Hey, it’s Samantha Hartley of the profitable Joyful Consulting Podcast, and I am recording from the road in beautiful Washington, D.C.

Today, I wanted to talk to you about a question that I've gotten from a client, and she is intrigued by the idea of only doing advisory services in her consulting business. And that's partially because when she left her corporate job as a trainer, a lot of her work took the form of training, so she's gone in and done consulting engagements, but the core of those is always training, and she's felt compelled to create more training. And when you have training, she thinks in order to grow the business, well, now I'm going to need to have trainers who aren't me. So I have to have this army of trainers. I need to have even more curriculum, and probably the best thing to do is bring in a whole technology wing so that I can have e-learning and make the training more efficient and reach more people. And the more she thinks about it, the more overwhelmed she gets. And when I've asked her what she truly wants to have in her business, you know, basically she's like, I just want it to be me. It could be simple, like, what's the simplest form of business that I could have and still had, you know, the $2 million mark which a lot of my clients come to me to to hit?

So today I'm going to talk to you about forming a kind of a business or of focusing your business around one thing, which is just you giving advice to your clients. No e-learning, no curriculum, necessarily. You probably have a point of view that you bring to your clients, but without having to build an enormous team or anything at all. So this is just consulting advice, consulting advisory services. Somebody listening to this is thinking, “Isn't that what consulting is?” For many people this is what consulting is.

A lot of times you'll hear about that retired executive who in retirement goes in with his old employer or some colleagues and just goes around and like, hey, answer some questions and advise us on the thing. And that is very common. And so this is why I'm making this episode today is partially to address that kind of what consulting is and has been for many years is just traditionally like a kind of giving advice format. And we who come out of this century want to combine it with all these other ways to do things.

And honestly, when I was first consulting, one of my frustrations was that my clients wouldn't implement. And so I felt compelled to create trainings and curricula that included them so that it could be more of a done with you kind of thing. And I have a number of clients who have begun doing “done for you” businesses where the client comes to them and they have kind of a consulting plus agency format where they do fulfillment of things. And you know, you can get a little ways down that road and realize, Hey, I'm kind of exhausted by that.

So I would advise you if you were my client, just as I advise my clients to keep a certain part of your business, that is just purely advisory. Because if a lot of your work, fulfillment for your clients, involves having your team do things for you, then each of those service lines is going to be less profitable than just you going out and giving some advice to people. And honestly, you know, you in your genius zone can do that with incredible ease, most likely. And that can be a service line that you offer, which is totally you and totally profitable. So I just put that out there as an idea.

Why don't more consultants just do the advisory? Why do some of us feel compelled to offer the training and the done-for-you and the other things like that? Well, a lot of times I think it's because it's what the clients need, and we think I can do that. I'm good at that. And so why don't I do that for me, as I mentioned, it was my frustration with the clients won't implement, and I'm just going to just give me that and let me do that for you. So it was just for my own peace of mind and for my own ability to relax and get the client's results, kind of even if they got in the way, I could still get them some results because we could do things for them.

So in this case, I think that's, you know, that's a fine inclination, and they don't necessarily learn how to do things themselves. Sometimes you can take something away and then give them back to them and completed, and then they can take it from there. So that's one of the reasons I think that we begin offering these services and we stop relying on just advice.

Another reason is, and this is the thing that I'm running into with some clients, we feel like, well, that's just not enough, really, just me showing up and kind of like spouting off my ideas or telling them the answers of what they need to be doing. Is that enough? Could that possibly be enough? Yes. If you can give people answers that are going to help them move to the next level in what they're doing, even if it's in baby steps, which is sometimes the best increments in which to move, then that is an incredibly valuable service that you're bringing and that is enough and plenty and wrap a bow around it and just send it out into the world that can be shipped.

So what format can these advisory services take? That's the thing I want to talk to you about. So the first one is transformational engagements. The thing that I've talked about so often on the show, the idea of someone coming to you and saying, here's a thing that we're struggling with and we are here right now and we want to be there. And can you get us there? Or, and this is likely something they will say to you, “Hey, we have this little problem here,” and then you say, hold on, hold on. I like the problem and I can help you with that problem, but tell me where you are, here, and where you want to be, there. So you get them one way or the other to tell you what that scope and direction is. And this is when it becomes transformations, when you say, Hey, actually help you with a small problem, but let me help you with this whole arc of change that you are looking for. And then we say, you know, let's come in and make that happen over the course of this duration. It's usually a year. Why? Because change takes at least a year, and then you go in and do that. You go in to implement that change. And if you think, you know, if I could do whatever I needed to do in order to get my client from here to there, then what would I do for them? So that becomes the structure of that transformational engagement.

So a thing that I would say so that transformational engagements have a shape to them because it's only advisory so that it has a shape to them. It's really helpful for you to mark down what those goals are and what those milestones are along the way so that you can say to a client, here's where we are and here's where we've been. Otherwise, worst case scenario, it can look like they just come to you in situations of struggle and then you help them. They leave feeling clearer and then come back to you, and it feels a little more circular and iterative and less linear like we're getting somewhere. So I want you to be able to recognize what that path is for you and the clients, and to mirror back to the clients that that actual path is being followed, that you're achieving milestones along the way. And telling them that in not just in your coaching sessions, but also in writing, like really sculpting those work agreements that way. Go a long way to helping them put the value of you in perspective and keep the value of you and your contribution in perspective.

Best case scenario they come to you, they implement. Things are amazing and you never need to even bring up milestones because things progress like that. But sometimes in purely advisory work, it does help to have that kind of structure where you are reflecting to them the ways in which now you remember the things that we talked about, you've just achieved it. Remember the thing that we've been working on? That's it in action. So putting it that kind of a structure to your consulting service can really help them to get your value and to help you to keep giving that value to them. So that's transformational engagements, which I highly encourage you to have. At least I don't know, I love a minimum of 20 percent. I'd love to see half of your work, half of your revenues be purely from that, that kind of advisory work so that even if you're doing fulfillment and training and other stuff elsewhere, you can do transformational engagements.

A place, just a quick tip before I move on, A place where you can put these before and after so you can come in and just do advisory services for a while and then realize, Oh, now that I'm here, I realize they need this kind of training, and then we're just going to take this piece over from them and we're going to do this. But it began with advisory services. So when you take things over, you're kind of incorporating that in the scope is getting larger and the value has been placed on strategy already.

The other place you can put this is at the end. So you've been doing, done for you or you've been doing fulfillment of some kind e-learning something hands-on, project management in some cases for the client. And then that actual work is over. And now they just want to have access to you and just have advice. So that's another place that you can put your service, and that can be another transformational engagement.

Or it can be the second thing that I want to talk about, which is retainer work, where basically they just want to have access to you. And so you're on call. So retainer based advisory services is just like totally classic. It's like what lawyers have. It's what a lot of people who give advice, how they work.

So how can you do this? How is this different from transformational engagement? Well, transformation engagements usually have a structure that I talked about, which is where it like we are here and we want to get their retainer is very often like, we're here and not that we don't want to grow and do something more. But a lot of times they can do most of it, but they want to have access to you to call on them. Sometimes they can be, these are, you know, distinctions that don't really exist, and they're mostly the same thing.

But just keep that in mind that it can have more of a shape to it. It can be just like they want to be able to call you and have the the safety and security that they can count on you when they need you and they can call on you. So that's it's a little bit of a board of directors role if you think about it, but just an advisor. So that how that role can be without structure or you can have specific things that you're working with them on. A lot of classic coaching style agreements are just this way, and I'm going to talk about in a minute, how do you price that kind of thing? Because if you're thinking about retainer service is probably your biggest question is, OK, I can do that. But like, how do I price that? So we'll talk about pricing in a minute.

And then the last format that can take is a fractional. So you've probably heard of like a fractional CFO or a fractional CMO or something like that. Fractional implies that they need a C-level person, but they don't need them full time. So this is usually for businesses that are like of a certain size, but not that big. My client who does fractional CFO work, begins at two million, her clients begin at two million and end around twelve million. Why? Because before two, they don't really need someone full time. Don't need a CFO full time. And after 12 million, while probably should go ahead and already hire somebody who's going to be with them permanently.

So you hear kind of the needs level of those kinds of positions, and I think in many cases smaller businesses, you know, one two three million really this one to $10 million range is when this kind of sea level fractional can be really helpful. I've done something that was less of a C level even many years ago, probably the middle of my consulting career start to do, you know, fractional marketing director.

Was not so much the boss's boss, but was just like coming in and doing the things when they really didn't even have a proper marketing department at all. They had like usually like a coordinator or somebody like that. Or maybe it was somebody who really worked in sales and did a little bit of marketing, and then I could come in and spend a year with them setting up that position and then they could hire that position. Was that my full time job? No way. It was a job. So it's a fractional position for me, a project for me and then a fractional thing for them until they hired that position.

So what could this look like for you? For, first of all, whatever your functional area is, almost every business will need a fractional version of it. So technically, CIO, CTO, CMO, Chief Marketing Officer. CHRO, so that's actually the first time I ever heard of fractional was I think I just left my corporate job and I heard about somebody else who had worked with me, had started a fractional CHRO business, and I thought, Well, that makes a lot of sense because this is the perfect example of we're not big enough to need a full time person doing the job. But boy, if you're without a proper H.R. function, you can really run awry if you've got enough employees to need that. So they were doing fractional CHRO of or fractional H.R. services in general.

So think about what would it look like if I were doing my thing in a fractional version? And again, it doesn't have to be a huge level, it can be, you know, if they need to have a designer of some kind, but they don't need to have that full time. That's curriculum design or graphic design. Or it can look like almost anything. So think about what your job would be in that situation. And I would be clear in every case possible. It's really just good always to have structure to your role. So job description, even though it's not a job, I understand that it's a consulting engagement, but I would still have a description of what you want to have done. What are the desired outcomes for this position? And importantly, what's in the scope and what's out of the scope of this arrangement? Because when you're fractional, sometimes they feel like they own you as if you were that function and that can really run you into trouble.

So I know we're talking about only advisory here, but I want to keep in mind that you may already have a team of some kind, and so if they're hiring you to come in and do things for them, you can be doing so much more than an actual like H.R. person or tech department or marketing person, because if you have a team, then they're kind of hiring the whole entire department. So I want you to do advisory and then I'm trying to stay on topic here, but I just want you to keep in mind, like if you have a hold of a group of people who do things for you, you are very valuable because you bring they're not hiring a person, they're hiring in the department that you represent.

So in general, whenever it's possible to resist this, I would love for you to consider, where can I just give my advice? Can you only give advice and have a flourishing business? Yes, there are many million and one to three million I can think of right now of my colleagues, coaches and people I know who are doing pure advisory in the $1 to $3 million range easily they're earning. So you don't have to have a team, a big staff, you can have a VA or as much staff as you choose to support you, but you don't have to have any support staff to support the clients. So that can be enough.

OK, so the elephant in the room? Let's talk about pricing. How do I price this when I'm doing this. So I've got at least one episode on pricing, so I want you to definitely go back and listen to that if you want to get more detail on pricing. But in general, we're never doing hourly pricing ever, ever, ever. So we're still doing value based pricing. So when we talk about this arc of where they are and where they want to be, we still want to put the value on what is the value of them achieving that. So if that's that they're going to add five million in sales, then you know, you can look. What five hundred thousand two hundred fifty thousand dollars for that engagement, right? And then you are charting the milestones along the way to ensure that they achieve that.

You can price anything, any way you want to, but looking at the value of it that will give them and then coming up with a number is to me, that's the starting point of it.

And the next thing to do is look at if they hired this position full time, then what might that cost them? Because it's never just the salary, it's the salary and benefits, and it's all the other kind of things like that. So very often that's a positive comparison. And I sold a number, and again, this was years ago sold a number of $60,000 engagements because by saying, “Listen, you can't hire this position for this and it's just 60K, and here's what I’m going to get done.” So that's been a really good price point.

And the last piece is what if it's like just retainer and they're just going to be calling you? I still want you to think about if they were just calling this position, if this position worked for them full time, you do more minutia, but directionally what you would achieve is still very much the same. So, you know, I feel like I always want to look at, I never want you to look at what you're doing. I always want you to look at what they are receiving, the value that they're getting by having access to someone who can, you know, you're telling them the answers to the final exam, right? You're totally giving them the shortcuts. All of the things that you're bringing to them are amazing experience, and to buy into that experience should be some kind of an investment. We talk so much on the show about $100K investments and easily, 60K,100K, is like that to me, is the bare minimum for this kind of these kinds of engagements. And from there, you know, you can just feel into your gut and say, like, what do I feel like? I want to be paid for this? And then somewhere between that number and what the value is for the client and what the client feels like, it's reasonable you're going to come up with a number that's going to work for everyone.

I am happy to talk in greater detail about pricing if that's something that you would like to to come and speak with me about on also how you can grow your business solely upon advisory services on what it really takes to do that.

And I would love to speak with you about doing so through the structure of my program, which is called the path to two million. Consultants are doing low six figures, you know, 200 ish and they come to me. I put them on the path to two million and I have clients who are crossing the $2 million mark as we speak. So if your goal is anywhere between the low six and the $2 million mark, then I'd love to speak with you about how to get you there and how to get you there faster and with greater ease and grace, and by the way, profitably and joyfully. So with that, I offer you and wish you from my heart a profitable and joyful consulting business.