Chapter 1
The No Normal®

Being patient until there is a "return to normal" or a "new normal" is like waiting for Godot. It's a long play with no point. We have to act based on constant change created by a seismic shift in demographics, a historical tectonic change in technology, and constant adjustments in social mores. Besides, "normal" means "average" or "typical." Is that who you want to be?

Gaining Conceptual Agreement

We often make the mistake of charging ahead looking for a "sale" instead of taking our time and creating agreement on value.

Alanism: Don't try to "increase fees." If you want higher fees, increase value.

Conceptual agreement is the focus on gaining buy-in-commitment-from an economic buyer by establishing:

• Objectives: What business outcomes are to be gained by this relationship? This is never strictly internal, such as:
  • Create alignment between departments
  • Enhance communications flow
  • Raise levels of empathy
  • Maintain cordial relationships and avoid confrontation

These are all "HR"1 kinds of objectives, which serve no business interest. Note that they can all be achieved without any demonstrable improvement in the business, and perhaps with actual declines in performance.

Business-oriented outcomes would include:

• Decrease involuntary attrition
• Increase referral business
• Decrease labor intensity
• Improve cross-selling of products and services

All of those can be measured and can have monetized value attached to them. We'll get to that in a few minutes. For now, understand that something like "improve profit" has copious potential, because if you improve profit you can:

• Increase salaries and bonuses
• Retire debt
• Provide better investor ROI (return on investment)
• Improve facilities
• Make more hires
• Increase technology and automation

You get the idea. True business outcomes leave the business in far better shape if met, and exceeded. The "no normal" means that getting one's "ticket stamped" by attending training programs with no measurable effect on productivity or performance is gone with the dodo birds.

The next step in conceptual agreement is "metrics." These are measures of success along the way, and/or at completion. The buyer may have existing devices (turnover reports, monthly income, sales by product, average price or fee, and so forth). The buyer may not have such resources, and will ask your opinion as to how to measure progress. This is still more value that you're providing (as well as the metrics for your own success).

Finally, we have "value." This is the actual benefit to the buyer. There are qualitative values (I no longer will have to play the role of "referee" for warring teams) and quantitative values (reducing attrition by five percent would save us an average of $120,000 per person, five percent of 100 is five, times $120,000 is $600,000).

Guidelines for conceptual agreement:

1. Must be done with involvement of, and agreement from, the economic buyer.
2. Try to create three items of value for each objective to be met.
3. Try to monetize two-thirds of the total value statements.

Since you'll be assuring the buyer of a 10:1 ROI, you want to make the monetized value as significant as possible, but still conservative. If the buyer says the saving will be $250,000-$350,000, or five percent to eight percent, cite the $250,000 and five percent to demonstrate you've taken the more conservative estimate each time.

Finally, on qualitative objectives, just ask, without a monetization attempt, about the value of getting home at dinner time, or seeing the kids' sports events, or alleviating stress, or better relationships with board members.

Alanism: Behind every professional objective is one or more personal objectives.

The No Normal means not discussing deliverables, or programs, or methodology, but rather what you create to improve the buyer's position.

Lean and Mean: Don't Feed the "Chicks"

Counterintuitively, if you want to move toward (and even beyond) seven figures, you want to be careful about not adding unnecessary overhead. Since I first began in the early 1990s writing about high-growth consulting strategies it's become apparent that adding staff tends to decrease revenues and margins.

Alanism: "Growth" is not the point, PROFITABLE growth is the point.

One of my all-star clients, who eventually sold her boutique consulting firm and is now playing golf, said in one of our small group meetings that she dreaded returning from traveling and finding all the "chicks" in the corporate nest chirping and waiting for her to regurgitate food. That was a visual never lost on anyone who heard it!

Even with the boutique firm owners I've coached, we focused on reducing staff, both professionally and personally. I've never known why someone who is making $250,000 a year requires a $30,000 virtual assistant! Have they failed to learn how to use a smartphone or a Filofax®? In most cases I've reduced staff for my clients from 30 to under 10, and often to zero.

But what about most of you, who are solo practitioners? How do you keep control of overhead, which kills small practices?

Vignette

When I was fired from the presidency of a consulting firm I told my wife I would never work for any moron who could fire me again. She said, "Okay, but you'd better get serious! What's the first thing you're going to do?"

"Rent an office," I said.

"Why?" she asked, "you're going to visit prospects to sell and clients to implement; they're not going to be coming to you. If I'm wrong about that, then we should discuss an office."

Forty years later, I've never had an office. My two kids went through private schools from pre-school through undergraduate.2 Those two 17-year experiences cost about $450,000, in total, which I paid out of cash flow. I calculated that a single office over that period, with rent, insurance, utilities, taxes, a secretary, repairs and so forth, would have cost, wait for it . about $450,000!

Lean and mean is the way to go, right into and through seven figures in revenue. That's how you create profitable growth.

Here are some items and resources you don't need or should have on a "pay for play" (outsourced) basis:

• Bookkeeper paid by the hour
• Tax accountants paid by the hour
• Legal help paid by the hour
• Answering service rather than part-time assistants
• Use American Express as your travel agent
• Use a franchise printer who prints on demand
• Use AI or a student to create your art work
• Use automated schedulers
• Keep your software and hardware simple-you don't need three cameras and seven lights for Zoom
• Don't chase shiny objects; you don't need every new iPhone

Don't allow your ego to determine your overhead. One mistake I made was to call my legal structure "Summit Consulting Group, Inc." with the intent of demonstrating "heft." When people asked how many were in the "group," I tap danced inanely talking about subcontractors and part-timers, which is like telling GM you know the auto business because you drive a car.

Don't rationalize growth with numbers of people. What really matters is your brand power, which we'll talk about later.

Vignette

I had a client named Phil who had four employees whom he strived to keep busy delivering projects. Phil traveled 80 percent of the time, often on weekends. He was the rainmaker for the implementers, and taking far less out of his company for his family than he should have.

At one point I hadn't heard from him in a month, so I called, and his wife told me that he had died of a heart attack alone in a Marriott Hotel in another city.

You won't get rich working for someone else and you won't get rich with people working for you.

Alanism: True wealth is discretionary time.

Scalability

One of the most significant advantages of the internet and AI is the ability to quickly scale your operation, without resorting to more people and expense. For our purposes, let's define "scalability" as the capacity to leverage more contacts with more buyers.

For most of you reading this, your key marketing challenge isn't lack of market need, or competence, or passion, which are illustrated in Figure 1.1:

• Market Need: Our ability to identify or, even better, create need and not merely satisfy "wants" for clients and prospects.
• Competence: Our ability to meet those needs and fulfill client expectations.

  Figure 1.1 Three Dynamics in...