Personal Branding for Consultants (& more) w/ Jennifer Lemmert

Author: Melisa Liberman

Host of the ???Grow Your Independent Consulting Business podcast &?

Creator of the?? IC Business Scalability Scorecard

Meet Jennifer Lemmert, a communications expert and fellow Independent Consultant

In this edition of “The Independent ”, Jennifer Lemmert shares her expertise on:

• Personal branding
• Relationship building
• Filling your pipeline in an authentic way and
• How working with a coach helped her achieve a business that succeeds even when life gets busy.

In the world of independent consulting, it goes without saying that your business is only as good as your reputation.

When you are an independent consultant, your personal brand and ability to build strong relationships matter.

But for some ICs, this can be a struggle.

Jennifer Lemmert is an expert in communications, creating executive voices, and organizational and personal branding that has been an independent consultant for about 2.5 years.

She focuses on helping executives to establish a reputation in their industry.?

In today’s article, Jennifer is sharing her journey in becoming an independent consultant and growing her business over the last couple of years. We will cover 2 areas:

1. How to apply what she knows how to do so well to a consulting business so that she and you can continue to evolve and strengthen your reputation and be the sought-after consultant for what you do and the type of services and impact that you offer.?
2. How fear of failure really kept her stuck for a while, and how she was able to dig through and identify the self-defeating thinking that she had, and was able to start tearing that down and rebuilding herself and her business in a different way.

Jennifer helps leaders develop their executive voices.

Every leader in an organization has a voice. Jennifer helps leaders:

• Develop their executive voices internally for their teams, or externally to media and other stakeholders.?
• Create and refine their unique leadership brand.
• Connect to the people they need to reach the most like future employees, peers in their industry, and beyond.

She also helps organizations focus on employee engagement. This is so important, more than ever, in the current corporate reality. There are tons of opportunities for leaders and companies to evolve their communications to meet the challenges of today. Jennifer helps organizations focus on:?

• How to communicate with their employees and recruit the right talent to their teams.
• How to understand those individuals once they're working for the organization.

It was the appeal of flexibility that brought Jennifer into the independent consulting world.

About 3 years ago, Jennifer took a hard look at what she wanted in the next phase of her career. She decided she wanted to focus on 3 things:

1. To make money.
2. To have fun.
3. To work with people that she liked.

She wanted to be able to do all of those things while having a ton of flexibility. She didn't think she could check all those boxes in the corporate world. She was also no longer challenged by her current job but was honestly just too tired to start looking for something else. So she was at a crossroads where she wanted to create something for herself? that:?

• Allowed her to do something she enjoyed.
• Allowed her to be closer to home and spend more time with her kids.
• Allowed her to just generally be happier.

Then…the world as we knew it shut down, and her secret side project suddenly became a sink or swim situation.

When Jennifer was furloughed from her corporate job, she found herself in an interesting situation being a full-time mom for the first time. This was when she really started to dig into becoming an independent consultant. During naptime and late at night, she started doing activities like:

• Doing outreach to others she knew looking for resources on how to become an independent consultant.
• Building a website.
• Mapping out her offerings.

She realized that finding a new corporate job wasn't going to save her. So either she was going to figure this out for herself and build her dream life, or she was going to have to go back to something that she knew wasn't a good fit for her. She stepped out on a limb and announced she was launching her independent consulting business. She was terrified to do that, but she got so much support from her network.

The fear of failure has been Jennifer’s biggest challenge in creating and scaling her independent consulting business.

Truth be told imposter syndrome was real, especially when she was first starting out. She had thoughts like:

• What if no one will hire me??
• And if they hire me, what if they decide that I'm not very good??
• And they decide I'm not very good, then am I good enough to do this at all?

If you are an IC, there’s a chance you have also had thoughts like this at least a time or two.? She was indulging in defeating thinking before there was really any proof to back it up. The fear of failure was so engrained in her from her corporate career.

Self-promotion is actually way out of Jennifer’s comfort zone.

Even though Jennifer is an expert in communication, talking about herself and doing things like going on podcasts is really far out of her comfort zone. So becoming an independent consultant made her:

• Step out of her comfort zone.
• Face her fears head-on.?

She had to get over that mindset and put herself into the mindset of the person that she aspired to be. She changed her thoughts to high-quality business owner thoughts like:

• What would a business owner/expert think??
• What would they do?
• What would an expert say?

Being able to own the space of being an expert independent consultant is what helped Jennifer make the mindset shift that she needed to make.

If you want to present to the world as an expert, you're not doing yourself any favors by sitting in the background, being your own worst critic, and tearing yourself down before you even get in front of a potential client or partner. So you have to own that space and make yourself feel like you are the type of person that you want to work with. You have to have a conversation with yourself where you say:?

• This is who I am now.
• You're not an intern who doesn't know what's what.?
• You have a lot of experience and a lot to offer.

When it comes to branding as an independent consultant and developing an executive voice, what best practices does Jennifer recommend for consultants that they could apply to their own businesses?

According to Jennifer, there are 3 main areas you need to focus on:

• Being yourself, not the person you think you're expected to be. You want to come across as authentic and transparent because that's what builds trust.? Being yourself makes you the type of person that somebody else wants to work with, work for, and believe in.
• Giving honest feedback. You want to make sure that the feedback you give is also kind and encouraging. Don't just tell people what they want to hear. Because eventually, they see through it. Nobody appreciates being led down the wrong path because you were afraid of saying the wrong thing.?
• Appreciating people. When we're in the super fast-paced world, sometimes it's hard to remember to do that. But go out of your way to appreciate people. It costs nothing to be kind. People remember when you acknowledge them and make them feel seen. It makes them feel important.

Balancing a growing independent consulting business with being a wife and mom to 3 kids under the age of 5 is not for the faint of heart and Jennifer doesn’t sugarcoat it.

There are a few things that Jennifer focuses on to help bring balance to her chaotic world.

• Her relationship with her husband. They work very closely together to support each other's work. You truly have to be partners and the other person has to be your strongest supporter and be willing to pick up the slack when you need it.
• Taking time for herself. Everybody needs a break especially when you have kids and own a consulting business. Prioritize taking time so you can unwind and relax.
• Utilizes a therapist. Being able to unload some of the proverbial stuff on an unbiased third party can be so valuable. This allows you to move through and strategize on how to find more of that balance.?
• Giving herself a break. Schedule time to be by yourself. Everyone needs downtime. Consider booking a solo retreat for yourself even if it’s just for a weekend away.?

Sometimes achieving balance is really just doing what you have to do to survive and not judging yourself for it.?

It can be really tricky to let go of the guilt that you can't do everything. You have to know that it's okay to rest. It's okay to throw up your hands and say that you can't take on one more thing, and scale some of that stuff back until you do get to a point where you are more of a functional human being who's getting enough sleep, food, and hydration. During times when life is kind of crazy, it’s really valuable to have a minimum viable process for your business.

What advice does Jennifer have for independent consultants who want to improve their ability to create a pipeline through networking?

Jennifer says relationship building goes back to being authentic. So if you want to build relationships, just so you can build a pipeline and make money off of people, that's the wrong approach. Stop that. You can’t just look out for number one or your bottom line. When you prioritize the relationship piece, the pipeline will build itself. You have to approach networking from a genuine place of wanting to:

• Be connected to people.?
• Learn from people.?
• Help people.?

It's important to recognize that networking doesn't come easily for everybody.?

Networking and building relationships can be a growth experience over time. It doesn't have to be all or nothing. So Jennifer suggests two ways to start honing relationships.?

1. Reach out on social media. Social media has made staying in touch so easy. You can literally see something on someone’s feed and just shoot them a quick message to chat about it. You do that enough over time and you're building rapport with somebody. Then, maybe at the end of one of those quick conversations, you see if they're on board with setting up a time to chat.
2. Bring something to the other person. When you have those catch-up conversations, you have to offer something. It could be an interest in what they're up to, or even an offer to make a connection for them. Regardless, that person remembers that you showed an interest in them, and you were willing to put yourself out there in a friendly way.

What has Jennifer learned in the last couple of years that looking back she wishes she would have known earlier?

For Jennifer, it’s being able to value who she is and what she brings to the table. Being an independent consultant is nothing like being in corporate. You don’t have the pressure of making a misstep that could be reflected negatively on your yearly performance review.?

With her clients, she feels like she’s found her voice. She’s not competing with anyone for promotion or playing office politics. Her whole job is really to make the client look good and that’s very freeing. She’s also able to lean into her own experiences and expertise to position herself as an expert in her field and truly advise her clients from that place.

What does Jennifer want her independent consulting business to look like over the next few years?

Jennifer says as long as she stays true to her original 3 goals, she’s going to feel successful. Her ultimate goal is to partner with more of her independent consulting friends and team up on bigger projects together. She would love to:?

• Work with other women.
• Help them build their businesses.
• Learn from them.?
• Work together with fun clients.
• Make a difference.
• Expand her reach.?

Why did Jennifer decide to start working with a coach for her independent consulting business?

She originally started working with another coach who gave Jennifer the accountability and encouragement she needed in a tough time. Working with me is different. According to Jennifer, when we started working together:

• She did not have any of the systems she needed to run and scale her independent consulting business.??
• She really needed to work with an expert on helping her prioritize and get set up so that she could run this business like it was a business.?
• She also really needed help getting out of the mindset of fear of failure and getting into that business owner mindset.?
• She also needed help learning how to separate the business from the personal.

These are all things she’s been able to work on with me as her coach and make great strides in. Jennifer said working with a coach really helps you get out of your own head,? put some plans to paper, and figure out how to take action on them and be accountable.

What was it like for Jennifer to work with me as her coach?

In full transparency, Jennifer said it was a little embarrassing at first, but also so valuable at the same time because I was asking her about things she didn’t know that she actually needed to know.?

She was able to have a sounding board for which processes would be most beneficial for her to position the business side. She learned how to do those basic operations now, and then eventually grow further down the road. Jennifer truly needed somebody like me to objectively ask her questions regarding her mindset, too.?

As a result of working with me, Jennifer now understands that she gets to create what success looks like to her.?

She’s able to give herself more credit for the things she’s accomplishing instead of continuing to move the goalposts. Now, she believes that she is successful today, and she’s going to be successful moving forward. Jennifer can comfortably say that she believes in her business, and there's no such thing as failure for her.

Are you interested in growing your income and impact in a way that’s sustainable and predictable?

As you can see, working with me can help you create a well-running, profitable independent consulting business that allows you to have the flexibility to define life and business on your own terms. Curious what it might look like to work together??

Grab a spot on my calendar at consultmelisa.com . Let’s see if we’re a good fit and take the next right step toward scaling your independent consulting business together.