From J.O.B to C.E.O.: Escape the Grind and Build a Business That Works for You

Welcome to Your Business, Accelerated! Digitally remastered with AI, Your Business, Accelerated! is the go-to podcast for entrepreneurs ready to scale smart. Hosted by Attorney Shaune B. Arnold, it delivers strategic business insights, legal frameworks, and real-world solutions to help you operate with clarity and confidence. Get actionable guidance to protect, grow, and optimize your business…one smart move at a time.

Ready to trade your JOB (Just Over Broke) for your dream business? Attorney Shaune lays out powerful strategies for transitioning into entrepreneurship without burnout. Learn how to structure your consulting firm for scale, fire unprofitable clients, raise your fees, and avoid turning your business into another J.O.B. 

Your future starts now. 

Transcript

Hello, everyone. and welcome, this week and every week to your business accelerated. I am your host attorney, Shaune B Arnold.

I am a California business attorney. And here on your business accelerated, we deal with a lot of hardcore legal and business issues that get in your way and try their best to stop you from building the business of your dreams. And as a California business attorney, I do have that training.

I want you to be aware that to the extent that we talk about legal issues here on your business accelerated, we are talking about California law, and that means that if you live someplace other than California, and I give you a legal construct, you need to take that to an attorney in your jurisdiction just to make sure that there's no difference between the law where you live and the law where I live.

I’m also so pleased to invite you to listen to my other podcast, legal biz cafe. On legal biz cafe, we deal with those mindset issues, those those little Gremlins that hide in your reptilian brain, and they jump out to scare you and keep you from moving forward in your business.

With these two shows, we deal with both sides of the coin, and that is because, as you are aware, my motto is to maximize your competence to get the confidence you need to succeed.

Well today, folks, on your business, accelerated, we are dealing with your career, and whether or not your career is really a job that's getting in the way of you building the business of your dreams. I was actually asked a question by one of our regular listeners right before we got started. This listener asked me to give you some tips on transitioning from a job to your own business enterprise.

Tonight, on your business accelerated, we’re focusing on how to actually keep your tasks within your consulting business from making that business feel like a J-O-B. However, the transition that one makes from a job to one’s own business enterprise is actually a related topic.

I'm going to tell you some of the things that some of my more successful clients did as they were transitioning to the extent that what they were doing for a living was completely different from the business they wanted to build. In this case, there needs to be a real line of demarcation between the two. But you know, as I was revving up to build my own company, Platinum Tower, I spent all of my lunch hours working on my business. I did client work either before my regular job or in the evening after my regular job, and on the weekends.

One thing that will help you make that transition, especially when you go home at night, is to change your clothes and not just get into your jammies, which is, you know, for me, when I go home, the dawning of the jammies is like a ceremonial part of my day. I love it so much because I know the workday is over. If you're coming home from work and getting into your jammies, and those jammies typically plop themselves in front of the television with a TV dinner or some ice cream, then you don't want to get in your jammies right away.

I would suggest that you get into an interim outfit, maybe a sweatsuit, or something that is going to help you realize that your day is not over. We all work so hard for our employers. We give 150% because we care about signing our name with excellence. But this means a lot of the time, when we come home, we are completely wiped out.

My next suggestion for you would be to pace yourself at the end of your regular work day. Perhaps only give 100% and not your usual 150%. Save that last increment for you, for your dream, for when you go home.

Test yourself. If you know that right about four o'clock in the afternoon, your energy kind of tanks, then you might want to consider moving your dinner hour up. Maybe eating your heavy meal earlier in the day, so you don't tank so much at four o'clock, and then really pace yourself during those afternoon hours. That way, when you do get off of work, and you get home and change into your interim outfit, you've got some gasoline left in your tank.

That is a huge issue for so many of us. We wipe ourselves out at work and all we can do when we get home is just sit on the couch and drool.

Now, I had a different sort of transition than what I'm talking to you about, because in 2008 the banks froze up, and I was running the transaction department of a 30-lawyer law firm in downtown Los Angeles. My desk was so robust that it took about two years, but I literally watched my workload go from this amazing job that needed associates, paralegals and legal clerks to help me to absolutely nothing.

There was a moment in that slide where I thought to myself, I should be transitioning into my own business. I started working on my business and products so that when the hammer fell I was professionally prepared, even though I was emotionally unprepared.

So, my third suggestion to you would be to keep an eye on your job, and if you're finding that it is time for you to transition, then pluck up your courage and make that transition. If we fail to move, life will move on us.

I believe that's what happened to me. I was comfortable and I stayed too long. There were times that I looked out of my floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking all of West Los Angeles and the ocean, and said to myself, “I have not looked out this window in I don't even remember how long." 

The view was for the clients. The view wasn’t for me. My head was down daily. My elbows were out. I worked beyond my natural stopping point daily and my natural transitioning point at the job.

These are some tips for you on how to manage your time, your energy, and your transition from a job to your own business. Let's shift gears just a little bit, because I really want to talk to you this evening about getting the tasks involved in your consulting business out of the way, so that they don't start making that consulting business feel like a J-O-B.

So how do you do that? Well, you know, as a consultant, your growth is really dependent on you not bringing on more and more and more and more and more clients, because you only have 24/7 to serve. Your growth is going to be dependent on you abandoning certain lines of business and certain types of clients in pursuit of other more a productive and profitable business.

This means your growth is not just financial. It includes broadening your experiences, broadening your higher-level contacts, taking on more sophisticated work and enhancing your reputation by doing all of these things

See, for a consultant, the attitude is typically that all business is good business. Never turn down a paying client. But you know what? I have to disagree with that. Not all money is good money. Some clients need to be fired.

I have a client that runs an advertising network. They are known in the industry as the 99 cent store of networks. That means, when people are looking to place cheap advertising, they go straight for his network. The problem is, he can't grow the network with all this 99 cent advertising. So, be very careful when you are looking for clients, and make sure that prospects don't wind up approaching you as though you are the cheap alternative (unless that’s truly what you want).

I deal with this a lot in my speaking business. A lot of meeting planners will require that an unknown speaker work for free, and they will allow you to sell your products in the back of the room. It’s a struggle trying to strike that balance between someone who is not getting paid to speak, and yet, calling yourself a professional speaker. I have had international, paid speaking and training opportunities. I find that I don't go after free speaking gigs because I don't want to get painted into that freebie corner. We all have to make our choices in this regard.

Think about that as you are building your business. I know you want to bring on clients and make that transition from the job to owning your own business. Just be very careful. Really start to have a conversation with your prospects and with your clients about how much productivity is enhanced in their business by whatever it is that you're doing. How much are you enhancing their bottom line by enhancing their productivity? How much are you saving them by doing this consulting work for them?

How much would they have to spend if they were spending that money in house? In other words, if they had an employee actually doing what you, the consultant, are doing, how much money would that cost them in resources? You need to tie your compensation to these numbers; to how much you're increasing their business, and how much they are saving by using you rather than their internal resources. Really make sure they understand the value of that, so they don't even think of asking you to work for free.

One other thing I would like for you to consider is, it really does take the same amount of energy, or very similar energy, very similar tasks, for you to get a large client, as it does for you to get, say, ten $10,000 clients versus one $100,000 client, it takes the same amount of work. It probably takes the same amount of tasking on your part.

Don't think about business as being quantitatively different, or even qualitatively different, if the client is small versus if the client is large. The quality of your work (not the size of your business) should be the sole measure of your success. How much are you putting out on getting clients in? Raise your eyes a little bit and pluck up your courage. And if you need to create a strategic alliance, maybe with someone else in the marketplace to enhance your value, go for it. 

For example, I had a conversation two or three days ago with someone who was a business consultant. We are looking at what his company does and what I can do as a business strategist, business coach and business attorney to help him. We’re exploring what we can create as a package deal so we can go after certain fortune 500 companies that neither one of us is comfortable going at by ourselves.

So, you see, there's some safety in numbers. Just make sure you have a plan of action so you don't wind up with your strategic alliance partner running at the client and then suddenly they're doing business with one another and making money, and you're out in the cold. You want to make sure that you get everything in writing if you have to do that strategic alliance.

But really consider that it takes the same amount of effort to bring on a $100,000 client, I think the thing that's enhanced at this level, over a $10,000 client is really your confidence and maybe some of the moving parts in terms of what you're doing to satisfy that client.

But for the most part, it requires just as much time to sell a $10,000 project as it does to sell a $100,000 project. Really, the only difference is in your attitude. Really consider the efforts that are required for you as a consultant to attract, administer and deliver those small assignments, because they really do overlap with those larger assignments.

One other thing that I would like for you to consider is raising your fees incrementally over time. I know that's really scary one for people. And you know what? My last job (in 2008, ...yikes! ...nearly 20 years ago) had me billing out at $250 an hour. When I went into business for myself, I raised my rates to $350 an hour. Why? Because I knew people would talk me down. And if they talk me down, they would talk me down to $250 an hour. I’m more than twice that now. So, you see, I didn't losing anything in the transition.

I would really consider raising your fees or refusing to make concessions to get business. And you know this is going to cause you to lose the bottom 15% of your clients. However, that's okay. Million-dollar consultants like you regularly abandon the bottom 15% of their clients as a growth strategy. It frees you up to expand the upper reaches of your market. It frees you up to raise your fees and then go after those larger contracts. Every two years or so, I want you to look back and identify assignments or contracts that you would not bid on or accept today as business, and then ask yourself, are you still accepting those types of assignments? Are you still at the same fee structure today that you were at two years ago?

If you are, and you have not abandoned the bottom 15% of your clients, then you can't expand the top 15% of your base, and your business will not grow. Your business will start to feel like a j-o-b. And we all know J-O-B stands for just over broke.

Ladies and gentlemen, I want to thank you for joining me on this week's episode of your business accelerated. I am your host attorney Shaune B Arnold. I invite you to follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter-X. In all of those places. My moniker is s-h-a-u-n-e dot Arnold.

In the meantime, and in between time, I’m reminding you, as always … to MAXIMIZE your COMPETENCE to get the CONFIDENCE ...you need ... to succeed.

I'll see you next week, ...right here on your business accelerated. ...Bye-bye, friends!