The Business of College Consulting
The Business of College Consulting
Soloprenurial Success: Scaling Alone vs Building a Team with Chris Bell
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Join Brooke Daly and special guest Chris Bell from Bell College Consulting as they dive deep into the benefits of staying solo versus growing a team. Chris shares a wealth of experiences from his career transitions to humorous marketing mishaps, and offers candid insights into establishing a client base. Chris shares wisdom on prioritizing well-being in a lifestyle business, offering strategies for maintaining quality while managing demand. They conclude by highlighting the value of professional groups and the importance of forging a unique path in educational consulting for a fulfilling professional life.
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 today I have the pleasure of speaking with Chris Bell from Bell College Consulting. Chris, thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 2:I am so happy to be here and to be talking to you, Brooke. This is great.
Speaker 1:Oh, thank you. Thank you, so Chris and I go back, I think, to 2018. I did look back on my in my record I'm like, yep, I think we met in 2018. So five years ago, and I certainly consider you a colleague, but also a friend, chris. So, thanks again, I like back at you, thank you.
Speaker 1:Thank you, so let's just jump in and get started. I would love for you to share with our listeners. A lot of our listeners are new college consultants getting into business. How do I grow? What do I do? What are the business mistakes I should try and avoid? Can you start just by telling your business growth story? How did you end up finding college consulting as a business and what was that transition like for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure I. You know, I came to this circuitously, I think, like a lot of our colleagues. I out of college, I was an English major at Colorado College and I was trying to figure out what to do and I have to tell you this silly story. I decided that I would write to famous people and see if anyone wanted to hire me. So I wrote to Woody Allen and Sam Shepard a playwright and Sesame Street, and I just said I'm available. No one answered except Sesame Street did. They came back and said oh yeah, you're funny, you write stuff, send us a sketch and we'll see if we can hire you. And I got so scared I never did it. So that's the sad part of this story.
Speaker 2:And what I ended up doing was I ended up teaching high school in the US Virgin Islands for a little bit. It was not quite as good as it sounds, but it was a great learning experience. And from there I've sort of followed this two prong path that involved a lot of stops along the way. So I was a techie guy, I wrote software, I did voiceover work and then at the same time I was learning about student affairs and that whole side of college and my career really ends up going back and forth between those two paths. So I worked in a variety of jobs in student affairs and colleges, and I worked in a variety of jobs involving tech, including running a software company with a business partner for 10 years, being an IT director at a law school and then also doing support, working with student orgs. I advised the film club at a school. So it's a variety of things. So all of this was background for me to say I want to work directly with students again and discovering the IEC world and founding my company.
Speaker 1:Amazing. That's a cool story, Chris.
Speaker 2:I wish I would have had the guts to send a sketch to Sesame Street, but other than that, life is good.
Speaker 1:Oh my goodness, I love that, I love it so tell me how long ago did you start your business.
Speaker 2:So I dabbled in around 2016. I founded the company in 2017, officially with paperwork. Not too long ago, right, what? That's six years ago or so, so not too long.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good, and tell me about the transition. Did you? If I remember right, you were still working and then doing this on the side, and then you eventually jumped out to do it full time. Can you tell us? What did that look like? What were the questions you were asking yourself to figure out if this was a full time move?
Speaker 2:Yeah, good, yeah. So I had a full time job and I was, and I kept that going as I started doing this work. So I could meet with students starting at 5.30 every day and the idea there was to dip my toe in it and see what I thought. It was also a very nice, comfortable, financially runway. So my first year I had about seven students at the end of the year and I also still had my other business. So then you could imagine, just from a business perspective the next year if I was able to maybe double that about. I'm like now's the time to pull the cord, and so then I just stopped my other job and did this full time.
Speaker 1:Amazing, great, and I think that that makes for a smooth transition, because it is obviously financially risky to have no clients and just quit your job and start, which I may or may not have done.
Speaker 2:It doesn't feel great right.
Speaker 1:Like you're. Like, I don't even have a client, so that's good, you're so smart Chris. No. So tell me about those early years and marketing, like how did you put your own out in your community? How did people find you?
Speaker 2:no-transcript. So I did a few things wrong, which I learned a lot about, and then maybe a few things right. So the wrong things I did was I thought that, well, here's my best one. I set up a booth one of my I live in Boulder here in Colorado and one of my specialties or is working with LGBTQ students and I thought, well, maybe I will, I'll set up a booth at the Pride Fest in Boulder so you've got to think Boulder's a small town, pride Fest, smaller still and then it's a booth that says college advising on the top of it. So it's like are you a member of the LGBTQ community who might be interested in college?
Speaker 2:I had a really great booth and I had about three people who came by that whole day. So I realized what I was doing was I was kind of yelling out into the void rather than than targeting people who have high schoolers or who are high schoolers or those things. So the marketing that ended up working was good, old-fashioned networking and so getting to know people, connecting with my local group of IECs, actually to get some referrals, and trying a few other things as well. And then eventually I did a direct mail that worked. I might be the only one who believes in direct mail working, but it worked for me and I still do it to this day.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Tell me your office. Okay, so you have a booth card or something that you send yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's scary. All the data that you can, that, all these lists that you can buy and it's very easy to assemble a list of people who have high schoolers who are 15 or 14 years old and get that list and you can even narrow it down like whatever homeowners or whatever you want, and then just a postcard and having I used a VISTA print and just here's my little postcard I designed and it's basically just call me if you wanna learn more, and that always pays for itself. I do that twice a year and it always pays for itself.
Speaker 1:I'm so glad to hear this, chris. So the episode that I interviewed Bob and Lisa Carlton they share their direct mailing story and essentially long. Well, it's not a long story. Short story short is Lisa mailed everyone in the Austin area that has a high school student in a certain income bracket. She said the phone rang once and it was a woman saying take me off your mailing list.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a weird thing, and I've heard this. I've heard that direct mail doesn't work and I've heard people say that and I will never, ever argue with the Carltons. But I will say that it happens to work for me and I still believe in it. And I'm not saying I get 20 leads from this, but I mean it pays for itself. I mean I get at least one or two people calling. I've had people say that they saved the card for five years and they called me up five years later because they saved the card and now they're ready or a friend gave a tool. So I still believe in it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that, and I love to test things out, too, to see if it works. So you've motivated me. I think we're gonna do this. I love it.
Speaker 2:I love it. Yeah, I definitely believe in testing as well. Try it out once and see. Yeah, Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So any other marketing strategies that you use that worked or didn't work?
Speaker 2:that you haven't done. Dear friend and colleague and mentor suggested that I try local church groups and I tried that and it did not work for me. That's cool.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:I wonder who that could have been. I wonder, and it's because I don't have real good connections with those groups and it just didn't work for me. So really it all comes down again to word of mouth. So I try to be very professional and have people know who I am. I did a fair amount on LinkedIn because they had a pretty good basis from years of just connections there. But I will say I am also personally opposed to social media marketing because I'm not good at it. I'm not good at it so I just don't do it.
Speaker 1:Fair? That is completely fair, I guess. Yes, it is its own animal.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I had a lot. I've gone to some great sessions and learned a lot and I thought, gosh, if I was motivated to do social media marketing, that would work really well. But it sounds like two hours of root canals every day does not sound fun to me from my perspective.
Speaker 1:So no, and actually that's a good segue into my next question when you're thinking about being in business. So you have a pretty, I guess, diverse background in your experiences. Now that you're in business, what are the things that you maybe enjoy doing and you don't enjoy doing, and how have you navigated that?
Speaker 2:Oh, that's a fun one. So I've always liked business in some sense and so ever since I had a lemonade stand, I'm like this is awesome and I really still truly rely on stuff. I learned from lemonade stand selling right and I really believe in that and I love that. So I'm quite comfortable sending out a postcard or those sorts of things. But of course, my favorite part is working with the students and I love that very, very much. I like the personal connection. I like learning from the students. I think that I work very hard to cultivate sort of that learner's mind and I have learned from every student I've worked with. They've taught me stuff and I love it. So that's a big thing that I love.
Speaker 1:So thinking about the things in business that you love to do, and then maybe the things that you don't, and how do you navigate that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I want to talk to you about this concept of that. I've purposefully stayed small as a business and in doing that I embrace doing it all. So I have a background of doing some techie work, like I said. So I really like designing a postcard, I really like keeping the books. So, by design, as I have chosen to do it, I get to do those parts and I like it. So there isn't a part I don't like. I'm trying to think, no, I mean, this is my dream job. That's why I'm here. Right, I like it all and we'll talk. I have hired someone to help with essay reviews. Oh good, but I like essay reviews. I just get you know it's a peak time, as our IEC colleagues will know, so I need help with that. But even that I like.
Speaker 1:Right, chris, I don't think I've ever asked that question and had that same response. That's amazing, so I think that tells a lot about your personality. One thing that I feel like I've learned about you is that you are a, you know, you're a very positive person, and I think maybe it's your perspective. I bet there are things that you don't absolutely love to do, that you do, but you have the perspective that you have this dream job and that you get to do it all, so I appreciate that about you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, thanks. Yeah, that's the way I feel, yeah, so I try to avoid things I don't like, but I like it all here, yeah.
Speaker 1:Amazing, that's amazing. And how lucky is your wife, because I'm sure you're a happy person.
Speaker 2:I like all of these things. Yeah, yeah, she's happy about that.
Speaker 1:That's great. So tell me about this. You know the transition to getting essay review help is how long have you done that and how did you know when you needed that help?
Speaker 2:Good question so. So when I started this one of the things that are very exciting, this meaning this work, this IEC business one thing I was very excited about and I actually made a goal of mine. I wrote it down no bosses, no employees. And so I think this is quite different from some of the folks you worked with, including the Carltons that we were just mentioning. They don't have any bosses, but I think they have a lot of employees. So and the reason for that is I've done that in various ways in my past and it was the part that caused me distress, so it's a conscious decision to make it a solo printer shop. So then, what do you do when you're feeling overwhelmed or you have too much work to do? You either cut down the amount of work, which would be putting down the students who I work with, or you find some little way to put an asterisk by that original rule.
Speaker 2:I wrote out and do that, and so I don't have an employee. I do have hired, let's say, folks and we'll talk about this to help with essays. So my first approach was using prompt, the vendor. I love them, I love the people involved, I love the approach of the essay software that they use. So I've used prompt from day one as the software and then they offer a service of hiring their team of editors and I've used that for a number of years and my plan was to just go forward with that and kind of use them as a I don't know a safety valve, a pressure release valve. Well, this essay I don't have time I'm going to send it to them- Send it to prompt.
Speaker 2:Yep, and I still like that. But I ended up working a meeting, doing a send off meeting with a student and her mom and the students like you know, chris, mom's really good at essays, and I'm leaving, I'm the last one in her house and she's looking for work and I'm like, oh, let's talk. And so she's a talented editor, a talented reviewer, with a big heart, and so I've hired her as a contractor and there's some interesting business rules around contractor stuff that one has to be careful of. But I've hired her as a contractor and I've been quite happy working with her. So this has been I call it a year and a half in and I'm planning on keeping to work with her. I don't know if she's coming to IEC, but she likes being behind the scenes, so it's kind of perfect for both of us.
Speaker 1:Perfect, yes, and how nice that you have one person to interact with and that makes perfect sense.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can talk through comments or oh, let's you know, and so she gets to know the students better. So it is nice. And I still think of prompt as a safety valve beyond that.
Speaker 1:So it's great Right, exactly, exactly. I love it and the safety is very high, like they set the bar.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I love that, so you mentioned other people who are working for you.
Speaker 1:Tell me more.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's it, that's it. So I have, it's me, and I consider it all alone, just me. And then I will hire people to do certain things, but I consider them contractors and it's just a specific task. So the essay thing is the biggest one. I'm literally waiting for a sign to come from a sign maker to put on in my zoom office. Just that, it's a nice sign, right, that's not someone I've hired, it's a, it's a vendor who I said let's make a sign and and so I certainly do things like that, or you know, vista prints or overnight prints, but otherwise it's just me, by design.
Speaker 1:I Love that. So tell me about your future growth Knowing they stay so low. You know a lot of people struggle with that because they feel that they're Maybe leaving opportunity on the table. Like how, how are you planning on managing that as you move forward?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I broke I. I want this to be a conversation. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, and we can do it after as well, but I want your advice on here. But my thought on this is this is a choice toward a lifestyle, this is a, this is an affirmation of Joy in life, and so it's very different from Any basically any business book I've read which is like growth is the goal. You know, grow an hour. I will call him a friend, although I don't know if he thinks of me as a friend. Zach Dillon, you know, has great advice on Forming a business to be ready to sell later, and I think that that's great advice.
Speaker 2:That's not what I'm doing. I'm doing have a good life, help a lot of people and keep things simple, and so I don't see growth. I have played with my pricing a bit, so, oh, where's my limit? With a number of students I can work with and I think I've landed at 30 per class. That's a large number in from some people's eyes and I think really aggressive go-gooders are like oh, you could go to 50 without a problem, and so somewhere in there is the right number. But I think 30 for me and that's a that's a busy load, but I like it and then I've kind of adjusted price a bit as as the demand came up. So I do. I do turn people away and the business the lemonade stand seller in me Regrets that every single time. But I get to send, send business to to my colleagues who I love and I can help them out New people and stuff, so that's a positive as well. So what's my plan for growth? Nope, you're seeing it, I'm done grown.
Speaker 1:But you, I think you've brought up such an important point because I think a lot of newer IECs get to the point where they're maxed out and then it is an internal struggle of should I grow? How do I grow? I don't want to be a boss. That's not my perfect Scenario.
Speaker 1:I've done that, or I've been there, and I think that I'm just so glad that you're saying no. It's okay to say like this is what I want. You have created the business that you want and that what fits you and your lifestyle and your needs wants desires. So I think it is important to know that you don't have to Like keep growing. And pricing is a funny thing. I think a lot of people end up raising their prices each year when the demand increases. One thing that I've talked to a lot of consultants about is pricing yourself out of the market that you want and and that becomes a different clientele. Then you know if you keep your prices at what's more like market average. So, yeah, have you been in that position where you feel like, oh, I raised it too high or do you feel like you still have a? You've been able to keep that? I?
Speaker 2:Think. I think that I'm at the sort of upper third of my local area and I think that that's where I need to stay. You know, I'm not I don't want to sound all Polly Anna I have had some clients over the last few years who are like you know, we're paying you this much and and we expect this. You know, we expect this service and you haven't done it and we're unhappy, and that that breaks my heart. Yeah, and it's not. It really isn't about the, the, the rate, but it is somehow it. There's a, there's a rub there. So I've been thinking about that a lot and I think I'm. I think I'm about where I'm gonna go. So done growing that way too, for the time being.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, I love that. So what? How is Chris? Your Paths sounds so smooth, like I feel we missed any challenges.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You have any significant challenges along the way?
Speaker 2:It's been smooth. I I kind of landed, I jumped in and and and hit it hard and and it's been smooth. My, my biggest kind of lessons is I really believed in this project management concept of the MVP, the minimal viable product. So just get something that kind of works and get it out there and iterate, and I believe in that. But the one thing I've found is like, yeah, but Once you have something that you're kind of using as part of your process, the Reinvention of it takes so much work that if I had it to do over, I think I would spend extra time to make you know whatever segment of my process.
Speaker 2:I think I would make it more robust and I think that makes it more repeatable, which is more comfortable later and and so there's this balance. I think if I were talking to a new IEC, I would still say just get it good enough and roll it out, don't go for perfection. But at the same time there's this other side of but make it, make it robust, so it's repeatable, if you can, as soon as possible. So there's that balance there.
Speaker 1:Yes, because that's gonna increase your capacity to right, especially if you want to stay solo. That's that's really important, yeah. So systems and processes, yeah. Materials, curriculum, all of those yes.
Speaker 2:Yep, and I really also believe in you know buying that stuff wherever you can too. I think that it's it's foolhardy to try to invent everything yourself. If you can buy something off the shelf or Hire someone to get you jump-started or any of those things, it's critical to just feel, to give yourself their permission to do that.
Speaker 1:Yes, absolutely. I love that. Yeah, good, so let's see. You know, one of the things, chris, I wanted to bring up today is that first I want to thank you. I feel like you serve IECA members so much and you invest a lot of time in the association. Can you just speak a little bit about your involvement in professional associations and maybe how that's like shaped your business experience, for you know how it's kind of helped you along the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, I, I'm a social guy and part of my worries about doing IEC work as a Solo practitioner is that I would only be talking to students. So I, from the start I wanted to get involved with professional organizations. I also think that's where the new ideas come from or are shared. So I believe in sharing in professional organizations. I very much enjoyed the introductory professional Instructional things. I did the HECA, ddi professional development Institute. I did the IECA summer training Institute. I liked them both very much.
Speaker 2:I like being involved with organizations Along the way. Oh, and I was like involved with NCAA, the, the financial one too, and so so I care about those groups Along the way, opportunity of the Roads, especially on the IECA side. I was invited to do more things and I like being involved so well. First of all I also participated as a student and associate member, as in Jeff and Jenny's roundtable. I as a participant, and then I was the note you know, the official note taker and then as a professional member. The IECA said could you host a professional members roundtable? So I did that with some dear colleagues Stephanie Mead and Gina Lee and so we host that.
Speaker 2:And so I just keep getting more and more involved. I'm involved with AICEP, the Certifying Organization for the CEP Group. I'm on the commission of that and I care about that, and that's really sort of ushering in a new world, a new order, a new, not new world order. I can't believe. I just said that we might have to cut that. That is not what I mean at all. A new path to sort of professional, sort of vacation and those things. And so I care about those efforts of those organizations and I want to be involved and help the profession. So I like it.
Speaker 1:I love that, chris, and thank you again for your time. I know as a volunteer in associations that it is a lot of work and it takes you away from the work that you're doing with students and working on your business, so thank you. I also would love for you to share a little bit. You have a very special regional group. That's pretty amazing, like it's huge.
Speaker 2:Can you talk about it? Yeah, it's great. It's great. The college consultants of Colorado CCC, and this group was founded way before I became an IEC and in it it's a.
Speaker 2:I think that the funny thing and I think that anyone can do this is it's at one level, it's a vibrant, supportive group of people who you could call your competitors right. But it's more than that. They're not competitors, it's professional development, it's raising the tide, and so this is a group of now I think last week I heard it was like 79 or 80 people all in Colorado and I was. I got to be the president of that group a few years ago and I'm on the board and I really like that group and it's a positive place for people to go. I think in Colorado, if you're an IEC, you should be a member of that group because you're gonna know your colleagues and there are monthly meetings of that group that are kind of formal presentation types and then there is a weekly informal gathering that some members have just organized and said come join us on Zoom and we'll talk about whatever we're gonna talk about. So it's wonderful. I love it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, hopefully that inspires some folks who maybe they don't have a regional group and they wanna start one or you know, yeah, energy into that. I know that when I was first starting out, that was invaluable to me. At the time. I had joined HEKKA and I somehow, my first conference, I got roped into becoming a community rep for HEKKA and starting this group. I had no idea what I was signing myself up for, but it ended up being the best thing ever, like I got to know my colleagues in my area and I was nervous. I was young and I felt like I don't have the experience of these people and they have everything happening and going for them, and so I just took a leap of faith and reached out to them and, lo and behold, we started the group and it's grown and I think it's yeah, it is invaluable to get to know your local colleagues and to just be able to help each other out.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I love it and I think it's a wonderful part and you think about it, it's really. I guess on that there is that competitor side, but not really. I mean, if you think about the American Bar Association, they're all lawyers and they're all together, so it makes sense to have these professional groups, Exactly.
Speaker 1:And I mean my thought is always that there are more than enough students and parents to go around Like.
Speaker 2:I don't Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Saturated the market. I think that you know and as a matter of fact, as you said, like you kind of raised the bar together and I think any like in our community we do a lot of events and we're very visible and I think that that's gonna help my colleagues in the area, because parents are going to learn about services of college consultants and things like that. So I think we're all better together.
Speaker 2:I agree, I agree yeah.
Speaker 1:Awesome. So, chris, is there anything that I have not asked you today that you wish that I would have, for any lack of wisdom for our listeners who are about to start a business?
Speaker 2:So this might be repetition, but I guess I want people to know that. I mean people like us IECs to know that there's not just one way of doing things, there's not just one path, and so I admire people so much like you and folks who have grown their business, and I think that that is a true, worthy path, and I just want to say so is not, and so it's just it's kind of think about what the advice is, think about what you want and then make that happen.
Speaker 1:I love that, chris. What a great way to end, and I completely agree Create your vision and go after it, but it doesn't have to look like what everyone else is doing or what you think is the perfect solution. So, thank you, chris. It's been such a pleasure having you on today. Thank you so much for your time and for your willingness to share, and I'm excited for you. I love it.
Speaker 2:Oh, I remain. This is like a highlight of my year. It's like being on the Tonight Show. So thank you, brooke, for having me on.
Speaker 1: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 Podcasts 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.