160 - How to Build a Facilitation Business with Mireille Beumer

What does it take to make workshops work? And how can we facilitate collaboration that sticks and leads to results? My name is Myriam Hadnes, and with the Workshops Work podcast, I'm on the mission to find the magic ingredients that make workshops work. Today with me on the show is a returning guest, Mireille Böhmer, and we speak about the business around facilitation, how to go from being a freelance facilitator to building a business and how to scale it. So stay tuned. And by the way, if you don't have pen and paper at hand to take your own notes, scroll down to the show notes to download my free one-page summary. And now enjoy. Welcome back, Mireille.

Yeah, thank you, Myriam. It's good to see you again. It's a long time ago. We met for the first time 3 years ago.

Yes. First at the mastermind in Amsterdam, and then in my living room to record episode 30.

Yeah. And do you still remember? Yeah. Do you still remember the mastermind? It was 40 degrees. That very hot, hot, hot day in Amsterdam.

True. It was very hot.

Yeah.

And now we're back here together. In the meantime, a pandemic happened. And we all moved from on-site to online. And I would like to start this conversation with a different question than usual. So what has happened since we last spoke? What are your learnings? What is your journey from through the pandemic since our last recording?

Yeah, so, so many happened. But I think that's for everybody. It was a crazy year or crazy 2 years, to be honest. And I can remember that the first— when the first lockdown was calling out, or they say, okay, we have a lockdown. It was March 18th, I think I remember, 2 years ago. I had an appointment with my business coach 2 or 3 days later, and everybody was a little bit in shock. Oh, what's happening? And a little bit fear and what's happening and not knowing. And my business coach was saying to me, Mireille, you have experience in online working and a lot of people have to work online at this moment. Why are you not organizing Q&As for all those people who don't know what to do? And I thought, Q&As? Online working? Because before COVID I worked already a lot online. I'm an associate with a facilitation company in the US. So before COVID we already met each other online every 2 times every month. So working online with a team, a team of international facilitators, was not new for me. So I did what my business coach was saying to me.

So coachable.

Yeah, so coachable, of course. So I started directly with free Q&As, how to hold your meeting online. And that exploded. And I think that was the start of my online career in the Netherlands. From the Q&As I did, I think, I think I did 10 or 20 free Q&As. And then I thought, yeah, but I have to also buy some bread and I have to also pay the rent of my home. So then I designed a training. So in April, 2 years ago, I started the first training in online facilitation. How to make your meetings interactive? And that goes on and on and on and on till the beginning of this year. Now it's a little bit quiet for questions on the online trainings or training online facilitation, I have to say. Yeah.

Wow. And what comes next? You said that this slowing down and when we're discussing about Possible topics for today's conversation, because last time we talked about the day after, what comes after the workshop and how to document it. And today I would like to explore what comes after being this freelance facilitator who designs, holds a workshop. And I know from many beginning facilitators that they dream of building a business around their facilitation superpowers or around their passion. So I think you already gave us a glimpse of your entrepreneurial spirit. And that's something that I've always admired in you. So maybe you can tell us a little bit more about that. So how did you come to build your business as a facilitator and what comes next?

It's a good question because a lot of people are asking me or are saying also, you've done so many nice things. You can always find me on LinkedIn. Every day or every week I post there 2, 3, 4 times a week. And the posts over there are quite different. Sometimes it's very personal about my life, my private life, or things I'm— subjects I'm thinking of or which matters me. Sometimes it's content, practical content, content you can directly use. For your own meeting, sometimes it's something funny I found on the internet also. And being always present on LinkedIn every week, there never stops a week. That really helps because people are sort of counting on it. Oh, it's Friday. There's coming a post. Oh, it's Tuesday. Oh, there's coming a post. And you'll see that people also. Make up their mind. They have an opinion about you, and that's very strange because sometimes somebody calls me or I have a chat chitchat with a client, and then he or she is saying, "Oh, but you are doing such nice things. You are so happy. You looks like energetic and enthusiastic." And sometimes I think, how do you know? Because I'm tired. I don't want to to work today. But then people have their own opinion because of the posts, of what they are doing and what they see of you.

So this means that you build your reputation through LinkedIn, if I understand you correctly. And would you then also consider LinkedIn as your main funnel to find new clients?

Yeah, yeah. One of the biggest advice I can give a starting facilitator or even somebody else who wants to be an entrepreneur, show up. Show up, show up, show up. Find your own voice. Find also— I'm not saying your own USP, because your own USP looks like you only can do one thing, one thing, your unique selling point. But my opinion is you can do more things, but it has to be clear for your audience. I get— when I started as a facilitator, that's 6 or 7 years ago, I get the question of a friend of mine and she's saying, she was saying to me, and I will never forget, you are a facilitator, you facilitate teams, you facilitate sessions. But to be honest, I don't know for what sort of session I can call you.

Hmm.

Can I call you for a strategy meeting? Can I call you for a kickoff or for a mediation meeting, something else? Or when there's a conflict in my team? I don't know. So that's why I don't call you as a client. And then I thought, yeah, that's very good advice. Be clear about the sort of meetings or the sort of services you deliver for your clients.

And it's funny that you started this explanation because I totally agree, and I think that's golden advice. And for me, this would refer to this unique selling point. So maybe it's not one service that we're selling. But I think that you want to have a brand, and it can be a personal brand, that if someone meets someone else around a dinner table, at the bar, and they're talking about a problem, they will say, oh, you have to call Mireille because she is the person to call in this matter. And I think if we become this one person that someone would refer to, When they hear about the problem we can solve, then we made everything right. And this for me would be a unique selling point, a USP.

Yeah. And I can add something. The person who is at the dinner table, he or she has to have your— you, Mirai, or somebody else in his or her top of mind. So you're not in top of mind when you post or do your marketing once a month. Then there are so many other mails and some other articles and some other videos which are going through it. So then you are not top of mind. Only once a month, just a single thing, send it out. That's too less. Be on top of mind of the people, of your clients, of your audience, so that they still remember, oh, there she is again. Oh, there is she, there is she again, or he. And that's by being very continuous every week.

Yeah. And providing value.

And providing value, of course. And second one, making sense out of it. Because people want to practice it in their own context. When you only write such abstracts or something, then people, then your readers are thinking, oh, that's nice, but that's not for me. They need to relate it to their own context, to their own problems, to their own questions, to their own troubles.

Yeah, very good point. And I think through this sensemaking, you can also show your synthesizing abilities and sensemaking abilities. And I think that's one of the superpowers of a facilitator, right? It's to condense information, to bring it to a point, to take something from one context and apply it to another one. And then They get a sense of who you are and how you work.

And I think the word sensemaking is exactly on point. Yeah.

And then when I come back to your experience through the Q&As and the trainings that you provided, it sounds more like business to customer so that you sold these sessions or you invited individuals. Whereas if I understood you correctly, before that you were rather working with corporates and teams. So who do you attract through your marketing strategy on social media and how did this shift your client base before and through the pandemic?

Yeah, I think you're totally right. The first 3 months in the start of the pandemic, it were open trainings, so single persons who bought a ticket for my training. And I think in the summer of 2020, it changed. I still give every month one open training, but then I get a lot of questions for in-company. And what's happening over there? That's a good question, good reflection question. What happened in the summer? And I think there are in every organization, there are also always some people, some employees who wants to know more. There are something like, I want to be self-employed. I have some self-leadership. I want to get more knowledge on building a meeting or facilitating a meeting. So they take care of themselves. They are employees in a company, but they take care of themselves and said, I want to do that training. And then they get that training and they took it back to their own manager and said, yeah, we need it all. We need it in our company. We need it in our team. We need it in our direction. our organization, part of the organization. So that's what's happening also. A lot of single participants took the training or the experience of the training, told their managers about it, and the managers were saying, okay, that's what we need. Call Miriam and ask if she can train our whole team or our part of our company. So from that point of view, from that moment, I only give a lot of in-company trainings.

This makes total sense and reminds me of the saying that we are, we're buying from people, from human beings, and we are selling to human beings.

Yeah.

So your funnel first. OK, I help you to solve your immediate pain through Q&A. Come in here and you get immediate solutions for the individual and then, oh, I want more of that. I sign up for the training as individual. Oh, I enjoy it so much. And then I open the door and I'm your reference basically to broaden it up and then come back to sell to the corporates.

I think there are 2 very clear things in your synthesizing, and that is people buy from good references of other people. So if I'm telling you that's a good one, Then you're thinking, okay, she's saying it's a good one, I want that also. I'm not going to do some research for others, for other trainings.

People buy from recommendations of other people. And the second thing?

The second thing is companies want to explore also. A lot of entrepreneurs are saying, I need a contact with the HR of that company, or I need a contact with the sales manager of that company. But be aware that those are all human and they have human problems. So don't— sometimes you're thinking, I need HR, or— but be aware it's a human with their own trouble, their own questions, their own obstacles. And just focus not on the function in the company, but focus on their troubles. What transformation do they need? To solve their problems or to make their work better so that they can get better results from the teams or from the organization, from their work.

Yes, very good advice. And then you can speak directly to them and you'll find a fan, an ambassador, definitely a door. Yeah, genuine.

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What just came up for me was if I think of someone in the audience who just started, I think, yeah, that sounds fantastic. But how do I get there? Because the more we do, the more case studies we have. So the more practical advice we can share on social media.

Yeah.

And for me, I started with a podcast and basically the podcast became the backbone of everything that I'm doing in my business. Where did you start? Where did you find the inspiration for these very first posts? Yeah, if they were posts.

Yeah, there are 2 different things. One is everybody has a lot of experience. Maybe when you are younger it's less, but you also have your little jobs when you go to school and in the weekends you work somewhere. And there are always a lot of situations which you can analyze what's happening over there. What happened over there? What did I do to solve something? So analyze your own cases. You have more cases than you think. You have more stories to tell than you are thinking. Just ask yourself, yourself, okay, what's happening over there? What did I do? How did I change the situation? How did I help somebody else? Just keep questioning you that.

I love that.

Yeah. And, and the second one is And that's something what really helps me also. Don't be very perfectionistic. When I think back to my first training, and that was a live on-site training, so that was years before COVID When I think back to that training, then I think, ah, what did I do? Did people pay for that? Really? Oh, I will never give such a training. What a bad training, because now you are much more experienced. We are 6, 7 years later. But what helped me at that moment is that somebody, another coach, said to me, do it, just try. Even if you say it's a pilot, call it something different, but you have to make your hours. You have to create experiences. You have to try, try, try, try and learn and fail. And try and learn and fail. And the third thing, what also helped me, is in Dutch we say it gluren bij de buren, but go ahead and watch others how they are doing it. So ask a co-facilitator, can I help you as a second person? Or follow a training with a very, at a very experienced facilitator and just think, okay, What little part can I change to make it my own? Don't copy, of course, the training, but you can pick everything from every person or book or article or an assignment or somebody else. Pick, mix, and match.

Yeah, and I think that's also another good source by just participating and learning. So I remember that I think I first Or what I associated with your name in the beginning was, oh, Mireille, she's the one who read all these facilitation books. You could, you could cite so many different theories and from so many sources that I knew, oh, you're very knowledgeable. And I think even if someone is starting out, they can share about what they've read and their own reflections and maybe a synthesis or how others can apply it. And if they participated in workshops, what have they learned? And how they would apply it. Therefore, the followers see the reasoning and they see that this person is investing in themselves and staying up to date.

Yeah, I'm still buying a lot of books on facilitation or designing team sessions. So it's still a source for me. And there are so many insights and so many models and so many ways of working But make it your own. Translate it to your own session. What if I had read this article or this book or this model before the session I did last week? What will I do differently? That's a very good question to apply new knowledge. And maybe the answer is nothing because I did a good job. And you did a good job, of course, last week. But Asking yourself, what could I do differently? And what will be the— will the result be differently— different? Is a very good reflection or applying for yourself your knowledge.

I love that reflection question. What would change if I applied this new insight on a past session? Yeah, beautiful. And how explicit or conscious were you about Building your own brand with niching down or being broad or what Mireille Baumer stands for, was this something that kind of emerged gradually and organically and suddenly happened, or was it something that you crafted?

Yeah, I think it's, it's grown. I find it very difficult to be very explicit. Because you're still a little bit afraid. Afraid, what are people thinking about me? Or what if they don't agree and they give another feedback? Or on social media, sometimes you can get some feedback where you think, ah, that's not what I meant, and that's not a nice reaction, I don't like it. And then you feel a little bit blah about it. So it took a while before I really write down my opinion, my sharp opinion, and that's more and more and more at this moment. Now I'm more explicit about my opinion, like for instance using the technical tools. There are so many people or facilitators who are using technical tools and forget the humanity in the meetings. So being explicit, we need more humanity in our meetings. It's, yeah, it's something I'm saying a lot. When another facilitator really loves a Miro or a Mural or something else, then he or she is thinking, yeah, but I, I, all my session, my session flow, it's in Miro, it's in Mural, and that's a very good tool. It's also a part of my workshop. And then reading, we need more humanity and less digital tools, that can clash. But now I'm much more stronger or more confident. That's, that's okay. But a couple of years ago, I found it a little bit— it makes me scary.

Yes. And it's, I think it's really, that's hard to find the balance. So when are the moments that we need to record our insights and what we are saying? And then yes, we do need a whiteboard. What are the moments where it's about connecting to each other and listening? And slowing down, and then it's better without tools, actually, and just focus on being human together.

Yeah.

And I think it's similar to back then when we started to use PowerPoint for giving speeches or talks, that it's so easy to hide behind a PowerPoint slide and then to use the PowerPoint basically as your own. Instead of having your notes, you have PowerPoint slides. And I think it's as easy to use a digital whiteboard like a Miro or a Mural instead of PowerPoint slides, but then it's also as easy to be dominated by the tool.

Yeah, and being very explicit about your opinion on that use of that tools. That's, you said, it's finding your voice and it's finding your own statements. to be explicit about what's your opinion about facilitation and what's your opinion about your way of working. How do you work? What is very typical for you?

Yeah.

And bringing back, for instance, the example we talked about, that's one very important example. And that is also, it's more like maybe also like a design principle What you find in, in the meetings I will facilitate.

And then it can also become part of your brand, right? So if you're associated with a specific tool or a specific school of thought or method, can be as beneficial to communicate as being your own brand or being quite broad or provocative.

Yeah, I think you have to make a choice as a facilitator Am I relate— do I relate to a tool and always use that? Or am I independent and can I use everything or nothing? And I think that's also part of your brand. What are you? Are you always, I'm using always Miro, or I'm always using Mural and that's part of my brand? Or is your brand, I'm using What's nothing or everything, or I can use everything, even if you want to.

Yeah, and I think similar to the methods, you can be a design thinker or a liberating structuralist.

It's the right word, yeah.

And then strongly associate yourself with that. And I think there are pros and cons about Doing that, right? Because on the one hand, by using these, you attract a certain community that already speaks the language. And I think it also makes clear or explicit what you're standing for. So if you're saying that you're a design thinker, then everyone who would hire you knows exactly what to expect.

And I think also to, to go on, on that brand question, be aware also of your presence That if you are a design thinker, then a lot of people relate that to creativity or innovation. And be aware that your photos or your visuals on your website or on your marketing are in line with creative and innovation.

Good one.

Yeah, when you are very— people relate me a lot with enthusiastic and energy. So the photos on my website, they show a lot of energy. They show a power woman. They show somebody who really stands on the website or stands in the visuals. And that's also very important. How do I want people that they see me not only read your articles or read your content, but also how do they want— how do you want that they look at you? What do they see? And is that in line with your brand, who you want to be?

Very good point, the consistency.

Again, the consistency, yeah.

Which also then relates to our facilitation work, where it's also about consistency, where it's about giving structure and creating designing processes. Yeah, so by the way we present ourselves and our brand, we already showcase what it means to us.

Yeah.

Although sometimes it's more difficult said than done because the shoemaker usually wears the worst shoes, right?

That's true, that's true. And I think that's why it's also your own question you have to ask yourself. Where do I educate myself and how do I try to be innovative? How can I try again new things? You don't want to do new things for your biggest clients for the first time, and that's why we need— you've never done before. But in a safe space, let's facilitate or try new things. So be aware of yourself. How do I try new things? What can I adapt in my methods? What can I adapt In my way of working to facilitate that client still better. And think for yourself, what is your trial and error path? Always have a trial and error path so that you can sharpen your own mind and sharpen your own way of working.

Can you share an example?

Yeah, last year I did several things and this year I changed it. Last year I launched very simple short trainings. They are only 10 days. I call it a 10-day program. And so everybody, all participants get every day a little bit content, and then they go into interaction on an online platform with each other. So they had a lot of discussions with each other and learn a lot from each other. And in those 10 days, I facilitate 2 or 1 or 2 online sessions So where they really live interact with each other and deepening their questions and getting to know each other. And it was a very low way of getting to know me, but also a low way of working. People can learn from each other, but it was 10 days. It was very intensive for them, for the participants, but also for me. So I changed, but it was for me, it was a very easy way to show new things and to try out, okay, when you're using this, how would you like to use this model in your meeting, for instance? Or what if you ask these questions in your meeting, what will happen? So it was really a tryout, and for the participants, they get new ideas and new suggestions. But because of the intensive period, 10 days, 10 working days, I changed the format in the beginning of this year. So now every month On the 3rd Friday of the month, I organize a free inspiration session. And it's not a training, but it's an inspiration session where people can learn from each other. I just only think about the subject. What is the subject of this month? I just formulate a couple of questions and some very simple assignments, and people, participants, are interacting with each other with the aim to explore that subject using those questions. And for me, it's an easy way to try something, to try, okay, we have to generate content, for instance, about hybrid meetings. So I will organize an inspiration session about hybrid meetings so people can learn from each other. And I can try, oh, if this question about hybrid meetings, does it work with you? Or do you get inspired by that question or that subject, that part of a hybrid meeting? And another subject is a manual of me. Make a manual of me, because before you want to work with somebody else, you have to know how you want to work and what's your way of working, what is your preference. So this is not— that's not a subject. So for me, it's trial and error. People can see me. Also the way how I'm facilitating and people can learn from each other. And it's not a training because I don't deliver a lot of content to them.

Yeah, and it gives you permission to try out new things.

Yeah.

And also to get inspiration from the group then.

And yeah, and I think the most important is also they get inspired by each other. They learn from each other. And I think that's also One of the practices or one of the competencies a facilitator needs to have. How can you open a participant and open the group, creating the safe space for participants so that they can share their knowledge?

It's funny that you're saying that because I always took it for granted that this is normal to do in a workshop, that everyone contributes. And, and then I was so spoiled with Never Done Before because there it's all about sharing. And then sitting in more and more other workshops, I realized, oh no, that's something actually quite special. So now I made it explicit in our community that it is a space where a unique group comes together around a unique topic. So if we're not using The collective intelligence, if not everyone has the opportunity to share something, it's basically disrespecting the knowledge that's in the room.

Yeah, that's a nice description. We have to use the content in a— and we are— how did you call it?

We have to respect the collective knowledge.

Yeah.

Collective wisdom, I think. Yeah. Yeah, because it's every time it's special, right? It's It's every time a different group around a different topic. And even more so for your sessions, I guess, that are open and invite different facilitators to join.

Yeah, yeah, very unique.

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