0:00:02 -  Welcome to the Grow your independent consulting business podcast. I'm Melisa Liberman, a fellow IC and business coach.

0:00:11 -  On this podcast, I teach you to become a consistently booked independent consultant without becoming a pushy salesperson or working 24/7.

0:00:21 -  If I can do it, you can too.

0:00:23 -  Listen on to find out how. Welcome to episode 168 of the Grow your independent consulting business podcast. This is Melisa Liberman and I am so happy you're here today. I can't wait to dive into this topic, which is today we're going to focus on a tool to help you optimize how you spend your time as an independent consultant. So excited to talk about this, because really, time is one of the biggest challenges I think we face as independent consultants because we're trying to juggle so many different hats.

0:00:58 -  We're trying to juggle client delivery with working on our business, being the CEO, being the consultant, being the CFO, being the COO, all the roles that you are playing and wearing in your business and really helping you to figure out how to make the most of the time that you have available. The other component that I often find makes this an even bigger challenge is one of the reasons you likely became an independent consultant is so that you have more ability to manage your priorities, you have more ability to create work life balance for yourself and to work the amount of time you want to work, to do the type of work you want to be doing.

0:01:39 -  And because that's likely one of the reasons you became an independent consultant in the first place, that's what makes this topic even that much more important. So that's what we're diving into today, is a tool that I want to share with you that can help you make the most of the time that you've got available to spend on your business so that you're not working more than you plan to work, and so that the way you're spending your time is much more effective.

0:02:05 -  Where this came from is I've been working with an author. His name is doctor Benjamin Hardy. He is an expert in helping business owners be more successful and the author of a book called ten X is easier than two x. Great book. I highly recommend it and we can put the link to that in the show notes for you. But one, in part of this work that I've been doing with Doctor Hardy, one of the things that he's really been hammering home is a driving question that he's been really focusing on getting. It's a group program. Getting those of us in the group to really consider and think about and focus, focus in on. And that's the question and the tool that I want to share with you today.

0:02:49 -  And that is, are you optimizing a system that shouldn't exist? It's actually a concept that Doctor Hardy has pulled from Elon Musk and is leveraging this as a tool to help those of us in the group to be more conscientious about what it is that we're doing and how that leads to the goals that we're trying to achieve. And that's what I want to bring to your attention today, is how you can think about this question for you and your business to make what you're doing more impactful and for you to be able to protect the time that you want to be protecting so that you do have that work life balance. So the question we're going to be focusing in on today is, are you optimizing a system that shouldn't exist?

0:03:35 -  And I can't wait to share some really interesting examples with you about how other independent consultants are, have, have taken this question to heart and have really turned their business practices on their head. And I'm excited for you to potentially do the same thing. So that's what we're going to be hammering home today. Are you optimizing a system that shouldn't exist? So with that, let's take a step back and talk about the agenda for today, and then we'll dive into this topic.

0:04:04 -  So first we'll start off and I'll share with you a companion resource that will help you put what we're talking about today into action in your business. And at an even deeper level, then we're going to talk about really what it looks like for most of us as independent consultants. Does it sound familiar, this scene that I'll set for you. I always find that describing what it sounds like and looks like for other independent consultants can be so valuable because a lot of times we think we're the only ones facing this challenge.

0:04:37 -  And I want to help you to see that you are not alone. That for most of us as independent consultants, time can be one of the most challenging aspects to manage in our businesses. Then we'll dive into what the typical fixes are for you when you're thinking about how to make the most of your time, how to better juggle working on your business with working in your business. And then I'll share with you at a more granular level the tool that is the focus of today's episode.

0:05:06 -  Are you optimizing a system that shouldn't exist. And then we'll dive into three specific real life examples to help you see how this can apply to you in your business in ways that you might not have even considered. And then finally we'll wrap up with three things that help you put this episode into action. So really excited about today's episode. To help you just take a step back and think about your business in a slightly, in a very different way. I don't want to say slightly different way. In a very different way.

0:05:38 -  So that you can start to free up time in your business that you never imagined was possible for yourself and make a bigger impact and have more work life balance and make more money. All the things, you can have them all. So with that, let's talk first about the companion resource for today's episode. It is the book that I released earlier this year. Grow your consulting business. The 14 step roadmap to make your independent consulting goals a reality.

0:06:07 -  You can go download the book@Melisabook.com or consulting business book.com. we'll put those links in the show notes. They both go to the same place. Just one might be easier for you to remember over the other. So that's why I shared both of them. But if you download the book or buy it on Amazon, you will find that in chapter 13, I focus a whole chapter on what I call the WOB plus wib time management system for your consulting business.

0:06:36 -  And what that stands for is that balance that you've got working on your business plus working in your business as you're trying to really establish and evolve and iterate your business owner routines, your consulting delivery routines, and strike that effective balance between all of the things that you're responsible for so that you can ultimately reach the goals that you want to reach. And even more so with that. Let's now dive into just take taking a step back and I love to share, you know, what it sounds like for so many of the consultants that I talk to on a daily basis, and you may relate to this, do you have a challenge trying to fit everything into the day or into the week and trying to juggle running your business with client delivery, especially when you're really fully utilized in terms of the consulting hours that you have available in a given week? You might be working on a couple of intense projects right now and you find that it's really hard to also keep the balls in the air as it relates to running your business.

0:07:42 -  And even sometimes you might be lighter on the client load and find that it's hard to really focus in on those actions and routines that, you know, are important for you as a business owner. It might not be that, it's just that you're really busy. Of course, that's one of the scenarios. But also, it can be just really challenging to fit everything in to a given week when you know that you want to keep up with things like networking and getting better at sales and developing repeatable processes for your business, and juggling all of the responsibilities that you have when you're, you know, have clients that you're working with, and trying to do all of that at the same time can be really challenging. And so as a result, we do one of two things, usually both of them.

0:08:31 -  We criticize ourselves for not keeping up or doing more. And our lists of responsibilities and actions and tasks and routines just keeps growing. And we get more and more frustrated with ourselves and start questioning whether or not we'll ever be able to keep up with all of it. That's so common for us as independent consultants to fall into that scenario. And the other thing that we oftentimes might do is get to the place where we really start questioning whether or not we are capable of handling all of the responsibilities that we need to handle in order to be successful business owners.

0:09:06 -  And so it can be really heavy as a business owner, trying to not only keep up with everything, but then manage all of that emotional side of the process as well. And so oftentimes, what we think the fixes to this situation that is so common to get into is that we need to somehow be more efficient, or we need to hire help in some form or fashion, maybe thinking about hiring subcontractors to help you with delivery, or virtual assistants to help you with the things that you're responsible for in your business, or bookkeeping, or potentially even thinking about outsourcing, you know, completely turning marketing over to an agency as an example.

0:09:48 -  And these fixes are valid fixes. These are things that can be really effective levers for you as an independent consultant. But at the same time, before you start trying to optimize these things, let's just ask the question that is the heart of today's episode. Are you optimizing a system that shouldn't exist? And that's the first step here, is before you start trying to dial in and getting a, you know, a better way to manage your to do list, or how to become more efficient with the client delivery that you're doing, or the sales process, or your lead generation, whatever all these things are that you've got on your routines.

0:10:30 -  Take a step back and ask yourself, are you trying to optimize a system that shouldn't exist? This question is so powerful and really helps you to put your CEO hat on and take a step back and out of the weeds and out of the day to day and really ask yourself about what it is that you're doing to run your business. And are the things that you've been told are necessary, truly necessary? And you might have even been told those things by me.

0:10:59 -  You might have listened to an episode and thought that, oh, this is what I need to be doing, I should be doing. And so you've started implementing that in your business, and it may be a system for you that shouldn't exist. You might have read a book. There's so many of them out there on independent consulting. You might have read a book. You might have watched a YouTube video. You might have gone to a webinar wherever you found out these things, or you might have decided this is the way you want to run your business, wherever you found these recommendations, whether it was from me or someone else, and you started putting those in place because you thought you should do that, or someone told you you should do that, and now you've kind of created a monster in a way of systems that perhaps shouldn't exist. And so that's what I'm encouraging you to think about today.

0:11:48 -  Are you trying to optimize a system that shouldn't exist? Is a great first question before you go about trying to become more efficient or outsourcing or delegating. So with that, let's dive into those three examples that I wanted to share with you. And I think some of them might even surprise you in terms of, is this even an option, to not do this in my business? And so the first example that I want to share with you is the concept of writing proposals.

0:12:15 -  This is one of the most painful things I hear oftentimes from independent consultants. I've, you know, it takes so long to write a proposal, I dread writing proposals. It feels like a wasted time. It's so common to hear consultants tell me, oh, I've spent hours and hours writing this proposal, and then I never heard back from the potential clients. I thought we were at the place where we were about to move forward to a contract, and we were just negotiating the details and the scope and the magnitude, and instead, I spent all this time writing a proposal, and they ghosted me.

0:12:51 -  Or I spent all this time writing a proposal, and then they changed their mind about what they wanted to do. And so now I have to write another proposal. And so this situation with proposals can be a huge time sink. It can be something that's really frustrating in your business and quite frankly, something you just don't even want to deal with. And the first thing I'll say is there was an episode last year, maybe we'll put the link in the show notes. I don't know the number off the top of my head, but it's about premature proposal writing. So that might be valuable for you as we're talking about proposals, but coming back to this concept of are you optimizing a system that shouldn't exist?

0:13:30 -  For many of us, we think the solution to this problem with proposals is perhaps you're writing it prematurely or you need to get better at it, or maybe chat GBT can help you in some way to optimize the writing of proposals. And what I want to encourage you to think about first before you go down those paths is the answer to the question, are you optimizing a system that shouldn't exist? And here are the couple of examples that I want to give to you of real consultants who have decided that they are not writing any more proposals.

0:14:06 -  One of them, and look, that you have to figure out for you in your business what makes the most sense. So I'm not telling you that for every consultant out there, that proposals shouldn't exist in your business, but it is something to consider that you don't necessarily have to write proposals in order to land work. So are you optimizing a system that shouldn't exist? The first example here is in this proposal category is I've got a client who just decided she's no longer writing proposals.

0:14:36 -  She's just writing a simple email that describes the client's goals and objectives, what the approach would be if they were to work with her to solve that particular set of challenges and to reach those objectives, and then what the logistics and particulars are about the consulting itself. And that's it. That's it. There's no proposal, there's no more PDF, there's no more trying to wordsmith, you know, a ten page documents, or even taking a template and optimizing it. She's not doing proposals anymore.

0:15:13 -  If the client wants to work with her, it goes from this simple email to a statement of work, and that's it. The other example, which I find fascinating, is have another client who decided she's got so much demand and supply in terms of the amount of clients she can take take on versus those who want to work with her and she just decided that clients are going to write proposals to work with her. So the clients are writing the proposals.

0:15:39 -  Again, that might not work for every single business. But I will tell you, is something interesting to consider. What if now the client has to write a proposal to work with you instead of you being the one to write a proposal to try to acquire their work? So I think that's something really interesting to be thinking about. So that's the first example of proposals. Are you optimizing a system that shouldn't even exist?

0:16:03 -  So then the second example, as you think about are you optimizing a system that shouldn't exist, is to think about lead generation. We often think as independent consultants that we have something in our mind about what lead generation should look like, what is effective from a lead generation perspective, what's not effective from a lead generation perspective, how much time it might take for lead generation in your business.

0:16:29 -  And so oftentimes it can be a very overwhelming system that you've got running in your business as it relates to lead generation. And all of this overhead of the thought process of that you don't have enough time, that it's not possible to fit it all in, that you'll never execute against a quote unquote perfect or optimized lead generation process. And so that can be a really common challenge I often see independent consultants facing is just really that heaviness and overhead of it never feels like it's enough.

0:17:07 -  And so sometimes we think somehow you need to dial in your routine better, or you need to even hire a content writer or a marketing agency or someone to help you to run that part of your business so that you have a more robust pipeline, you have more leads coming in, you have more predictability. And so what I want to share with you, while some of those approaches can be valuable, depending on where you're at, in the kind of trajectory of your business and where your reputation is and where you're at with inbound leads versus outbound leads and all of those kinds of things.

0:17:44 -  But what I will say is, first and foremost, you want to be asking yourself, are you optimizing a system that shouldn't exist at all? Is there a place for you in your business where you don't even need lead generation, where it could look like you're creating all inbound type leads? You're not doing anything for lead generation that is in your mind, like things like writing content or even networking.

0:18:11 -  One of the examples I want to share with you now, which is a consultant who has basically just thrown out the entire lead generation process that she had built. And now it's all focused on leads coming from channels. Leads coming from channels. So for example, as a change management consultants who primarily works with technology, data transformations, digital transformations, that kind of thing, usually her work, for example, has a lot a software component to it, a software component that's really the driving force behind the change.

0:18:51 -  And so for her, she's built relationships with three or four key software providers in her space who have implementation resources themselves and sometimes work with integration partners to implement the software. But they don't have her deep domain expertise as it relates to change management and getting the user base and driving the adoption within the user base. And so she's created a scenario and situation for herself where these channels are constantly feeding her potential clients. And she doesn't need a lead generation system in the traditional sense.

0:19:37 -  She's not doing any networking. She's already built these relationships. She's not doing any speaking, she's not doing any content writing, she's not doing any of that. What she's done is throw all of that lead generation system out and based on the question, are you optimizing a system that shouldn't exist? And now she's able to really have leads coming into her from those channels because of those relationships that she's built that are now really on autopilot.

0:20:08 -  So again, that exact example might not apply to you and what you're doing, but hopefully you can see that by asking that question, am I optimizing a system that shouldn't exist? You can really start to think about your business in a different way and start to free up time by approaching what you're trying to accomplish in a completely different way. Okay, let's talk about the third example here to bring this concept to life.

0:20:35 -  Are you optimizing a system that shouldn't exist and that is about client delivery? Client delivery, we have oftentimes a tried and true method that we come to the table with when we think about client delivery. Might be something that you've done for years now and you're just used to handling your client delivery in a certain way, or perhaps you were a client when you were in corporate and you've built a system around that of what you knew worked best. When you were working with consultants as their clients, however you came to create your methodology and your approach to client delivery, it likely came from some of those contexts.

0:21:20 -  And so the challenge can be trying to keep up with everything, all of the meetings that you feel responsible for going to, the project assets that you might be delivering like dashboards or executive summaries and that kind of thing. And so it can be really challenging to keep up with everything. And sometimes we're motivated to quit, quite frankly, have a lot of these types of things, especially if you're getting paid by the hour.

0:21:46 -  The client wants them, the client wants a professional approach, and you can deliver that, and you're also getting paid for it on an hourly basis, for example. And so you might be thinking that the answer to trying to keep up with all of your client delivery is to do things like using chat, GBT or AI transcription to try to get better at creating project dashboards or status updates or executive summaries.

0:22:14 -  You might be thinking that trying to work through automation tools to help you become more efficient at some of the delivery and make it more repeatable is part of the answer to the challenge that you're facing. But the question is, first, again, are you optimizing a system that shouldn't exist? One thing underneath this umbrella that I would challenge you to consider is, number one, is the way that you're engaging with clients, a system that shouldn't exist, perhaps looking at the way you're charging for the work that you're doing and the way you're setting up the engagements, instead of trying to optimize all of that, completely turning it on its head and changing from hourly over to retainer base so that you have more flexibility to really deliver what the client needs.

0:23:05 -  And both of you aren't really focused on the number of hours that it's taking to deliver that as an example. Another example is some of this assets that you're creating and what the client is used to, or even you going to these meetings that you might be, your calendar is really filled up with, are those activities that should even exist really taking a blank slate? One of the ways that I often see clients do, independent consultant clients of mine, doing this, is on a quarterly basis, completely deleting everything from their calendars and then deciding one by one what goes back on there.

0:23:47 -  Are you optimizing the meetings, for example, or should they even exist at all? Perhaps that there are no more meetings with your clients and all they, and you work with them over texts or, you know, exchanging things asynchronously, just really taking a step back and thinking about everything that is that you're doing. Because a lot of times this is what's, what's taking up the majority of your capacity as an independent consultant and as a business owner.

0:24:17 -  And so thinking about the way you're delivering for clients and taking the first question, which is, are you optimizing a system that shouldn't exist and figuring out before you start optimizing something, should you even be doing it at all? Should you even be going to any meetings at all? Should you be creating the types of deliverables you've just been used to creating? And so you don't question those anymore, really looking at everything within your client delivery pillar and questioning how you're doing it and rethinking and reimagining so that both, that it benefits both you and the client when the client is getting a result, perhaps in a very different way than they've been used to getting, and you can do it in a, in a much, you know, compressed amount of time or less time, both of you benefit. So taking a step back and using that blank sheet of paper approach to reimagining your client delivery is another example here as we, as we wrap up. So hopefully that gives you three very specific examples that you can leverage as you're thinking about.

0:25:19 -  Are you optimizing a system that shouldn't exist and using that as a tool to get so much more efficient and impactful with the scarce resource that you have available in your business, which is your time? So to put this into action, what I would recommend are three things. Number one, really think about specific issues that you might be facing. For example, your pipeline. It might not be as full as you need it to be to meet your business goals for the year.

0:25:47 -  And you're trying to figure out how can you carve out 30 minutes here or an hour there? First, looking at specific issues in your business and asking yourself, are you optimizing systems that shouldn't exist? And then the second step is to take a more macro view. Ask yourself, what systems might you be optimizing that shouldn't exist? Look across your entire business and ask yourself, re, look at everything.

0:26:13 -  Maybe you're doing things within your business, or maybe you're not doing things within your business that you're criticizing yourself for. Maybe they shouldn't even exist at all. So those first two steps are looking at specific issues and asking yourself, are you optimizing a system that shouldn't exist? And then from a more macro perspective, what systems in your business are you optimizing or that you think you need to be optimizing that shouldn't exist?

0:26:40 -  And then finally, the third step is, if you believe you could use some help with this, which most of us do, is so hard to see when we're inside the jar what the label is. For example, if you think of yourself as a jar of pasta sauce, for example, you don't even realize your pasta sauce because you can't see the label on the outside of the jar. And for us as independent consultants trying to run a business, even though we may know exactly how to advise our own clients, for example, on some of these things, it can be so challenging to apply it to ourselves.

0:27:12 -  So if you believe that getting some assistance with implementing these types of techniques in your business so that you can achieve the goals you want to be achieving for your revenue, for your work life balance, for your emotional experience as you are a business owner, reach out and see if working together would be a good fit. You can find a time on my calendar@consultmelisa.com and we'll put the link to that in the show notes as well.

0:27:39 -  All right, thanks for tuning in today. I'm excited to hear where you might be uncovering areas that you've been trying to optimize and realize you can just throw them out entirely. Reach out and let me know. You can send me an email@Melisalissaleberman.com. it'd be so amazing to continue accumulating examples like those that I shared with you today. All right, thanks for tuning in and I will see you again next week.

0:28:05 -  Take care.

0:28:07 -  Thanks for joining me this week on the Grow your independent consulting business podcast. If you liked today's episode, I have three quick next steps for you. First click subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Next, leave me a review in your podcast app so other independent consultants can find and benefit too. And finally, to put the ideas from today's episode into action, head over to Melisaleberman.com

0:28:38 -  for the show notes and more resources to help you grow your consulting practice from your first few projects into a full fledged business.

0:28:47 -  See you next week.