Women Consultants, What Are The Assets In Your Business Beyond Your Expertise?

Welcome to today's edition of the Seven Figure Consultant LinkedIn Newsletter for Women in Consulting. Don't forget that you can get daily updates from Jessica in your LinkedIn news feed by accessing her LinkedIn profile and hitting Follow. She will be sharing insights and discussions through the week that she would love to hear your views on.

When you started your consulting business, did you seek advice on how to make it profitable?

Often with consultants, particularly women, we set up a business which enables us to do the work we really love and then we reverse engineer it to become a business. We build it up organically based on what feels good, what feels like the right fit for our lifestyle, and also our skillset or availability.

Like lots of people, I didn’t do a really detailed business plan when I started my business. I told myself I didn’t need a bank loan to set it up and that I wanted to be in control of everything myself. We build businesses like that and then think, ‘where is the value in this business?’

I don’t mean the value in what you do. Your expertise is very valuable! You are an expert in your field. But if you were not in the business, what would make it profitable? You might be thinking, but Jessica, I’m not planning on selling my business. Whether you are or not, there’s going to come a point when you need that business to run without you. 

You get to the point where you are fully booked and if you want to serve more people, what are you going to do? You could work all the evenings, but you probably don't really want to do that. You don't want to give up your weekends. You would like to be able to go on holiday. And even if you give up your free time and work instead, it doesn't really budge you very far. 

You get stuck in a bit of a dead end with your business revenue because everything is dependent on you being available in person to do those hours. If you are solo in your consulting business and you’ve put your name on it, then people can be very funny about suddenly not working with you anymore. They might not want to work with an associate they don’t have a relationship with.

It's these really important structural parts to our business that often we haven't given very much thought to. Women often don't access business mentorship. Men are much more likely to be mentored and seek out this kind of business advice. So, I invited Erin Austin to be my guest on the Seven Figure Consultant podcast this week. Erin is a lawyer and consultant using her experience in big law and corporations to help consultants identify the hidden assets in their business.

She shares strategies to decouple your time from your income and how to plan for when a potential acquirer comes calling. 

We talk about:

• Using our businesses to generate wealth
• Where the ‘Rembrandts in the attic’ are in your business
• What happens when you get fully booked
• Developing your process and creating a system
• Licensing your framework

?? Head here to listen to the interview in full 076 Finding hidden assets in your business.

Let me know in the comments, do you seek business development advice?

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It’s the framework that helps consultant women like you find their feet and get back to leading the business, rather than being buried in client work and back-end business operations.

Sign up here for your PDF report, and I'll show you the six elements your consultancy needs to make the shift from a nice little 6-figure lifestyle business to a serious 7-figure enterprise.

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To find out more about the work I do, visit jessicafearnley.com or message me here on LinkedIn if you'd like to hear more about private coaching and how I can help you transition from booked up and burned out to THRIVING as the CEO of your 7 figure consulting business.?