Starting (or re-energising) your own business on the smell of an oily rag
Like most people who had always been an employee, the decision to start up my own HR/Team Building consultancy came with lots of sleepless nights and mountains of fear and trepidation.
The first couple of years were hard, as I expected they would be. I had to get out into the marketplace and let people know who I was; what I was doing and how I could add value to their organization. And as anyone knows who has ever been to a networking event, there are consultants by the hundred all attempting to do the same. How to compete? How to stand out? How to get noticed in this river of look-alikes? Everything was so new to me.
I decided initially to run workshops for women in the evenings to get cash-flow happening. I still had a mortgage to pay and two teenagers to feed and clothe. Being a solo Mum, paying the bills was always going to be my biggest challenge. This was in the days of putting ads in local newspapers so I placed a regular, very small run-on ad for these workshops in several suburban newspapers, and slowly the phone started to ring.
The workshops were based on self-esteem and personal growth. I ran a two-hour evening session once per week for six weeks; had a two week break and then ran another one. It was fairly exhausting and it certainly didn’t make me an overnight millionaire, but it did keep the wheels turning. I met so many wonderful women – many of whom worked in the corporate world during the day which slowly built me contacts with a variety of businesses!
I also took on 1:1 coaching with some of the women, another way to supplement my income in those early days. I hadn’t lost sight of the HR/Team building business I wanted to build, so during the day, I would write letters, send brochures, make calls to HR managers and Operations Managers and at night I ran the workshops. It had to be this way because I knew setting up the consulting side of my business would take time.
Then an interesting thing happened. I received a call from a person who ran the local Brian Tracy seminars. He had seen my small ads and was calling to ask if I would be interested in running their Peak Performance Women sessions – up until then they hadn’t had anyone to run the programme. Of course I was interested.
While working with the Brian Tracy crew – I met a person who was keen to run team sessions also. His background was that of financial controller with a large manufacturing firm, but he felt like a fish out of water in accounting and really wanted to work with people. He and I formed a company together (The David Principle) and for the next two years we worked together and created what was to become a 6 step team building/change management programme.
Because of his background (ex financial controller) and mine (ex HR manager), we presented the best of both worlds to potential clients. We built on the process I had been using with the women’s groups – we advertised and started running regular public workshops for team leaders and managers. And at the end of every session, if we had done a good job, someone would stay behind and ask the magic question: “Could you come and run that session in-house for our company?”
We were on our way.
Even in a partnership success didn’t happen overnight. It took a good 12 months from my decision to leave the golden handcuffs of my well-paid HR role to receive our very first big contract. But once we had run that one session with a named company, we had a testimonial and a referee. We kept the public workshops concept running which brought in our second contract and a third.
Was life all smooth running after that? No. We still had to market what we did, and attend networking events, and advertise and make those dreaded cold calls. ?But we now had a process that worked and it made all those sleepless nights worthwhile.
About two years into working with my partner, he decided he needed to go back to having a ‘proper’ job – he now had a new baby and a mortgage and was nervous about the peaks and troughs of our consultancy work. I have to admit, his deciding to leave terrified me.
Could I do this on my own?
Was I strong enough?
Did I have a big enough network?
I too could have decided to go back into the corporate world and get that lovely regular salary again, but the thought of going back into a 9 – 5 after having been my own boss for several years did not fill me with joy. I decided I had nothing to lose by going it alone (well except the roof over my family’s head of course) so I gave myself 6 months to see if I could keep going alone.
That was almost 30 years ago and I’m now in a semi-retirement stage of my life. I never once regretted sticking with going it alone. Yes the peaks and troughs continued, but I learned ways to iron those out and even ended up franchising the business I created.
Over the next few weeks, I will share extracts from the franchising process I taught my franchisees – the ways they too could set up in business for themselves by following the sales and marketing process I had used and was still using. You can simply follow these articles OR you can purchase the book It’s just a Numbers Game’ which covers:
·????????Rule number one for setting up a new business
领英推荐
·????????Why you should never cold call
·????????4 ways to set yourself up for success (or RE-SET yourselves up for success if your business is flagging)
·????????The four stages of selling
·????????Dealing with rejection
·????????How to host client events (this was pre pandemic but you can still run events online)
·????????Why networking still works
·????????The marketing wheel which must never stop turning
IMHO marketing is one of those things we seem to stop doing when the going is tough. Business owners think ‘We can’t afford to spend money on marketing right now’ when in fact you can’t afford NOT to keep marketing. Not having a marketing wheel is where most business fail –
You can purchase the e.book ‘It’s Just a Numbers Game’ right here for a mere $4.99
Stay strong. Keep believing in yourself and your business and you will succeed.
Ann Andrews, CSP. Author, speaker, profiler, Life Member PSANZ
Author of:
Women Behaving Courageously: How gutsy women, young and old, are transforming the world