Welcome to the latest entry in The Workaround. You’re in good company with thousands of fellow entrepreneurs and innovators!
I’m Bob, your host. My mission here is to share personal, behind-the-scenes stories of the ups and downs of my career leading tech startups and corporate innovation.
I write to make you think, smile, and discover a shortcut to success or a trap to avoid.
Here we go…
“Everybody wants to know how they can get into consulting.”
So said my friend Rob, a few months after successfully starting his new business. We live in a time when the appeal of owning your own career through some form of consulting has never been higher.
I think it’s due to a few reasons: Company and employee loyalty is generally low due to a combination of low unemployment (voluntary exits for something better) and normalization of layoffs (involuntary exits) as a company strategy. There’s also a growing acceptance of fractional work and career paths.
But I think it all ladders up to a faster pace of change.
Strong leaders are confident in their abilities and have less appetite to be victims of their employers’ constant changes, which frequently fall short of expected improvement. Rapid change means companies seek more outside guidance to help them, which expands the market for consultants.
So you, too, might have a golden opportunity to increase control over your career while significantly boosting your income—possibly while building a company that can grow to be a source of wealth.
But these dreams cannot become real unless you’re good at one skill: Creating process.
Consultant to the Marketing Stars
My friend Angie works with the Chief Marketing Officers of some of the largest companies in the world. Her story is typical of how great consulting businesses can be born.
Angie worked for several years at a large, multi-brand consumer products company. She was successful as a general manager and rose up the ranks, but she grew less interested in the path to the top over time. Things got more political as she went higher, and she had less hands-on involvement in the art and science of building brands.
One day, a job opportunity arose within her company that caught her eye. It was a chance to work in a centralized corporate function focused on upgrading the company’s marketing planning and brand-building processes. Angie jumped at the chance to do this work despite a warning that she would permanently be off the path to CEO.
She threw herself into building new playbooks for the modern marketing era and loved it. Angie gathered a team from around the company, researched what was working for new external brands, and built relationships with thought leaders outside her company. She saw opportunities for new models as well as tweaks and process shifts that would make the company’s traditional marketing model more effective in current and near-future times.
Her work was a great success. Brands across the company and around the world asked her and her team to help them implement the new processes. Decades-old brands rebounded in sales and share, and Angie enjoyed seeing her work have a positive impact. She continued her work for a decade.
One year, her company felt the need to downsize after a major acquisition and offered extremely generous voluntary exit packages targeted to senior leaders. Angie was not unhappy at work but had lingering thoughts about pursuing new challenges before retirement, and the potential financial windfall was hard to ignore.
So she took the package…Then her phone began to ring.
First, it was Bill, whom Angie had worked with a few years earlier. He had left to become CMO of another large firm. His new company needed an upgrade in its marketing model, and he wondered if Angie would be willing to consult.
Usually, his firm contracted with one of the big, brand-name consultancies for such work, but he didn’t know them and loved working with her and her models. His fancy new job was at stake, and he couldn’t afford to trust his brands to a firm that just seemed to rest on its consulting brand. That firm quoted him $150,000 for a 3-month project, and he asked if she could do her magic for that amount. She said yes.
She designed a process and timeline. Like the work she had done for years—and the kind of work involved in any consulting project—it involved steps and timelines for onboarding, internal and external research, drafting frameworks and plans, seeking feedback from the broader organization, a few rounds of adjustment and testing, and then full rollout.
The project was a success. It led to another assignment for the CMO, and he introduced her to a friend who had similar needs at another company. The business picked up steam…
Angie’s clients were pretty typical: They rose to a level of success at large companies by managing a business and executing a process. This success made them attractive to other companies searching for proven leaders during change. Once these executives landed their new roles, they discovered they were expected to update aging models and introduce new methods.
But they had never done that before! And it was never the skillset they developed over their careers. They rose through the ranks by delegating and directing others’ work. Their judgment was strong, but creativity was missing. They could assess the strength of a strategy but not formulate one. They could evaluate where a business fit on a 2-by-2 matrix but not grab a marker and flesh out an original framework on a whiteboard.
So they needed help—someone they could trust to do the work on a project basis and then go away until needed again*. They required a sherpa who could bring an external perspective and exist outside the political intrigues and internal biases. The last thing they wanted was to hire a full-time employee who might become a rival someday. And finding a budget for important temporary consulting projects is much easier than making space for FTEs.
*One project almost always leads to another, as companies face constant changes and don’t want to lose this proven service partner.
The first projects led to further work with more clients as time passed. Each time Angie worked on a new project, she and her team made tweaks to improve results and efficiency. Word-of-mouth spread among networks, and more fellow alumni of her company asked for help. Angie hired both junior and senior employees, full-time and part-time, to handle the increased workload. Suddenly, she was doing the work she loved, among an interesting variety of companies and building a tidy fortune.
Years later, Angie turned over more leadership and decision-making to her team members. She gave them the chance to step up, which allowed her to step back and pursue other skills and interests. Today, Angie is reframing her own career to do more of what she loves, including working here and there from exotic locations.
Got Process?
In this story, “Angie” is a combination of many successful consultants I’ve met over the years, especially in my role in looking for new service business founders to back.
Almost all of them fell into consulting without planning for it. They got laid off or took time off for family reasons and were disinterested in returning to interviewing and the usual grind. They caught up with old friends in leadership roles at other companies who both wanted to help and had business pain that they would love a skilled, trusted person to come in and solve.
The first hurdle is gaining the confidence to go for it—and this usually comes from having been there and done that before.
You don’t have to have an MBA, to have written a book, created a personal brand, or worked at BCG or McKinsey in the past. You don’t even have to be that creative! Almost all consulting work we do is simply borrowing from the frameworks, concepts, and best practices many others have developed and shared publicly. But you should tweak other models to make your own. Oh, and throw a “TM” on there so that it looks more special. After all, you need some special effects in the theater of client service. And never be afraid to fake it until you make it.
If you’d rather build a process than execute one and love designing systems for improvement and innovation more than moving up the ladder, your talents are probably under-compensated and under-appreciated within a typical corporate environment. Mostly, it’s because processes don’t need to change too often, and outside consultants tend to be called on over internal experts for the reasons above.
Realize that you have a rare talent, and the world has never been more willing to seek your services. You have enormous potential to make great money, scale your success, and have lots more freedom and fun along the journey. Just start with one client and one project. With your process mindset, you’ll likely figure things out from there.
How we might work together…
Are you interested in launching your own consulting or service business or need help taking your current services business to the next level? Fleet is our holding company for services, and we’re actively looking to build business partnerships with winning leaders. Let’s talk!
My team and I lead Hearty, a boutique recruiting service that helps tech-forward companies hire proven talent. Our senior team of operators sources and screens, saving you time and money. When you need help, let’s chat.
Need help with a software project? Perhaps a product MVP, a project that requires outside help, or a fractional CTO for key strategic decisions? Our team at Shipwright Studio has worked together to build multiple successful startups, and we love helping leaders turn their dreams into reality. We're the team our clients trust for software built to last.
Looking for Influencer Marketing and Content Creation? The team from our previous company is back by popular demand with A2 Influence. We’re ramping up now and would love to share more.
Feel free to schedule time together during my Open Hours for questions, feedback, networking, or any other topic!
BONUS: Cool Content of the Week
A little something I found meaningful. You might agree…
People are just as Happy (or Unhappy) as they’ve always been
According to nearly every information source, the world is worsening, and people seem hopelessly unhappy. Our current worries are getting worse, and we’re adding new existential crises to our to-worry lists—like A.I. killing us all and a pending population implosion. Oh, and an election is coming up in November that nobody is looking forward to…
But according to long-term survey data, we’re about as Happy and Unhappy as we’ve always been. For proof, check out this post by Adam Mastroianni. In addition to sharing the numbers, he suggests that it’s all part of human programming. Like our home air conditioning and heating units, our minds adjust to keep us in a certain “happiness range” no matter what happens. Kudos to Adam for helping us gain a little perspective. I feel happier already.