Consultant Marketing Solo DoubleTrouble

You made the break. 

You decided to put your consulting career on the front burner. You decided that it is time to make that side hustle your full-time job.

Two considerations.

You need to think about two things that will make or break you. I’ll bet neither have managed to tap you on the shoulder so far. If you’re like most, you are too excited by the potential in front of you to consider these factors. Those important items that are eluding you are:

• Team
• Technology

Before you marshal your arguments, listen to my tale of woe. 

Team

The crew you work with was probably assigned to you. Or, rather, you were assigned to it. As your career progressed you were moved from team to team. You may have decided to change companies but once again you were assigned to a team. With experience you were moved more and more into leadership but seldom if ever did you select the people on your team. At best you took on the responsibility of selecting individuals from within the organization to put into teams. 

Now you are engaged in building a company. Any business coach or attorney will tell you that you need to have a business entity. No matter what form of business you decide on and no matter what title you assume, you, for the first time possibly, will be the one calling the shots. You will Have to think about teams differently.

Solos don’t have teams

That was my contention until a client pointed out that I had a group of suppliers that I worked with all the time. We were comfortable handling projects together, each of us doing what was needed, each connecting seamlessly to get things done, each a solid member of the unit that wasn’t formal but still functioned by any measure as a team.

Even then I still held that the best thinking came from individuals not teams. I cited all the geniuses of the arts and some of the discoveries in the sciences as “obvious examples”.

Not long after that I was trying to convince the man who has now been a client for a decade that moving from doing turnarounds as a CEO or COO to Leadership and Management Consulting was significantly different and that he did not have a team in place to handle the shift.

Teams can trump persuasion.

I pointed out that That when you have C-suit initials as your title, employees have to follow your orders. They may resist, citing long standing team approaches, but long term they must acquiesce. As a consultant you don’t have that power. You have to convince, persuade, cajole and sway them in any way you can to be effective. And the team you have in place whether they work for you full time or on a 1099 can and will impact your efficiency. 

Nobody can do it all alone. 

At least not the ones I’ve come across. That was a hard lesson. It took me over 20 years to figure it out. And I was still left with a hole in my knowledge of how to select build and lead teams starting from scratch. Like a lot of people I searched for answers. I had worried my way through just about every assessment tool you can imagine starting as a beta tester on an early one back when I worked in Denver.

Technology wasn’t the answer. 

There were a couple problems with the assessments:

1. The person you were evaluating had to take the assessment for you to get any kind of real fix on them.
2. The training requires that you use the labels assigned by the assessment on a daily continuing basis in order to use it to greatest advantage.

I found very quickly that I had to become a new millennium astrologer to begin to get any use out of all the time I’d put in. Unfortunately my Mars in retrograde got wrapped around the axle of the conflicting moons and I found myself fizzling out avoiding detritus circling Saturn even if I had the assessment codes for a connection.

Maybe their Why is the answer.

I learned of a new piece of Software the other day. It is called the WHYos and will introduce on November 15. I went to the WhyTechnology website to learn more. I tried the free trial and in matter of minutes was rewarded with the assessment’s view of my Why. 

“Why” is associated with Simon Sinek.

He wrote a book called Start with Why back in 2009. He may be better known for a TED talk which can be seen here. He made the world cognizant of what made some individuals and organizations stand out from others. Because of Simon Sinek, a dentist in Texas began developing software that would allow him to optimize his why.

Dr. Gary Sanchez’s WHY is to find a better way and share it.  HOW he does that is by making things clear and easy to understand.  WHAT he brings is simple solutions to help people move forward. He and his Team have worked with hundreds of thousands of individuals, as well as thousands of companies from small yoga studios to Fortune 500 Companies helping them get clear, stand out and play bigger. 

I didn’t know I was looking for that piece of software. 

But I was. It is called the WHY.os

I didn’t realize what a difference it could make. 

Now I do. I tested it.

I was never quite sure what drew me to trying to find a better way in everything I do.

Now I understand. 

Why.os is changing my life.

It will change the product launching December 15 called Linked In Brandr which guides you step-by-step to inject brand into your linked In profile in just one evening. It will make it possible to base your brand on your why. The product was good before. Now it is great.

And so it goes.

Jerry Fletcher is a sought-after International Speaker, a beBee ambassador, founder and CEO of Z-axis Marketing, Inc. See Jerry’s speaker demo reel.

His consulting practice, founded in 1990, is known for on and off-line Trust-based Consultant Marketing advice that builds businesses, brands and lives of joy. 

Credibility to Cash TM is his latest way to share experiences so you can take your business up a notch…or two Sign up for the unique audio/video/article Newslog here.

Consulting: https://www.JerryFletcher.com
Speaking: www.NetworkingNinja.com"> https://www.NetworkingNinja.com