My unscientific estimate is that only one in 20 people who enter the consulting profession as independent practitioners without a game plan or coaching help makes it to the point where they are supporting themselves in a comfortable lifestyle (in excess of $150,000 of annual income) within two years. And only one in 40 establishes a long-term, viable practice, meaning that the business continues to grow, the principal can take time off, more prospects call than have to be called, and so on.
Most of the experts in entrepreneurialism and small business start-ups agree that the three-year mark is the critical milestone. On average, people beginning their own business have run out of contacts, friends, and luck by three years, and must have forged independent marketing channels and attracted new business sources to survive beyond that point. If they've done that, then they probably have what the accountants refer to as a going concern. If they haven't, then they will probably go back to work in a corporate setting or return from whence they came.
Add to this the reality that at least three-quarters of those beginning a solo-practitioner consulting practice are experienced veterans of the workforce—in many cases, a refugee from a large company or an early retiree seeking a second career—and are unwilling to spend five or 10 years building that career. Consequently, people entering consulting not only have to hit the ground running and create clients during the first year of operation, but also have to establish a thriving business. (Many people who enter my mentoring program tell me that they are consultants, not business people. I tell them they are business people, but just lousy ones.)
Here are the hallmarks of the successful transfer from acquisition of initial clients to the building of a practice.
Twelve Characteristics of a Successful Consulting Practice
More business comes to you via referral and passive marketing than you actively pursue and solicit.
You have a fully funded retirement plan that grows every year.
You are taking at least two vacations of one week each per year, and they have no tie-in to business or business travel.
You have the appropriate and modern equipment that you need, and you are not merely making do until you can afford something more advanced.
The practice does not require your 24-hour attention. You have procedures, people (albeit subcontractors or temps), and resources to accommodate normal needs.
About 75 percent of business is repeat business, and about 25 percent is new business.
You are personally growing each year, learning new approaches, gaining new experiences, and helping to achieve new results.
You control your travel to the extent that less than 25 percent of it is on-demand, unpleasant, or outside of your influence.
You control your client composition, so that you reject work you do not want or like, periodically end unproductive long-term relationships, and are selective about the projects you accept. Stated succinctly: You can turn down business without threatening your business or lifestyle.
You contribute to the profession in some way (for example, with trade association leadership, publishing, speeches, interns, and so forth).
You have a brand or brands, trademarks, service marks, and clear intellectual property of your own.
Your name, work, and resources appear in multimedia and you can easily be searched for and found. (If you search for your name or company in Google, for example, and you're in forty-seventh place behind high school students and dog trainers, you have a problem. And I love dogs.)
Some practitioners (I among them) have done just fine with no full-time staff and precious little subcontracting or temp use. My philosophy has always been to maximize the profit I keep; otherwise what I make is irrelevant. And I've mentored too many people who generate well into six and seven figures of business but who have to personally barely scrape by because they are supporting a corporate welfare system of staffers who must be paid, housed, and cared for.
There are consultants, however, who will accurately make the case that they could never be as productive as they are without a few well-chosen and carefully placed staff members who free them up for both the professional accountabilities that are theirs alone and the personal time that they would otherwise sacrifice.
As the French would say, chacun à son gout, which basically means for you, "Now what do I do?" But no matter which side of the debate you favor, there are some unequivocal rules for hiring people, which can serve as an objective template when you're ready to make that decision.
If you need people to deliver or implement, then pay them by the project as subcontractors (do not hire them), because the need for this ability is situational and in abundant supply. This category includes training, interviewing, surveys, computer work, assessments, coaching, and so forth. Some of the large seminar companies have successfully hired appropriate talent for as little as $300 per day, which is close to indentured servitude. Any time you need another pair of hands, simply rely on a cadre or network of capable people that you can easily develop amid your professional dealing and travels. They will be grateful for the work, since they cannot do what you are doing: find, solicit, and acquire the business. Never fall victim to the myth that delivery quality is everything, because it is in large abundance, while your name, brand, and intellectual property are not.
Anyone whom you hire or collaborate with must provide a synergy that creates an exponential degree of business. In other words, if you and the other party could each generate $50,000 independently, it makes no sense to collaborate to generate $100,000 (or even $125,000) together, because the relationship is going to require energy and resources to manage. Don't team up with people who have the same skills that you already possess (that's duplication, not growth), who must rely on you before they can do something (that's support, not synergy), or who are simply friends and great people (that's loyalty, not strategy). If you're going to partner on a formal, business basis, or collaborate on an informal, trusting basis, begin with a clear piece of business on the table. Otherwise, you're leaving the landing lights on for Amelia Earhart. It's a nice gesture, but it won't help.
I would never take the time to learn the software that would enable me to develop slides or computer-generated presentations from my own computer. I have zero interest in this level of techno-mindedness. I prefer to spend my time on more interesting pursuits (such as playing with my electric trains), and I have absolutely no affinity for learning that software. I've gladly paid as much as $3,500 for a visual presentation for a major piece of business, because it would have required $50,000 of my precious time and made me impossible to live with had I tried to do it myself. Similarly, I don't do my own taxes or attempt to balance the books, since I can't even begin to understand the instructions. Your time is valuable. Don't do the difficult or the painful. Find people who will. (This work is almost always situational, meaning you don't need staff, but merely contract help. My bookkeeper costs about $240 per month for a few hours' work, and your business is smaller than mine. Yet I know consultants with smaller practices who employ bookkeepers part-time for $25,000 a year, simply because they don't believe they should be sending out their own invoices or writing their own checks.)
When I first interviewed bookkeepers 23 years ago (and you should interview many candidates and make careful choices, so that you can then forget about it after the selection), I found one who manually posted all entries and charged by the hour. "Let me get this straight," I blurted out. "You refuse to use a computer, which makes you slower than those who do use one, and then you penalize me for your slowness by charging by the hour??!!"
She replied, "Yes, and no one has ever questioned me about it before."
I told her that her streak had just ended, and that she ought to begin considering another kind of work, perhaps calligraphy.
I want my tax estimates done far in advance of year-end, so that I can make adjustments in my favor before it's too late. I want my design work completed in a week for my review, and my printer to give me top priority when I have an infrequent emergency request. I treat my clients with great care and responsiveness; I expect people I pay to see me as that kind of client.
Many consultants can't bear to tell a prospect that their office is at home, they have no staff, they don't have six PhDs[59] and five MBAs, and so on. Get over it. First of all, few prospects ever ask. Most of the time, the poorly prepared consultant is busy spilling all of this irrelevant information all over the carpet. Second, most prospects don't care. They want to know what you can do for them, not how many phone lines you have and how many assistants are standing by to answer them.
Having an office, a staff, a payroll, and an accountability to employees does not make you a professional. It simply makes you a labor supporter. If you need skills and resources beyond your personal abilities, then subcontract for them, and hire only if you need them 100 percent of the time.
Some final thoughts on hiring a staff:
I've built a seven-figure business without one.
Managing people is not a sign of expertise or maturity.
Staff must enable you to grow your business dramatically, not cause hardship through gobbling up precious resources.
Think about those people sitting there, with a secure salary, mandatory benefits, and commuting to their homes, while you're on an airplane missing your family and also about to miss your connecting flight on a dank February night.
You have to be able to fire them if economic circumstances dictate.
Under many benefit plans, you can't take certain advantages unless you extend them equally to every employee. (This may limit retirement funding, for example.)
No matter how careful you are, there will be attempts at threat, forming competitive companies with your material, personal issues that intrude into the business, and a lot of whining.
I have this to say about planning: Don't do it.
I'm not kidding. Plans have an invidious aspect about them, in that sometimes you hit them, which is horrible. I'll explain.
I've had a lot of clients who have plastered their business plans on every available wall: We will grow by 7 percent in the Northeast next year. Every secretary, sales manager, marketing director, and visitor knows clearly what the plan is. And through constant repetition, undiminished focus, and fanatic dedication, the organization indeed hits the unprecedented 7 percent growth mark in the Northeast.
The problem is that the business should have grown by 22 percent, given the robust economy, poor competitive services, and unique demographic shifts. But it wasn't geared to do that. It was geared to grow by 7 percent, which it inefficiently did.
I had a conversation once with Marsh Carter, the former CEO of State Street Bank, which is one of the largest and most successful custodial securities operations in the world. We were discussing the feasibility of a new project.
"We've grown by over 20 percent compounded annually for five straight years under my watch," said Marsh. "That's almost unprecedented. A lot of people would kill to achieve that kind of growth."
"That's true enough," I said. "I just have one question."
"What's that?"
"How do you know it shouldn't have been thirty-four percent?"
Marsh developed a small twinkle in his eye, paused, and then replied simply, "We don't."
The project was approved.
Don't make business growth plans, no matter how grand—because they are inherently delimiting. I know that this is counterintuitive. Nevertheless, you are not General Electric, where there are shareholders, Wall Street analysts, budgeting requisites, and governmental regulators staring you in the face. (And even GE had a magnificently simple overall strategy under former CEO Jack Welch: To be number one or two in every market it enters, be it light bulbs, appliances, locomotives, or aircraft engines. If he were still there at this writing, I think NBC would be gone from the fold.) What you should do is put the marketing tactics in place, which we've discussed earlier, and try to maximize your business acquisition and development as the year progresses. The harder you work, the luckier you'll get. It's far better to turn down or delay business because you're generating so much than it is to scratch and claw to reach a certain predetermined ideal.
In this profession, you want a pipeline that is always active and, preferably, filled, beginning with leads and prospects, and ending with signed contracts and enduring business. The major mistake that consultants who are initially successful in the profession make is that they separate and compartmentalize delivery and marketing, thinking that they can't do both simultaneously. The fatal result is that a project consumes them, eliminating all marketing activity, so that after completing one or two projects they have to begin all over again generating business. This is a crazy hand-to-mouth strategy that is always feast or famine.
It's far better to have marketing devices always in place and active, to be on the lookout for continued marketing opportunities even while implementing,[60] and to constantly bring on board new business, rather than fitfully starting and stopping. The goal is to develop a long-term, viable business, not to generate individual consulting assignments. A business plan tends to reward the latter and ignore the former.
Don't waste your time with one.
If value-based fees enable you to deliver consulting expertise without having to depend on labor-intensive practices, products and certain services can create income without the need to show up anyplace at all. When you reach a certain point in your career—and it may be much earlier than you'd suspect, hence, the subtitle of this chapter—you can create products and services that will generate income while you sleep.
We've spoken earlier about the use of print, audio, and Internet materials for marketing purposes, which may double as products. In moving to the next level and further developing your practice, these credibility items can also become substantial revenue generators.
Here are some examples of products and services to consider, depending on your expertise, comfort, and interests:
Booklets and pamphlets.
Manuals, guides, templates, and checklists.
Audiotapes.
Videos.
Self-published books.
Commercially published books.
Newsletters.
Licensing your technology or methodology.
Remote advice and coaching.
Teleconferences.
Podcasts
Chat rooms on your web site.
Combinations of the above to form albums or libraries.
There are others. Simply bear this in mind: If you can create passive income of just $500 per week, you've generated a quarter of a six-figure income without ever leaving your home. That amount alone can pay a mortgage, finance private schooling, fund a SEP-IRA (simplified employee pension individual retirement account), pay off significant indebtedness, and so forth.
Here are some shortcuts and secrets to effectively creating products and services that will generate significant passive income:
Design from the buyer's perspective. Don't create a tape or booklet with everything you know about strategy formulation and call it How to Set Strategy Using the 14D Questar Process. Create the product focused on immediate, practical help to the buyer, and use a title such as How to Get Everyone to Support Your Strategy Every Day. People are interested in tomorrow's business improvement, not theoretical excursions that make them work hard.
Provide choices. This is our options tactic again, but it works. Try to have a choice of booklets, a choice of print and audio material, a choice of electronic or hard copy. Let people decide which products to buy, not whether they should buy.
Be contrarian. Don't be the four-millionth person to write about teamwork. Write instead "Why Teams Don't Work," and make your points in that context. Stand out in a crowd. Challenge the potential buyer.
Accept credit cards. It's easy to arrange for an electronic terminal right on your desk through your local bank and/or American Express. If you accept MasterCard, Visa, Discover, and American Express, you'll cover 99.9 percent of the waterfront, which is good enough. The fees for accepting credit purchases are small compared to the dramatically increased business you'll receive. Arrange for your web site to use a secure server, so that people can confidently provide credit information over the Web. Similarly, have a discrete phone line or voice mail option for product orders that only you access. Accept orders by mail, voice, fax, Internet, and on site (for example, when you speak at a conference). Establish a privacy policy so that people are assured their names and addresses won't be sold or shared. (You can arrange to process payments by way of computer instead of terminal, as well.)
Keep CD tracks to 30 minutes, which is approximately auto commuting time for most people. This is by far the most popular length. Make sure you provide for MP3 downloads on all of your audio products, if possible.
Obtain ISBN numbers for all products and make sure they are carried by Amazon.com, other Internet providers, and as many other sources as you can persuade. (For newsletters: ISSN)
Take pains to create and maintain timeless products. Don't use examples with dates, or examples that can easily be dated. Avoid passing fads and temporary buzzwords. The less dated the material appears, the longer shelf life it will have without need of revision.
When you do reprint, make some small changes and thereby update the copyright date, so it always is as recent as possible.
If you commercially publish a book, ensure that the contract contains a reversion-of-rights clause, which allows you to publish the book yourself once the original publisher declares it out of print. Even after paying to print it, you'll still make a profit of almost 90 percent on a hardcover, compared with the 10 percent to 15 percent the publisher was paying you in royalties. And the marketing value of keeping a book with your name on it, "as originally published by . . .," is significant.
Include product catalogs as a normal part of your press kit, speech handouts, client information, and other relevant packages. These are often handed around, filed, or otherwise kept, and people will eventually order something. They may ignore your catalog, but they definitely won't order if they don't have one. Make sure your web site has an electronic catalog that leads to a secure ordering page. (Secure pages are indicated by "https" instead of the normal "http.")
Provide services—such as business coaching, mentoring, surveys—that can be done from the comfort of your office at convenient times. You can't build a business solely on these, because credibility and word of mouth are so important, but you can build a nice source of income from them once you have established something of a reputation. Teleconferences, podcasts, and even webinars are easy to do from your home with a minimum of equipment.
Be vigilant for joint venture partners who will bear the cost of product development and promotion in return for your intellectual property. There is a constantly growing number of Internet training, video production, audio production, and print publishers who are seeking such relationships. In return for a smaller piece of the pie, you are freed of all production costs, fulfillment responsibilities, and bad debts. In addition, these arrangements can usually be fashioned so that you can have your own version of a product that you continue to sell under certain circumstances. Some universities also sponsor these as part of their management extension programs.
Keep abreast of what the competition is offering. Find out what your clients are buying. I consistently browse my clients' bookshelves, internal course offerings, and libraries to find out what's popular and why. I started producing audio products when I found out how much clients love to listen to them in their cars, and then made them available as MP3 downloads when the iPod became so popular.
Product development and passive income sources probably aren't for everybody. But they can be a quite natural investment and by-product of growing your own practice successfully. One thing I know I would have done differently is to have created products much earlier in the life cycle of my own firm.
All businesses are increasingly global businesses, and yours should be no exception. While some consultants prefer never to leave their general geographic area, others realize that maximum learning and business development occur when they are willing to board airplanes.[61]
The best way for new consultants to work internationally is to work with multinational, U.S.-based businesses, or the U.S. headquarters of an overseas-based multinational. By doing excellent work locally, and by developing relationships with people here, you are relatively well positioned to do business with their colleagues overseas.
An example of a U.S.-based global company would be Merck, or Ford, or Coca-Cola. An example of foreign-based global companies with North American headquarters here would be Daimler-Benz, Allianz Insurance, or Sony. When you work with such firms locally, you're almost guaranteed to meet foreign nationals who are here on a temporary or rotational assignment. American expertise is highly respected in most parts of the world (in Asia, we're often called "the wise men from the East," which is overstated but makes my point), and is an ongoing import of most nations seeking management improvement. It is not unusual for people in their first year in consulting who are in my mentoring program to acquire overseas business commensurate with their U.S. business development. (Peter Drucker has claimed that knowledge export is the most valuable aspect of the U.S. international balance of trade, though it is not calculated or included in statistics.)
Here, then, are some tips on fostering an international business.
Thirteen Tips for Generating International Business
Use the Internet. Produce a first-rate web site as described previously, and use articles, tips, techniques, and references that have a global appeal (or an appeal to a particular part of the world you'd like to work in).[62]
Stay culturally neutral. Don't be xenophobic, and don't focus on strictly U.S. events. There are plenty of international occurrences, from the European Union struggling with a common currency and uncertain treaty provisions, to the growing capitalistic reality in China, to give some variety to your examples and focus. (Two of my books have been translated in long-form Chinese, one of which is Million Dollar Consulting, which tells you something.)
Develop overseas contacts. Subscribe to The Economist or the International Herald Tribune (both great publications, and in English). Look up the Hong Kong Management Association on the Web, and see what they're doing and offering. Write to colleagues in your trade associations who reside abroad.
Market to trade associations that host international conferences. The Young Presidents Association holds meetings all over the world. The Institute of Management Studies has local chairs in five European cities. Most international trade associations, from retailing to banking, hold conferences all over the globe.
Build your international and cultural knowledge. Read articles from the international sections of Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, and other periodicals with international coverage. Do some research about your areas of focus and expertise as they apply to other countries (but be aware that much cultural transition information you'll hear is wrong, and perpetuated by people who have never been abroad).
Learn to value diversity. The differences in gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, background, and other factors that enrich the American business environment are representative of what you'll encounter overseas. The more practice you have in diverse environments here, the better equipped you'll be to handle diversity there.
Seek out consultants who have worked successfully overseas. Network with them and find out how they started and what mistakes they made. Don't attempt to reinvent the wheel. Who knows—they may just need subcontracting help, which is as good a way as any to start.
Focus on a single country or locale. Many consultants have focused on primarily English-speaking countries, which greatly reduces initial difficulties. Some focus narrowly on a single country, attempting to get work, say, in Britain or Australia. In the early stages, barring serendipity, it's a good idea to limit the search in this manner.
Try Canada first. We take it for granted too often, but it's a fine place to work and, although English is predominant in the West, the significance of French in the East will get you accustomed to a bilingual environment. It is easier than ever to do business in Canada, and U.S. citizens are welcomed across the longest undefended border in the world.
Be alert for serendipity. Keep your radar tuned. You may meet someone at a conference who's an officer of a German company, or you may see a request for help in Peru listed in the back of a management journal. You may publish an article and get a request to reprint it in Italian. Respond strongly, and pursue whatever possible areas of synergy may exist.
Exploit the fact that English is the world's language and the dollar the world's currency (and, for better or worse, U.S. culture has vast influence).
Focus on strongly developing economies: At this writing, Russia, China, India, and so forth.
Accept wire transfers for payment (and international credit cards). Sometimes this is vital if you are to consummate business, and you will be paid more quickly with fewer conversion penalties.
Most consultants who do not work internationally are those who choose not to pursue such work, either consciously or unconsciously. How far can you go if you pursue it? Well, I've been to 56 countries thus far.
If you have the attitude, means, and determination, there are a variety of things you can do to build your business to the next level in a more aggressive manner. Some consultants prefer to wait until they have some money in the bank from early business success; others feel that life is short and want to accelerate the process. In either case, it's never too soon to at least contemplate the more dramatic ways to grow your business, so that you're always creating some stretch goals for yourself.
I've listed some of the more prominent trade associations earlier in the book, and you'll find more details in Appendix D. There are also many more local and regional organizations to consider. Most of these trade and professional associations don't exactly have a line of people waiting to run for office. In fact, most are desperate for talented, creative, and energetic professionals to assume key responsibilities, so much so that I know a person who served on three different trade association boards simultaneously, without breathing hard.
Begin by joining the association, attending every meeting, and networking. Then offer to make a presentation to the group, serve on a panel, or coordinate a fundraiser. Volunteer for a committee chair, especially something that no one else likes to do: programming, membership, treasurer, and so on. Then run for a seat on the board. Most of the time, a nomination is as good as an election because the seats are uncontested. That means that the nominating committee is the key, so that's where your networking, volunteering, and support will pay off the most.
Many of these organizations have a progression of president-elect, president, and immediate past president, meaning that you'll have an apprenticeship and a guaranteed three-year stint in a highly influential position.
Leadership in a trade association at the local level affords the opportunity to meet key people on an intimate basis (guest speakers, national officers, and so forth), form relationships with other organizations with which yours collaborates, and gain visibility as a leader in the profession. You will also have the opportunity to run for a national office, present at regional and national conventions, publish in association periodicals, and network with an enormous portion of the membership. This is a strong accelerator of learning and visibility that you can begin quite early in your career.
Warning: Don't allow your business to be subsumed by your volunteer work. Use your elected office and accountabilities to showcase your expertise and abilities. But be wise with your time and subordinate volunteer activities to your business needs. (The worth of value-based fees is that you never have to worry about where a day of your time is being invested.)
I have colleagues who are syndicated in business publications and metropolitan newspapers. Some publish weekly in 6, some in 36, publications. Other colleagues publish their own faxed column to a subscriber base every week. After publishing a contrarian article early in my career ("Why Quality Circles Don't Work") of 650 words in a training newsletter, the editor asked for another, and I went on to write 72 consecutive columns, one a month for six years. The reprints served for a decade as invaluable marketing tools.
A regular weekly or monthly column—whether syndicated or simply appearing in a single publication—provides for a consistency of visibility and a forum for your philosophy and approaches. Advertisers appear consistently in select media over long periods of time because research shows that people are influenced over time by repetitive exposure. Similarly, your appearing consistently in print, on the Internet, or by newsletter will create a buzz about you.[63]
You never know until you ask. Start modestly with a local weekly business newspaper and work your way up if you must. Hint: The minimum frequency for effective influence is monthly; quarterly is too infrequently.
A column will provide credibility, leads, reprints, exposure to additional publishing opportunities, the core material for a book, introduction to people in the media, and very high visibility. You can begin pursuing this at any time you have the energy, nerve, and ideas to sustain a continuing column.
The needs of the Internet have created capacious space for more and more columns and thought pieces, so the potential is greater than ever.
We've discussed speaking as a marketing device, but I'm talking here of becoming a keynote speaker at conventions and business meetings. This is a discipline requiring discrete skills, but it's a lucrative one from three aspects.
First, noncelebrity keynoters demand anywhere from $3,500 to $20,000, depending on the event, for about 45 to 90 minutes of platform time.[64]
Second, I have closed huge consulting contracts after addressing virtually every key manager and executive in an organization, establishing credibility and rapport, and suggesting ways that they can improve their condition—all within an hour while being paid five figures. That's not a bad day's work.[65]
Third, clients don't want to have to educate a lot of people, and one person who can do many things is that much more valuable and economical to them. As a consultant who can also address the annual convention, deliver the results of a project to a major management meeting, or address the parent company of the local operation while representing local management's choice well, you provide exponential value to your client. (One CEO client, who was program chair for his trade association, asked me if I knew "any first-rate keynoters." He never knew that I was one, and it took me awhile to convince him!)
Professional speaking will create a second source of income, generate incredible visibility, provide for additional products (audio and video products are easily created), and raise your stature as a consultant. Just remember, you're a consultant who speaks, not a speaker who consults. The former position holds far more credibility.
At this point we've covered the creation and growth of your business, and how to then raise it to ensuing and higher levels of success. The next issue to address: What happens when you get there?
Final thought: Your success is never relative to someone else's, because there's always someone who's making more, running faster, driving harder. Your success is a function of exceeding your life goals, which are uniquely yours. Consulting is a wonderful profession, but it's a means to another end.
TIAABB: There is always a bigger boat. Just worry about keeping yours shipshape.
Q. Isn't there a danger in products insofar as people can take our intellectual material, put it to use, and not require your services?
A. That is a fear akin to being afraid of the dark. The more intellectual property you put into the public domain, the more people will recognize your expertise. And no one can learn as much from a book or audio as they can with you, interactively. If you observe those of us with the strongest brands, you'll find we constantly place things into the mainstream. Just visit my blog for examples (contrarianconsulting.com).
Q. Don't I need local partnerships to do work in certain countries?
A. Not usually. Most of the time you can simply operate on your own. If you were to open a local office (which is usually unnecessary) you sometimes need a local partner in countries such as China. Of course, local alliances are always helpful to provide the introductions and local support needed.
Q. I'm helpless when it comes to "administrivia". Isn't is wise to get staff to help me?
A. Sure, but hire on an hourly or part-time basis. Do not take on employees unless there are extenuating circumstances. Your expenses at least triple with employees, and if they are support people and not revenue generators then there is no commensurate increase in business to offset their expense (except your working harder!).
Q. Are the people who can place articles for you useful in helping to get printed material into publication?
A. Outside of literary agents, few are. They generally try to represent a lot of people, so your particular article gets lost in the herd, and they will never be as passionate about your work as you are. Plus, they represent still another expense.
Q. Can I recycle material, say, printing it in a newsletter, putting it on my site as a position paper, and recording it in a podcast?
A. You can, but carefully. The easiest way to do it is to say, "Originally appeared. . . ." and fill in the details. Another excellent way is to alter the material with different examples or graphics or openings and closings, so that there is differentiation. People do catch on to recycled stuff, meaning they won't be as eager to open your next newsletter or audio offering.
[59] I pursued a PhD in my forties from a nontraditional school over two and a half years, using Brown University for my research, and three Fortune 100 companies for my dissertation experiments, merely because I wanted to increase my knowledge about things I already knew worked and didn't work. The degree itself has never helped me at all in marketing, and sometimes the specter of an academic turns people off. It does, however, help tremendously with dinner reservations: "Ah, right this way, Dr. Weiss." I actually had my first dissertation rejected and got into an argument at my oral defense.
[60] For example, reaching out laterally to additional buyers within the current client, as discussed earlier.
[61] Readers interested particularly in global consulting should are referred to the author's (with Omar Kahn) The Global Consultant (Wiley, 2009).
[62] This could be something as simple as using soccer instead of baseball in a sports analogy, or citing Mercedes as an example of a large merger and subsequent divestiture. If you wanted to focus on, say, Australia, then use Australian Rules (a type of soccer-football hybrid) and talk about Qantas Airlines.
[63] A warning here: Do not fall for the blandishments of radio stations that want you to host a program and charge you for the privilege. This is a scam. The audience is not suitable for you, and the radio station is simply playing on ego—yours—to gain some revenue. For some reason, professional speakers are constantly taken by this scam, perpetuated most aggressively by a radio station in Providence, Rhode Island. Don't forget: The talent usually gets paid, not the other way around. (Another scam: Asking to pay to be on a cable TV show with a faded personality. The only ones getting wealthy are the producers and the personality.)
[64] I'm talking here of noncelebrity speakers who are not in the news or voracious self-promoters, but who are merely competent, engrossing speakers who do a good job for their clients. See my book Money Talks: How to Make a Million as a Speaker (McGraw-Hill, 1998) if you want to pursue the business aspects of making it big on the speaking circuit. Of note: This also has been translated into Chinese!
[65] One executive vice president who ran up on the stage to thank me during sustained applause said into my still-live mike, "We're hiring you!"—which gained even louder applause, including my own!