Description
A proven, step-by-step guide to building a lucrative consulting practice and the mindset that goes with it
In The Seven-Figure Consultant: A Professional’s Guide to Building a Legacy-Level Consulting Practice, rockstar of consulting and renowned author Alan Weiss, delivers a hyper-focused, step-by-step guide to using your consulting skillset to build the lifestyle you’ve always wanted. Weiss walks you through his eye-opening perspective on what it really means to be “wealthy” (spoiler: it’s about time, not dollars and cents) and how to achieve that wealth.
The book explains the on-the-ground realities of building a consulting service that grows sustainably and brings in the fees you need to live your life to its fullest. You’ll learn how to frame your value proposition, how to sell yourself as a true expert, and how to walk the tightrope that lies between arrogance and confidence. You’ll also find practical tools for how to engage with the latest AI tech, how to write a proposal that gets accepted every time, and how to track your most important metric: labor intensity.
Inside the book:
- Key strategies on marketing your practice, including the six options for exponential growth that work at any level
- A revealing collection of interviews and commentary from seven-figure solo consultants who have mastered their industries
- The proper place of social media within your consulting practice, its benefits, and its unavoidable limitations
The Seven-Figure Consultant is a granular, first-hand look at building a successful consulting practice by an author who has done it himself. But it’s also a mindset, one that correctly identifies “real wealth” as the time you’re able to make for—and spend on—yourself, and the people you care about the most. Weiss explains how to build both, one step at a time.
Table of Contents
Preface xi
other Works by Alan Weiss xiii
Introduction: The “Ancients” xvii
1 The No Normal ® 1
Being patient until there is a “return to normal” or a “new normal” is like waiting for Godot. We have to act based on constant change created by a seismic shift in demographics, a historical tectonic change in technology, and constant change in social mores. Beside, “normal” means “average” or “typical.” Is that who you want to be?
Gaining Conceptual Agreement 3
Lean and Mean: Don’t Feed the “Chicks” 6
Scalability 9
The Remote (Seven-Figure) Consultant 13
2 The Reality of “Wealth” 17
A “million dollars” is a metaphor. Discretionary time is a reality. Too many people are refugees from corporate work who have “gone out on their own” and now have a tyrannical, tougher boss. Using money as a metric will only make you want more and more while working harder and harder. Is your idle really Scrooge McDuck?
Value-Based Fees 19
Fee Formulas (Clients, Collaborators, Referrals) 22
Advisory Work Is the Future 30
Legal, Financial, Administration (yada yada yada) 33
3 Whom Do You Want to Be? 37
Ask a hundred people who they want to be in a year and 100 percent will tell you what they want to be doing. The real issue is what you want to be contributing, how to continually raise your value, and how to manifest it.
No Wind Is a Good Wind Without a Destination 39
Your Value Proposition 42
The Power of Solo 45
Who’s Pushing Your Buttons? 49
4 You’re an Expert Now, So Act Like One 53
Eschew the “consultant/coach/trainer/speaker” commodity traps and position yourself as an expert who can help others in a wide variety of ways. People may “want” a coach, but what they “need” is improved behavior. They may “want” strategy, but what they really seek is market domination.
Thought Leadership 55
Process vs. Content 58
Critical Thinking Skills 62
You’re Not Selling, You’re Giving 66
5 If You Don’t Blow Your Own Horn, There Is No Music 71
A brand is how people think about you when you’re not around. Your most potent brand is your name. You need to identify your particular “public square” and become the person who must be seen by others to move forward.
How to Build and Sustain Your Business Community 73
How to Maximize Referrals and Reduce Costs of Acquisition 76
Skating Up to the Confidence/ Arrogance Boundary 79
6 Naisbitt Was Right 87
AI won’t take over the world but you’ll be lost in the world if you don’t intelligently utilize it and learn to employ it to help your clients. The “high tech/high touch” equation is more important than ever, and YOU are the high touch who must understand the high tech.
Consulting Isn’t Advising, Which Isn’t Coaching, Either 89
The Uses and Limits of Social Media 92
How Executives and Business Owners
Really Make Decisions 95
Better Practices in AI and Technology 99
7 Watch Your Metrics 103
Growth isn’t the point. Profitable growth is the point. Higher revenues are pointless unless you also strive for reduced labor intensity. It doesn’t matter what others are doing, what matters is whether you are achieving your life goals.
TDTC (Total Days to Cash) 105
How to Write a Proposal That’s Accepted Every Time 108
Letters of Agreement 113
How to Reduce Labor Intensity 115
8 Marketing 601 119
The six options for exponential growth at any level (one is mandatory, the other five represent options you select). How to use disruption and volatility as offensive weapons to dominate your field. Generalizing vs. specializing: Do you want to dig with an excavator or a pair of tweezers?
My Unified Field Theory of Marketing 121
Passive Income 126
Collaborations 130
9 The Esteem Machine 141
How to constantly build resilience and momentum and avoid guilt, fear, and stress. Why social media, and people telling you how good you are, will sink you. How to see daily opportunity and not a long, slowcrawl through enemy territory.
Self-Worth 143
Servant Leadership Is Ridiculous 146
Peter Drucker Didn’t Debate, Neither Should You 150
Maybe There Was a Monster Under the Bed 154
10 Eight-Figure Consulting 157
Establishing what you really need to become who you want to be. Picasso’s advice on the matter. What’s beyond “success” and what happens when you exceed your own aspirations. Join six of my all- stars and me who will tell you what we know.
Cutting the Gordian Knot 159
From Those Who Have Been There and Done That 161
Appendix 169
Acknowledgment 201
About the Author 203
Index 207
