Deb Zahn: Hi, I want to welcome you to this week's episode of the Craft of Consulting podcast. On this podcast, I'm going to hit four topics that a lot of consultants ask me about. And they're related to getting clients and to what the heck you do when you have clients and you're thinking about your business and you're thinking about how you manage tricky situations.

The reason I'm picking these four topics is these are things that come up in my membership. These are things that my members in the Craft of Consulting membership talk about all the time, and we work with quite a bit. And so I want to give you a taste of what actually happens when you're in there. I also want to make sure that you get some of the answers to those questions because they tend to be burning questions for consultants.

Now, obviously, I'm going to be bragging about my membership a little bit. I promise you this isn't going to be a whole commercial because I hate that. But what it is going to be is give you an insider view of the type of help that people get. And if these are things that are important to you right now, you're going to get that help by listening to this podcast.

Now, my Craft of Consulting membership is always open. I do take applications, and there is an application process. So if you're interested in applying, definitely want you to do that. You can go to my website, craftofconsulting.com, go to membership. Or if you're on my website looking at this podcast, there'll be a link in the show notes. I want to invite you to apply because if you apply and if I accept you, then you get the first 30 days for free. So it's risk free. The reason I do that is the folks who are in it right now are getting the help that actually matters to them to build their consulting business and actually enjoy their life around having that consulting business because that comes up a lot. So I want to make sure that it's doing the same thing for you. I want to make sure it's a fit for you. So if it is a fit for you, then you stay. And if it's not a fit for you, then you don't need to continue because I want folks in the membership who are really getting something out of it.

So that's what I'm going to say about that. I'll say a little bit more at the end about the goodies that you get when you're in the membership.

But let's dive into a few of these topics. There are obviously a whole lot of questions in the membership and folks asking for help or asking for feedback all around trying to get clients. And not just get a client, sometimes that comes up, but to get clients more reliably and to be able to fill your pipeline. One of the things that comes up quite a bit is, “Hey, how do I describe what I do in a way that's going to make prospective clients or folks in my market that I want to work with, that they're going to care and they're actually going to want to hire me? Right? Or they're going to care enough that they're going to want to talk to me or they're going to want to respond to me? How do I actually describe my value to them?” And that is one of the most critical questions that you have to answer in your consulting business.

So if you're new and you haven't developed your value proposition, a real crisp, clear statement about the value that you provide to the folks that you most want to work with, or you've been doing this a while and you haven't done it because I did it a while before I knew that I was supposed to do that. Boy, it got so much easier after I did. Or you haven't looked at it recently and your work is strain or maybe going different places that you didn't expect, it's worth pausing and taking a look at it.

Now, there are a whole lot of questions that my members have asked specifically around this. And one of the things that they also do is they use a tool that I have in the membership where they can develop their value proposition and then they post it, and they get feedback from me, and they get feedback from others. That's really helpful to be able to refine it because then you've got other eyes on it to say, “I'm not getting it, or I love this. This is fabulous. Move this up front because this makes me excited." But you really get a chance to get it into a good spot.

But one of the things that we focus on quite a bit is making sure that it has absolute clarity about who it's for. So that's the first part. You can't define value because it's not value to you, it's value to who you ultimately want to work with. So you need to answer the question, who do I ultimately want to work with? So a lot of times, I'll see value propositions, and I can tell that they haven't answered that question because it's so broad, it could apply to a whole lot of folks. And what that means is sort of a watered down version of a value proposition. It doesn't end up feeling terribly valuable to the folks that you ultimately want to work with. So it's not terribly compelling.

And so we focus on the, you got to nail down the who. Tell me precisely who this is for. Sometimes it's called the ideal client and sometimes you develop a... And I encourage a list of things about who that person is so that you can have the clarity to figure out the value. Notice I said person. So I didn't say company. I didn't say organization because it really is about a person. And I'll use myself as an example. So I'm a practicing consultant, and almost all the time who hires me and who I want to hire me are CEOs. And they're CEOs in the U.S. healthcare system in particular sectors that I work in. And they have these particular things that they care about, that they're struggling with or that they aspire to. And I know a whole lot about them. So I know who to reach out to and I know what I can say to them that's actually going to get their attention and make them want to continue to talk to me or hire me.

So if you're an IT consultant, your who might be the CIO, might not be the CEO. If you're an HR consultant, it might be the HR director, it might not be, anybody else. Or if you're in marketing, it could be a marketing director or a chief marketing officer. You need to know the difference because they're going to care about different things. Now, if you know that there's different decision makers in the clients that you ultimately want to work out, then yeah, you have to actually think about the value proposition for each one of them because a CEO cares about different things than an HR director cares about. Different things will resonate with them.

So you got to know with specificity who the who is, and that's a key part of doing a value proposition. You got to know where they are. So what's the market? Or if you're working across markets, understanding what that is, or if you have a particular niche. Like I do have actually a couple niches that I work in. I need to know that because again, there will be different things that you have to know about that, that will help define what your value is. So I need to know what's happening in those markets so that when I'm talking to my CEO, I can actually describe things in a way that are going to be contextually correct and meaningful.

And then you have to know the what. Now, what I often see happen is folks jump to the what. And so one of the things we do in the membership is make sure that folks have that initial clarity, the who and the where, and then you can jump to the what. And again, the what isn't what you've done before. So it's not the defaulting to talking about your resume or your past positions. It's not even defaulting to using language about the things that you do. So it's not working with stakeholders, it's not implementing systems, it's the value that the client gets out of you doing those things. That's the what. That's why they want to hire people. They don't want to hire consultants because consultants just show up and do stuff. They want to hire us because we actually help them achieve things that matter to them. And so the value is an articulation of those things that matter to them.

So when we're looking at the drafts that people put up of their value propositions, those are the things that we're looking for. We're also looking for language that is going to resonate with the client. Again, that's why you have to know the who because you need to figure out what's actually going to resonate with them. But it's one of the tricky things that folks have had if we've gone over their value proposition, is they're often describing the underlying problem that's really causing the problem that the client cares about or what's really going on that would lead to that aspiration that they would have.

The problem is that the clients don't know that necessarily today. So if you use language that might be precise and actually correct, but they don't know that and they don't experience that, then if they hear, “Oh, this is what you do” and you have a value proposition that says, “Oh, here's your value,” they might not know that's relevant to them and will pass you by or won't talk to you because they don't think you do what they care about. Or when you're talking to them, you're going to spend a whole bunch of time helping to recalibrate their understanding as opposed to making a link by using language that actually connects their understanding today with the value you're able to provide.

So when we're looking at value propositions, one of the things that we're looking at is, is it going to resonate with what their current understanding is? And so a lot of members have actually changed their language or gone out and had some conversations to test it and then come back and have to retool it because it wasn't a match. And they got to figure out a way that clients are going to see it and say, “Oh, I got to talk to that person,” because that's ultimately what you need. And I do encourage folks if you don't know or you're not sure, or even if you think you're sure you should go have some conversations, have some conversations with people in your market who either are or know the folks that you ultimately want to work with and test it out and then go back and refine it.

One of the questions I had in the membership from someone is, “How many of these conversations do I need to go have?” This person had heard from somebody else, 50 people. Oh my goodness, who has time for that? No, the truth of the matter is, is I would pick a handful of people that you first have conversations with. If you start to hear some of the same language pop up, some of the same emotional language because that's one of things we talk about the membership is always pay attention to the emotional language people are using. So if they're saying, “This frustrates me, this drives me nuts, I can't stand this, I wish we could do this.” And there's emotional language or emotional charge, that's what you pay attention to. Because that's what you want to mirror when you're developing your value proposition because those are the things that are going to get people's attention and get them to say, “Wow! This person gets me. They get what frustrates me.”

So if you go have conversations with five or six people and you're hearing all of that same stuff, why go meet with 40, 45 more? You don't need to do that. If you go meet with five or six people and they're all saying totally different things, then you need to go back and say, “OK, am I meeting with the right people? Am I really clear who my who is?” And then you refine it and you go back out and have some additional conversations. The conversations, nothing is written in stone, those conversations have utility for you. So basically, you have the conversations for as long as they're useful and then you don't have to have them anymore. There's no hard and fast rule for how to do that. So she felt very freed up, by the way because she was trying to figure out like, how is this going to fit in my schedule? And the answer was it wasn't and it doesn't need to. So she was delighted to be freed up from that.

One other thing that comes up in the membership, this is another thing I want to talk about is a lot around outreach. One of the ways to get clients is to outreach within your network, both to get clients, but also to get access to their networks. So you take your little network or your big network, whatever size it is and you work it, but you're also trying to get access to other people's network to expand.

Now, obviously, we talk a whole lot about marketing, which is where you are expanding beyond your network and you are basically getting attention and hopefully connections with people who don't know you today. We talk a lot about that. We talk a lot about doing that through LinkedIn. I'm not going to get into that here, but outreach is one of the ways, particularly for new consultants, you're going to get some of your first clients.

And so one of the things that has come up is how you reach out to them and how you get people to respond to you and how you get them to actually let you into their network. We've had lots of conversations around this. One of the first things I always say, and I do by the way, have some templates in there that folks can use that's essentially a sequence for how you do some of this. But the first thing is you got to know what you're doing. You got to know what the purpose is and have absolute clarity around that. So if I'm sending out an email to someone because I think there is a likelihood that they might need some of my fabulousness to help them achieve something, that's a very specific email and I know that my goal is to get them on a call because the call is where the magic happens. That's my goal. If it's someone who I want them to refer me to others, then I'm crystal clear that that is the purpose of that email. Everything in the email leads to that conclusion.

What I see a lot when folks send things out, and I've seen this in the membership as well, is they want to throw everything in there. I've seen emails, actually, this wasn't from a member, but emails people are sending out where they're trying to get people on their email list, they're trying to get clients, and they're trying to get referrals. And that is way too much to ask anybody who's reading the email because that's already too long. Your call to action is too many things. It's too unclear. You got to be crystal clear about what you are trying to achieve from this email that you're sending out to this person. This is where you also want to, if you have that clarity, then you can actually be brief and brief is good because people are busy and it takes a long time to read a long email. And the long emails are just filled with information about how wonderful you are, that no one's reading.

And even, by the way, if they think you're wonderful, chances are they're not reading them because people are really busy and you want to send something that gets them to do the thing you want to do. And most of these emails are not for people to embrace your fabulousness. The goal of the email is to get them on a call. Again, that's where the magic happens. So focus specifically on that. And then, by the way, make it super easy for them to do that. If you listen to my podcast about friction, I talk a lot about how to make it easy for them to do that. But if it's really about getting them on the call, they should be short, they should be clear, they should be respectful, and they should have a link that makes it easy for them to schedule that call directly from that email without having to do anything else.

One member actually told me she switched to this approach. She said she used to spend a lot of times thinking about the emails just like I did and just a lot of other people do and just packing a lot into them. When I used to do it, because I did it, were my War and Peace emails, which were just so long that if you printed them out, it would be an embarrassing probably two or three pages, which is ridiculous. And people have sent me those by the way, and I ignore them because I just don't have time, even if I like the person. And then they bury their lead and it's at the bottom that they want to talk to you. I haven't read that far, so I don't even know that that's what they want. So short and sweet. But this member said she switched to that approach and not only did she save time, but she said boom, boom, boom, she started getting more calls set up than she ever got and getting them set up much faster.

So we talk about those very specific tactics that can help you get on those calls to try and get people to... Again, you're going to be clear about it, but either trying to see and do a discovery call to see if there's something that you can help them with or get them to refer you.

Again, that's one of the things we talk about. Then we also talk about, well, what do you do if you get ghosted? So a potential client or you reach out to someone in your network who you're hoping to have a conversation with, have a discovery call with and they ghost you, or maybe you've talked to them once, they sounded really excited and you were like jazz because you're like, “Oh, good, I'm going to get a client.” And then crickets. What do you do? A lot of times what happens, again, we talk about this in the membership, is that folks make assumptions. So you might be making an assumption of, “Oh, they don't want to talk to me. They don't want to work with me and they don't know how.” I mean, we make up these either really simple stories like, they want nothing to do with me. Or if you're really, really creative like me, you come up with an entire case against why you should reach out to them because of all the ways that they don't want to be connected with you.

So whatever your version is, don't do that. Don't take it personally and don't give up. You should be reaching out more than once. The reason for that is, is that people are really busy and we're inundated with information. I get more emails than I've ever gotten in my entire life and I can't possibly read them all. And so sometimes what happens is I'll get one, I'm like, “Oh, that's nice. Oh, I'm so glad they reached out.” And then Etch A Sketch, it's gone. So you got to recognize that people's lives are really busy, particularly now when there are so many extra pressures on folks that keep following up. Ghosting isn't necessarily... It's not dating. It's not where they really are blowing you off and sending you a signal. The signal could simply be, “I'm busy, it's slipped my mind,” et cetera.

So it is appropriate to nudge. Send out nudge emails that are short and sweet and respectful of the relationship because you got to make sure you're not pushing for a sale, pushing for the thing that you want. You want to appropriately move it down the field if you can, but you always have to honor the relationship because any good, solid, profitable consulting business is based on having good relationships. So that is primary at all times. But yeah, nudge. I find nudging helpful. I love it when people do it to me. I'm like, “Oh, thank you.” It's sort of like, “Thank you for doing that,” because gosh knows where it was in my head. But you want to do it respectfully.

I actually have sample emails that I share. Or if somebody's puts up a sample email, I'll give feedback on it or I might even write it and say, “It should be something like this.” But I like using language like, “If I don't hear from you, I'll loop back in two weeks.” Or I'll say, “Unless you tell me otherwise, I'll loop back in two weeks or a month,” or whatever the appropriate timeframe is based on who they are, the relationship. What's nice about something like that is you're essentially giving them permission, very respectful permission to say, and I've had this happen as a consultant, “Would love to talk to you, I'm just buried right now, so give me a month.” And that's OK. That's actually a really good response because your relationship has actually taken another step forward. And again, that's the basis of a good, solid consulting business.

But using language like that, that's respectful, but also lets them know, “Hey, here's the thing I'm going to do unless you tell me not to do it.” I have found that to be very successful and often that's what will prompt someone to answer me is when I put in language like that. Again, in the membership, people post their draft responses or I suggest responses. And sometimes if a lot of people are asking, I'm like, “Oh, let me do a quick tool or a template for that so everybody can use it.”

Now, the other thing I want to hit on that we talk about in the membership that I think, particularly during the pandemic, was a big topic for folks, but I think it still is, it certainly is, is the question about, you know recession is still looming, is around pivoting. That has been a big area that members have wanted advice about and have talked to each other about. And it happens sort for different reasons, but it was such a hot topic that I actually said, “You know what? Let me do a training on this so that we can all benefit from.” And all my trainings get recorded. So if somebody can't attend, they get to listen to it afterwards. But we win over three types of pivots, either you're going into a new market or you're niching down. Niching down means that it's in the same market, but now you're going to specialize what you do. And niching can be a really helpful tool.

It's funny because a lot of people talk about, “Oh, you know, the riches are in the niches.” And so there are a lot of shoulds around niches. And one thing I said in the membership recently is remember, niching down is a tool for you. So if it's helpful for you, if it helps you know what the next things you need to do to get clients are, then niching is a wonderful thing. If it helps you get clients, it's a wonderful thing. If it doesn't do either of those things, then don't do it. It's your business, you got to do what you want to do.

So again, it's really about helping consultancy the way I hope we all do, that this is really about how we want to do it and what's useful for us not doing a whole bunch of shoulds because I don't find that helpful. So it's either going into a new market or a new niche or applying what you do across markets. So you might say, “I want to do this other places too.” Or changing your offer, creating a new offer. And so we sort of dove into that and dove into why you would pivot because you think it makes sense or your head tells you to or your heart really is somewhere else. So pivoting towards something that makes your heart sing and lights you up is a really good reason to pivot. It might because there are things happening in your market that you need to really respond to and pivoting is a good choice, or it could just be your life and the impact it has on you and the impact it has on your life. All of those are good reasons for pivoting.

And then of course, we talk about a lot like yes, pivoting is a choice. You are the boss of your business, you get to make the decision about when you want to do it, but pay attention too. You don't want to do it because you're worried or panicking and then you're going to make a sort of rash decision. And not if what you want to do isn't working, it might be that if you have things you really want to do, you might just have to switch up your strategies and your tactics to make it work. Not like, “Oh, now, I have to do something completely different.” And then of course, the last one is no chasing squirrels. So if it's just like, “Oh, and that shiny thing sounds fun.” And because you know you're going to do it again and then that shiny thing and that shiny thing. Not a good reason to pivot. So we do talk about checking ourselves on that to make sure, but then it's all about going back to basics.

So you got to go back to the foundations of your value proposition. Who is your buyer? What do they want to buy? What are you selling? Why would they buy from you? And being able to answer those questions that roll up into your value proposition.

And then we talk about how to get intel from your market to make sure that again, you're using language that resonates with the clients you most want to work with for this new thing that you want to do or this new niche that you want to do it in, and ways to potentially sneak into it. Because a lot of times when folks pivot, particularly if it's a new offer or they're just doing something they haven't done before, they think they got to do free stuff. And you do not.

Please don't go do free stuff. You can do small projects. You can do subcontracting. You can start to establish yourself and build authority by developing content that shows a unique perspective or thought leadership pieces. You can get on podcasts where you're talking about it to build authority. You can go where your buyer is on forums and add value to what those conversations are. There are all kinds of things that you can do that help you actually establish yourself in whatever the new thing you're doing is without saying, “I guess I have to do things for free.” Because again, unless you're a volunteer and unless you don't need to build a consulting business, it doesn't make sense to be doing things for free, particularly if you truly can add value.

The cool thing about this one is sometimes we have members pivot, and they talk to each other about it offline so that they can share their experiences and support each other. Which again was one of the most fabulous things about the membership is how supportive and what a great cheering section you have of other members that are in it.

And then the last example I'll give is, this is more once you have clients. And when you have clients, stuff happens. So tricky client situations come up. And tricky client situations are, by the way, my specialty. I have worked with other consultants and on teams and things like that and usually when something tricky comes up, they're like, “I'm out. Deb, you're in, go handle that.” And I do because I have a lot of experience doing it. But one of the tricky situations that we talked about and we had really, really good back and forth about is because goodness knows this happens all the time, is when the clients that you're working with have unrealistic expectations, either about the deliverables, the timeframes, the scope. And there's a particular instance we were talking about, which I've had happen to me certainly before, is when you're dependent on the client for giving you information, giving you data, doing something so that you can do your part. And the only way you can meet your timeline and actually produce your deliverables as if they do their part.

And so this was a situation someone was having where that wasn't happening, but the client still expected them to be on time and on budget and have their deliverable ready even though it wasn't possible. It didn't make any sense for that to happen. So what we talked about is, first and foremost, know that this happens. And so next time because there will be a next time, know it's your job to be the keeper of those details and to try and prevent it.

So part of what you should always put into your contracts are, and get paid for it by the way, are regular check-ins. Make sure that there are clear communications around going over the timeline, going over the deliverables, going over the scope and normalizing that so that it's something that they expect. In fact, I have with many a client, and I'm doing this more and more often, is I will actually say in the kickoff meeting or when we're doing the contract that, “Just so you know, one of the things that I do is I have regular check-in meetings and what we'll be talking about in those is any issues that come up. But every time, we're going to check in on where we are with timing, the deliverables, and where we are with the scope and the budget, and see if we need to make any adjustments.” I say that at the beginning because I want them to understand that's a normal thing that we're going to do. And then I know it's my job to guide those conversations and make sure they actually happen.

And you got to know that clients don't memorize contracts. You might think, “But it was in the contract.” It might be in the contract, but they might not remember it. And that's OK because it's your job to actually manage that. And then we talked about, “Well, all right, so next time you're going to prevent it. This time, you got to manage it because it's in front of you and it's bubbling up and you got to deal with it.”

So one is we talked about how to prepare so that it's clear what is and isn't impossible. And send something ahead of time, and this is definitely one of my favorite things to do, is send something ahead of time that frames the situation so it actually says, “Here's where we are.” The reason for that is, is you want to be in the driver's seat of that conversation. You don't want them to get on and say, “OK, look, we just need you to do X,” which they might do anyway. But you want to, as much as possible, frame the conversation so what you send them is the thing you are talking off of. Whether it's a revised work plan or a list of what timeframes are in deliverables, but something that is going to anchor the conversation, but it's going to anchor it in the reality that you know and understand.

And you also want to think through options ahead of time. So if we did, this is what this would mean to our timeline, our budget, our scope. If we did this, here's what's possible. And you do have to be honest. Now, I don't immediately jump to, and this is one of the piece of advice that I gave in the membership, is I don't immediately jump to, “Look, here's what's in the contract.” Because now you're in an argument and it doesn't mean that I don't have those conversations, but those aren't the first conversations I have. So you have to be honest. If the folks on the other side, there's some dysfunction in how they're operating, you want to break that dynamic up as much as possible. Again, sometimes they just don't remember, it's not dysfunction, but whatever it is, you kind of got to break that up and you want to state that you care about what they care about so that they know that this isn't you just trying to throw something at them so you can get your money and achieve the deliverable. So you want to show and say that you care.

You want to also use language that doesn't slip into the blame game, but you also don't want the honest to be put on you to do unrealistic things. So I am very precise about the language I use, and this is the language I encouraged her to use. Usually, I will put some buffers in the timeframe just because stuff happens. And so I will say things like, “Look, you know, we knew some stuff might happen.” And notice I'm using the word “we” because I want them to understand sort of we're in this together. “We knew some things were going to happen. We did put that into the timeline. Unfortunately, at this point, we've lost all of our wiggle room.” And I'll use wiggle room precisely because I don't want it to be a heavy, loaded language, but I also want it to be very precise. “So let's look at this and talk about what's possible.” Again, I'm inviting them into solving the problem with me.

And then I talk about mutual dependencies. So I don't say things like, “You were supposed to do this.” I'll say, “So as we mapped this out, you are dependent on me for doing this, I'm dependent on you for doing this. That's what will allow us to achieve what we want to achieve in this timeframe. That's what we need to figure out because that's the piece where we're having some trouble.” Again, I'm saying we, I'm inviting them into the conversation. And then I use really specific, neutral language. So I don't say, and this is what I advised her, I don't say what I can and can't do. I use words, “If we're able to do this, then it's doable or then it's workable.” And workable means almost empirically, this is what reality is. Not, what can I go kill myself to do and it's still not going to be possible? I don't want them to just say, “Well, we just need you to do it.” I want us to talk about this in a reality based way so I'll say doable, workable, language like that.

And then I actually, particularly if there's been a lot of slippage in the timeline and not getting things from them, I will actually say, after we figured out the solution, say, “OK, so I think we're on track, but if for some reason something comes up and we're starting to slip in the timeframe again, what is the best way for me to alert you so that we can stay on track or get back on track?” And it shows them that I care again about what they want, but it also shows them that we're in this together and we need to figure out a way to keep this on track. And sometimes they'll say, “The best way is to text me. The best way is tell this person. If you tell this person, it will get to us.” So it's also problem solving, which they tend to like.

So I told her this. She was going into it, she was very nervous about the conversation, And it went great. She's like, “Oh my gosh, I kept peppering that language and it got back on track and things work.” And sometimes it doesn't, but in this case it did work. But this is language that I have found to be very powerful, very respectful, but also help solve the problem when you're dealing with that particular client situation.

So those are four examples out of the membership of the types of things that we work with together. The one thing I'd say about the membership, aside from what I said before is how fabulous the members in there, that are in there now are, and just how supportive and gracious they are with each other, is that I move very fast. So I move at the speed of your business and I give answers quickly. So if I decided at a certain point that if I don't care what my hair looks like, then I can answer quickly. And that's more important. So you get to see me in all kinds of different lighting, with jacked up hair, different outfits. Sometimes I look fabulous, I'll admit. But I care more about getting answers quickly to members so that they can do the things they need to do. Because you often don't have three or four days to get an answer. Sometimes you have a few hours, sometimes you have one day, and I want to make sure that you get what you need to be able to move forward.

So those are the things that I do in the membership. People get super rapid responses. We have these monthly ask me anything group coaching calls, where people get coaching from me, but also get input from others. There's training, highly interactive monthly trainings. And then occasionally, if there's a topic where people are like, “Ah!” You know, there's a lot of energy around this, I'll say, “Let's do a quick popup training or popup conversation about it.” So we had a conversation recently where I'm like, “We're all talking about virtual assistance. Let me put something on the calendar and let's all get on and talk about virtual assistance and a good way to think about how they can support your business.” And then there are tons of tools and templates and anything that supports ease of action and fast action because that's what I'm all about because that's really what helps you with your consulting business.

And I will tell you again, the members in there are having a great time. I love to get quotes from them. So one member posted, “I did exactly what you said and it worked. And that was amazing. I get so much value from you.” So people are in there and they're getting what they need to help them build their business, help them get clients, help them deal with the clients they have, but also around things like what's actually going to make your life easier. And again, I just want to remind you, if you apply, you get the first 30 days for free. I want to make sure it's a fit for you. So I do an application and I answer quickly to the application. Because again, if you want to get in there and you're a good fit, I want to make sure that you get in there and you get the goodies as soon as possible and then you can see if it actually works for you.

And that is as much as I want to say about the membership. I'd love to have you apply, if you think that it's right for you. If you're not sure, feel free to send me an email. I'm also happy to talk with you and we'll tell you whether or not I think it's a fit for you because it's really all about what you need, right? To build what you're building.

So I want to thank you. Hopefully, this was helpful. Again, these are things that... I've been doing this, what? I've been doing consulting now for 12 years. These are things that still come up today and these are tactics that I have to take all the time. So anything that I talk about is not like, “Oh, yeah, I did that 10 years ago.” It's usually things that are pretty ripe because they happened recently. So thanks for joining me on this episode.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Craft of Consulting podcast. I want to ask you to do actually three things. If you enjoyed this episode or if you've enjoyed any of my other ones, hit subscribe. I got a lot of other great guests that are coming up and a lot of other great content and I don't want you to miss anything.

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