My Business Evolved Again From Q2 to Q3

Hey friends! It’s been a minute since a newsletter went out. I want to fill you in and share some insights since the last time you heard from me.

I meant to write a Q2 retrospect at the beginning of Q3, 22 days in — better late than never.

This won’t be a full-blown retrospect but some key lessons I learned in building my consulting business and what I’m doing in Q3 to hit a new ceiling.

Business lessons in Q2

People don’t want an immense amount of volume, no high level entrepreneurs at least. More volume of material / trainings / videos / worksheets does not mean more value to the founders I work with.

Working with cohorts in Q1 & Q2 was the right call to make versus trying to scale this business right away at the beginning of the year.

In Q1 I wasn’t clear on my “Ideal Client Profile” aka ICP. I figured it out by working through the cohorts in Q2.

Knowing your ICP is critical from a marketing, sales, fulfillment, brand and content creation standpoint. Took me forever to nail this, now I feel unstoppable lol.

Realizations / Breakthroughs / Mistakes

Realizations

I don’t need to work with founders or operators. I can work with founders and operators. Especially if they are in the same business.

I can’t just live in the strategy and tactical when it comes to my consulting, to make a true impact in businesses I have to coach as well.

Breakthroughs

I’ve figured out how to consult on all levels of business, not just operations. I lead with operational freedom as the outcome, however my consulting is best leveraged in a holistic manner to improve lead generation, lead nurturing, conversion, delivery (fulfillment) and retention.

This approach makes me 10x more valuable to any client I work with as I’m never limited on how much I can help them. How I help them is methodical and strategic to the goals they have to focus on right now.

I also know how to strategize and execute in each of those areas listed above. I don’t and won’t do it FOR them, but having me to strategize, provide an execution plan and leverage my tool box of playbooks, processes, case studies, etc is decreasing their financial and time risk significantly.

Mistakes

The only mistake I’ve really made is spending too much time creating and developing assets for my consulting instead of marketing or selling.

Just this week alone I was getting coached in a mastermind because I had on my calendar 5.5 hours of recording trainings when I could be selling, having conversations, and so on.

I used to be against “sell now, create later” — it didn’t feel right.

However I was given a reframe.

When you’re not at the revenue levels your life and business needs to be, you cannot afford to just live in a creative and development process.

Consulting businesses don’t need that. Why?

Consulting is selling expertise, accelerated learning curves, accelerated execution.

I can offer that without a bunch of trainings, instead giving my brain and a set of start assignments / worksheets/ or initial strategic plan.

The lessons:

Help my clients get clear on their outcome.

Give them the best strategic and execution plan they’ll ever get.

Build out the most important supplemental assets / trainings after.

While they’re executing, I’m creating and releasing new assets.

Needle-mover #1: Get clients, solve their problems.

Needle-mover #2: Create, develop and release supplemental resources.

That’s all for now, back to embracing the “reframe” and implementing what I got coached on.

JP