Why Most Consultants Fail Before They Launch and How to Fix It

Hello, welcome to today's episode of Black Belt Startup with Feras. Thank you for tuning in. So what's new in the world of entrepreneurship? Well, a lot actually. In the next 72 hours, I'm releasing something I've been working on for over 6 months, and if you're thinking about starting a consulting business You don't want to miss it out. It's called The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business. It's a free 50-minute walkthrough, step by step, with tools, worksheets, and templates to help you launch and grow your business the right way. It's everything I wish I had when I started. You'll find it soon on my YouTube channel, and I'll link to it in my weekly newsletter, on LinkedIn, and everywhere else where you connect with me. Now, in today's episode, in today's episode, I'm giving you a preview, a warm-up from that guide. I'll go over a foundational formula, my 10+5 formula, 3 pitfalls to avoid, and a couple of real-world examples. But first, a quick story about a conversation I had with Adam. Adam was, or is, a serious want-to-be entrepreneur. He had been circling this idea of starting a consulting business for several months. Smart guy, experienced. He had built things and solved hard problems. But when it came time to keep— to go on his own and to take all that he had learned, all his skills, all that experience, and turn it all into a business, he froze. We were talking through this experience, and, and I was answering some of his questions, and he said He asked, what kind of problems, what kind of problems can I solve? What can I help other people with? You know, he shared a few things and then he paused. He looked at me and said, oh, I didn't realize people actually paid for that. He said, I didn't realize People actually paid for that. Now, that sentence might sound small, but in that moment, something big shifted for both of us because I remembered that I had that exact sentence once too. Now, flashback 20 years earlier, I had just gotten laid off from my job, an awful experience. Decided to start a web design company with a friend of mine. And then we had, we had, we had some resources in terms of financial resources from our savings and whatnot, but we had no idea how to get clients. We had no sales process. We didn't even know what a sales process was, and we had no clue what we were doing. I had come from corporate background, from a corporate experience, but I had zero experience in sales and zero experience in marketing. But we were committed, so we hit the pavement, knocked on doors— literally, we did— we chased leads, we fumbled through awkward sales calls. We didn't know how to price, we didn't know how to sell and whom to sell to. And honestly, We didn't even really know what we were offering. We found this old CD set my partner had about sales, and one of the tips in that CD set was very simple. It says, tell everyone you know about what you do. I'm a good student. I did. I told friends, I told family, even my dentist. And guess what? My dentist became my second client and paid $2,000 for a website. Now that one sale changed everything. The first sale was unbelievable. I still remember the moment I, I had that— I sold that first deal. But the second one changed everything in my mind because up till then Including that first sale, in my mind, it all might have been just luck, a fluke. But the second one, that's when it clicked. This could work. I could actually do this. And so I doubled down. I kept talking to people, kept refining the pitch, kept showing up. What I realized after dozens of conversations, maybe over 100, was this: my experience, my skills, my resume— none of that mattered if I couldn't connect it to something someone actually needed. And that's where Adam was stuck. Not in talent, not in drive. But in understanding where his value met the market. So we mapped it out. I helped him see what problems he was already solving inside his company and how those same problems exist— existed out in the market waiting to be solved by someone like him. That's when I knew I had to put this guide together, this Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business, because if you're like Adam or like I was 20 years ago, I don't want you to stay stuck. I want you to get traction faster with less stress, with fewer late-night doubts, and with less gray hair. You'll have some gray hair. So, so that's, that's what The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business is all about. And today I'm giving you, as I said, a warm-up, a, a preview. Now before we dive in, let's check to make sure we've got no questions, all of that is working out well. Technology, technology is always something here that we have to, uh double-check on. And if you are new to this channel, to this podcast, I go live here every other Thursday at 3 PM Pacific, 6 PM Eastern. I cover a business topic and then I answer questions we get from the community. So make sure you subscribe, you hit the like button if you're liking this content, so this way you don't miss out on future episodes. Also, if you're listening or watching live or you are tuning in later, I'd love to hear from you. Let me know about the business challenges that you're going through. Let me know about what wins you have— small wins, big wins. Let me know if you're still in this idea formulation phase, if you're not sure if this idea is going to stick or not, you need some help, you have some specific questions about your your, your scenario, you can email me at feras@startupwithferas.com. Feras spelled like my first name, F-E-R-A-S. Obviously you can leave me a comment on any of the platforms you're on, on LinkedIn, on YouTube, on, on Facebook, Instagram, and also on X. But if it's something maybe very personal or very specific, feel free to email me. I answer every email I get and I keep all this information confidential. My mission here is to help you get to your destination with less challenges, with less hurdles, with, um, with, with learning from, from my mistakes or from the mistakes and, and the successes that I hear from other founders I work with. All right, so let's dive back in and get you more customers and help you set up your business to grow faster and to, again, to get to your destination faster. So I want to start by going over this formula. My— I think it's a found— I believe it's a foundational formula, and I call it my 10+5 formula. And the first part of the formula is having 10 conversations. So 10+5, the first part is 10, having Have— having 10 conversations. Now, it might sound simple. Actually, it is simple. I'm not saying it's easy, but I want you to talk to 10 people who might need the kind of help you can offer. Now, these conversations, they don't have to be sales calls. In fact, they shouldn't be. They're discovery calls, they're listening sessions, they're learning sessions, because you want to ask people about the challenges that they have. What is it that they're struggling with? Where are they losing time, money, or peace of mind? Have they tried hiring someone else to do this for them, and what worked and what didn't Was it expensive? Was the quality good? Was the quality bad? All of that information is going to help you better position yourself as the expert who will sell that service, who will solve that problem. So in this phase, when you're doing this discovery early on in your business, or if you've already started a business and you're struggling and you're about to pivot, maybe start a new service line, or maybe go after a new market or try a new service altogether. So this process of speaking with 10 customers, potential customers, people who have a need for what you offer— again, it could be IT consulting, it could be financial advisory, it could be home decor, it could be elderly care, whatever professional service, whatever service you are planning on offering based on the skills that you have, or maybe based on skills you are planning on on acquiring, speaking with people, as we call in marketing, targeting your target audience, your client profile, speaking to people about what they're going through, their pain points, their challenges, you know, the benefits they want to get out of this engagement, their aspirations will help you better position yourself as the solution provider for those problems, for those challenges. And when you have those one-on-one conversations, again, I'm, I'm big on founders, entrepreneurs being, being out there. I want you to talk to people, interact with people. Yes, you can do a lot of things online, and you should. There's a lot of benefits from what you learn on YouTube. Check out our channel, other channels. You can, you can obviously ask ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude a whole lot of questions. That's all good. But the experience, this business, starting your own business and building a business, there's a whole lot of art to it. And without experience, without gaining experience, without reps, without being out there, without exercising your networking muscle, your sales muscles, your marketing muscles, your listening muscle, You won't be able to start and grow a sustainable business. And when you have those one-on-one conversations, and let's say especially if people were not happy with the previous provider and they're complaining about the level of quality they got or the price they got or the responsiveness from the other vendor, you get when you speak with these people that the These unprompted conversations, they're much more powerful than what maybe you hear from a result of a survey or some online research, because you as a service provider, as a consultant, part of it, a big part of it, of what you offer is solving these problems and connecting with people. See, People, especially in services and consulting, people buy from people. You know, you could have all the credentials, you could have all the degrees, you can have all the certifications, case studies, but if you don't connect with people, if you don't, if you don't understand what they're going through and position yourself as, again, the solution provider for these challenges, they're not going to buy from you. So I'm big on founders, on business owners interacting directly with people. Now, if you can't do this in person because you live maybe in a small town or for whatever reason, you can still have one-on-one conversations, you know, on Zoom. You can have conversations through other means, but it's really important to set a time aside to connect with 10 people to help you understand what the market needs, right? And then in the ultimate guide video that we are releasing soon— and for those of you who are maybe watching later, you can go to the channel and, and, and check out the video, and the channel is @StartupWithFeras— you'll see around 10, the 10-minute mark, I walk through what to ask. I have a worksheet that you can make a copy of and use right away to help you capture the information you need. In a systematic way. But here's the real key. You're not only— when you're speaking with clients, you're not only looking for pain points and aspirations, you're also looking for urgency. Pain is interesting, urgency is profitable. And sometimes the best thing Excuse me, the best thing these conversations do is help you realize which of your skills are actually valuable and which ones aren't worth building a business around. So for those of you who are listening live, if you have a question about a business idea you want to start, if you're having difficulty in identifying your audience, the people that are likely to buy from you, or even how to approach them, Leave me a comment now. Again, if you're listening to this later, leave me a comment with a specific question. I'll be more than happy to give you some tips on how to reach out to these folks and how to listen, you know, for the— there's a book, The Art of Listening, is important here. In sales, it's all about active listening. So I'll share with you exact tips that you can apply right away for your business. Don't hesitate to, again, email me, leave me a comment on whichever medium you're on, and I'll be more than happy. I will answer those, those comments. And I'll give you an example. A young professional I met with a while ago, he's just launched a speaking coach business. And after he's sort of good on stage from when he was young— actually, I've known him for a number of years, and he turned this now into a business. So he honed his skills at public speaking and being comfortable you know, on stage. And after doing some volunteer gigs and helping others get comfortable speaking, he learned— he spoke with so many people, and he learned when it comes to public speaking, he learned that people have issues in terms of, you know, they, they have stage fright. So in his messaging, he says, I help people overcome stage fright. People speak without a whole lot of confidence. They hesitate. They're very nervous. So in his messaging, in terms of how— what he does for his clients, he didn't list his credentials and how many events he spoke at. He said, you know, he wants to help his audience learn how to manage nerves, how to elevate their public speaking skills, how to speak with confidence. And then he knows some people from his conversation with his potential clients. Some, some people like to learn on their own, so he has a workshop, virtual workshop, and he also offers hands-on coaching where he provides real-time feedback and then onstage practice to— for people, for his clients to get better at delivery. So his conversations with these potential clients as he was planning his business and before he launched his business enabled him to offer something people are looking for, people deal with all the time. A lot of us have to do public speaking one way or one— it could be a toast at a relative's wedding, it could be obviously a presentation at your company, it could be if you're part of a volunteer group at a nonprofit, you might be presenting something to donors, whatever the case might be, learning how to how to speak is a good thing. And if you need help with, um, speaking with a speaking coach, let me know. I can connect you with this, uh, this friend of mine who, who, um, who, uh, just launched their business. But the point is, what this gentleman has done over the last several months is his due diligence in, in talking to potential clients and potential leads to understand the issues they face And he built the business, his business around that, leveraging his own skill of being a good speaker, a good MC, a good event organizer, and a good coach. That's something that he's just done over the years. He's just honed those and turned them into a business. So that is on the 10, the first part of the formula, having those 10 conversations. Now the second part of the formula, the 5— remember, the formula is 10 plus 5— the second part is on doing some competitive research and specifically doing 5 competitor scans. Let me pause just for a second, see if we have any question from those of you. Thank you for again dialing in, and we do have a lot of comments, and sometimes the comments here don't show up On my screen, and I don't think it's a user error. We had some issues earlier, but let me see the comments here. Give me one second. I see there are a bunch of comments, but they're not showing up for whatever reason. I just see the count of comments, so I'm sorry I can't see your comment. Really apologize about this. Uh, let me see if I can go to my other screen. That might become a little bit better, I think. Yes. So, um, A question about recording. Yes, we are recording this. This is live streaming on YouTube, on LinkedIn, on other platforms, on Facebook, also on X. So, uh, but you can always come back and view it on LinkedIn. Um, someone said this is a pre-recorded. No, my friend, it's not pre-recorded. I'm here live. So if you have a question, ask me. I'm not sure if you're trying to be funny here on YouTube and adding a lot of comments. But if you have a question about business, about starting a business, let me know. So, and here is my friend Shafiq. I didn't know actually he was joining this livestream, but he is the speaking coach actually I referenced. And he said takeaway number 2 Connect and understand what your customers are going through because people buy from people. And he has this in all caps. So, so the point here is that, um, you can do a whole lot of research. As I said, you can do a lot of online research, you can read about a topic, you can obviously, um, uh, you know, ask ChatGPT. I want you to do all of that. But this is not a replacement of talking to real people. They will— you'll see their body reaction, their emotions when you're asking them questions. And again, if you're struggling in finding people to speak with in your niche, in your area, or you're not sure what to ask, what to say, don't hesitate to reach out. I'll be more than happy to answer. And again, sorry for missing some of these comments earlier. Because, um, I don't think it was a user error. There's a new thing in the interface and all the comments were hidden. So I just saw that. Good. So the second part of the equation, and that is on the 5 competitor scans. So study, study 5 other companies or other consultants who are doing something similar. This is not to feel bad about yourself. If they've been around for a while, they have a whole lot more customers, their website is fancier. No, it's not about feeling bad about yourself. It's also not about copying what they have, but to understand how the market is already buying. So look at their offers, look at their pricing, Look at their positioning. Are they targeting sort of— are they going after maybe their price-sensitive buyers? Are they going after premium, high-end type offering? You know, understand when you look at these competitors and you're comparing the notes from the competitors to the notes you heard from your potential clients, are there gaps that people ask you that they're looking for this sort of thing and none of these competitors offer it? This is the opportunity. If a lot of the people you spoke with were unhappy with the responsiveness of these competitors, that is your edge. If they're not happy with the quality of the deliverable or whatever you hear from clients, that's what you want to capture. So you're, on one hand, you're getting input about what clients are looking for or potentially want to aspire to have. And then what the market is offering today, what the competitors are offering today, and that's where you start to formulate your offer and tweak it. Although you might launch your business with a specific business model or a specific set of pricing or a specific maybe way to sell, and then there's nothing wrong with changing your pricing or changing your packaging or even sometimes offering something different based on the skills that you have. You know, we've all done it. We pivot. I want you to give it your best before you pivot, and pivoting is a whole nother session, but there's nothing wrong with tweaking things even after you launch and you set up maybe pricing or specific packages. So in these conversations, as I said earlier, then in this research with the competitors, you want to know what is it that they're emphasizing? What do their— what, what do their customers in testimonials or in case studies, what do they praise them about? And also what complaints, uh, complaints— excuse me— complaints you see or you read in reviews? Again, all these are gems for you to be able to stand out. And what is it that they're missing, these competitors are missing, that you could do better? Because there'll always be competitors. And, and in, in when you're just starting out, the idea is to, to, to really leverage your skills, leverage the few things that you have, that you have going for you, whether a certification, whether it's a degree, whether it's some credentials, whatever the case might be, you know, your years of maybe volunteering, you have maybe a network that you can reach out to. Those are the things that you, you these are the advantages that you have. You might not have a long list of clients yet. You might not have big logos yet. You might not have a name in the industry yet. So you want to be able to map what you have in terms of skills, soft skills and hard skills, to what clients are looking for and then what the competition is missing. So that's the formula. That's sort of the art, the exercise that you go through. And again, When we have the video launch in the next 72 hours, the ultimate guide to launching a consulting business, I walk you through this whole exercise. I spend 5-7 minutes going through a worksheet on how to do this with sample data from real businesses, how to— what questions to ask, how to capture that information and put it in a systematic way, and also how to do competitor research. So again, if you're not a subscriber to the channel, go ahead and subscribe now so that you get notified when we launch the video within the next 72 hours. So now we have— you have a flavor of this 10+5 formula. I don't want you to overthink this. You just need to look with intention because When you put those 2 steps together, the 10 conversations and the 5 scans, you start to see patterns as I said earlier, and patterns are what help you craft a compelling offer with proof baked in. And what this process produces is what I want you to think of is going from, I have a lot of experience to I help. So this is a lot of consultants, come to consulting and they've— they're very proud of what they've accomplished. I agree 100%. You deserve, uh, you know, you should be proud of what you've accomplished, but that's not what people buy. You want— you want to turn this, I have a lot of experience, into, I help this kind of person solve this specific problem by doing this specific thing. That's what buyers respond to, not your years of experience, not your education, not your story. These things help, but buyers respond to precision. And that's what this 10+5 map gives you. All right. So before we wrap it up, I want to cover 2 things. One is 3 pitfalls I want you to avoid and then walk you through a real example of a consultant I helped. So the 3 common pitfalls to avoid. One is waiting for it to be perfect. The goal isn't to get your offer right. I want you to give it your best to get it right, but it could be good enough. It's this being clear enough to test it, to go out and share it with others and tell people about it, to go to the local Chamber of Commerce or to the local BNI or to go to an industry conference, go to the exhibit hall and meet with people during happy hour, whatever, wherever your potential clients are, go out and test out this offer, practice not pitching. We use pitching as a sales thing, but it's really a conversation. And early on, as you're trying to figure out or maybe refine and fine-tune your offer, you want to go out and listen to what people say. Again, don't wait for this offer to be perfect. Build something that, you know, give it your best and then go out and test it. You can refine as you go. 2, talking to the wrong people. If you talk to the people who cannot or won't ever pay you, then your insight and what you're hearing from them will mislead you. And again, in the, in the client— in the Ultimate Guide to Starting a Consulting Business, in the, in the video that we're releasing soon, I define how to, how to reach out to, to this, uh, to the client, your ideal client profile, ICP some folks call it. All right, so you can check it out. And then the last, and the third and the last pitfall is copying competitors. I alluded to this earlier, but it's really important. And I made a lot of what I cover on this channel is mistakes I made. So, so I don't want you to repeat these same mistakes. I want you to get to your end destination faster. I want you to get to that 7-figure business to, to maybe potentially have, have 8, an 8-figure business, but don't do it. I don't, you know, it took me, it took me 7 or so years to get to 7 figures. In the second business, we got there in half the time. So whatever I'm sharing here, I want you to get to your destination faster and smarter. So don't copy competitors. Instead of copy something that, oh, it works well because it works for them, no, study them. Your offer should be different because of them, not identical to them. So those are the 3 pitfalls. And before I go to the last point here on in today's episode, I just want to make sure we have other other comments here. All good so far. Let me go over the the real example here, and it's a an HR consultant. So so this gentleman I worked with a while ago, they wanted to offer HR consulting. They've done they were a manager at one point, they've done a lot of hiring, and then they worked in HR, and they said, I want to do HR consulting. Okay, companies hire, companies fire, employee benefits, recruiting, all of that is good. There's always a need for this. So, but it was a vague idea. I want to be an HR consultant. But after 10 interviews with founders, and 5 deep scans of HR benefits and HR recruiting companies, here's what he found. The real point, at least in the market he was going after, the real point wasn't HR, it was a specific part of human resources. And for, again, for the sample founders that he worked with, they were having difficulty in hiring and retaining people. And the bad hiring decisions, the bad hiring was draining time and money. And, and when he looked at a lot of competitors' websites, they were offering bloated audits and policy updates and, and, and things that they do, uh, salaries and whatnot, but not— they did not offer some systems for reliable hiring and some training for hiring managers and to establish processes For the small and mid-sized companies to have a reliable, repeatable hiring process. So after working with this consultant for a little bit, we repositioned the offer as, again, from I do consulting to I help early— I help early-stage companies, small, small companies, reduce costly mis-hires by building repeatable hiring systems and also leveraging latest AI hiring tech. So instead of, again, before I do HR consulting, I am an HR consultant. Compare that to, let's say you're a business owner and you're having issues in retaining people. You hear this, I I'm a— I'm an HR consultant, or you hear, I help early-stage companies reduce costly mishires by building repeatable hiring systems and leveraging latest AI hiring tech. Again, you can— don't take the exact wording here, but you can, you can make it a bit flow nicer. You can make it, you can make it more concise. But the point is, this consultant was now very specific. He said, early-stage companies, small companies, starting companies. He talked about the business benefit, reducing costs. And then he talked about establishing repeatable hiring systems because that will help companies grow. And he's leveraging AI. There's a lot of tools. There are a lot of tools out there. He invested in learning about all these AI tools to help the hiring process and the reference checking a bit more objective. So that is an example of how you can take something very broad, which people who have a lot of technical skills, talented people, kind of start off with, and turn it into something buyers are interested in hearing. So this new positioning made it very concrete. It hit the real pain point for these, for the CEOs that he was going after, and he immediately got traction. And that's what the 10+5 Map is for. It doesn't just help you sell, it helps you see what you are really selling. So that's it for today. And before we wrap it up, again, if you're liking this content, hit the like button, share this video, leave us a comment. I promise I'll do a better job in getting these comments next time. Um, and then, and then, and also subscribe to the channel. And if you have a specific question about a business challenge, don't hesitate to leave me a comment. I answer all the comments myself. And if it's something very personal, very specific, you can reach out over email, feras@startupwithferas.com. And you can— we also— I have a weekly newsletter. We send it every Saturday with a lot of practical tips. So go ahead and also go to startupwithferas.com and sign up for the newsletter. And if you have any other questions Let me know. Other, other than that, we will talk to you next time. Bye.