The Business of College Consulting
The Business of College Consulting
Liz Murphy: Business Growth and Money Mindset
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In this episode, Brooke talks with Liz Murphy, the founder of Liz Murphy College Advising and the creator of the "IEC's Growing Our Business" Facebook group. Liz shares her journey in business growth from starting as a part-time consultant and transitioning to full-time. She discusses her unique business model, which includes part-time college coaches assisting her clients and her approach to relationship marketing. Liz also mentions her challenges related to money mindset and how she worked on improving her pricing and financial management skills.
Welcome to the Business of College Consulting podcast. I'm your host, Brooke Daly, founder and CEO of Advantage College Planning and Advantage College Planning. Franchising, Building and growing a business is not for the faint of heart. In this podcast, you'll hear incredible stories from successful college consultants about growing a thriving business. They'll share the secrets behind a remarkable growth and the trials and triumphs shaping their path to success. Welcome to the Business of College Consulting podcast. I'm your host, Brooke Daly, and I have the pleasure today of chatting with Liz Murphy, the founder of Liz Murphy College Advising and the Wonder Woman behind the IEC's Growing Our Business Facebook group. Welcome, Liz. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much, brooke, it's a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So I have to ask and obviously I want to hear about your business growth journey, but tell me about the IEC's Growing Our Business Facebook page. When did that start and what sparked your interest in creating that? By the way, it's fantastic, so much value there and I think the community is amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you so well. Like so many of us in the IEC industry, I have a background in something completely unrelated to business. I have a background in the sciences. I have a bachelor's degree in biology and a master's degree in public health and you know, I kind of got into this career a little bit later in my career journey and it's I love it, it's great, and I have had a lot of professional training. I went through the IEC, the college consulting certificate program at Berkeley, and I've done a lot of other professional development. I've earned my CEP, but what was really and I, you know I love working with students and I'm very comfortable with the college consulting part of the practice, but what's always been hard for me and I hear this from so many people is the business part.
Speaker 2:And so you know what happened was that I finally hired a bookkeeper because I just was not doing a very good job with my bookkeeping, and she said, oh, you know, how much did you make last year? And I said I don't know, you know. And I said I said I could check my bank balance, you know. And she said, no, look at your profit and loss statement. And I was like, oh, what is that you know, and it just kind of crystallized for me that you know I'm running a business, you know, and I can't just, you know, just not do that anymore. So you know, I thought, well, you know there are more, it's more than me who's having a problem with this. So let me just start this little Facebook group. I thought, oh, maybe like 20 people would just kind of join and chime in when we had questions.
Speaker 2:So I started the group in 2019. Just, I just kind of put it out there, invited a few people that I knew not very many people and just thinking we could just kind of enter each other's questions like what's a profit and loss thing? What even is that you know? And so, like so many things, it became something a lot different than I thought. It became this big, wonderful, supportive, knowledgeable community of IECs who really, you know deeply, want to help each other, help their clients, help themselves, understand how to run their businesses. Now we have almost 1,100 people in the group and we've started doing something which is really fun, which is a yearly kind of mini conference for IECs, strictly on running your business. So it's never going to be about, you know, working with problem parents or what it works with problem parents Liz.
Speaker 2:But you know it's all about running our own businesses running, scaling, growing, improving, making a profit, and so it's. You know it's really turned into something different than I thought it would, but it's fantastic and it's just such a nice group of people so supportive, so that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, kudos to you, Liz. I feel like, as the leader of that group, like you've done something right there to have such an amazingly collaborative and just nice invite, like everyone seems to play nice in that group, so I love that. So let's talk about Liz Murphy College advising and just so we have some context. Do you want to paint a book? Do you want to paint a picture of what your business looks like today? And then we'll work backwards Like how did you get there?
Speaker 2:So today what it looks like is me, and then I have five part-time employees, I have an assistant and then I have four part-time college coaches. So I have a model that looks a little bit different from what other people do, and but that's what it looks like today, and I work with about 40 students per class. So this has been my way of scaling is to have this model with the college coaches.
Speaker 1:Yes, so tell me, what does a college coach on your team do?
Speaker 2:So the college coaches are all either current or former high school teachers. They all have or are working on their master's degree in education and then they might have education past that. I have one coach who's also just finished law school and they each of my students is assigned a college coach to work on the more routine aspects of the college preparation process. So the college coach helps them research schools, helps them create their applications, helps them create a list of activities that will you know they'll be able to plug into their application, helps them with essay brainstorming I do the essay editing and the finalizing, but the coach will help them kind of brainstorm topics. So I work with the student about half of the meetings and they work with their coach for the other half.
Speaker 2:That is really cool. That's how it works. I still have a total oversight of all of my clients and I know them well, but I just decided that I don't have to work with every single student on like okay, we will call them that. Okay, open that link. Okay, you're not right, put in your birthday. So the coaches do those more routine tasks.
Speaker 1:I love that idea. So when you bring on a new client, do they get to meet with the college coach right away? Is it something that you it's both of you are introduced as their team that you work with?
Speaker 2:So usually I'll meet with the client first and we do some pre-work just the two of us so we'll do. Some of my clients choose to do a major career work, so we work on that together, all of my clients. I work on a college list with them. So once we get that basic information out of the way and it's time for them to start their applications, that's when I introduce them to their coach and then they just start working with their coach on those specific tasks.
Speaker 1:Awesome, that is great. So, liz, tell me how Liz Murphy College Advising got started. What was your inspiration behind starting the business?
Speaker 2:So, like so many of us, I have kids. I have four kids. I'm going to have a daughter, and Austin too.
Speaker 1:Yay, oh, congratulations, that's amazing.
Speaker 2:So when my son was in high school, I had twins and I'm not going to go into this but they had a lot of health problems so we were really in and out of the hospital and I was not really available. So he wanted to go to college. So I actually hired Gail Casner. No way, yes, I love Gail. She changed my life. So she worked with my son on his college, his list, his applications, his essays, so he's really well, he went to college.
Speaker 2:But almost as impactful, or almost more impactful, is that she became my mentor and she really, as she was working with my son, I was like that is cool, I didn't even know that existed. I could do that, I could do that with people. So she encouraged me to just start small, like maybe take on a client, maybe take on a friend's kid and help them and just kind of see how it was. So I did. I started just working in a very small way. I went through the Berkeley College and Career Counseling program. I hung up my shingles. I just started working with people for free and I was still raising my kids. So it was a very part time at the time, kind of growing as my kids grew, but it just 10 years later, it's become I'm the CEO of this company and it's become a company and a practice that I just love.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that. I love that Gail was your mentor. She is one of the first people I met who is in this industry at my very first HEKA conference. Her and Scott Hamilton, who I just interviewed for the podcast as well. So that's so cool and what a great mentor to have. Liz, you could not have asked for someone better. That's so cool.
Speaker 2:I mean, she's retired now.
Speaker 1:She know, I know, I know that's awesome.
Speaker 2:This wonderful chapter, but she's been fantastic.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So tell me how at the beginning. So you said that you started this maybe on a little bit of a part time basis as you transitioned to full time, what were the challenges? How did you decide to transition to full time? Maybe talk a little bit about marketing, Like how did you market yourself in your community?
Speaker 2:So I believe in something called relationship marketing. So I never do any kind of marketing I don't do. You know some people do like group chats or library presentations or webinars. I never do anything like that. I only work on the relationships with my current clients and then they refer me to future clients. So that's my model and that's always been my model, you know, because I started small and I only wanted a very limited class. I was fine just having like two clients, five clients, 10 clients, right. So it worked really well. And now you know it's kind of like just kind of concentric circle, right. Like you have your clients and then they were for you and then they were for you. My biggest challenge was managing my business, and you know billing and keeping track of the money and what to put where, and you know just how to set my prices and how to set up my schedule and how to be efficient. So those were all the challenges as my business grew bigger.
Speaker 1:Yes, classic examples. Thank you for sharing that, Liz. So tell me, besides the Facebook group, because you started that you know years later, how did you solve those problems? Or maybe, if you could choose one of those, like which one of those problems were you able to solve and what solution do you feel like was the most beneficial for you?
Speaker 2:So I think the biggest problem I always have is money. And so you know, going way back to the root, it's a money mindset issue for me. You know I've done a lot of kind of deep work on this. But starting from, you know how money was talked about in my family, how we treated money or didn't talk about money in my family all the way up and through. You know I worked for a long time but then I stayed home with my kids for a long time and I didn't have a, I didn't earn any money for a long time, so just kind of the imbalances around money.
Speaker 2:So I think the root of my biggest issue was my own money mindset and so that manifested in pricing, charging, discounting, tracking, money, all those things kind of you know, went back to the way I think about money. So I actually hired a business coach about four years ago, natalie Eftall and you know I did a lot of work on money mindset and I can't say that I've solved all my problems. But now I'm confident with my pricing, I'm confident with my billing. I have a billing system, I use QuickBooks, I'm confident in my QuickBooks, I have a bookkeeper. So you know I'm much more comfortable talking about money, dealing with money, charging what I'm worth than I was when I first started.
Speaker 1:I love that and that's such an important message, I think, for new consultants to hear that that a lot of people have that issue at first like, oh, am I charging too much?
Speaker 1:Am I really worth this much? And then it's the hesitation and kind of how it manifests, right, it's like I'm not sending out this invoice to get paid because I don't feel confident in what I'm doing or what I'm charging. And so your mindset around money is so important in your success because at the end of the day, I mean, a lot of people get into this business because they wanna help students, they wanna work with students, but, as you mentioned at the beginning, you are also running a business and there are responsibilities that go along with that. So kudos to you for working on that and you know, and making progress, because I think it's something that we all have challenges with at the beginning and not everyone gets over that hurdle too. Right, so good. And I think too, can you talk a little bit about how maybe so if you've increased your prices, like, how do you approach that with a new money mindset versus how maybe the old Liz would have approached that?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So the old Liz charged $60 an hour for her services, discounting if people bought more than one hour. Wow yeah, and you know, I always thought that was, you know, a really good hourly wage for myself. And why would I even pay more for that? And you know, the more research I did, the more I realized that undercutting my pricing wasn't good for me and it wasn't really good for my industry either, you know. So, you know, of course, I did some research on what people are charging and you know I would say, you know, after I, you know, four or five years ago, I really decided no, I'm gonna charge what I'm worth, I'm gonna charge what the industry charges. And since then, you know, I've significantly and confidently raised my prices. So, you know, somebody asked me once are you a charity, are you a hobby or are you a business? And so I really had to think about that, you know. And I've decided that I'm a business. And so I, you know, I run my company like a business.
Speaker 1:I love that and what a group, what a powerful question, right, it really does make you pause and yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's like if you're a nonprofit, if you are, if you're a community-based organization, you might run your you know your company a little bit differently. Or if you're a hobbyist I was a hobbyist for a while let's find two. Like, any of those things are fine and great, but you have to decide what you are.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, so you're managing about 40 students per graduating class, right? So that's a pretty significant caseload. And you do have your college coaches which help. But tell me I mean in the IUCs, growing our business Facebook group. I think that sometimes I get overwhelmed with all of the suggestions and the things and the systems and the technology. Tell me what's one either piece of technology or system or process that you use that is invaluable in managing your client load.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not really. I know there are people who just love all the latest tools, and that's not me at all. I'm pretty simple. So I mean I would say, you know I am trying to to this year one of my goals is to have a better sort of client management process. But you know, google works great for me and every you know all of those, all of those you know Notion and Asana, those are great and but those are just seem to me like just like bigger kind of Google systems. So I, you know, probably going to stick with Google and just use it a lot better. You know there have been some, there were some presentations at this last strategy session last week on Google workspace and Google classroom. So I'm going to, you know, like look more deeply into those tools.
Speaker 1:Awesome, awesome. So what do you think is most helpful and I'm just thinking of those who are growing, you know, a significant client base, like what's one thing you know you had mentioned scheduling as one of your pain points earlier on or even just like the client management what is one maybe best practice that you would share to a new consultant to help them as they're trying to manage or grow their client base?
Speaker 2:Well, I love Calendly Good one, yes, so you know it. Just, it just takes all of the email back and forth scheduling out of it. And you know what's what I love about this, this business, is that I'm in control of my calendar. So, and you know, all my college coaches are in control of their calendars too. So they don't, they never ask me for time off or, you know, tell me they're, you know they're traveling, like I just got it.
Speaker 2:I just texted one of my coaches and he said, oh, I'm in the Caribbean. I was like, oh, I have fun. We all just manage our own calendars and as long as we can meet the needs of our clients, if we're available, you know when they're available and we can meet with them as often as they need, as we need to meet with them. You know, then that's to me that's a successful client management. So we just all set our own calendars. We take time off when we need to come off, we work more when we need to accommodate more clients, and so I would say Calendly has been just a real lifesaver.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I love that and I love the notion of if the client is happy, then I'm happy. You know, create your own schedule. I'm all about that philosophy, love it. Speaking of clients being happy, you had mentioned that essentially, referrals and serving your clients well is is your marketing strategy. Which is a strategy? Can you talk a little bit about the parent's role in your process and how they're included or not included and how you manage that relationship?
Speaker 2:So I love parents. I mean I'm a parent, I, you know I have. Like I said, I have four kids. Two of them are currently in college, and so you know I love and respect parents.
Speaker 2:So usually, usually, the way I work with parents is they're invited to our first meeting, our initial one hour meeting, where we just do a real overview and talk about goals and options and, you know, extracurriculars and testing ways that they can students, can strengthen their application, and so I love parent input, like I'll always ask you anything to add, you know, like from your perspective, you know what are your thoughts. And then after that I really encourage students to meet, just meet with me on their own. No parents, just because students tend to be more open, they talk more, but parents are always invited, like if they want to join the last 10 minutes of a meeting, they're always invited. And then I usually put it on the student, like tell your mom what we talked about you know, tell your mom what you know what your action items are before the next meeting. So I like them to feel included, but I don't necessarily like to have them in meetings and have them be part of the planning process.
Speaker 2:I also do something that you know a lot of consultants do a lot don't. But I send meeting notes in an email after the meeting and I always see, see the parents on those. So the parents have confidence that you know we're moving through the process, things are getting done, they're included, so they don't. For most parents it's a relief Like they don't have to come to the meetings. They I always tell parents like my job is to promote family harmony. So I'll do the hard parts, like I'll nag about the essay draft coming into me, I'll nag about the deadlines and you do the fun parts, like you go on the college tours and you shop for the door room and you know we kind of share that and most parents are honestly relieved.
Speaker 1:How. I'm curious, liz, how did that work this year with your students? Did you have students who, for the most part, responded, and were they active in getting their assignments done? Did you have to pull parents in? What did that? Look like for you this year.
Speaker 2:This year I did a little more nagging. Let's say, One of my coaches loves that role. She loves being an accountability coach. And she really knows how to like. She'll say you know, leave it to me, I got this, I got this, so and she, you know, she has text with the students, that's how you know they communicate, so I lean on her my accountability, coach, coach.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I did have to reach out to parents this year. I really did. You know I'm concerned deadlines aren't being met, internal deadlines. I'm concerned that the college deadlines aren't gonna be met.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:You know, how can I, how can I support your son or daughter? So we have, you know, we have different kind of strategies that we use, but I always tell families, if you miss the deadlines it's because you miss the deadline. It's not that we didn't remind you or you didn't have enough time, it's that there's something else going on.
Speaker 1:Yes, you know, we just had a team discussion about mental health and we were talking about the connection between mental health and then executive functioning.
Speaker 1:And I think sometimes it's a sign, like if you have a student who's consistently showing up, who's just not doing the work or blaming something else, like usually that is a sign of obviously some kind of underlying issue.
Speaker 1:And so we were talking about at what point do we, you know, bring parents in or mention that we feel like this could be a sign of a larger issue that they may want to take a look at.
Speaker 1:And I think over this past year our team and you know I brought up the question because we did struggle with this last year we had more students than ever who were just not doing any work, and the only time they did work is when we were sitting down in a meeting with them, and so we were just talking about, okay, how can we change this? And but then we all read the IECA Insights magazine as kind of a book club pick and it was all about mental health and we're like, okay, it just makes sense that there's a connection here, that these kids are not all of them are thriving right, and so their productivity is down, their motivation is down, and so how can we help support them when we know that, like, if you're not okay in your heart and your mind, then you're not gonna be okay in showing up and being productive in your college counseling? So, anyway, I digress, but I think that's I do think that's a lot too.
Speaker 2:It concerns me, it worries me.
Speaker 1:Yes. And then you know there's the larger connection of okay, if you're not able to get this done or be independent and have the executive functioning to get the college admission process done, then are you going to thrive in college, like, are you college ready? So then it's a, you know, like I said, a bigger question. But these are all things that you know we're really thinking about right now. Do you have anything like when you think back on your business growth? Is there anything that you would love to go back and change, or a decision you made that you wish you would have made differently?
Speaker 2:Well, looking back, I was powering through by myself for many years and I wish I had hired earlier. My first hire was an executive assistant. She stood with me and that was just the best decision that I made.
Speaker 1:Can you do, you mind, just elaborating on what your executive assistant does for you, what that role is?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so she does all of our background work. She works for all of us really. She supports all of us. She does all of the onboarding of the clients. She gets into our systems, she sends out the emails, the assessments. So she does a lot of the initial touch points to the clients and families and you know she's just such a kind and welcoming presence to our families. And then she does a lot of like. She helps with our scheduling and managing our calendars and she does, you know, we with the college list I prepare a report so she helps, you know, prepare the report so I can just plug the information in. So she does just like client communication and also a lot of background. She just saves us a lot of time, a lot of energy. She keeps the wheels on the bus. You say I love that.
Speaker 1:So how did you know it was time to hire someone? At what point did you say, OK, it's time to hire an executive assistant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know it was in 2020. And we all know 2020 was kind of a pivotal year. You know, I went fully on Zoom. I also got a giant influx of clients. I think a lot of us did, just because parents were, you know, panicking a little bit. The schools were online, the students weren't getting you know what they were getting before, and so I just had a huge influx of clients and you know, I was staying up till midnight every night working and you know, I was so worried I wasn't meeting everyone's needs. Everything was falling between the cracks. So, you know, a friend of mine said you know, there's someone that works for me that would do a great job for you. And my assistant is actually a hairstylist. She was in beautiful at the time. No way, yeah. And she's a local woman, she's done a ranch. So she doesn't, yeah, she doesn't have college counseling experience, but she's just super smart, super organized, super kind. I mean, she's just the perfect person for that role. So yeah, Love it.
Speaker 2:I love it. That's how I started working with her.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. So one of my questions for you is going to be your most influential mentor and you had mentioned Gail, but I guess, as you've grown your business, have you found you mentioned a business coach as well. Any other mentors or people who helped you along the way?
Speaker 2:So you know I am so inspired. There are IECs that really inspire me. So I'm going to kind of list some of those people and why I mean some of these people. A lot of these people I've met through the IEC growing our business based book page, and you know they feel very free to like, be who they are and share their stories.
Speaker 2:So Sylvia Garcia Borgo she is just amazing at design creativity and she has such a positive outlook. Lisa Fuller is she's very grounded, she's involved in so many different things and she is a moderator on the Facebook page and she's very detail oriented but she's constantly messaging me with things that I need to take care of. So Ashley Taylor is just a genius at Mishing and she Mishes it for the University of Michigan students and I'm Mishing toward the University of California students, so she's just been such a role model in Mishing. Robert Powers I love what he's doing in his advocacy work around LGBTQ students and he co-founded an organization called IECs for Human Rights. And then Annie Tolkien is doing a lot of work in the disability space and actually worked with my son who has major disabilities and he's a junior in college thriving in Sotsuti. So I just have you know. I'm so inspired by my fellow IECs that I've gotten to know and what they're doing both inside and outside of their practices.
Speaker 1:I love that, liz. Oh, thank you. Thank you for sharing that. I'm seeing many ideas for future podcast interviewees, so thank you for sharing. That's awesome. Are there any questions that I haven't asked you, that you wish that I had, or anything else that you wanna share words of wisdom for newer consultants starting their business?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I have a question for you. Yes, so well, I'll preface it by saying that every year, I choose a word of the year. So my word of the year this year is creativity, because I'm trying to infuse more creativity in my professional and my personal life. So I have a question for you. Yes, I love this. Do you have a word?
Speaker 1:for the year. I do, actually. So it's so funny you asked this because every year I do a strategic planning meeting with my team and we talk about goals for the year. So we talk about business goals and then individual goals, and I have someone on my team, dana Murphy. She's our director of community engagement, so she does a lot of community outreach. We do a lot of free information sessions, seminars, webinars, we work with nonprofits and schools and all of those things, and she inspires me every year to have a word and a color of the year. So I love that you asked this question.
Speaker 1:So I actually struggled this year with my word, so I have two, but I would say my top word is service, and the reason for that is I'm putting an emphasis this year on how we're serving our students and parents and seeing if there are any opportunities to serve either of those groups better, more creatively or in a different way, because we have just seen, as I mentioned, our students not performing as well as they have in past years, and also with parents, I think of this.
Speaker 1:As we both know, this is an innately stressful process and I want to help serve them better in not feeling as much stress.
Speaker 1:That's always our goal, that's part of our mission is to reduce stress, and I think every year it gets more and more difficult to be successful or to feel like we're being successful in that. So service is my first word, and then a close second was going to be process. So, just based on our business structure, process is really important, and just solidifying process and making it easy so that anyone who comes on board is very in the know and feels like, ok, I understand what I need to do at each stage of the college planning process. We all do things differently and so I just want to make sure that or I guess, when I say we all do things differently, every business owner does things slightly differently in the college planning space and I think we've done a really good job of creating systems, but I need a process in order to make it clear for any new person who comes on board. If that makes sense, I feel like that's as clear as mud. So, yeah, thank you for asking that question.
Speaker 2:Those are great words. I love those.
Speaker 1:OK, I'm going to ask you one more question, Liz, because we're on this topic. One other thing that I love to ask is around the. I'm not necessarily a believer in New Year's resolutions, because we all know those don't usually stick, but do you have a daily habit or practice that you feel has led to success, whether it's personal success, business?
Speaker 2:success? Yeah, so I do. I go on a daily walk with my dog and I know a lot of people do. But one thing I've been really enjoying is I live in this really beautiful sort of rural area of Northern California and I hike up to an old quarry and at the floor of the quarry someone has created a labyrinth out of rocks and I love to just go up there and walk the labyrinth and just really think about just what's going on, my goals, my day, what that's going to look like, my kids. So that's become just such a healing practice. That really sets me up for just what's going to come in the day, whether that be a little surprise, whether that be a little bit stressful, whether that be super rewarding, whether that be everything, but it kind of clears my mind and sets me up for the day.
Speaker 1:I love that. It's like setting your intention for the day. Love it. What a great habit. Well, Liz, it has been such a pleasure having you on today. Thank you so much for your time, but also thank you for what you do for our industry and creating and moderating the IEC growing our business Facebook group. It's amazing. So thank you for all of your efforts.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Brooke. It was so great to talk to you. I really enjoyed having this conversation. It's been really fun.
Speaker 1:Likewise, liz. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Business of College Consulting. I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. If you did enjoy it, please leave a review on Apple Podcast or Spotify, or share it with a friend in the college consulting industry. I'll see you next week on our new episode. In the meantime, take care.