Starting a Consulting Business in Uncertain Times

We are live. Thank you for tuning in and welcome to today's episode of Black Belt Startup with Feras. What's new in the world of entrepreneurship? Do you bend or do you break? If you're starting a consulting business right now, it can feel like you picked the absolute worst possible timing. We're seeing technology disruption, industries are changing overnight, the economy feels uncertain, and regional geopolitical hostilities with global implications. So it feels like I finally decided to start a business and now what else could go wrong externally? But here's the truth. Entrepreneurship has never been stable. I've started businesses during downturns, layoffs, and market shifts, and one lesson keeps repeating itself. You cannot control the storm, but you can control your foundation. So in today's livestream, I'm going to share 5 practical things that early-stage consultants should focus on when the environment feels uncertain. No theory. It's not theory. It's not motivation. Just the fundamental— just the fundamentals that keep a young consulting business standing. So if you're in that boat, you are about to take the leap, you've been thinking about this for a long time, or you just took the leap, this episode is for you. And let me make sure we are Good on technology. Everything looks good. So yeah, so if you're new here, welcome. My name is Feras. I started my entrepreneurial journey over 20 years ago after I was laid off, and I had zero sales background. And after a whole lot of hard work, plenty of mistakes, and with the help of incredible co-founders and amazing team members, we eventually figured things out. A lot of mistakes along the way, and then started and grew 7 businesses, including one, a marketing and analytics consulting company that went on to 8 figures that I later sold to Dentsu, the global media giant. So now I'm on a mission to share everything I've learned with founders who want to build and grow consulting businesses. I'm also a 4th-degree black belt in the martial art of Aikido, So you'll hear some martial arts references, but more importantly, I try to apply those timeless principles like discipline, commitment, and balance to entrepreneurship. And before we jump in, a quick reminder that I have these live streams every Tuesday at 3 PM Eastern, 12 at noon Pacific, and I answer the questions that I get from the community. So if you have a question about a challenge you're having difficult time overcoming. You're not sure how to market your service, you're not sure even how to package your offer, you're not sure how to sell, you're struggling with getting leads, or you're struggling with your first hire or with a co-founder that they're not putting their share— whatever the struggle that you have, I'd love to hear from you so I can share with you my 2 cents on how to help you overcome these challenges and launch and grow and scale your business to 7 figures and higher. And you can reach out to me on YouTube, on LinkedIn, on the social channels, and you can leave me a comment there. And if it's something maybe private you don't want to— if it's business related, you don't want to share with the world yet, maybe you're still working in corporate and you don't want to tell the world that you are launching a new business, you can email me at info@startupwithferus.com. .com, Feras spelled like my first name, F-E-R-A-S, and I will be more than happy to answer your question. I'll keep— I keep everything confidential, and I make sure at least I give you what I know. I'll share with you what I know or point you in the right direction. So enough with that, and we are good to go. Uh, let's, uh, let's see. Let's— so, so there are 5 main points I I want to cover today, and again, it's to it's it's to do with launching and and maintaining and and sustaining and growing a business during uncertain times. The first one is the first point is there's a reality of of starting in uncertain times, and that reality is, as I alluded to in my introduction. Is that entrepreneurship, even in the best times, entrepreneurship always involves uncertainty. And I want to dive a little bit into that because in corporate, you're used to a certain rhythm. You're 9 to 5 or 8 to 5 or 8 to 6. You've got someone sharing with you, telling you what to do. You have—it's like a cruise ship. You are—it's headed in one direction. You get your paycheck. You get your PTO, your 401k plan, your benefits. All of that comes to you. So things—we—we become used to this illusion of stability and safety and certainty, and the waves of layoffs that we hear. About every other day tells us that there is no such a thing as certainty, even if you are working in corporate. So I want you to think about this as you're thinking of taking that leap, as you are thinking to maybe grow your consultancy and start a new service or go into a new market if you've already been out there and you're struggling now. I want you to remember this one definition of entrepreneurship that I like the most. It's by HBR. It says entrepreneurship is pursuing novel opportunity while lacking resources. So you're pursuing, you're putting the effort, the time, your thoughts, your energy, you're putting your heart into a novel opportunity while Lacking resources, so it's something new. It might might it might not be new to the market. Other people might be doing this, but it is new to you. So with when we do new things, we are not comfortable. We might have anxieties. We might have fears. We might have concerns. We might be nervous, but that's the nature of it when we do new things. Remember. the first time you rode the bike. Remember the first time you learned how to swim, right? So novel opportunity, that's one side of it, and then the other side is lacking resources. You might have financial resources, you might have been very disciplined financially and have saved up to maybe a 12-month runway, so even if you have zero revenue for 12 months, your basic expenses are covered for personal and business, so you might be in a very solid situation, and that's, that's the exception, but let's say you're that, you still have, you still lack resources because you'll be, as a consultant, you know your trade, you know your craft, you know accounting or IT or HR or hospitality, whatever it is that you want, you know supply chain, you know AI workflow and automation, this is the technical thing that you know, but you have to learn marketing, Sales, hiring, managing, accounting, payroll, taxes, all that stuff you have to learn. Now, of course, you can hire contractors, suppliers who, who will help you, but you still have to learn a lot of new things. So, so, and that's again the best, best case scenario where you have a solid financial runway. And a lot of times most of us won't have that luxury. So, so So again, back to the definition, you're pursuing novel opportunity while lacking resources. So by design, by nature, if you decided to take the leap and to go on this entrepreneurial journey, just know, just realize, etch it in your brain that risk and ambiguity and uncertainty, they're just part of entrepreneurship. And I've been in Silicon Valley now for close to 30 years, and I've seen this play out over and over again. Early 2000, 2001, 2002, the dot-com crashed. The bubble burst. Mass layoffs. I was a VP. Next day, I'm laid off. One day, you had this startup that was the darling of all the venture capitalists, all the VCs. Next day, it goes under. Beyond Silicon Valley, the housing market in 2008, the crash. Later, with the mobile revolution, if you're a web designer and you focus on desktop and did not get into mobile, you might have lost, you might have impacted your business negatively big time. Were in the marketing business and you were relying on data, with the data privacy regulations, a lot of things changed for you. So, so, and the list goes on. So if you're waiting, there are always challenges. Some, of course, are more— maybe more, um, they stay with us longer. Uh, some are, um, they, they, they, they're harder than others, like the pandemic, right? But they're all— there are always challenges. And if you wait For perfect timing to start a business or to grow a business, it's you're putting yourself in a trap. So the goal here, what I want you to leave with with this first point is the goal isn't certainty; it is resilience. And martial arts Bruce Lee, he said, "Be soft but not yielding." That's the yin, and then be firm. but not hard. That's the yang. So as an entrepreneur, as a founder, you want to be soft but not yielding, and then firm but not hard. And this applies in life, not just in martial arts. Bridges have the same quality. If the structure were entirely rigid, it would quickly snap under the stress from the environment, the weight of of the cars and trucks and the weather and the wind, but by absorbing the pressure and bending with the adversity of its environment, the bridge remains unbreakable. So those are the things that as an entrepreneur you want to think about, you want to read about, you want to start experiencing, and it's a mindset. There are practical things that I will cover, in the next 4 points here, but from a mindset perspective and understanding what's ahead of us, we set the right expectations. If we think something is really easy and we will become top-notch consultants making $20,000 a month in 2 months, and then reality hits and it takes us a year to get to $20,000, we will be very frustrated and then we might Burnout, or you might just bow out. And if you watch videos on social media, you hear a lot of the get rich quick scheme that schemes that I I I just it it's just unbelievable that people fall for this narrative that you can become rich very quickly, that you can establish this this amazing drop shipping business or. With crypto, crypto you can make so so much money so fast, and then people end up end up wasting time and money and energy, and potentially losing their savings. So so not I haven't seen a successful person or read about or heard of someone who's been very successful, who did it overnight, or who did it without a whole lot of hard work and commitment. So be aware that if you're aware of what's ahead of you, you set the right expectations, you prepare properly, and you're more likely— or your chances of succeeding and completing this journey and getting to your destination increase significantly. Success is never guaranteed, but you want to increase the chances of success and eliminate or reduce the, the factors that contribute to failure. And for those of you who are just joining in, we are talking about launching a business, and if you've already launched, about growing a business, or at least sustaining the business during uncertain times, because entrepreneurship is uncertain. And that's the very first point I'm covering now, is that the reality of entrepreneurship is that there's always uncertainty. And the goal here is not to avoid uncertainty or eliminate uncertainty. So that is the point I'm covering here. And so instead of seeking a flawless guaranteed plan, you should treat your business as an ongoing experiment where failing fast is simply a mechanism to discover what actually works. It's really difficult. It's easy for me to say it now after all the businesses, But it's hard. You think of the idea, you think your idea will save the world or will make you rich and you'll be able to support your family and buy the things you want to buy, and then you go into this thing called entrepreneurship and things take longer and you have to put more hours and you're thinking you're doing something wrong, but a lot of times it's just the nature of it. You have to learn, you have, as I always say, you have to build those muscles, the marketing muscle, the sales muscle, the resilience muscle, That, that the ability and the mindset to fall and, and get back up and go, go hard at it. And I remember the first time I went out selling, and we were selling websites. This is 2003. It was a novel thing. Go to small business owners and trying to convince them to buy a website from, from me. We got 5 rejections. 5 rejections on the first day. It was devastating. I still remember that day. We went back, my business partner and I went back to our place and we thought, what the heck? Nobody's going to buy from us. We did the wrong thing. We've been delaying this day to go out and pitch for like 7 weeks or 8 weeks. We were planning, here's our 5-year strategy, here's our 5-year plan, here's our pricing strategies, here's how we will penetrate these markets, and, and all of that— I'm all for planning. I have an entire playlist on the channel, on the YouTube channel, about planning. Go ahead and do planning, but I don't want you to do 8 weeks of planning. I want you to plan for, for a weekend, for a couple weeks, and then you can, you can test things out. And I, I cover this in other videos, but the point is we were delaying that day of going out and pitching for so long. And then when we did it and we felt great that, hey, we mustered that courage to go out and sell, we got those rejections. It took us a day or a couple of days to actually recover. And then we said, you know what? Let's learn. Let's examine. Let's write down all the objections we got, all these rejections. I can't afford it. It's not for small businesses. Who needs a website? All those objections we got, we wrote them down and we wrote answers to those objections, and then we went back out and started to talk to people and talk to our network, and we, ironically, the very first client we landed was also a restaurant, so we learned from those 5 rejections, helped us land that first deal, and obviously— Got bigger deals, and then over time, we were selling 5 figures and later got into Fortune 1000 and later into Fortune 500 and later in Fortune 50. So all of that to say is that I don't want you to wait for the perfect timing because it will never come. I don't want you to wait for a flawless guaranteed plan. There is no such a thing. I want you to take action, and with taking action and knowing what works and what doesn't, I want you to take those actions on a solid foundation, which brings me to my second point, a foundation that I want you to think about and embody and build out early on. This way you can stay standing. And I'll start with— the main point of this foundation is something called— I usually say cash is king, but in uncertain times, Cash is oxygen. Now, you might say this is obvious, but let me tell you, a lot— most companies, a lot of companies, I think 35% or so, they run out of business because there's no cash. Founders use up the money they've saved, or if they had some investors, they used up the money, and then there's— you can't tap into the well because the well is dry now. You run out of cash and And you don't, you just have to close shop. So what I want you to think about it in these uncertain times, if you've already started and you have some cash in the bank or you're about to start and you put aside some money, you have to protect your cash reserve like your life depends on it because your business life depends on it. And there are specific tactics you can, you can do, and I promise I'll give you practical things to do. So things to do to protect your cash: payment terms. When you go out and sell, a lot of new consultants, they say, okay, let's say this is a $5,000 project. Yeah, you can pay me when I'm done. And the project drags for 3 months then, and you're not getting any payment till the project is done. You might be done You might be 90% done and you won't get paid till the project is 100% done. So you can do 50% upfront in your— in terms of your payment terms and your proposals. You can do a 50% down payment, down payment, and then you can do 50% on completion. You can also cover— do 33%, 33%, 34% based on specific milestones. I cover a lot of these different payment terms. Actually, I have the ultimate guide to writing proposals. It's the longest video I've ever produced, an hour and 4 minutes on writing winning proposals. I have a section in that video on, on payment terms, so check it out. But that's one thing. If you get some money up front, you have some cash in the bank. So that's one, one practical thing you can do. The second thing is if you've started and you have 2, 3 projects going on and you get busy because initially you don't have any project to implement, so you're busy selling. Now, once you start to sell and once you start to get leads and sell, now you're busy delivering what you promised when you sold. So you start to forget about some backend functions like accounting and collection. So even if someone is willing to pay you 50% upfront, They say, send us the invoice. So if you're busy and you forget to send them the— you delay sending the invoice by a week, the cash in your bank will be delayed by a week. So in terms of collection, you want to— the minute they say invoice us, you send the invoice. And then within a few days, depending on the size of the business, some businesses have— you were just speaking with the owners— you just have to nudge them to pay you by credit card or what have you. But also the second thing is if you are working with bigger companies, mid-sized and large companies, they might have some standard payment terms. We'll pay you net 30. That means 30 days from when you invoice us. Some companies, they will do net 60. I, I have a whole rant about a company, a Fortune 500, that wanted net 120. So to the extent that you can negotiate these payment terms in terms of not just how much they pay you based on the progress on the project, but also when you get paid. It's one thing to have $5,000 in revenue, it's another thing to collect that revenue and have the money in your bank. So that's one thing. The other thing is also make it super easy for clients to pay you. Do not go cheap on refusing to pay 2% or 3% credit card fees because you just want to get the cash, you want to get the check or the wire or the ACH. My friend, make it super easy. I learned this from a sales coach way back then when I was learning sales, Marvin, great guy, still a friend. He said, make it very easy to collect money from the clients, especially when you're working with small businesses. Because they can pay you by credit card, they can pay you, they send you a check, someone pay you cash, I don't know, but make it super easy. Have all the payment options available on your, in your proposal, on, on your payment, on your payment page. All right, so that's, that's another thing. Also, if you have someone who's just been delinquent, they're not paying you, you gotta, you gotta make it your thing. Like every day send them a reminder. Call them, text them. If you've done your work and they're just behind, they might be just busy, they might be lazy, they might be tight on cash, but do what you can to get that cash in. I mean, there are other ways to do it in terms of you can get an institution involved, a financial institution involved to help you with, if you have some invoices out, they can cover some of those invoices, give you some cash. You can also have a line of credit. All of that, you can obviously start expensing things on your credit card. I mean, there are obviously implications to a lot of these creative ways to delay spending because in terms of cash, it depends on revenue coming in and expenses going out. So you can— I want you to work on both ends of it. One, in terms of do everything you can to collect money, to bring the money in, And then use all these techniques to avoid the— you know, you want to pay your vendors, your suppliers, but if you can delay it by a little bit, as the founder of Virgin Atlantic, he said he always— I forgot, I think it was the first book he wrote. He said, I always paid my vendors, my suppliers, But at times, I delayed it to the last minute before they sued me because— not because he was a jerk or he was just hoarding cash, because he didn't have money. I mean, he just did not have the money to pay them. So he would delay paying others till the very last minute. So these are certain things. I remember one more story here before we move on to the next point. When we had— my co-founder and I, when we had some employees, and we were running payroll, and we were doing manual payroll, and one of the main reasons I did that is because I wasn't sure we would have money in the bank to run payroll automatically, so people get their money deposited in their bank accounts, and everybody kept asking me, Feras, you know, like, let's modernize, why do you still use paper checks? Well, I didn't tell them that money was tight, we were sort of like, paycheck to paycheck as a company. So, and I remember when we got— we would make sure our team always got paid. My co-founder and I would get the actual check, but we would not deposit it because there wasn't enough money in the bank. At times, we would wait a few days. At times, we would wait a week until my wife and also his wife would nag on him, or my wife would nag on me to, hey dude, we got to pay expenses. So, That's just part of it. And I had to tap into my savings at times to make sure we cover payroll. So again, a lot of these, I'm not saying or suggesting that you tap into your savings. If you do, make sure your people impacted by that decision, typically your partners, your life partners, your spouse, typically you want to get them on board before you make a decision that impacts that impacts others. So, so to the extent that you can delay paying money to others, do it. To the extent that you can expedite receiving money from others, you want to do that. And the last point here is I want you to examine your financial— your, your finance— financials or your, your, your expenses. And I have a full video It's on, if you go to my YouTube channel at Startup with Feras, on the live tab, you'll see, and search for runway. I have a couple of videos on building a 6-month financial runway. So what I want you to do is to do that, go through that exercise, and there's a spreadsheet with, and I explain it. There's a tab, actually, let me show you. I think I, yeah, I have it open. Let me share that with you here quickly. Right here. So here, again, you can download this, make your own copy. Go, it is. I'll put the link in the description. But basically, I want you to examine your expenses. your personal expenses. And again, I have this, I have some, some column D is my own assumptions, and then column F is for you to add your own expenses for food, for childcare, for housing, for transportation, all that good stuff, right? Add it all up. And then you might have specific types. I mean, this is what we all need to survive, to live, but you might have other expenses. You might have loans that you have to pay back, elder care, you might have some hobbies and recreational activities, travel, whatever the case might be. I want you to list all of it here and then see where you can reduce. So again, cash is oxygen. Cash is oxygen. Without cash, you cannot sustain a business. So you might have to make some tough decisions, some tough decisions into how the cash is spent at the personal Side of things. That's why it's important to make sure other people who are involved and impacted by your decisions of starting a business—they're on board with what you're doing. So you get the support at home. Entrepreneurship is hard by itself. Entrepreneurship, and then peace at home—it's a bit easier. And entrepreneurship and Not being supported at home makes things really, really difficult. So examine your personal expenses and see what is it that you can cut down or delay. And then the same thing for your business expenses. I have another tab where I list your— maybe you're renting an office, so work from home if you can, or maybe smaller office. Utilities, other things you have to do, marketing, maybe you can do some guerrilla marketing instead of doing paid ads for the next couple of months. You want to preserve that cash and do things that don't cost you money. So all of that, you know, legal fees— for some, some of these things are important, you can't go cheap on. But, uh, examine what the point here— I want you to examine your expenses and, and leave this, this, this one thing that I want you to leave with from this point is that survival and, and being frugal and survival buys you time so that, that you can handle and deal with the uncertainty and the challenges that are caused by these external factors. So that is point number 2, which is cash is oxygen. Now going back to— let me go back. And then for those of you who are just joining, if you have a comment or a question, I'd love to hear from you. And it looks like we have a comment, so let me check it out before we go to the next point. This is from Esparazal. You are very grateful for your advice. You are most welcome. I'm grateful that you are attending, and if you have any other question, specific question, or something that worked well for you, I'd love to hear from you. But thank you for joining. I appreciate it. All right. So the next, the third point here is speed to first dollar or speed to first revenue. In uncertain times, momentum matters more than perfection. So what do I mean by that? See, when you start a business, you might have a specific type of project that you want to work on. You might have a specific type of client that you want to work on, an ideal project. I love what I do. I do HR consulting. I want to go into these mid-sized companies and maybe 200% company, and I want to streamline their entire HR processes from hiring, from recruiting to hiring, to retaining employees, to improving all the employee performance process, all of that. You just, you have a knack for that, and you've done it, and you're very good at it, and you're using AI to streamline some of these processes. And that's what you want to do. But when you work with mid-sized companies, and definitely when you work with larger companies, it takes longer to sell and it takes longer to get paid. So if you're waiting for this bigger company or that Fortune 1000 company because you want that logo on your website, know that cash revenue is going to take longer. I'm not saying that you change, you alter your dream, or you change your strategy and your execution to get those clients. What I'm saying is if cash is tight and, and, and because of these uncertainties around us, you want to expedite, accelerate the speed to get that first revenue and get that first dollar, then maybe, maybe consider going after smaller projects. Find business owners with maybe a 20% company or maybe a 30% company, and you can convince them of the value add to their company where you can increase the employee retention. And they'll— they like you, they listen to your pitch, you come and visit with them, you show them your case study, you give them a reference, they buy from you, they give you 50% upfront. You get— instead of getting maybe that $30,000 project from the mid-sized company, you might get a $5,000 project from this small business owner, but you get some cash. You're paying rent now, that's covered. You're not tapping into your savings. So go after smaller projects if you have to, and this is not theoretical. I've seen founders that have struggled and then either burnt out or just decided to call it quits because they're waiting for this ideal client. that never showed up. So find smaller projects. Also look for things you can sell that have a faster sales cycle. So if you have— you're offering 2 services, for example, back to our HR example, if you're offering 2 services, one is typically easier to close and there's a— just when I say sales cycle, from the time you start getting the leads to the time you close the deal. That's the sales cycle. If you have 2 services, let's say you do an implementation, you help a company choose, identify the right HR software, and then you help them implement it and you train them on it and you show the managers and the employees how to use it and all that good stuff. So implementing a software, it could be in IT, it could be in accounting, it could be in sales. Like if you are a CRM consultant, the same thing applies here. So there's that process project of convincing someone to change their systems, their software, and buy the one that you're recommending, and then implementing and customizing and training them on that software. That is typically a longer project, longer sales cycle, and a longer project. But an audit, you come in, let me go in and audit your systems. Typically, it's a smaller amount, dollar amount that is, and you can do it very quickly relative to the implementation project, and you can then get cash in. So if you have maybe 2 or 3 different services, find the ones that get you cash quickly. So that's— those are a couple of things you can do here in terms of that speed to revenue, speed to dollar. I want you to think about it, examine it, This is not pivoting from what you ultimately, ultimately want to do. This is not abandoning your dream. No, but when we have some difficult circumstances, we have some external challenges— the thumbnail on this video is Bend or Break. I don't want you to break. So all these tips here are tips to allow you to have a solid foundation and to give you the ability to bend when the storm is coming hard at you so that you don't break. So these are some of the tips around revenue, speed to revenue, and speed to dollars. Now, in terms of if you're new to sales, a lot of founders, 68% of new founders, they don't have any or very little background in marketing and sales. I also want to share with you a playlist that I have on the YouTube channel. Let me go there and show you, uh, that is dedicated to those of us who have to learn sales from the ground up. That's me many years ago. And just go on the channel and search, go to the playlist, and you look for this one, How to Get Consulting Clients, Sales for Non-Salespeople. So how to pitch, um, and the proposal process. All of that is in this playlist, so I highly recommend you check it out. Um, if you are new to sales or you're struggling with sales, you're not sure how to, how to pitch, how to, how to negotiate, how to price, all of that is— and how to obviously send a proposal and close a deal— all of that is in that playlist. All right, moving on to the next one, and we have 2 more points before we wrap it up. And again, for those of you who are live with us Feel free to comment. Let me know what questions you have on your mind. And also, for those of you who are listening or watching later, leave me a comment. I answer all these comments. And if it's something again very private, something you don't want to share with the world yet, you can email me at info@startupwithferus.com and I will reply. I will reply to all these emails I get unless it's spam and you're trying to pitch. Please don't use that email to pitch services to me. Okay, unless you think you have something to offer, I'm happy. I'm always— I look at all the pitches because I roast them at times, and if something we, we use, I might reach out to you. So, so here you go, uh, not an open invitation to spam my inbox, but I truly would love to help you if you have a question and you don't want to put that question in, um, on the internet. So the 4th point, control what you can control. So the whole premise here is that there are external factors outside of our control, right? The storm— we can't— storms don't send us calendar invites. But there's certain things we can do. There's certain things we can control, although it's chaos out there. And the chaos, the storms will always exist, just like the weather. But founders should really focus on what they control. what they control. Now, what is it that you can control? Mindset. We talked about the mindset. I do want to touch on the mindset in a bit, but you can measure your outreach volume. How many emails or calls or meetings are you having every week? Let's say today is April 1st. Let's say today is May 1st and I'm planning my, my May schedule for, for, for getting leads. If you don't have meetings scheduled every week, 2 to 3 times, 2 to 3 networking events, if you're in a city, if you're in a small town, no networking events for your services, okay, you can do things online. I talk about this in other videos. You can potentially every once in a while go to a nearby city where they have events where you can meet with your potential buyers. You can do things online, of course, but what I want you to do, if geographically you can go to a place where there are people, okay, not YouTube channels, not virtual meetups, not Facebook groups, I want you to meet people. And I want you to measure that— how many people are you starting conversations with? If the word pitch makes you sound icky because it's sales and sales is dirty, okay, sales is not dirty. You're helping others. You are a consultant. You are knowledgeable. You are helping others solve problems, okay? That's who you are. You're an advisor. So if you don't want to call it pitch, fine, call it a conversation starter. I want you to track, that's under your control, how many people you are connecting with, whether emails you send, you send emails you send, or meetings you have. So that is under your control. Number— the number— that's the one metric if you're starting out or, or if you're struggling with sales. The number one metric is conversations per week. How many new conversations are you having? And as you are developing and having these conversations, nobody's gonna buy right away. Okay, some might, few, a few might, but generally in B2B especially, you have a whole lot of follow-ups that is required. At times 7 to 8, up to 12 times, 12 follow-ups that are required. So, so how many conversations are you having, new conversations, and how many follow-up conversations, uh, follow-up, how many follow-ups you're doing? With the people that you spoke with and they said, check with me in a week or send me a case study or send me your price list or whatever the case might be. So that is under your control. Action, action, action. If you're pivoting because whatever, for whatever reason, uh, have I, have I put together a timeline to check my offer, to vet my, my business idea? Have I put a timeline to speak with potential buyers? Have I put time on my calendar to research my competitors? So all of these are under your control. The chaos still exists, but you can still do all of that, all of that, the outreach volume, the conversations per week, the proposals. If you're not sending out proposals, why? Especially if you're talking to people and they're interested, are you doing enough follow-up so that they ask you, they are ready to receive your proposal? So if you want to track all of that and you haven't done any sales in the past and you don't know what a CRM is, a client— a customer relationship management system, I have this DIY CRM. Let me share it here on the screen that I also want you to— you can download. It's at bbsu.net/crm. I'll put all of that in the description after the livestream. But basically I want you to track everything that you do and we have some data here for you. Obviously delete all of this. This is all John Doe and Jane Smith, right? So I want you to capture information about the people that you are reaching out to, their first name, last name, email, all that good stuff, their industry, and then I have some specific lead where these leads came from and then their status. Are they qualified? They're not qualified? They're cold for now? They said, you know what? Reach, reach, reach back to me, reach out back to me in, in 6 months. So capture all that information. Again, this is just a template. You can add more columns, you can customize it, but the muscle that I want you to build, the habit I want you to build early on in your consulting business is to track your sales activities. It's boring, it's administrative. AI can help, like if you're on a call with someone, and you use Gemini or another system or like the Zoom AI, it will give you, the system will give you a summary of your conversation. That's very good. You can store that in your CRM. If you don't have a CRM, you can store it in a directory for your client, but you still have to record what, and that AI summary will give you the next steps. Like, okay, Tom is going to do this and then Jimmy's going to do that. So put those actions in your CRM or in this DIY DIY CRM worksheet, and then on your calendar, when is it that you want to follow up with this person? So you have control over when you follow up, you have control over these conversations. I want you to track it all here, and your spreadsheet, your own copy of this DIY CRM, should be expanding vertically and horizontally. Vertically in the sense that you want to be adding rows, names of people you want to reach out to, and then You want to add— you want to— you're updating your statuses. You're going from a, a, a cold lead to a conversation, then they're qualified, and then a proposal sent, and then I close the deal. So, so you want to— you want to be expanding this spreadsheet, and it is a numbers game. Yes, you can work smarter. Yes, you can be more efficient. You can— yes, you can use some of the AI tools to help you find the right lists and the right, the right way to to approach and you can automate some of the sequencing in terms of sending out emails to those who open and those who didn't. I'm all for all of that, but at the end of the day, you have to track your sales activities and follow up on those who are ripe for the next step in the sales process. Okay? So that is on the DIY CRM. So the next point, the last, the last one here is that it's tied to the first point on mindset, mindset. And, and the, the 5th point here is the founder mindset shift. So, and this is important if you're by yourself as a founder, or if you have a co-founder, there are 2 of you, or maybe 3 of you, there are 3 co-founders, or maybe you have a couple of team members. Or maybe you have even a contractor, because your team may eventually depend on you, even if today the team is just you. The way you think, the way you process information, the way you think of what's hitting us, all of that is very important. So you might not know what the market will look like in, in, in 6 months or for the rest of the year, But you can define the next step. So in, in during unstable times, leaders like you feel the pressure to, especially if you have team members, but even for you, for yourself, just by yourself planning and thinking about the business, like you feel the pressure to provide this big picture reassurance. Everything will be okay. I mean, that's okay. Sounds okay to say everything will be fine, but the storm is coming, or we're in the— or we're in the middle of the storm. What your team wants to hear, and even if it's just you, you want something that is clear. You want what I would say directional clarity, meaning what is it that we are going to focus on this week? What metrics matter right now? I just mentioned the right metrics to look at earlier, and then what decisions are we not making, or should we be making? And this is really important, especially if you have co-founders. Some of you out there have co-founders, and in these relationships, and I always say, deciding on a co-founder is the most consequential decision you make in So there's typically this honeymoon period. Everybody's excited about the opportunity and everybody's putting the time and effort and yeah, yeah, yeah, here's what we want to do and we'll be millionaires and then we'll go and have our company meeting in Hawaii and all that good stuff. But when financial pressure hits, battles erupt between at the top if you have a bigger company or if it's a small company, typically with the co-founders. or maybe with a senior person, because finance, you have to pay, you have to process payroll, you have to pay vendors, you have to take care of rent, and then sometimes you need resources to help you deliver a project. That means you have to hire it, you hire a contractor, and then sales is taking longer, revenue is taking longer. So, so your job as a founder Whether it's by yourself or you have co-founders or you have people that work for you, you have to stay steady. You have to focus on the solutions. You have to keep moving forward, and of course, plan and scenario plan for different cases and for different for different scenarios. Scenario plan. For downside cases, not just the shiny day and the blue sky day. You want to look for what happens. I have Plan A, Plan B, Plan C. That is all on you as a founder, but you have in this process, when the storm is about to hit or the storm has already hit, you have to stay steady, you have to focus on solutions, you have to keep moving forward. And you have to lead with restraint. And if you have team members, including if you have co-founders, it's on you to show empathy. See, people react to storms differently. People react to fear differently. People develop anxiety. People have experienced trauma based on certain— because of certain conditions, and now they're seeing the same conditions and they're very anxious, so you can't control that, but as a founder, as a leader, you can show empathy, you can give your team members or your co-founder space if they need it, but also don't get into spreading panicking, or let's say there's a political crisis, or if you happen to be living in a region where there's geopolitical hostilities, don't get involved in the politics or don't inflame politics or spread panic. Your steadiness becomes the stability of your company, of your co-founder, of your team, and keep in mind that if this instability becomes prolonged, you might have to revisit Plan B and Plan C and Plan D that we talked about earlier. And you might have to diversify markets, you might have to pivot, you might have to take on a different service that you didn't think you had to do at the time, you might have to cut down your prices, you might have to do more work for the same amount of money, all of these are tools in your inbox that will help you survive till things improve, and if you survive, and when you survive the storm, you'll come out stronger. You'll come out maybe bruised a little bit, but you won't be down. And that's my goal, is that there'll be bruises, there'll be cuts. That's just the nature of life. That is the nature of business. That's just the nature of martial arts. If you are— if you step on the mat, you might get injured. It might be light, it might be— you might get a sore muscle, a sore joint. That's just part of it. But you're also protecting yourself. you are getting better at what you do, and you're minimizing those chances of being— of not surviving. So entrepreneurship isn't about predicting storms or preventing storms. It's about learning to navigate them. So those are the 5 points I wanted to cover today. And before we wrap up, I do want to remind you, and let me go to and share, of the YouTube channel I already mentioned a couple of resources, but if you are starting and you're struggling— oh, where did I go? Where did I go? Yeah, here you go. If you are struggling to start or struggling to scale, this is what I focus on. It's all about consulting. It's all about starting a business. Some of the tips and strategies apply to all businesses, but a lot of the specifics apply to services businesses and to consulting. So check out the videos I have. Video on 26 ideas for this year, so if you're struggling to just find the ideas, check out this video. I have the Ultimate Guide to Writing Proposals as a Consultant. It's very thorough from 20 years of experience and 2,000 proposals. All the lessons are here, and then there's the one I mentioned earlier, this one right here, the Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business. It's been very well received by the community, and I go through everything you need to do to start a consulting business with templates and worksheets and, and tools and tips. So, so check it out if you have any question on starting a business. And, and between now and, and the next live stream, I want you to remember that storms will come, um, economies will shift, industries will change, unexpected setbacks will, will be there, but founders who build a strong foundation— founders who build strong foundations early tend to survive these storms. The goal isn't to eliminate uncertainty. It's to become the kind of founder who can operate despite the uncertainty. So your preparation will determine whether the company bends or breaks. All right. Send me a comment. Send me a question. If you're liking this content, hit the Like button. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Follow me on LinkedIn or on the other social media platforms that I'm on, and I'll be there for you, and I'll answer your questions and help you get started and grow and scale and achieve your business dreams. See you next time.