Year one, consultant life — Lizzie Davidson

The learnings, wins, and fails of a new consultant

I’m a year into freelance life, helping consultants pimp their websites to be bad ass new business machines and create content that’s their best salesperson.

And I promised you and myself to do this thing transparently, sharing what I learn as I go. Partly as a resource, partly as a record.

When I started my business, I was intoxicated with freedom and possibility.

For the past five years I’d worked in high-pressure agency jobs. I learned a lot. I laughed a lot. I got to work on some incredible projects with wonderful people.

But by 2019, things weren’t going so well. I was losing my sense of autonomy and mastery. I began to second guess my own abilities. Worse, I felt trapped. I didn’t know what to do next and I felt I was earning too much to quit. I was growing smaller, at the very time in my life that I should be starting to step into my full power.

Luckily, the universe decided to give me a push. The agency I was working for restructured and I was offered redundancy and left.

As is often the case, I hadn’t realised just how unhappy I had been, until the weight lifted, and I felt this enormous sense of rightness and relief.

I had no plans. I just assumed I’d go look for another job. But the day after I decided to leave, a friend suggested that we start a small comms agency together, and I thought, well, why the hell not? I’ve got savings in the bank. Now’s a good time to give it a go.

It turned out that a business partnership wasn’t right for me at that time. After a few months, I knew that I wanted to focus on copy and content marketing. Also, I realised I was too tired to make the effort and compromises required to build a strong partnership.

So, I set out to build a new business alone, two weeks before Covid hit New Zealand.

Timing eh!

In my first year of being a solopreneur, four key things stood out:

1. Mindset will make you or break you.

2. Self-knowledge is essential.

3. Community is everything.

4. Planning and learning are the twin building blocks of success.

Let’s unpack those four themes in a bit more detail.

There are no magic bullets in here, only a lot of graft. And just because I’m able to package these as neat insights now, doesn’t mean they were neat and tidy at the time. But this is the unseen stuff that went on under the hood of my baby business in 2020.

Yours truly at my desk, aka the dining table. My hands get cold typing, hence mittens.

Mindset, superpower, or fatal flaw?

Over the Christmas break at the end of 2019, I read voraciously about business. I was starving for wisdom and I crammed everything I could into my mind like a child binging on birthday cake.

A theme emerged fast.

Your mindset is more important than your skills.

For most consultants, there will be hundreds or even thousands of other businesses out there doing what you do. Many of them will deliver similar results. And no matter how unique your processes are, they can always be imitated.

The only thing that is unique about you, is you. Your energy. Your focus. Your ability to bring your unique combination of skills and personality to solve your clients’ problems.

You are your secret weapon.

And the tool that hones that weapon is your mindset.

A strong positive mindset will enable you to achieve your goals, even to achieve more than you think possible right now. A negative mindset will undermine you, no matter how capable you are.

I’ve found two things to be key to improving mindset:

1. Changing the story you tell yourself.

2. Adopting a regular practice that nurtures your mindset.

What story are you telling yourself?

I know first-hand the power of changing the story you tell yourself.

For years I told myself that I struggled with periodic depression without looking closer at the reasons why. I’d accustomed myself to being unhappy because I believed I didn’t deserve to expect more. That I wasn’t disciplined enough, brave enough, good enough, attractive enough to deserve a life that I really enjoyed.

I also told myself that I wasn’t really exceptional at anything, and that only exceptional people deserved success and happiness.

Along with that, I told myself that it was self-indulgent to dwell too much on my sad, bad feelings. That I should be strong enough to either get over them, or just deal with them. Suck them up and stiff upper lip basically.

I had (and have) so much in life, a great education, a strong healthy body, a sharp brain, people who love me, a well-paid job, a beautiful house. I’ve won life’s lottery.

So, I believed that because of my massive privilege I should be happy, and the fact that I wasn’t, also meant I was a deficient human.

When you think about it, that’s some pretty screwed up logic.

I was telling myself that I didn’t deserve to be happy, but also that I didn’t deserve to be unhappy either. How’s that for a lose-lose story?

So, what happened?

My partner kicked my arse. He said, “You need to get help. Not for you, because you don’t seem to value yourself enough, but for me, because your self-disgust is damaging our relationship, and even more importantly, for our daughter, because your poor mental health is hurting her.”

That was a hard thing to hear.

In my fear of being self-centred, I’d become truly self-centred, sunk deep in my own pain, oblivious to what I was doing to the people who loved me.

It doesn’t matter why I was telling myself those stories. TBH, even after a few years of therapy, I don’t know if I know the answer to that myself.

What does matter is that I changed the story I was telling myself.

I started being kinder to myself.

I started noticing when my inner critic said things to me that I would never say to anyone else. Have you noticed how we do that? Rip ourselves to shreds when we get things wrong? Who needs enemies when we do such a brutally effective job of demolishing ourselves?

I stopped having unachievably high standards, and instead celebrated the daily wins. And when I did that, I noticed that I was pretty good at a whole bunch of things.

I started honouring my feelings. When I felt deflated or anxious, I asked myself why. And I found that paying attention to my emotions helped me identify some unhelpful stories I’d internalized, like equating my self-worth to my salary or revenue.

I started being honest with myself. I admitted that I hated my job. And I left.

And then instead of just looking for another job because all I deserved was to help someone else chase their dreams, I listened when other people said, “Lizzie, have you ever thought of starting your own business, because you’d be great at that”. And I said to myself, I’m going to give it a go.

So I did. It’s going really well. Today, as I write this, I’m happier and healthier than I’ve ever been in my life. And it’s all because I changed the story I told myself.

What story are you telling yourself about your life? Is it serving you, or holding you back?

Make it a good one.

Sometimes, when it all gets a bit much, I take a cup of coffee up the garden and sit under the plum tree.

Adopting a practice that nurtures your mindset

We all acknowledge the benefits of physical exercise. Whether you do it or not, you know that you should be active at least five times a week for at least half an hour. You know that you should eat five servings (or more) of fruit and veggies a day.

But what do we do to exercise and nurture our mindset? Our mindset motivates us and fuels us. It’s the most important force we have, apart from our life force, and yet most of us take our mindset completely for granted, or even ignore it, because we’re unaware of how it works.

When you think about it, it’s bonkers.

So, you know how we’re obsessed with the morning routines of the great and good? Yeah, well there’s a reason for that. They work.

The most valuable thing I did this year was to adopt a regular routine to nurture my mindset.

One day I read an article about financial planning, where the guy said, pay yourself first.

There was an audible thud in my head as the penny dropped, and I realised that paying yourself first is essential in life. You can’t be a good parent, partner, business owner, employee, boss, or friend, unless you have gas in your tank. Self-care isn’t selfish. It’s the ultimate investment in serving others.

This is my routine. You do you.

Get up early enough so that I can invest two hours in my own energy, before I start giving energy to others.
Write my morning pages. Partly this is an exercise in calming the chatter in my mind. I write freeform about my worries, excitements, and dreams. Then, once I’ve vomited all that out onto the paper, I do a quick exercise.
I celebrate three wins from the day before, jot down at least three things that I’m grateful for, and write down three wins I’m going to have that day. Then I close by visualizing the day that I’m going to have, and the mind set I’m approaching it with.
Often this will read something like this. “Today is going to be a great day. I’m going to have an excellent session with my coaching clients, where I’ll listen actively, and we’ll work on personal content strategies. We’ll all feel really energised afterwards. In the afternoon I’ll write two case studies and I’ll feel proud of that work. Then I’ll prepare for the discovery meeting I have tomorrow with a new client. I’m calm, strong and capable. I love supporting consultants with their marketing and helping them grow their businesses. I can do this. It’s going to be a fun, rewarding day.”
It ain’t great literature … but it’s powerful stuff.
When you repeat an exercise like this every day, you’re building new beliefs, overwriting old insecurities, and setting yourself up for success.
Meditate for 11 minutes using a guided meditation. This helps me approach the day more calmly, and it’s also helped me become more aware of my thoughts. As a result, I’m more aware when I’m going into a destructive thought pattern, and I’m able to remind myself to be kind, and ask myself what I can do to make myself feel better.
Go for a 30-40-minute run around Lyttelton. These runs are also a form of meditation, and I often have my best creative ideas as I sweat my way up the hills.
Shower, breakfast and start work.

This routine has made me calmer, stronger and more resilient.

2020 was the best year of my life. It was hard, it was scary in parts, but it was also enormously rewarding, and I put that in no small part down to the work I did on my mindset.

Social media master Jen Heuett also talks about the power of gratitude work for her mindset and shares her mindset routine in this interview.

If you take only one thing away from this article, please make it this. Create a routine that nurtures and strengthens your mindset. Do it today. Then do it every day.

You’ll be glad you did.

Sunset in my garden in late spring. In a month, the sweetpeas will over run the obelisk.

Know yourself

The best leaders know themselves intimately. They know their strengths, their weaknesses and flaws. Because they know themselves so well, they’re comfortable with themselves, and they don’t bring self-doubt and a need for affirmation into the room with them. That means they can be present and fully focused on the people they’re there to serve.

To have a sustainable, successful business you must also know yourself.

I knew a few months into my first stab at a marketing consultancy that I wasn’t playing fully to my strengths. I needed to refocus and do what I was most passionate about. Since I made that decision, it feels that each week I get more clarity and certainty about my direction.

To be a successful consultant, I believe you need to know three things:

Your strengths. These may be the things you enjoy, the things you’re best at doing, or the things that you do that others value most. It can be helpful to interview your clients, colleagues, and friends about your strengths. Some people find tools like the VIA Institute’s Character Strengths Assessment useful. Construct your business so that you’re doing these things all the time. It’s your business. Make it work for you.
Your passion. While you have many strengths, to build a brand as a consultant, you need to become famous for being great at one thing. Brands are built through the repetition of a single value proposition. So, it makes sense that to build your best business, you should focus on doing the thing you love most. This will be the thing that you enjoy doing so much that you lose track of time when you’re doing it, because you enter a state of flow. Super smart strategist Alicia McKay says it’s the thing that you get all over excited and annoying about when it comes up in conversation, because you feel so strongly about it. Find your passion.
Your weaknesses. I believe in the power of positive focus on your strengths. It doesn’t serve us to flagellate ourselves with our flaws. But it is useful to know your weaknesses so that you can be honest about them, avoid putting yourself in situations that exacerbate them, and seek the support you need with your business, so that you don’t waste your time doing the stuff that you’re shite at. You don’t have to do everything yourself, even if you are a solopreneur.

If you’re not clear on your best assets, take some time to discover these. Then ask yourself if your business is constructed to play to your passion and your strengths, and whether you have the support you need for the things you’re not so hot at.

Know your community, find your tribe, and show up

Community has been a three-fold proposition for me this year, what with finding my market niche, building my support crew, and growing my digital community.

1.Find your market niche, the community you serve

When I started my business in March, the first thing I had to do was work out who I’m best equipped to serve. I decided to serve people like me, helping consultants turn their websites into attraction machines and use content to attract their ideal clients.

I’m qualified to do this because I’ve spent years growing business for agencies and now, I’m growing my own consultancy, so I know what works when it comes to marketing for consultants, coaches, and other freelancers. And because I know being a solopreneur can be a lonely row to hoe, it gives me enormous satisfaction to help other consultants grow their community.

The secret of an effective consultancy is finding your niche. Know who you’re here to serve and focus on helping them solve their problems. The money will follow.

Despite this advice being so old hat that I’m boring myself by writing it, I find that the thing holding many NZ consultants back is that they don’t know their ideal client.

Or if they know who their clients are, they don’t really know them, as in they don’t know where to find them online, what their pain points are, or how to talk to them about those problems. This became problematic for many businesses when Covid hit and they had to pivot to selling digitally.

I made you a resource on discovering your market niche over here. But if you haven’t got a spare 20 minutes to dig into that big boy, my top tip is talk to your best customers more. Find out what makes them tick, where they’re hurting and what’s the most valuable thing you can do for them.

The more you know your best clients, and the more you focus on attracting more people like them, the more satisfying, sustainable, and successful your business will be.

2.Find your tribe, the community that supports you

Being a freelancer can be tough. You’re in your own little bubble doing everything from admin to business development. It’s challenging and it can be lonely and exhausting.

Friends and family have your back, but it’s not fair to expect them to be there every time you need energy, inspiration, or advice. And it’s also placing unrealistic expectations on them, because unless they’re consultants too, how can they understand the issues you’re facing?

So, you need a support crew. This crew can be:

Mentors.
Coaches and / or counsellors.
Other people on the same journey as you, who understand your challenges.
Digital communities of like-minded professionals.

A robust support community will have more than one of these elements in place, so you always have energy to draw on when you need it.

The most rewarding thing in my year has been talking with other consultants about their experience. Whether I’ve been working with clients or interviewing consultants for the new Consultant Kōrero series of articles, I’ve been energised, educated and inspired by these conversations. You will be too.

Fizz and bants with the fabulous social media master Jen Heuett. Tap into her wisdom here.

3. Build a digital community

If you’re a consultant or a coach, your personal brand is the fundamental reason why people buy from you. Your energy, values, and personality count for as much as your skills and services.

People make decisions based on two drivers:

1. First, they must feel an emotional connection. Do they like you?

2. If they like you, they’ll justify their preference with logic. Can you deliver results?

Humans make emotional decisions swiftly and intuitively. Within seconds everyone you meet will categorise you as friend, threat, potential mate for sexy fun times, or irrelevant. These decisions are triggered by atavistic responses to our body language and physicality. So, the first thing you must do is establish an emotional connection with your potential client.

If you sell online, the same rules apply. People still need to connect with who’s behind a business.

The decrease in business travel and in-person meetings, coupled with the massive growth of activity on digital platforms, makes your digital profile increasingly important. The first-place people go to validate your expertise is online.

This is why it’s important to make yourself visible digitally.

If you want to build a successful business, especially if you’re the heart of your business, as all consultants are, you must show up online, build a following, and talk to your community regularly. Your goal is to become a visible expert and build a community of people who value your expertise.

The benefits of being a visible expert are many.

You attract new business.
You attract interesting opportunities and collaborations.
You command higher salaries / fees.
You have mana as an authority.

In my first year, almost 40% of my business came from LinkedIn. Social media expert Jen Huett reckons 60-70% of her business in her first year came from her community on Instagram. There’s money in those hills if you develop a strong content strategy and show up consistently.

And there’s the rub. Showing up consistently.

When you start putting yourself out there and sharing what you know, it can be hard. It can feel exposing. It can trigger self-doubt and your inner critic, who says helpful things like, ‘who am I to be telling people how to do things,’ or ‘I don’t have anything valuable to say,’ or ‘I’m not cool and funny like her,’ or “I don’t have thousands of followers, so I don’t have the clout to speak up.’

The pain’s often exacerbated when you do screw your courage up and craft a thoughtful post full of golden insights, press publish and what happens? Sweet FA, that’s what. Crickets.

Brutal.

But you have to do this stuff.

Because here’s the thing. You already have a personal brand. It’s your existing digital footprint. And it’s what people say about you when you’re not in the room. So if you don’t take control of what you’re putting out in the world, by actively influencing the picture of you in people’s minds, you’re allowing the world to create a brand for you. And the world can be an asshat.

So, work out who your ideal clients are, find out what problems you can solve for them, and go solve them by creating and publishing content.

It doesn’t matter where you do it so long as you do it on a channel where your target market hangs out, and you do it regularly and consistently.

I don’t need to tell you about the mere exposure effect do I?

And don’t tie your sense of self-worth to vanity metrics like reactions and comments. That stuff’s nice because it grows your reach, but it ain’t essential. The only metric that matters is business growth. And it’s a sure-fire dead cert that if you create content solving your target market’s problems, and put it out there on the regular, you will grow your business.

Have a proper plan & never stop learning

So, planning and learning. The two loves of my life. The two golden girls.

These are mahoosive topics all in their own right, but I’m going to gallop through them like a famished royal corgi at dinner time.

Planny McPlanface

You can’t expect consistent revenue until you have consistent systems in place to generate that revenue. So, you need a plan.

But have a proper plan.

Not that business plan that you did once and never looked at again, but a living, breathing, evolving document that you refer to and update all the time.

Here are my top three ingredients for a proper plan.

Have a big vision, but break that sucker down into goals and tasks, because you can’t measure progress towards a dream. Say your goal is to make $100k this year. Exactly how are you going to do that? How many clients do you need to win? How many courses do you need to sell? What marketing do you need to do? Set goals and measure progress.
Plan big and small. I plan annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily. Identify goals, the actions you need to take to attain them, the tasks that make up each action, and the time you need for each task. This process can be as high tech or low fi as you like. It’s the planning that matters, not the tool you use.
Manage your time. Batch your tasks and schedule everything.
- Schedule all repeated tasks, including daily time to post and engage on social.
- Schedule time to work on client work.
- Keep meetings under control. While talking with clients is the life blood of your business, meetings are also the thief of time. I recommend designating meeting days and workdays and keeping firm boundaries between the two.
- Schedule time to work on your business as well as in your business, and guard that time ruthlessly with one of those scary spikey club things. I’m crap at this. Don’t be like me.
- Be realistic about what you can achieve each day. I only schedule three tasks in a day, because I know from experience that I can’t manage more. If I get through the list, great, I can do a task from the next day. Or I can bugger off down the pub. Being my own boss is awesome like that.
- Identify the most important thing you must do that day (it’s usually the thing you want to do least) and do that mofo first.
- Do one thing at a time. Multi-tasking is a myth. Quality work requires focus.
- Turn all notifications off and only check your email three times a day. I know everyone says this. Everyone is right.
- Stop saying “I don’t have time”. Say “I choose not to prioritise this’” instead.

How’s your plan measuring up? Is it inspiring? Realistic? Measurable? Are you managing your time, or letting lack of time define you?

With the whānau in lockdown. Portrait by Justyn Denny as part of her Together Apart Lyttelton series.

What did you learn today?

The day you stop learning is the day you start depreciating in value as an asset to your clients.

Now I know that everyone learns a heap through the good ole university of life. But it’s not enough. If you’re not investing actively in growing your own storehouse of knowledge, you’re in danger of becoming stale, repetitive and (eventually) obsolete.

Plus, learning = shortcuts to doing better work and earning more money (if you give a toss about that). It’s the only investment that always pays out.

I see learning as a fivefold exercise.

Build goals into your plan that stretch you out of your comfort zone, so that you’re forced to experiment, and try new things. Be comfortable with the fact you may fail.
Debrief everything for learnings.
Always be reading or listening to podcasts and audio books.
Talk to your peers. They’re one of the richest repositories of knowledge you have. Competitors are learning opportunities and potential collaborators, not threats.
Invest in formal learning. Have a generous budget for courses and spend it.

If you’re a consultant or a coach, and you’re not investing regularly in your own learning, you’re straying dangerously close to charlatan territory, because you’re not practicing what you preach.

Besides learning is genuinely the most fun you can have in this world. So, what’s on your knowledge acquisition bucket list for 2021?

Christmas getaways to St Arnaud in the Nelson Lakes

2020: The wins, the fails, the future

Things I got right in my first year in business

If you’ve read this far, you’ll know that I:

Worked on my story and my mindset.
Got to know myself better.
Identified a group of people I really rate as the market niche I wish to serve (consultants, coaches, and freelancers), and researched the heck out of them.
Built a community of supporters. This is an ongoing project.
Grew my LinkedIn community and made money from my LinkedIn network.
Planned and planned and planned.
Invested time and money in growing my own knowledge.

Here are a few other things I got right:

Jumped into coaching in lockdown and gave it a go. Since then, I’ve taught 38 people to improve their websites and content marketing, including group coaching and one-on-one.
Said no to projects and clients that didn’t feel right.
Hit my earnings target. I wanted to earn $70,000 in my first financial year before GST, and I came in at $81,815. It’s not the dramatically satisfying six figures everyone aspires to, and it’s (a lot) less than I was earning in salary, but I’m still hella proud of myself, because I’ve never run a business before. 2021-2022 will be bigger.

Things I got wrong in year one of business

It wasn’t all delight though. I dropped the ball a few times.

I was rejected as a Covid Funding Partner by Regional Business Partners back in June, when I was told by some poor stressed human that they weren’t accepting marketing service providers anymore. I thought at the time that sounded unlikely, but I was busy and didn’t follow up. Turns out it was utter baloney, and I missed out on the opportunity to give strategic support to a whole lot of consultants as a result. Lesson learned. Follow up when things smell funny.
Not prioritising things that grow my own business. Yes, it feels right to put your clients first. But by so doing, you deprioritize your own growth (be it personal or financial) and in the long-term, that serves no one.
Showing up inconsistently. Whenever I got busy the first thing that suffered was my blogging and my presence on LinkedIn. I did OK. But it’s my job to practice what I preach and show up like the pro content machine that I am.
My false start with a business partner. Had I been more attuned to myself, I’d have known this wasn’t the right move for me at the time. But I’d like to express huge gratitude to my talented friend Rachel for her energy and belief in me at a time when I needed that lift. Rach, I don’t know if I would have made the decision to go solo without you, and I’m sorry that I wasn’t in the right space to make our collaboration work.

That’s it folks. The obligatory year in review. I hope that sharing these things is helpful for those of you on the same journey.

2021 for me is all about community, connection, and consistency, and I’ll be sharing more on these topics with you all soon. May 2021 bring you all more of what you wish for in life.

Beech forest in the New Zealand hellhole that we have the extraordinary great good fortune to live in. So grateful for this place, our government, and for the tenacity and decency of New Zealanders. Kia ora.