where you have a bunch of people, you structure that appropriately, if you enjoy that it can create a lot more freedom for you can make the business significantly more valuable in case you ever want to sell it in the future. But the true the opposite is also true, right? You could end up being miserable, because you don't actually enjoy managing people and you don't like systems. And so there's no right or wrong is really what I get out here, Jeff. But whichever, whatever path you choose, it's important that you define what your model is, because depending on your model, then you're going to take different steps to build your business. Right. So we have clients who generate, you know, several million dollars every year and they have teams, we have others who you know, are solo independent consultants doing about a million dollars a year, and then you have, you know, a whole bunch that are lower and higher, like everything in between, there's no right or wrong. But the advice or guidance that we would give to somebody, for example, who is let's say, a solo consultant with maybe with a virtual assistant, you know, would be potentially different, depending on their goals are compared to somebody who actually wants to build a team of five or 10 people, because they're, they're gonna have different requirements, they'll need some different infrastructure, they'll, their priorities will be different.

Jeff  36:18

Yeah, I was just thinking when you're talking about that, I can't imagine doing this. When I originally started thinking about it like 2010, right? There was no, I'll let you know what, like SaaS-based services, like, Oh, I'm gonna do my billing through this system. You know, I don't have to go hire a bookkeeper. And then like, Fiverr, up work, just being able to like, oh, you know, what, I don't like my PowerPoint ability to create graphics, I'm gonna have this done in 24 hours with an expert. And I mean, because you started doing this before this all started happening, what were people doing beforehand, were they just hiring bring out lots of people or big making bigger companies or,

Michael Zipursky  36:59

I mean it. So again, it's both some people were were just being like, when I started out 20 plus years ago, I was very hesitant in, you know, in our first company, or the first, I should say, the first consultancy that I was running myself, I was very hesitant to, to bring on other people early on, because I thought I can do this myself, I don't want to spend money on other people, it'll take me longer to try and train them. And I was wrong, you know, I was very wrong, because it's very hard to be successful. And to create a great lifestyle, and to have, you know, your time and freedom and all that kind of stuff. And to really make a big impact. Like if, if you want to stay where you are, that's fine. But if you want to continue growing, it's very hard to do that all by yourself that you can't do everything by yourself, there's very, very few people that can do that. And that's where learning how to find contractors, or freelancers or actually full time people or part time, whatever it might be, is incredibly important. Because if you try and do everything yourself, what's gonna end up happening is you spend a lot of time on low value tasks that you shouldn't be doing yourself. And you might think that it's more beneficial for you to do it yourself. But in fact, if you understand value, you'll quickly realize that when you could hire somebody for let's say, $50 an hour, which is a great rate that you can get really, really, really good people for $50 an hour. And let's say your average value, even if you don't use hourly fees, which you shouldn't, but let's say you do, and your average is $250 an hour, that's a 50. You know, you're essentially losing $200 an hour, every time you do that activity yourself because it's low value, you can get somebody else to do it for $50 an hour. So when you see that, it you start to go Oh, wow, that that actually means that by bringing somebody on to help me with these things, I'm actually going to be able to go out and create $200 in additional value every hour, that right now where I'm losing $200 Every hour,

Jeff  38:43

and on that note, I'm like, I don't think my customers want me to be doing that work for that hourly rate, like like, oh, sorry, this took me an extra three hours and sorry, the bills a little bigger, but like I'm terrible with like,

Michael Zipursky  38:58

exactly, yeah, it's a very good it's a very good point. Yeah, I would agree.

Jeff  39:02

Okay, so I'm gonna let people know where to find you and everything is in a minute, but for for the last couple of months, I've been asking people try and get into the more human thing. What your COVID hobby has been, you know, what's the you know, what have you dug into? I know you're super you know, big into all the work and everything but has there been a thing like we've got the bread baking I know somebody who started like fly fishing and things like that.

Michael Zipursky  39:33

I bought a boat. Oh, wow. Okay, that's that's one but I mean, I think that the bigger the there haven't really been, I mean, aside from the boat like a Wednesday there's big shifts in in my life like it's interesting for us because we were already you know, a distributed virtual company with clients and and team members all around the world that when COVID hit, you know, we didn't really have an impact that our business just got busier and And so you know, it's a nice problem to have, we felt and continue to feel very fortunate. We had to work a lot harder, you know, to support our clients and the demand and all that kind of stuff. But the real big shift for me, I mean, I, I'm in the office right now I walk from my house is 15 minutes or so or less. So again, there's no impact there on COVID, the big the biggest impact or biggest change for me, Jeff hasn't really been a hobby, I continue to do all the same things that I've done before, the only other thing that's really changed is I used to go to the gym pretty much every day. And then when COVID started, I stopped going to the gym, I've elderly parents, I didn't really want to take a chance. And so I just started to run. And you know where I am, there's all kinds of weather, a lot of rain. And I just decided I'm just gonna run every day, every morning, regardless of what the weather's like. And so you I don't know if I call it a hobby, something that doesn't feel like the most fun when it's early in the morning, but I get it done. And so yeah, I spent the last year plus now running through through sun and, and wind and rain and snow and everything else. And what's interesting is, I don't know if I'll go back to the gym, like I really do enjoy running, I find I mean, I was doing this even at the gym, but when I'm running every day, that's when I'm listening to podcasts. So I get to learn, I really get to multitask, because it's good for my mind, good for my body. I'm getting inspired. I'm getting motivated. I'm educating myself. And so that's something that I think, if I would call a hobby, it's something that I've taken on, it's probably the biggest change for me in my life since COVID. Start.

Jeff  41:27

That's great. Thanks for giving me that insight. And yes, that's a great time to listen to podcasts as well. So, so listen, you got your website, you've got podcasts, which we talked about, where's the because I know there are specific people listening to this that they're going to want to dive right in and everything. So where's the best place for them to start and find out more about how to set themselves up if they're going in that direction.

Michael Zipursky  41:53

Verso home base for everything is consulting success.com. If you want to go deeper, we've compiled some of our most popular articles in one place. It's a 47 page guide. It's called the consulting blueprint. You can get that by going to consulting success.com forward slash blueprint. And I always encourage and welcome people to connect directly. If you want through LinkedIn, you can find me there. Michael is the frisky just put a little note when you send a connection request because I do get a lot of connection requests. And the ones that don't have any personal note I tend to not accept because I don't know who the person is. So just put a little note that you saw or heard on on just podcast here. I'd be more than happy to connect and always happy to provide some guidance and see if there's some resource or direction that I can point you in.

Jeff  42:44

Yeah, absolutely. Well, Michael, thanks for being so open with your time as always, I really do appreciate it. Hope you have a great weekend and have a couple of great runs going on. Thanks

Michael Zipursky  42:53

so much. Definitely. Well,

Jeff  42:54

just a little quick second. I'm gonna stop the recording and then a couple quick details here.