Consulting Success with Michael Zipursky

How do you make business problems disappear? Wrap em in bacon for business owners, marketing execs and anyone trying to grow your business. Pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Every week our chefs will serve you proven recipes for ramping up your revenue. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo.

All right, welcome back to Bacon Wrap Business. This is Brad and today we're going to talk about consulting. I get a lot of questions all the time from some of my listeners because I don't often talk a lot about my own exact business model. I don't make a pitch to you to sell you anything typically and I oftentimes simply work with companies, brands, influencers to not only consult them on their business, their brand strategy and their growth. Of course sometimes I have been known to buy a company and make some acquisitions and do some other creative transactions. But I don't often talk too terribly deeply about the practice of consulting and it has been an amazing business model for me ever since I sold my publishing business about I think we're going on like six and a half years ago and I immediately realized I did not just want to go become a brand new startup business owner again because starting up a business is super hard, it takes a long time and I've got a lot of skills that I like to leverage and help other people grow their business. I like to be kind of that pivot point to where they can, they can leverage my knowledge and we can all get results a lot quicker. So for the past six years that's where Costanzo Marketing Group was founded. And people pay me very handsomely to help create strategic roadmaps and tactical implementation plans for how they can grow their business. And I have learned a lot of this through trial, error, gut instincts, et cetera. I have taken courses, I've been coached, et cetera. But a lot of this has just been get out there, see if you can offer value and help people. And, and it has led to a tremendous business for me and I love it. And today I have got the founder of consultingsuccess.com on the call, Michael Zypersky. And Michael is, he's also the author of the Amazon best seller the Elite Consulting Mind. And he's advised organizations such as the Financial Times, Dow Jones, rbc, Omron and many more and helped them launch products into global markets at as well as helping over 180 consultants from around the world and over 50 industries. Add six and seven figures to their annual revenues. And he's here to enlighten you guys and share some of the sizzling hot tips with me as well on how we can use some of the things that have worked for him and his clients to grow our own consulting businesses. So if you are, if you are a consultant now, if you sell your time and your advice for money, you don't want to pay super close attention. But if you aren't, and if you're, whether you have your own product, whether you're trying to get into business, whether you're working for a job and you're not really excited about, but you think that there may be a better way to create some consulting success for yourself, and this is also something you're going to want to pay really close attention to. And Michael and I are going to share kind of what's been working for us. So, Michael, welcome to the show. It's great to have you.

Hey, Brad, thanks so much. Real pleasure to be with you.

Absolutely. So you're up in Vancouver, you were.

Saying earlier, right at the moment? That's right.

Fantastic. Now, have you lived there most of your life or is that just somewhere somewhat recently?

So I call Vancouver home base, but in 2017, I was out of the country for about five months, most of it traveling with my wife and daughter.

Love it.

Yeah, I'm able to work from anywhere as long as I have Internet connection. So that is nice. We spent quite a bit of time in Europe and in Japan and other places. But this year so far, we've trying to stay a little bit closer to home. And now that we're getting into a nice season, it's always nice to be here when the sun is out.

That's great. So prior to starting consultingsuccess.com and helping to show other people, you know, kind of how to get started and how to grow their business and scale it as a consultant. What, you know, what was your entry into the world of consulting? How did you get started?

So, yeah, really? I mean, there's no. I have no formal training as, as a consultant, if we can call that. I learned from the school of hard knocks. I started my first consulting business now going on almost 19 years ago. And at that time it was in kind of web development design, helping clients in the early days of the Internet. And so we built that business. Things went very well with it. It was kind of. When I say we, I'm referring to my cousin Sam, who's still my business partner today. We've built and sold several Businesses over the years, but that was the first one. And from there we went on and create another business. It was called kanke culture. Kanke in Japanese means relationship. We're very big believers in the building of relationships. And especially if your clients are other businesses, larger organizations, the mindset of establishing a relationship is extremely important over the Internet marketing approach, which can be a little bit different. So that was what we did. I ended up going over to Japan, open up the branch office for that. We built that business. I came back to North America, started another consulting business called relogy Marketing, that again, standing for relationship strategy. You can probably see a theme here. But then that business was really focused on helping professional service firms, so law firms, other consulting firms, financial advisors, and so forth, to generate more leads through kind of all of this. And around the time when I was heading from Japan back to North America, I thought, you know, why not start sharing my own experiences of what I was doing, you know, at the front lines, building consulting businesses, not only the things that were working, but also things that weren't working, in the hopes that others could benefit from my missteps as well as my successes. And that's kind of how consulting success was. Was born. There was no real monetization plan. It was just really about sharing of ideas. And it's taken off since then.

I love it. So most of the. Most of the consulting you've been doing has been primarily on, like, marketing, growth.

Et cetera, because, like, there's all types of consulting out there, right? You can be a consultant on really anything that somebody needs help on. But your specialty particular has been on marketing, branding, customer acquisition, et cetera.

Yeah, exactly.

Same here.

Lead generation. And I mean, you know, back in the day, there was a bit more focus on, let's say, strategy or brand strategy and design, because that was one of our businesses. We did a lot in that area. But we have clients as consultants now that we work with who are literally in every kind of industry that you can imagine. The only distinction that I'll make is that we only work with what we call expert consultants. So these are people that are serving other businesses or established organizations. We don't work with life coaches or spiritual healers or others that are serving the B2C market.

Perfect. Okay, so let's talk about some of the.

Like, your sweet spot. When you're working with a company, obviously there's really small companies doing, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars a year who are, you know, just getting started. But then there's companies doing millions or tens of millions of dollars and even higher per year. You have a sweet spot of the type of consulting clients that you worked with as far as the size of the business goes.

Yeah, it's a great question. So in my earlier days when I was running a more formal consulting business, so over the last 18 years, I've built several of them. Most of our clients, the majority of my time was spent working with billion dollar organizations. So if we say Panasonic or Dow Jones, Financial Times, Royal Bank, a whole bunch of others that people may not have heard of because they're very kind of B2B players, but if you're in that space, you would certainly know them. So that was a lot of, you know, my kind of upbringing in the consulting world. That's where I really honed my chops and kind of learned what I know now.

How did you get your foot in the door with those big companies?

Yeah, great question. Relationships. Okay. So, yeah, like I got, you know, let's say when I went and ended up in Japan, a lot of people say, well, how could you, you know, start like reach the, you know, the president or get into the boredom of a company like Panasonic or a company like Nisha, Nihon Shashi Insatsu, a very large printing company that used to print like the cases for Blackberries and stuff like that, or the wood paneling and high end cars. And it's all relationships, right. I would go out, I would find a way to meet with someone. And so in my specific situation, it was reaching out to other owners of and principals of graphic design firms and ad agencies. I would connect with them, I would build relationships with them. Right. While all the other foreigners may have been off typically at the foreign bars in the evenings, chatting about their days and teaching English and their experiences, I was in a hole in the wall. Izakaya, like a little Japanese bar, rubbing shoulders with people that were twice my age just because I wanted to learn from them. And so I immersed myself and really geeked out on learning more about the culture, the language. And that created very strong relationships which led to introductions and referrals and opening up a world of possibilities that otherwise would have been very challenging for me.

Yeah, okay, great. So these were companies who were already doing probably business with the companies that you wanted to get access to. Right. And that was your entrance.

That's how it started for sure. And then from there, then the name started to become known and people who were larger Japanese or it then spread throughout Asia, who wanted to get assistance with growing their brand or market share or getting their products into an English speaking country would hear about us and come our way.

How would you position it when you're talking to. Or whether it was then or now, when you're talking to a potential like that, I call it a gatekeeper. Right. So let's say you're talking with the owner of a graphics company or somebody like that. You said, who has, who's maybe doing business and has the relationship with the big potential target that you want. How would you position them to make the introduction and to kind of tee you up.

For, for, you know, for the intro?

Yeah, I love these questions. I wouldn't. So my, my focus was not on trying to get the introduction. My focus was on building a relationship with them. So my observation, my advice to anyone in this position would be to focus on identifying people who you feel could be strategic. Right. And this is just one way. So we're not even talking about direct outreach and getting in front of others in terms of lead generation. This is just if you want to build kind of a referral or introduction network that can get you into places that otherwise you'd have a hard time getting into. In my case, right. With owners of a graphic design firm or an ad agency, it would be, I'd love to meet with you, learn more about what you're doing and share some experiences. And then that conversation would go well, or it wouldn't go well. In many cases it went very well. And then it would be, hey, you know what? Like, they would suggest you need to meet this person. And that would lead to, you know, a meeting on a 50th floor in downtown Osaka, overlooking the city, sitting at a bar, talking with some other executive who I never would have, you know, unless by chance ran into. And now we're talking about things and it just kind of brewed from there.

I like that. Now this is great because I'm on, I'm actually on your website too, on consultingsuccess.com if anybody wants to take a look. And in some of your bullet points where you're talking, I guess you have a, you have multiple things, you have a course, you have coaching, but inside one of your courses, you've got some great bullet points such that you will learn this, this, this, these are actually providing me some fantastic questions for you. I just found that. And we just, and I just see this right here, which is how to land contracts with big companies.

Does this flow into it or are there some other things that you recommend right now for somebody who is, who's got good consulting chops, and they kind of want to level up their game and get a hold of some of those bigger budgets. What would you recommend somebody do today?

You mean in terms of strategies?

Sure, yeah, yeah. To land those bigger consulting contracts as opposed to going to, you know, the really small companies that, you know. Small companies are great. I do a lot of work with smaller companies because A, I know a lot of them and I get access to a lot of them, and I know I can do a couple things and really move the needle. But at the same time, a lot of times smaller companies are much more price sensitive. They don't have as big a budgets. And I've worked with some much bigger companies and billionaires and people like this, and it's a lot more fun when a company's got a bigger budget, even though sometimes it takes them longer to make decisions. But what are some other. A few other ways that you suggest landing these bigger contracts.

So, number one, you got to get very clear on who your ideal client actually is. Just saying that you want to find a bigger client, right. Is not going to be the most effective approach to get really clear. I mean, specifically, like, what industry are you targeting, what company, and then within that company, who is the decision maker that you need to get in front of that is going to have the budget and the authority to be able to say yes to you? Then the next step that you want to take is make sure that your messaging is going to resonate with them. Right? Understanding what is the problem that they have right now, what is on their mind, what will compel them to take action? A lot of consultants make the mistake of just trying to kind of lead with what we call inputs, right? It's like, this is what I do. But buyers don't care about what you do. They care about what they get. Exactly. Right? So they care about the output. So figuring out what is the output, the outcome, the value, the result that the buyer wants is really important because it allows you then to create the right messaging. Then once you have that now you can start to actually reach out to them. Right. And there's many different ways to do this. LinkedIn is one. But you can get lists. There's different approaches to this. But the main thing is you need to become visible. Right? The challenge for most consultants isn't that they lack skill. It's that they are not on the radar of their ideal clients. And so, right, from like an Air Force perspective or the military perspective, you want to fly under the radar. Well, in consulting, you want to do the exact opposite. You want to get on the radar of everyone that you possibly can. And so in terms of who are your ideal clients? So you want to figure out who they are and then actually take steps to get in front of them in the most direct, efficient and effective way possible. For some, that might be speaking, for others, it might be doing through LinkedIn. For others, it might be a slightly different approach, but you want to get in front of those people and you want to start to build a relationship with them. If we talk about LinkedIn as one example, you can target them very specifically. You can connect with them. You can then start to build a relationship on LinkedIn with them through some conversation and then from there take it offline in terms of conversation or an in person meeting. And mixing into all of that, it's not just about the focus on making a sale or having a conversation. You definitely also want to be thinking about how you can position yourself as a real authority and expert. And so that might be by providing some kind of materials or valuable information that your ideal client will really appreciate, help you to establish your credibility and your authority. So that going into the conversation and even helping you to get the conversation, that's going to really improve your chances of being able to move things forward a lot faster.

I love that very, very solid advice. Have there been ways that you've gotten on people's radar that have been more effective for you than others? Obviously, I think speaking is fantastic way to do it.

Yeah. You know, and I really do like this question because there's a big belief in the marketplace and this is my observation, that there's one best way to do things, and I'm a really big believer that is actually not the case. Right. I really believe that. And again, my observation is that depending on your current situation and a lot of different variables, there may be a different strategy that's more effective for you as opposed to others. Like I was just speaking with a well known sales expert who for them, like speaking, I mean, this guy is a road warrior. He just gets out and he speaks. He doesn't have to do anything else, he does other things. But for him, speaking is what generates the vast majority of his business. And so he can just continue doing that and it's working really well for him. For someone else, speaking is not going to be the best route because maybe they have family obligations or it just like it scares them like crazy. And there's other things they could do. So for, for us at consulting success, one thing that has worked really well, has been content. Right. We've been playing the long term game for quite a bit of time now, been about nine years. We've put out a lot of valuable information to help consultants to grow their business. That in turn helps us to get a lot of people coming to our website to get those free resources. But for others, like, you know, that's the content game, that's the inbound game. And inbound can work, but the flip side of that is outbound. And outbound you can typically see results much faster because content. Right. Inbound takes more time to create ahead of time. And then you land the conversation, you have someone reaching out to you. But with outbound, you can actually start to connect with people and have conversations much faster because you don't need to take the time to create as much content that the challenge on the outbound side is a bit outside. Outbound side is that when you do that.

The prospect is typically a little bit colder. And so it takes a bit more time and you need to invest more time in the relationship to be able to move them further down to want to have a conversation, to really have a meaningful conversation with you.

Right, okay, fantastic. What about.

And you can speak to, I guess, your experience on this. But.

When it came to, you know, when it comes to consulting, there's. There's various degrees of consulting. There's giving advice and then there's advice plus implementation. And then there's sometimes just implementation. Right. So if somebody, somebody may already know what they want. I need somebody to run. I mean, it could be as simple and tactical as I need somebody to run Facebook ads. Like you're a Facebook advertising consultant, they know what they want, you kind of come in and you just kind of do it. More of a service vendor, in my opinion, than a true consultant per se. When you were running your business, were you doing or take me through like some of the typical things, like how, how much implementation of the things were you doing versus just giving them the strategy?

And it may have changed over time. I know mine has.

Yeah, it definitely changed over time. I mean, starting off in the early days of my career as a consultant and building consulting businesses, it was very much focused on implementation. And I think that's really important and a good place for most people to go if they're new to it because you get to learn firsthand, you get to really develop your skill set. If you already have a real clear skill set, your expertise is there, then you're able to provide higher level advice. But if you've never Actually done what you're suggesting that people do. Right. Like, that's probably not a good approach to take. So that's where implementation can help. But you know, my career, as I did a bit more implementation, then it was very high, like strategic level advice. And then we built models where there would be certain things would be high level strategic advice, others would be implementation or others would be kind of advisory. So advising and overseeing teams, implementing on our recommendations.

Okay. When you were doing on fees. So I see you mentioned here, and this is something I told like I adopted a long time ago and I told, I told myself clients and colleagues and other people who sell by the hour. In some cases that's okay, but in most cases I discourage people from billing hourly. And I'd love to hear some more of your thoughts on that as well as kind of going into some of the ways that you suggest people structure their fees. And especially like, we'll keep in line. I mean, you and I are talking, we're both kind of business marketing growth consultants, etc.

But, you know, what's your, what's your take on hourly fees versus the ways that you recommend people do it more effectively?

Sure. Hourly fees are terrible. Just come on and say that. You know, for a lot of different reasons, but mainly because you're putting an income cap on, you know, kind of a ceiling only after 24 hours a day. Yeah, exactly. Right. And the other negative is that, is that as you start to want to increase your fees, buyers become very sensitive to that. If you talk about units of time, a buyer will always do the math and try and figure out, well, okay, so I'm paying three sessions to. That means that each session costs this much. Oh, whoa. That's like a lot. Right. And so you're having the wrong conversation because buyers don't actually care about time. The only thing they care about time is how quickly they can start seeing results and outcome. And so you want to be focused as a consultant on helping the buyer to see the outcome, the value, the result that they're going to get and not worry as much about the time that it's going to take you to provide that as long as you're able to provide that in a time that, you know, fits within what they, you know, how soon they want to start seeing results. So, and then there's all the administrative hassles of trying to track time and so on and so forth. Right. The. A much better approach is to structure your offerings and services around the ROI that you're going to provide for Your clients. So one of the things that we teach our clients is a concept called ROI positioning, which essentially, Brad, is about figuring out what is the real value and ROI that your client is going to get from the services, the advice that you're going to provide, and then doing a little bit of math and a little bit of equation so you can provide them with a very positive roi. Right. Typically it can be anywhere from five to seven times what they're going to invest with you. They should be getting an ROI of five to seven times on top of that. And it's easy for me to say right now, but of course there's a lot that comes before that. It's like sales, right. Making a sale is not hard and we could just talk about that very quickly. But really it's everything that leads up to making the sale that influences whether or not that sale is made. And so it's the same thing when it comes to fees. People can understand how to structure ROI positioning and ROI and value into their fees. They can get that, but just getting that is not enough. You have to actually figure out how are you going to have the right kind of conversation, which we call meaningful consulting sales conversation, where you're asking buyers the right questions, where you're able to identify the true value, the problems, the cost of inaction, as well as the kind of future and desired state that they're going to have and the value that will be created there. Putting that all together and then ensuring that they actually see it, that they're bought into that, that return makes sense for them and then fees at that level becomes much easier.

I love it. I love it. Now, have you personally ever done much consulting either for A equity or B profit or rev share on many deals, performance based consulting or sometimes it's a combination of like a retainer plus plus a percentage of revenue or profit.

But is that the answer? Yeah, the answer is yes. Okay. And then I'll give you a few different perspectives on this. So I have, you know, a drawer full of paper that was supposed to be worth millions and millions of dollars because in the early days it's a reminder to me and it's something that I share with clients for years. It's a reminder that the paper is worth just like paper, there's no real value there. And so the mistake that a lot of entry level or kind of novice consultants make is they get excited by that idea and they trade their time for a future potential and it's only a potential return. The problem, however, is that most deals Even the, you know, the best venture capitalists have a very low hit rate in terms of success. And so if you are giving up 100% of your time and trading that for a piece of equity, then, you know, you can't get that back. And my suggestion to people around equity, if you're going to do that, because it can work out very well, is, number one, don't do it. When you're working with someone for the first time, I think it's important that you establish a relationship with that person first because you're really putting a lot of trust into them. They have all of the control. You could be working for them for three months, working really hard to try and get them a result, and then one day they might decide, you know what, we're gonna pack things up. This product line isn't working for us. We're gonna change whatever. You don't control that. And now everything you hope to get out of that relationship and the work that you've done is, is gone. So a better approach is to first of all ensure that you understand who they are, that you have a good working relationship. Do at least one project, it doesn't have to be a big one, but do at least one project with them to ensure that there's a good cultural fit and relationship. Then you can look at kind of an equity or performance type of deal. And when you look at that, ensure that you're not taking on 100% of the risk, that both parties have skin in the game. Meaning that you should be receiving a minimum amount of payment, you know, every month or at a set kind of schedule, and then have on top of that the performance or the equity component. So that way you should set up so that if for some reason you never see any of that upside that you're hoping for, you still feel good about the engagement, you still feel that it was profitable for you. Not as high in profit as it could have otherwise been if it was 100%, you know, structured as a project. But, but you still feel good about it. And then you have the upside potential that may or may not come. Cherry on the top.

I love it. And it falls right in line to a lot of the stuff I've kind of done in the past. And I've actually came to. This is a, this is a. There's a recent, there's a recent issue that I was actually dealing with with a client. And it's kind of funny. I was, I did, I definitely did. I did a project and it was performance based, but this was easy because this was one aspect of that they weren't doing at all. And I added a brand new profit center to their business for, you know, and we're splitting the gross profit 50, 50, and it's been fantastic, right? But then I was looking at it saying, okay, there's, there's a lot more than I can do with your company. And there's like this, this, I mean, there's a litany of things that they're not doing. And I think, you know, we could triple the size of the company in the next year if we did, if we did them. And I'm sitting here thinking, okay, how would be the best way to structure this deal? Because.

One of the things is they've got declining revenues, right? So they're on a downtrend over the past 12 months. And I'll use some broad numbers here. These are not exact numbers, but let's say they were doing about $300,000 in revenue per month, right? Really healthy profit margin, etc. But.

That'S the average, that's the baseline. And in the past I've done some stuff where it's worked out. I said, listen, I'll come in, I'll help you, and you pay me 10 or 20% of anything over the baseline that we do. And they're like, okay, that's cool. The problem is when you've got a decreasing trend. And let's say in December, November, December, the holidays, they may have done like $450,000 in sales, but then just recently, they may be doing 150 or 175,000 in sales, right? And now those things all average out to about 300. But if I came in and if I said, well, anything over the past 12 month average, which is 300, you give me an X percentage. Well, heck, if I did that today, I've got to almost double their sales, you know, next month just to hit my baseline. So I'm sitting here thinking, what would be a better way to structure this to where it is performance based as opposed to just fees? Cause I love, I love performance based consulting, especially when I know that I can hit it out of the park.

But this has been a nut that I'm trying to crack in working with a company who's got declining revenues and creating a baseline for performance based consulting. And this may be a much deeper question, but it kind of made me think about it when we were talking. So if you don't have an answer, that's quite all right.

Yeah. I mean, the first thing maybe to Ponder a little bit would be can you structure an initial or a project with them where the goal of that project is to stem and stop the bleeding? You're right, exactly. With a performance component. So, you know, goal pay, figure out what is the value of stopping that bleeding for them. Right. By helping them to see if they don't stop it, like really what kind of losses are they going to be facing over an annual 12 to 18 month type of period. And then figure out what your fee would be to help them to, to stop that, but also have some built in performance into it so that you don't just stop. And they say, okay, now we're good and you know, bye, bye Brad. Figure out a way to just add a little bit of on top to that. And then that would be step one. Step two would then be, okay, now we've got you back to where you want to be. The blood has stopped. Well, now how do we start to really improve performance? And now you add that secondary project which has a greater percentage or greater portion being performance. Is that something you've considered?

Yeah, and it's not as eloquently as you've put it. So that's great. And it's one of those things where it's almost like doing triage. Right. So if somebody is in a bad accident or something, the first thing you want to do is go stop the bleeding and just let's stabilize the patient. And I have zero medical experience, but I've seen TV shows about emergencies, so I am an expert now and I'm going to consult on this. However, my dad's kind of like that, like, all right, these are the biggest, weakest points. These are the things that I think are losing you money. Let's go stop the bleeding. And if I'm able to do that, that's obviously worth X amount over this time period and we can kind of come to an agreement. You know what that would be worth. Now I do like that, like stabilize before you kind of like created this average baseline. But yeah, that was a weird conundrum that I hadn't really worked with because it's kind of a turnaround situation, which I'm good at turning things around, but I just don't want to, I didn't want to screw myself. And at the same time, when somebody's got decreasing earnings, especially in a trend, the one thing they don't have is a big budget to just toss out consulting fees because they're worried every single month they're making less money, they're worried about where's the next dollar going to come from. So those are very real issues. And that's why typically I like, I personally, my favorite companies to work for and work with are people who maybe they've plateaued and they just don't know how to, they just don't know how to kind of get unstuck from their plateau. They're busy, but they're leaving a bunch of low hanging fruit, you know, laying around that they're just not doing. And those are easy ones to kind of come in. And I always tell them like one of my little strategies is I always like, if I'm, if I am asking for fees, I'll ask them what are some of the things they're doing right now? And especially some of the things they're doing right now that aren't working for them. And I get them to kind of pinpoint the things that.

This is an example I haven't used in a long time. I actually never used this with a, with an exact client. But like some businesses still use the yellow pages, right? So it's like, and they spend like thousands of dollars, sometimes like 15, $20,000 a month to still have a yellow pages ad because they think they still need it. And you know, in other cases I've done this where sometimes they're doing direct mail, sometimes it's magazine ads or whatever. I ask them, is that working for you? And they go, well, no, not really. Well, why do you keep on doing it? Like, I don't know, we just, we kind of feel like we need to. So then I'll ask them instead of, instead of, you know, I'm not asking you to spend new money, I'm just asking you to kind of redeploy those assets that aren't, or you know, those marketing dollars that aren't producing a return. And try, try it over here and let's see what this works. You've got nothing to lose because that other stuff isn't working either. So as, as often as I can, I'm looking for opportunities to just get them to think about redeploying their marketing dollars to something more productive as opposed to reaching in their pocket and spending new money.

Yeah.

So that's been kind of effective for me. What about.

What have been some of the consulting models, whether it was yours or whether it was some clients that you've worked with that have really just kind of made you go like, wow, that is a, that is a fantastic gig that either that person has or something else, like some of the best like, my favorite ones are when companies call me in to just give them strategic advice and they stroke really big checks, and those are fun. And they kind of just keep me on retainer to make sure things are going really well. So there's very little implementation, etc. And I've gotten paid very handsomely just to do discovery for clients as well. To say, I don't even know if I can help you, but you've got to, you know, write me a check and we're just going to do discovery, and then if you want me to continue on this basis, we can go down that road. But have there been any consulting models or individuals that have just really got something dialed in that just a great example?

Yeah, I mean, there's many of them, Brad. That's really what we're helping our clients to improve upon. You know, different approaches work for different people. We have some clients who really enjoy the approach to retainers. There's two different kinds of retainers, right? Just for those who may not be familiar, there's either pay for work or pay for access, as we call them. Pay for work being where essentially it's like an ongoing contract that you have. You're doing a certain kind of specified work each month for the client. Then pay for access is really where the client has peace of mind that you're on their side. They can give you a call, email, at any time, and they know that you're going to be able to respond to them in a short period of time and help them out and provide them with that strategic kind of counsel and advice. So the pay for access approach to retainers is one that a lot of people love, and that can typically last for quite a while, quite a bit of, you know, a period of time. However, some people find that there's downsides to that. One of them being that as that relationship progresses, and often, you know, it can be even a year or two down the road that you start to be treated and almost become like part of the company. And so your advice isn't respected as much as it used to be. Oftentimes you may not be called upon as much as you used to be either. And so you feel that you're not providing as much value to the client as you did previously for others.

That's happened to me too, by the way.

Yeah, it's very common. Another approach is really productizing your consulting services so that you have a lot more leverage. You're able to work with more clients at a lower level of intensity and involvement, but your Model and process and systems are so well defined and you have the right support around them that you're able to essentially run your clients through them and provide them with a very consistent, positive outcome. And that's a really good model for growth. Especially if you're a consultant that's building a consulting firm where you're eyeing an exit. Right. You want to sell your firm at some point, looking for ways to productize it and to create value that does not only rely on you or relies less on you is a really good approach to take.

Yeah. And the book John Warlow wrote built a Cell as a perfect example. If you guys haven't. Who's listening? Haven't read it. It's a perfect example of productizing a service model and getting it to where it is sellable and it actually frees up your time. Are there any other productized service examples that you can think of offhand?

You mean in terms of courses and resources?

No, just other people who've taken their service and productized it. Just for the reference of the listeners.

Oh. I mean, there's many. We have clients who are rolling with that model right now. Just put out a course, actually on how to productize consulting services that people are really seeming like they're enjoying and helping them to do that. I mean, it's a model that I think for a lot of people is very interesting, but they just don't know how to wrap their head around it. It's not for everyone. Right. Some people do really enjoy working with a small group of clients in a very intimate and intense way where they're charging significantly higher fees because of their level of involvement and intensity with them. But for others who want to create more leverage and have a business that has more asset value and doesn't require as much of their personal time, the productization approach can work really well, and it really can work for any type of consulting business. As long as you are open and flexible to figuring that out, it can be deployed in any industry, anywhere around the world.

Fantastic. I love that. Well, you know, we're coming up to a hard stop that we've got here, but this has been fantastic. And I can tell by the way that you are not. You know, there's a lot of people out there who say they teach consulting, and they're not really right. I can tell that you've actually got the chops that you're. You've kind of done this, that you've got like the true B2B stuff and not just teaching, not just coaching. Coaches on how to coach coaches, on coaching coaches and calling yourself a consultant. So.

With that being said, is there, you know, for people who are either existing coaches, I'm sorry, I just Freudian slip who are existing consultants, or looking to start to break into this and looking for a really good resource. You've got these resources and it's both in a coaching program. You said you have online courses over here at Consulting. What do you suggest is the best way for somebody to dive in? Get started, understand your methodology and leverage some of the experience that you've created?

Sure, yeah. If you go to consultingsuccess.com, you can enter in your email to get a free 51 page consulting blueprint. Lays a bit of a foundation with some popular consulting topics, but really you'll get kind of entered into some emails that I send out where I share my journey of building a consulting business and working with billion dollar clients and just successes, failures, lessons learned. So if you're looking for some strategies and tips from the real world of consulting, that's a great place to get started. And the cost makes it very manageable because it's free. And if you are looking for other information, you can also check out the Consulting Success podcast as well. As you mentioned, Brad, we do have a self study program as well as the coaching programs that we run for consultants that are really committed to greater growth.

That's fantastic. Well, I've really enjoyed this time, Michael. You've given some fantastic insights and I think that every single person listening can benefit from this in one way or another because we are really moving towards quickly what they call the gig economy where there is a lot less full time employment. A lot of companies, a lot of bigger companies are enlisting the help of outside consultants for projects as opposed to having just full time employees. And there's a million reasons to do so. It just makes a lot of financial sense. And that is that that creates a danger if you're just thinking about staying in your job. But it also creates a tremendous opportunity when you learn how to package up your knowledge and your expertise or go learn a new expertise and then learn how to package that up and then be able to provide your skill sets and your consulting services to all types of companies, which gives you an extra layer of protection and not being subjected to potential layoffs or downsizing or anything else like that. So I think that consulting is a booming and even getting much, much bigger industry worldwide. So I love the fact that you're on the forefront of this and helping people kind of you know, light their path on their way to Consulting Success. But.

If people want to get ahold of you directly, is there. Do you want to. Are there any social media profiles you'd like them to follow? Maybe a direct email address if they've got any questions, it's totally up to you. Or maybe they just go to Consulting Success and kind of follow the yellow brick road.

Yeah, I mean, they can certainly go to consultingsuccess.com but anyone that wants to connect with me on LinkedIn, you can find me there. Michael Zapiersky. Or, you know, Twitter, Facebook, any of those other usual spots. Feel free to reach out. Always welcome questions or comments. Or if I can point you in the right direction, be happy to.

Fantastic. I love it. Guys. I hope this has been a tremendously valuable episode for you. I should say epicizzle for you. I know it has been for me. I love this stuff. I've been doing consulting for years. I highly recommend it. And it's one of the easiest ways to create a business without undergoing a million of the other moving parts of starting something else. Go in, utilize your expertise, get paid for it, be the lever, you know, let somebody else leverage you and leverage your knowledge while you leverage the infrastructure that they've built, and you can make a tremendous income. I look forward to hearing your emails. If you have any questions, shoot them over to me@askbradakenratbusiness.com and. And leave a review on itunes. When you do it makes me happy. And when I am happy, I do better shows. And when I do better shows, you get better shows. I guess so. That being said, Michael, thank you again for being on the podcast today, and I look forward to continuing the relationship.

Fantastic. Brad. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much.

All right, guys, and tune in for the next episode. See you next time.