CenterBrain Partners

As an independent consultant, the way I feel every morning is a little bit scared and excited. I think that’s the emotional description of properly balanced risk. It hasn’t always been this way—there were times, particularly in the early years of my practice, CenterBrain Partners, that my fear was pretty strong, mostly when I encountered things for which my MBA and corporate experience hadn’t prepared me. For example, I didn’t expect to need an intimate understanding of the accounts payable system of every single company I worked with.

If you are considering leaving your corporate job, I’ll say that I fully believe the grass is greener on my side of the fence—but there are some bald spots you need to recognize. Here are a few of what I consider myths about the world I work in.

1.   You are going to make a lot of money.

I always started a New Venture Creation course I taught at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga by saying something like this: “Welcome to America, where you can make as much money as you can.” Pay attention to the words in that statement. It is not so much one of encouragement as it is one of caution. Some people can’t make much money—I hope you’re not one of them.

2.   You’ll get to focus your work only on things you enjoy.

I hope you really enjoy selling, because selling accounts for 90% of the work you’ll do in the first five years, 75% of the work in the next five years, and at least 60% of the work in the five years after that. If you can’t sell you’ll be among the 80% of consultants who fail in their first year in business.

If you can’t sell, find a partner who can. And split your profits equally because no matter how talented you are, your partner’s selling talent is at least as valuable as yours.

3.   Your life will be more balanced.

Yes and no. In the first few years you will need to work incredible hours. I used to tell people that my consulting job “gave me lots of flexibility, the flexibility to work all the time!” If you are passionate about going out on your own the long hours won’t bother you—but they will bother your loved ones. Prepare them ahead of time. I wish I had.

4.   You’ll get to choose the people you work with.

Again, yes and no. In the first years of business I took any assignment I could find, which helped me formulate two hard and fast rules:

1. Only work with nice and ethical people, life is too short.
2. Don’t accept catfish accounts.

The first rule was one I started applying after I encountered businesspeople so insecure they made an art of torturing “suppliers and vendors,” a couple of really denigrating terms. “Vendor” is one I particularly abhor. It puts my services on par with the guy who manages the contract for the corporate cafeteria. If you aren’t considered and called a partner on a project, move on. It’s a simple matter of respect.

The second rule, “Don’t accept catfish accounts,” applies to times when business is slow. A catfish is a bottom feeder—in business, catfish are level C, D, and F clients you might be tempted to take work from in slack periods. You’ll be eager to help, maybe discount your services, and overpromise. I know, I did all those things. Catfish clients are easy to spot. They have unclear or no objectives, their business issues go far deeper than what they want you to do, and they’re slow-pay. Or no-pay. Plus, at the end of a project, because they have a weak business model and weak project objectives, they’ll always be disappointed. Their disappointment, in my experience, will often be partly the consultant’s fault, because you overpromised to get the business you thought you needed. What has frequently happened to me is that I take on a catfish and a whale shows up at my door. I end up resenting the catfish because he is taking time away from my money-making accounts.

5.   The people who encourage you to follow your dream will be your first clients.

Some of my friends and colleagues were so encouraging during the time I was considering going out on my own that I felt I couldn’t let them down, so I took the leap. Since many of them were decision makers who could easily throw me a project or two, I thought I’d instantly have the business I needed. That isn’t exactly what happened.

There’s a big difference between friendly support and the willingness to risk a career by dealing with an untried new business. Over time, however, the people who encouraged me did become my clients, and not just because they liked me. It was because by then I had a track record of success—something you can only build if you get out and sell, sell, sell!

Some parting thoughts

Yes, the economy has been in a very bad downturn and many clients, especially the young ones, have adopted a “deer in the headlights” look. My experience is that fear, especially in business, is not a productive emotion. A lot of those “deer in the headlights” get hit by trucks.

Tough times may not seem like the best time to launch your own consulting practice—but for some of you, it will become the only option you have. I encourage you to give it a try. Position yourself, perhaps using some of the methods in my book, CenterBrain Thinking©, (http://www.amazon.com/CenterBrain-Thinking-practical-positioning-ebook/dp/B003RWS5BY ) and get passionate about your success. I have never regretted the decision I made 20 years ago.

“You don’t blog enough.” I heard this yesterday from a nice and knowledgeable friend. I don’t actually agree. I never was much of a memo writer back in the day, and I don’t write a lot of emails. I actually like talking to people and getting things done over the phone. If that makes me old-fashion, well okay. I like humans and human interaction, but the world is changing. So, I’m writing a blog today about something I am working on with my friend Gary Lumsden right now. I call it the “3 M’s for 2012″.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the virtuous cycle. Most of us have heard the term. It just means that something starts and continually gets better. It’s a cool concept and I’ve seen it work a few times in my life. With the the 3M’s for 2012 I can see it working again. First let me tell you what the 3 M’s are.

1. Media-As in traditional and social. There is no difference now. You have to deploy both simultaneously with solid positioned brand content. Please go to (www.centerbraininc.com) to learn more about positioning.
2. Mobile-As in lots of people with smart phones and pads engaging your content and your promotional activity.
3. Mining-As in all the data you receive from that engagement being mined by professionals for real insights (beliefs and behaviors), so you can improve the content of your media, and your mobile engagement.

See how the virtuous cycle starts happening. Conceptually your marketing and promotional activity just gets better and better and you drive more sales. No, not conceptually it really does work. Let me go into some more detail.

Let’s say you have a restaurant or retail brand, or dare I say a Higher-Ed brand. You have a good idea of who your target audience is. For media let’s pick radio, yes radio. It still exists and is listened to more than you think. It is very easy to target with radio, you can buy lots of reach and frequency and if you have good positioned content you can get people to act. So, let’s run some radio directing people to social media with some great positioned content, ask them to opt in to our mobile number, which now can be customized for every restaurant or store in your chain, or every department at your university or college. We gets lots of opt-in because we make it worth the customers while to opt in. You know, a great trial offer…..remember 29 cent trial sizes. Now we have the consumer’s mobile number and we can start “engaging” them, say over a 6 week period, once a week, with promotional offers that get them to act. Let’s try a bunch of promotional offers and see what works. As we collect data and collect “engagement” chatter we can mine it, parse it, analyze it, and look for insights. As we learn more in near real-time we improve our content, our offers etc. and we keep getting better and better about driving sales or enrollment or whatever your goals are. A very simple and powerful concept.

Now here is the good news. My friend Gary Lumsden who is seasoned and cool, but seasoned, not 30 anymore, figured out how to do this as a turnkey operation. Turns out that you have to have a bunch of skills to pull that off, ones that are learned over time. You see, you can learn new things, but apparently it is hard to go back in time and learn the things (like media buying, producing real positioned content etc.), that only come with experience.

Now, some of you will read this and say, “Nothing is new here.” You are right. But innovation is not necessarily about inventing new things, sometimes it is about figuring out new ways to bring several ideas together, and then executing flawlessly. The devil is in the details.

If you want to find out more about how this works, give me a shout at 859.750.7259. I’d love to have a human to human discussion with you.

All the best in 2012.