Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Made in the UK for HR consultants worldwide. You're listening to the HR Marketing Guys podcast.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Hello James here and welcome to this week's podcast. In this week's main event, I'm going to share a proven growth formula that you can use to build a successful consultancy. I've spoken to hundreds of consultancy owners over the years and the ones that have big businesses like 400k plus all share the same growth journey. And I'm going to talk you through each step of the growth formula so that you can achieve the same success. In today's cheeky plug, I'm going to talk to you about my brand new video program, how to package up and sell HR to make more money. And in this week's thought of the week, I'm going to talk to you about the power of staying in your own lane.
[00:00:46] Speaker A: So let's jump straight in this week's main event.
[00:00:51] Speaker B: I love working with HR consultants and over the years I've had the absolute privilege of consulting with some incredibly successful consultants, both sides of the Atlantic, from startups all the way to multi million dollar consultancies. And thinking about it now, I've easily had thousands of different conversations with consultancy owners over the years, which is absolutely mental. When you speak to loads of consultants like I have, you end up hearing the same stories and you build up a really good picture in your head of the typical consultant's journey. For instance, pretty much every consultant I speak to started their consultancy because they were sick of being employed, sick of being the leadership team's puppet. They wanted to do HR in the right way. They actually wanted to make a difference and they wanted better work life balance. You then hear the same evolution story. So most consultants I know started out working by themselves. Most of you are working mums. So you fitted work around looking after your children. Very much a lifestyle business to begin with. And there's no negative connotation to using that term either. Then as your family life quietened down, maybe your children have gone to school or university, you have more time to take on more work. You maybe worked off an associate model when you had more work coming in, and your consultancy has grown through word of mouth and referrals. And then you hear the same big success stories. So for the big consultancies that are 500k plus, they all share the same growth journey too. There's a tried and tested formula that they've all followed to achieve the success that they've had. So what I've done is mapped out what they've done and created a growth formula for you to follow. And in today's podcast episode, I'm going to talk you through each step of that growth formula so that you can replicate it in your own consultancy. So let's get started. Step one is to believe in the value that you provide. I started the growth formula with this step because I think it's really important and I see it as a really big issue in the industry. Most HR consultants I speak to have forgotten the value that they provide and it's really sad and they allow business owners to push them around. Instead, I want you to remember that you're a strategic partner. Business owners don't get HR like you do. And that's why you need to educate them. You need to actually challenge them when they say stupid stuff. And you need to consult with them like a strategic partner does so that they can see the bigger picture. You can then embed yourself as an important part in their business, not as just some operational support they can access via your hourly rate on the side. The most successful consultants I work with know this. They have confidence in themselves and they have confidence to consult and challenge business owners in the correct way. Moving on to step two now, and that's to have a clear life vision. So your life vision should always come first, and your business is there to provide you with the personal and financial freedom you wanted when you first started out. Your business should not trap you inside working crazy hours and being underpaid for the work that you're doing, which is, sadly, where most consultants I speak to get stuck. The most successful consultancies I know have a very clear life vision. They know what they want from life, they know what they need from the business in order to achieve it. And they do not allow themselves to lose this clarity.
Step three is to package HR up in the right way. So most consultants get stuck spending their time and they go into a business and just try and sell this big chunk of HR on a retained basis. But this is actually a really bad way to sell HR, and this caps their earning ability and the scalability of their consultancy. The successful consultants I speak to know that this is a trap. They know that they can earn way more by packaging up their services in different ways. They have HR software packages, they have peace of mind packages, they have recruitment packages, and they have HR audit packages. And they have a nice mix of revenue. So passive, subscription, time based and one off. They also know that they can value stack different packages on top of one another to increase clients average spend. And they know that by creating packages, they can more easily dedicate the workout to other people, which leads us nicely on to step four, and that's to create the right people plan for your consultancy as part of your day job. You create lots of different people plans for your clients over the years, but when was the last time you looked at your own consultancy to see if you've got the right people in the right places? You sit at director level, yet you may be spending a lot of your time, more time than what you should be delivering work at admin, advisory and management levels. This is massively reducing your blended rate and you aren't making as much money as you should be. As a result, the successful consultants I know understand this and they delegate the work to someone that sits at the right level, therefore optimizing their blended rate and profit in alignment with the work that's coming in. Once you've packaged up your services in the right way, and you've got the right people delivering the work, it's time for you to then free yourself from client delivery. And this is step five. This is one of the most important things you can do as a consultancy owner, as this gives you the time and energy you need to be the face of the business and to drive it forward. All of the successful consultants I know have done this. As a result, they've been able to quickly scale the business while giving themselves the personal and financial freedom they originally wanted when they started all of those years ago. Once you've given yourself the time to work on the business, you can then focus on growing your consultancy's revenue. And there are three ways to do this. The first is to get new clients. The second is to get existing clients to spend more with you. And the third is to get existing clients to spend more with you more often. Getting new clients is the hardest way for you to grow revenue, and that's why I always advise to get started by sending more to existing clients, which is step six. One of the first things you could do is increase your prices. A lot of consultancies I know are massively undercharging. So have the confidence to look at your prices and increase them to where they should be. Another thing you could look at is your pay as you go clients and get them onto your peace of mind. Subscription based package. As a strategic partner, you should be meeting with your clients on a regular basis to consult with them on their goals. This is a great opportunity for you to up and cross sell additional services to them. Successful consultancies I know understand the importance of account management and they'll spend a lot of time account managing their clients in the correct way to increase average spend. So once you're managing your existing clients in the right way, you can then move your attention to marketing and getting new clients. And this brings us nicely on to step seven. And that's to market your consultancy on a consistent basis even when you're super busy. Why? Because this keeps your brand awareness ticking over. This keeps your pipeline topped up at all times. And the big consultancies I know have learnt from their mistakes in the past. They've been super busy, they haven't done any marketing. They then go through a quiet patch and they completely regret not doing anything. This is where the HR marketing box comes in. So it's an online content library full of ready to use content and ideas to help you increase your brand awareness and get new clients. It saves you loads of time. It's a thousand times cheaper than hiring your own content writer and it saves you the stress of writing all of your own content. And now we can move on to our final and 8th step which is to get expert support. You're an expert HR consultant, yet when you become a consultancy owner, you're required to become a finance expert, a marketing expert, a sales expert, a software expert. You have to develop so many skills and that's why you need to learn from specialists. So one of the biggest hacks that you can do is find guidance and mentorship from experts in their field and let them support your growth. And that brings us the end of the proven growth formula for building a successful consultancy. So let me wrap this up by summarizing these steps again. Step one is to believe in the value you provide. Step two is to have a clear life vision. Step three is to move away from a time based model and package up HR in the right way. Step four is to create a people plan for your consultancy and make sure that you've got the right people delivering the right type of work. Step five is to free yourself from client delivery. This is so, so important. Step six is to sell more to existing clients. Step seven is to market your consultancy consistently, even when you're super busy. And step eight is to get expert help when you need it. When thinking about how you're growing your consultancy, I highly recommend that you review each of these steps and use them to create your very own growth plan.
I'm really excited to announce that I'm launching my flagship video program next Monday called how to package up and sell HR to make more money. And it's for consultants in the UK and USA. I've been working on this all year and I can't wait for you to watch it. I start this program with a loving wake up call. 99.9% of HR consultants I know have lost loads of money by selling their services in the wrong way. It's likely that you aren't making as much money as you should be. You're stuck selling your time, you're massively over delivering. You're doing work that's below your experience level and you haven't got enough recurring revenue coming in. This isn't what you imagined when you first started out. You started your consultancy because you wanted personal and financial freedom. Freedom to do HR in the right way and actually make a difference, and freedom to live life exactly how you want to. But instead, you've maybe created a prison of your own design and you've trapped yourself inside delivering client work, all because of how you've sold your services. In this video program, I'm going to show you that there's a much better way to learn more about this video program. Please go to my website, thehrmarketingguy.com, and go to the top where it says.
[00:10:32] Speaker A: Video program James thought of the week.
[00:10:41] Speaker B: I'm 32 now and I say that I'm living in my James .3 eradic. I look at my friends who have done the typical they've got into a relationship, they've got a dog, they've got a house, and they seem to have just glided through life without any big emotional interventions. And I sometimes feel envious for their stability because I feel like I've been on a whirlwind journey where I've had to constantly evolve. Some of it has been really uncomfortable. But then I'm also grateful because I'm really starting to love who I'm becoming. I feel a sense of security within myself that I maybe didn't have before. And I definitely feel like I'm pushing myself, which is providing me with an awesome life and the type of lifestyle that I want for myself. One of the things I've learned in my thirties is the power of staying in my own lane. And honestly, this is one of the things I absolutely love about myself. I love my own little bubble. I have laser focus on what I want to achieve in my life, I know what I want from a relationship, I know what I want from my business, and I purposely remove anything from my life that could possibly steer me off course, social media being one of them. So I deleted Facebook years ago. Ever since I watched the great hack on Netflix about Cambridge Analytica. If you've not watched it, you totally should. It's really scary. And then I deleted Instagram on New year's day of this year. So that's 2024. I haven't missed it one bit. And having deleted it now, I actually realized how much I was being triggered on a daily basis. It was making me feel lonely. It was making me feel like I wasn't having a good life. It was making me buy crazy things, like an electrical grounding mat. Honestly, I'm the marketer's dream.
And the only thing that I have now is LinkedIn for work purposes. And I've even had to unfollow a few people on LinkedIn not because of what they were doing. There's no juicy gossip to share. I removed them because they just made me feel a certain pressure. It's probably a me problem, and I'm totally cool to admit that. And I think you should have the same honesty with yourself, too. So why am I sharing this with you today? Well, I think as humans, it's in our DNA to be influenced by people, to get FOMO to feel the pressure of doing this and that because you see other people doing it and you can take action that isn't right for you and doesn't necessarily make you happy. As business owners, we can easily get distracted by what's happening around us. People who we collaborate with, our competitors, our clients, and their influence can sometimes take us off course. And this can stop you from growing and evolving as you should. So what I like to do is check back in with myself on a regular basis and just see if what I'm doing is actually aligned with what I want to achieve. For a lot of consultants I speak to, they take on way more than what they should. Steve Jobs once said, focus is about saying no. So knowing when to say no to distractions is a huge flex, allowing you to say yes to what really matters for your business. So that's why I'd like to finish this podcast episode. By empowering you to stay in your own lane. When you stay in your own lane, you find your power. And this is one of the most important things you can do as a consultancy owner, to keep your eyes on the prize and to get there as quickly as possible.
[00:13:46] Speaker A: You've been listening to the HR Marketing Guys podcast, helping you to get new clients and create a life you love.
