What do you have to do to be successful? Can you really earn a million dollars as a one person business? I get these questions all the time from women consultants. I get them from my actual clients. I get them from potential clients, from aspiring consultants, from longtime consultants. I have some hard truths, some really hard truths that I want to tell you because you can be successful. There are tons of successful women consultants, and there's some things that you need to know about what it takes to be successful.

A couple years ago I worked with a woman, we'll call her Kathleen. She had just left a c-level position with a really big company that you have heard of, and was pursuing consulting. She had so, so much potential. She had incredible contacts. She was so well connected and incredibly visible in her field, like niche famous. And so she said like, how do I get clients and how do I get these like big kinds of clients? She wanted be working with other high level companies like the one she'd come out of. And I was like, well, your Rolodex is nuts, right? You can get on the phone with just anybody in here, like they respect you, you’re their peer, they'll totally take your call. So let's talk about who you want to call and then what those conversations are. It's not like, Hey, do you want to hire me, but it's like, Hey, you should know that I'm available and I'm doing consulting. Your next five clients are right here in your Rolodex, I told her.

So we hit a little snag there though because she didn't want to reach out to people. She didn't want to sound needy. She didn't want to feel salesy or seem salesy. And I was like, I don't know by what magic formula you think you're going to be getting clients, but this is what needs to be done. You have to let people know that you're available as a consultant and we can talk about ways that you can do that that align with your values and don't feel so salesy. But at a certain point, you're going to let people know I'm open for business, I'm a consultant now, and you can hire me. That was a really hard hurdle for her and we didn't end up working too much longer together. And from what I can see from her public presence, it doesn't sound like she pursued those angles and is working with those kinds of large clients like she wanted to.

My intention today is to talk about what is required for success and it's to tell you the real honest truth and then to encourage you, inspire you, even piss you off enough that you say, I'm doing it anyway. I want you to be committed to this. You have to be so committed in order to make your consulting business work.

My favorite Edison quote is “Most people miss out on opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like hard work.” And even though I don't really believe in hard work, I believe in smart work. At the end of the day, you have to do hard things to be able to grow your business, and you can do hard things. I want you to be rich. I want you to win. I want you to be successful. I want you to prove people wrong. I want you to piss off everyone who counted you out, and we could only do that by acknowledging and overcoming the things that I'm going to talk about in this episode.

There is a lot of opposition to you being successful, to women consultants being successful. I mean, we could just like look big, the patriarchy, misogyny, sexism, starting with that, all the way down through all the other things. If you're too pretty, nobody takes you seriously. But if you're not pretty at all, then nobody really takes you seriously. If you're too young, who's going to listen to you? If you're too old? Ah, they just like count 'em out. If you're successful, people resent you. But if you're not successful, ugh, people think like you're a loser. You know, there's all these conditions that we can be in and like, there's no winning in all of this.

You'd think you could turn to your friends and family, but what happens very often with them, well, a lot of times your friends will be envious. they'll be annoyed at your work because it takes you away from time with them. Your family will be like, they want to take your pain away from you. Like, why are you working so hard? I don't think this is a good idea for you. Listen, they had that great opportunity back where you were working before. Like, wouldn't that just be easier for you? And if you have a spouse, you know, the spouse isn't always on board with this either, 'cause it can seem like a huge risk and a lot of burden on them. Or you can get into this whole competition thing of like who's really trying and who's out earning, it's hard.

And that's all just the external oppositional things. We are not even talking about how to build a business. There's a lot of things opposing you in the building of a business. It's a lot of like pushing a boulder up a hill of like, let's try this thing and then that doesn't work. And then you get some clients and then you get lost in delivery and then you end up on the revenue rollercoaster. There are so many forces opposing women consultants that it's a miracle that any businesses ever succeed. This is why when I'm working with people, if they have any inkling of maybe not being committed to consulting like, I might take a job, or, I don't know, I'm kind of deciding do I want to really pursue this finally and commit to it, or do I maybe want to take a job? I'm like, take a job a hundred percent. Take the job. Totally take the job. Because if you can work for someone else, you should.

Consultants who are really successful are people who are like, I would never, never go back to a company. Are you kidding me? No. Everyone's stupid but me. Or like, that schedule did not work for me. Or that structure. Like, no, they really, really want to control their own fate. So out of all of this opposition, it can get you down. You've gotta know that it's going to be there. It's going to be there the whole time that you are working. And what you have to do is get used to it and not just get used to it, but be like, okay, whatever, right. People are naysaying you okay? Whatever. What has got a triumph over all of that is your commitment to doing this. It's gotta be non-negotiable for you. It has to be, there's just no way, I'm totally doing this.

And that segues me into the next point, the next hard truth. You have to take risks and it's all risks. One of the biggest risks is just stepping out and doing this, like risking the scorn of your family or the doubt of your former employers or anybody looking at you funny. You have to risk that reputation and do it anyway.

One of the biggest risks that you have to take is to spend ahead of growth, even when there's nothing coming in or when there's only the tiniest bit coming in.

There are investments that you have to make in yourself and in the business. Early on, I don't want to get into comparing men and women throughout this episode, the one place that I want to look at, this is in the area of risk taking, because nen will very often invest quickly in something like a VA because they don't want to like learn how to do a bunch of stuff. Their first investment is a VA so that they can take a bunch of stuff off of them and they can focus on building the business. Whereas a lot of women, and I think this is because women are multi-talented, they're like, I'll do the website myself, I'll do the bookkeeping. I'm not going to pay anybody to do this stuff. I'll just keep this stuff for myself for a while until the business is really earning. And then if we just look at something like bookkeeping, it's like, eh, it's only like a half an hour. I can do that myself. I'm not going to pay somebody else to do this. And then what happens with that, that half hour, you never really get to it. And so you do that after hours. And it's not just that it's after hours, but it's like when you're kind of tired. So that 30 minute task ends up taking like an hour. And it's not just any hour. It's like an hour after hours. So it's either like family time or resting time, or when you're late and you're not as smart as you should be, and so you make mistakes.

That's the way that not taking those risks and not investing in things snowballs into a bad decision. And so I really, really encourage women consultants to take those risks. They're calculated risks. I mean, again, last thing I'll say about men is like, we know men drown more often than women because they think they're better swimmers than they are in many cases.

And so they get themselves in situations and they drown. Women are more cautious. That's why women are better investors. And we still need to know when you're taking risks in your business, everything is going to feel like a risk. Those first team members that you're bringing in to support you, investing in coaching, investing in learning more, it's always going to feel like a risk.

Another quote that I always think of on this topic. Progress always involves risks. You can't steal second base and keep a foot on first. A lot of times women consultants will want to feel that stability, want to be a hundred percent sure of something, and so they don't take that risk. But you have to necessarily be in between first and second. You have to be in this place of no longer and not yet. You have to be in the place of not exactly knowing. That's why it's a risk.

So doing those little tasks yourself is like watching pennies instead of dollars. Oh my gosh, I don't want to spend this little bit of money, to have someone take care of these tasks for me. Yeah, But what you're spending on that support is pennies compared to what you could be earning. Women too often will look at the downside of spending money on something instead of seeing the upside. To me, if it's like, yeah, but the bookkeepers cost $150 a month, I'm like, well, what kind of a client do I need to get in order to pay for that? Every time I've joined someone's program, I have thought, oh, it's like a thousand bucks a month, great. Then I need to make $5,000 from what I learned in order to make this really worth it. To me, I've always taken that responsibility for getting ROI on myself. And that's the commitment level you have to have to yourself and to making consulting work. That's why I'm like, it has to be a non-negotiable. You don't want to go back to corporate. You don't want to take a job. If you're in the situation of like, no, this must work, then you're going to succeed.

I hate to say that when it's optional for you to make revenue in the business, well then it's optional and it doesn't necessarily get made. My clients for whom making that revenue isn't optional. The ones who are breadwinners, the ones who have these massive expenses at home, they're the ones who make that money. When they invest, they expect an ROI on it. They invest in programs, they invest in products, they invest in directions in their business. They expect it to succeed. I had a client the other day say the reason she hadn't been closing new clients was because she was hoping to get a client from this particular association. She said, I realized I'd been hoping, and what I needed to do was to know and to expect. That's the mindset of my clients who are doing the best.

The third hard truth, as I alluded to earlier, is you, you are selling. You are selling yourself. Years ago, I worked with a client, Donna, and she did a vision for her perfect business. As I asked my clients to do, I'm like, what's your vision for this? So she said, okay, so here's what it would be. Here's what my week would be like, and here's what we would be doing, and here's who would be working with. And then she wrote, and then somebody else would be doing the selling. And I thought, I don't think you're going to make it in self-employment. This is not going to work out for you. I was right. She didn't. About two years after that, they decided they didn't want to do consulting. Someone else cannot be doing the selling.

Eventually you might have a business that's large enough that you bring in a business development person. You might hire somebody to go do outreach for you on LinkedIn. Those little direct messages, you can do little business development like that. But there's nobody who can sell like you. There's no one who's committed like you are. And you are selling yourself. People are buying you. Now, I'm very cautious with this kind of language when I'm working with my clients because I had, someone once say, well, we were roleplaying a conversation to have with a buyer, and she said, well, I cost this much money. And I said, no, no, no, no, no. You, you are priceless. You are a priceless gift from the universe. Your services cost. So my services, well, that service would be this. Well, the investment for this would be, so when we're talking about things like money and ourselves, we want to get that separate from ourself.

But two things can be true. It is also true that what they're buying is you. If you've watched any episode of Shark Tank, you've seen this happen very often. The sharks are like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that business is great, but you, you entrepreneur, you're somebody I want to invest in. They'll even say that out loud, like, uh, this business is like, we'll just trash this thing, but we want to work with you buyers, your clients, the know, like, and trust, what they're investing in, not just with their money, but with their energy, with their beliefs. What they're investing in is you. So you have to be a hundred percent sold on yourself. You have to believe more than anyone out there that you are the one to do this work, that you're the one who can solve their problems, that you are the one who can build this business.

Kathleen did not want to believe that she was selling herself. She didn't want to have to sell herself. She didn't want to be caught selling. She didn't want to be seen selling, she didn't want to participate in selling. But that's what we're all doing. And if you've ever asked for a raise, if you've ever persuaded someone about your idea, you've been selling. If you've ever tried to win an argument, you're selling. That whole process is selling. And my clients who really succeed and other consultants I've seen who really succeed, they get comfortable with like yeah, people are buying me. People are buying my ideas. People are buying the things that I'm presenting. People are buying me. And even if there's sometimes some awkwardness about the sales process, eventually they get over that, learn to love sales as much as I love sales, and they realize, yeah, I'm selling the dream. I'm selling myself and my ability to help you.

I promise you hard truths, and this is a really hard one. It's really hard. It's hard even for me to say this to you. You'll earn as much as you believe you deserve. Not as much as you deserve because you deserve to earn millions, billions. You deserve to earn whatever you want. You deserve the world, but you'll only earn as much as you believe you deserve. So how do you know how much you believe you deserve? You answer this question, how much are you earning right now? How much are you earning? How much could you be earning? That is the answer to how much you believe you deserve.

I had a client, let's call her Genevieve. I love that beautiful name and my client is beautiful and wonderful and smart and she, through our work, landed a big, big engagement. Very soon after that, started experiencing in her life a lot of money mistakes and money problems. Someone took some money from her and a couple other clients canceled their contracts, and she lost some money on a real estate deal – just weird stuff happening with money. And she came to me and said, what the hell is happening? So we worked through this, a lot of dialoguing about it, and finally I said to her, listen, you're powerful. You are a powerful person. You got this client. You made this stuff happen around you. Why did you cause all of this money to go away from you? Why did you cause this to happen? So she spun it in her mind from it was happening to her, and she thought about it, like, why am I doing this to myself? Why would I do this to myself? And then she heard the answer and she said, because I didn't believe that I deserve the money from the big client.

When we don't believe we deserve the money we have, we send it away from ourselves. When you believe you deserve to earn what your goal revenues are, you will have more money than you ever imagined possible. You'll have tens of thousands in your bank account month after month after month. Years ago, I had an affirmation on the page where I track my revenues and I said I always earn exactly as much as I need. And then I did for years, and then I realized I always have as much as I need, but I don't ever have more than that. So then I changed the affirmation that was on that sheet, and I said I always have more than I need. I always have so much more than I need. And then my experience right now in my business is that every time I check my business bank account, there's always more and more and more and more and more and more 'cause that's what I affirm and that's what I believe I deserve. Would I like to be earning more and am I always working on raising my money thermostat? Yes, of course. And this is the thing I'm working with my clients on constantly. We are pushing the envelope for ourselves, we're expanding our capacity to receive and expanding what we believe to be possible for ourselves.

But there are some people who struggle with that. Another thing I don't want to say but I have to say this, when I worked in Russia years ago, it was right after the end of the Soviet era and when American companies would come in, they wanted to hire Russians, but they didn't want to hire anybody who had too much of the, that kind of Soviet communist way of thinking ‘cause they wanted them to work like Americans. So they wouldn't hire anybody who was over 30 years old. I guess that was what the cutoff point for being able to teach an old dog new tricks. If you were 30, you couldn't learn anything new. But if you were under 30, you were still like malleable and still had that intellectual agility.

So what I have seen in my work is that the older a woman is, the harder it is for her to accept the things that I have been telling you in this episode, particularly what she believes she should be earning. So the older my clients are, the harder it is to push past those barriers, those externally imposed barriers. Because we have this internalized misogyny, we have this internalized scarcity, we have this internalized beliefs about what we can be earning. And so my clients who have been over 60 have the hardest time of all. I really need them to unlearn all that they've been taught so that they can invest in a new belief of what's possible. They can invest in believing, like, no, I can totally do this. Yeah, I totally deserve this.

I have a last quote for you, which is one that I keep in my notes app, which I use as a journal, from a futurist named Alvin Toffler. He writes, the illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn. Women over 60, they have the most to unlearn around what they deserve. I think they're the most deserving, women who have tons of knowledge and wisdom and experience. Over 60, over 70, what about over 50? What about over 40? Let's unlearn anything unhelpful that we have been taught and face the hard truths.

I want you to have heard the things that I'm saying here and either say, Okay, I don't believe that. Yay. I'm on the track to being as successful as I want to be, or saying, okay, I can unlearn that. And if you are so furious right now at me or at society, or at whomever, I hope you'll take that and channel that into like fuck you, everyone who keeps me down, who doesn't believe in what's possible. I really, really want you to channel this energy that we have. We are creating something new. We are changing the industry. We're healing the collective feminine, empowering the collective feminine to be able to claim what is rightfully yours. And you are your best investment. If you're ever wondering where to put your money, it's on yourself. Bet on yourself. You are a risk that is worth taking.

In case you're not subscribed to my newsletter and haven't gotten any of the free resources that I offer. Specifically, I would invite you today to download the Definitive Guide to Winning Six Figure Clients. There are so many inspiring case studies of my clients. You are going to see women consultants taking the principles that I've talked about today, and really doing amazing things with their businesses.And I outline specifically how they can do that and how you can do that too. I really believe in you. I know this is possible for you. And with that, I am wishing you a profitable and joyful consulting business.