Hey there, it's Samantha Hartley of the Profitable Joyful Consulting Podcast. This is season 13 we're talking about gifts and talent skills and expertise and today I wanted to talk about a unique way to structure your consulting business so that you have peace, the capacity to share your gifts and talents and skills and you are not constantly chasing new clients. I call this the revenue pyramid.

The way traditional consulting businesses are structured is that it's mostly made up of project work, right? So you do a project for a client. And that one ends you look around for more clients, you do a project for a client, a lot of times these are one offs sometimes they'll be like longer term. You know they may be like three months and you may even sometimes be able to layer on the work but a lot of times it's project, hunt hunt hunt project, furiously hunt hunt project etc, so that means revenue rollercoaster, it means a lot of stress and it means constantly looking for clients.That can be when you're doing you know workshops, consulting engagements no matter the variety of the ways that you're working a lot of times that's kind of start-stop or highs and lows in the revenue flow is the case in traditional consulting. So I looked at this a few years ago and I remembered how the financial advisors that I'd worked with had recommended that we lay out a portfolio. You know they had this kind of idea of your pyramid. So at the bottom you wanted to have kind of like the more stable investments like bonds and things like that. And the middle was like mutual funds like mild risk and the top could be you know your riskier investments but the point was that you as an investor felt like you have some sense of peace of mind at the bottom of the pyramid that you have a sense of stability there and so that's why I took this traditional consulting model and I flipped it upside down so that all of the one-offs they go at the top and the bottom of your pyramid is made up of long-term engagements. So the transformational engagements that I teach on this podcast and I teach in all my programs are the way to work with your clients long-term transformational engagements, they're at least a year, they're at least $100,000 a piece usually and that is the base of your pyramid. If you think about the idea of The Path to $2,000,000. That's the name of my program and that's what most of my clients are on. You know they want to be somewhere between 500,000 and $2,000,000 in their businesses. What's the best way to do that? Well if you try to do that with these one-offs then you're constantly on the revenue roller coaster and you're stressed out and you're constantly looking for new clients and it's just to me. It's just not the best way to grow business.

So if you have instead 5 to 10 clients at the base of the pyramid valued between 50,000 on the low end 250,000 can be more, I have some clients who are charging more but just that in general, as a foundation for your business then what happens you end up feeling peaceful right? You have just the sense of steady revenue coming in and you know you being able to kind of like relax and not constantly being on the hunt for new clients.

The second thing that happens is when you work with clients longer term you've heard me say this before about transformational engagements. You tend to get fantastic results because you have the capacity you have the time to really dig in and do great work that helps them to get great results when clients get great results. What happens? Well a lot of times they'll renew. So these clients that are one-year engagements go on to work with you on and on and I've had clients who have been working with me for 6 to 10 years on and on and that means that you again, you're able to dig in and do ever better ever deeper work with them. You get a lot of referrals because these happy clients are going to know others and so sometimes. It's just a self-perpetuating business like from this base of 5 to 10 you generate enough to um in the new clients who come in replace anyone who stops working with you for any reason so you know you lose 1 they're easily replaced by either referral or someone who comes in. Now when you're working this way, how many clients do you actually need to add? Interestingly I've always asked new consultants when they come to me when they say I want to add 150,000 or what's your goal like 500,000 I want to add that to my business. So I'll always ask. Can you add that in a single client and sometimes they'll say 150 actually yeah I think I could or 500? Oh no, that seems like too much well could you do it in 2 times two fifty could you get 2 clients at two fifty a piece, that still seems kind of high well how about 4 times one twenty-five oh 4 clients at one hundred and twenty five, yeah I think we could do that so instead of thinking like oh my gosh I need to go get clients. Oh my gosh I need to add $500,000 to my business. You know 500,000 times one. It's a lot. No, what you really need are like 4 clients, for most of us consultants what you need are like 5 to 10 clients. Probably already have some right now. So if you think about how many you need to add. It's usually not that many. It's usually you know 4, can you add 4 clients over the course of the year? I'll bet you can so that it's a different way of thinking about marketing and business. Then business owners out there are thinking about marketing their small businesses because you're building something which is you know 500,000 to 2,000,000 probably and you're building a base of clients you're going to work with for a year now not 37 at a time just 5 to 10 and you know we can talk about who goes into the middle and the top of the pyramid in just a moment.

So what I love about the revenue pyramid is that it gives you this sense of spaciousness in your marketing. You're not on a hamster world. So what can you do? You can build your brand, you can use thought leadership and really put your ideas out there and have them you know, discovered make a difference in your industry. And have those clients come to you because you don't need 40 a month to come to you. You just need maybe 1 to 2, I mean honestly for most of my clients they have to be really considerate about how many new clients they take on because the onboarding can be heavy. So if you have 5 to 10 you have to really budget how many you can add. So most of my clients only need to add 1 to 2 clients per quarter and how doable is 1 to 2 right 1 to 2 clients per quarter is really doable.

This kind of a business is for you if you're excited about long-term work or transformational engagements. And I'm not being facetious when I say that because some of my clients will say I'm not clear on what that long-term engagement would be but I like that idea that's something that I can help them with but I also have other clients who like me when I was younger I didn't really want to work with a client for a really long time because I wasn't, as good at choosing who was a perfect client and so I wouldn't get I didn't want to get into a situation where I was unhappy with a client that I'd chosen and I was stuck in a situation so you know if you're good at selecting who's a good client for you. Um, and you really want to do that long term work then this is the right model for you. It's also for you if you get amazing results that tend to lead to referrals or could if that was something that you could cultivate.

The other thing is if the path to 2,000,000 is the kind of business that you want to have, you want to earn somewhere between 500,000 to 2,000,000 in your business, Now I'm not saying you can't want to earn more. As I've mentioned before I have clients who want to earn 30,000,000, sell business and go beyond an island. This is still the best way for consulting businesses on that path to create a firm foundation so they have that expansion, the expansiveness and the um, the capacity to be able to do amazing work without having to worry about like the bottom line and without tons of marketing. So my favorite part of this is that you're not on that hamster wheel because it's so manageable. I'm not going to say it's easy, I'm not going to say it's simple, but it's really doable for you to add, you know 5 clients in a year for you to have 5 to 10 clients as the base of your business.

So what about funnels? From time to time I'll have a client come to me and say so-and- so says that I need to have a sales funnel. Okay, what else did they say actually I need to have my Youtube channel and I need to be doing Facebook ads and I also I've heard about this thing, automated webinars I feel like I should be doing automated Webinars and I'm like marketing flavor of the month what's next? That's not how you get business. That's not how this business model works if you are working with a revenue pyramid. You don't need to do all those things, you can do anything you choose. But that's not how clients come to you? Okay, clients are going to come to you because they are already working with you so you're going to get referrals, you're going to get new clients through networking and speaking and being seen you're going to get new clients because you're building a brand publicly and you're going to attract people to you. Those are just some of the ways if you want to know more I speak specifically about how to grow this kind of business on this podcast so you just look for any episode that's about strategic visibility and pipeline and how to get clients and I'll speak to that. It's unique for this kind of business and it's not the same as internet marketers are wanting to sell you on. Your business is so simple. It's so simple. You don't need to build a funnel. You don't need all that structure now. I'm not saying don't have a lead magnet on your website and email capture and do an email newsletter. I'm just saying all of these are complicated. You know construction and mapping. Oh my gosh. The maps that I've seen of you know the client goes here and then they click on this and then they go to this thing you need 10 okay, you need 10 keep it simple.

So I mentioned earlier the middle and the top of the pyramid and if we're turning those traditional businesses upside down then what goes at the bottom. Well the bottom is a classic place for one-offs and sometimes there are one-offs that were like cool but the thing about a one-off is that it might happen and it might not so. You want to put at the top of your pyramid. The kind of revenue that may come in but it may not like a speaking engagement or like somebody decided to sponsor one of your events so revenues that are great if they come in but we're totally not depending on them, so the middle of the pyramid is a great place for testing, testing ground. It's where you put engagements where you're not quite sure about the client and so you didn't do a twelve month but you wanted to try out like a six month or a three month, you're just testing if this is a client that you want to work with or maybe they wouldn't go for a twelve month and you're both kind of trying things out on a three month paid assessment or a short term engagement. That's great for the middle of the pyramid because the middle of pyramid is revenue that might come in and might not and so that can be steadier work but not necessarily anything you want to count on. If you have ongoing training that you do you know a short burst ah six week twelve week any of your shorter term things that aren't a year long are good to put in the middle of the pyramid. It's just not the base. Okay, and even if you only have 2 transformational engagements. But at the bottom of your pyramid you're going to feel the comfort and steadiness of having that revenue down there while the rest of your revenue in the middle of the pyramid is kind of you know, come and go.

Once again, what I love about this model is that you build this foundation and you have peace of mind, you have steady revenue flow and you have amazing results that you're getting for those 5 to 10 clients at the bottom. It's just so much simpler a way to run your business because you're not constantly marketing like the new clients will very often just come to you naturally just through you being visible at all or the referrals of existing clients and that is just like such a profitable and joyful model. If you would like more information about building this kind of business or if you want to figure out what are the best next steps for you on your path to 2,000,000 then I highly recommend you download and take my self-assessment. It's free. It's at samanthahartley.com/super and it'll help you evaluate where you are on the path and what your next steps might look like. And with that I am wishing you a Profitable and Joyful consulting business.