The Business of College Consulting
The Business of College Consulting
Stephanie Meade: From Test Prep to College Counseling
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Stephanie Mead shares her journey as an "accidental entrepreneur" who built a successful college consulting business by trusting her instincts over conventional business wisdom. Her experience demonstrates that personal authenticity can be the strongest foundation for business success.
• Started as a test prep tutor while pursuing an acting career over 30 years ago
• Discovered her natural talent for connecting with teenagers
• Transitioned organically into college consulting through client demand
• Grew a tutoring team to 15 people before scaling back to focus on what she loved
• Found that a smaller business actually generated more take-home profit
• Implemented an innovative hourly billing system instead of traditional packages
• Recently added two associates using a profit-sharing model rather than employment
• Uses a virtual assistant to handle administrative tasks, improving efficiency
• Believes strongly in being true to yourself in business decisions
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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 their 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 chatting with Stephanie Mead, founder of Collegiate Edge in Los Angeles, california. Welcome, stephanie.
Speaker 2:Thank you, brooke. I am so delighted to be here and I'm really looking forward to our conversation.
Speaker 1:Oh well, thank you Likewise. Let's go ahead and jump in. I would love for you to share you know just your story, your background, how you got into college consulting, how you found it or how it found you.
Speaker 2:How it found me is really the way to put it. I like that. So my story is, you know, as I was kind of reflecting, thinking about this conversation, in some ways, nothing that I've done has been intentional, which, of course, is like the worst possible advice to give somebody who's thinking about, you know, who's contemplating a business venture, and things did kind of find me. I started in the tutoring and test prep space and that was more than 30 years ago, and the reason I was doing that is I needed a side hustle because I was pursuing a career as a professional actress, which I did, and I worked across media and I did it for a long time. And I did both of these things together for a long time, and tutoring was a perfect fit for that because of the flexibility. I also had studied biology in college and so there's always a demand for people who can teach math and science, and I happened to connect with someone who'd gone to the same college that I did, who was starting a test prep company, just got in at the sort of the right moment and ended up helping her develop all the math and science curricula, training the tutors, and was really shocked to discover that I loved working with teenagers because this was, remember, my side hustle and that's how I saw it for a very long time. I eventually went on my own tutoring and I was in New York at the time moved to Los Angeles my husband is also in show business, so New York and Los Angeles are the kind of obvious cities for that and I had to start over with zero clients and it took a minute. But one of the things that happened is, completely accidentally, I was introduced to somebody who was an IEC and back in those days this was barely a profession. I think there were literally two people in Los Angeles who were doing it and it was actually through an acting related interview that this conversation came up and I thought, huh, I should reach out to that person as a referral source for tutoring. That person filled up my schedule in six weeks and became my first for tutoring, my first mentor, wow. So the tutoring business got busy.
Speaker 2:So I ended up hiring my friends and you know, just kind of accidentally, I like to refer to myself as an accidental entrepreneur because I never saw myself as a business person. I come from a family of you know academics and artists and, to be perfectly honest, I think there was sort of even a negative connotation in my family around business, which is ironic because my two siblings and I all are entrepreneurs. We all have our own businesses After having done. You know, in my brother's case is architecture and engineering. So you know that that was.
Speaker 2:That was always something that I just never saw myself as a business person, and so I decided to just experiment with bringing on a few of my friends who were, of course, actors and they are usually the best tutors because they're highly educated, usually quite verbal, great communicators, have flexible schedules, need money and this is important in terms of what I learned down the road is they're also usually not interested in stealing clients or developing their own business or becoming a problem in that way. So that was sort of how I got started and I recognize every single thing I've learned has been through usually painful mistakes, partly because there wasn't that much of a profession at the time. I didn't really know it was a profession. I didn't actually admit to myself that I was doing it. So you know I wasn't seeking training or guidance, I was just bumbling along, making mistake after mistake and learning from them, and one of the things I learned is that when I was giving students to other tutors, I needed to understand more about the student and family. So I started doing what I call the initial consultation, in which I would meet with the family. There was a particular incident where we were two weeks away from an SAT and the student score hadn't been going up, and the parent just happened to mention that the student had a learning disability and I thought, ok, I need a process where I learn more about the student at the beginning. So I started doing these consultations and I think I was one of the first people who started actually charging for these. So I've always charged for my initial consultation.
Speaker 2:Well, guess what? When you are sitting down talking to an 11th grader and their parents about test prep, you are doing college counseling, whether you're ready or not, because that's what the conversation becomes. And the other thing that was happening is that I was, you know, my husband and I were both working from home, and my husband would occasionally overhear my conversations with parents and he would say from home, and my husband would occasionally overhear my conversations with parents and he would say I think you're giving them really high level advice. I think that might be something that people would pay for. So all of these things sort of converged.
Speaker 2:So I ended up developing a what for me felt like a large tutoring and test prep company of about 15 tutors and then started taking on the college planning piece, and there were a few forces that were pressing that forward in my life. One my husband's remarks. Two, the conversations. Three, this mentor and I also had a longtime student that I had started working with when she was in the seventh grade and her mother called me and said we'd like you to do her college counseling and I said I don't do that and she said I don't kick. It was an important lesson that you know the relationship and the trust that people have in you is often so much more important than your knowledge on paper, and that your ability to communicate with students is also more important than just about anything.
Speaker 2:In fact, that first mentor that I mentioned said something to me that I've never forgotten, when she started to encourage me to move into college counseling. She said you have the one thing that can't be taught you know how to talk to teenagers. Everything else you can learn. And I think that's true, and I remembered that as I built that tutoring business and subsequently have taken on associates in my college counseling practice. So I discovered when I was running the tutoring company that I did not enjoy having employees. I did not enjoy spending so much of my time on management duties. I felt like I wasn't good at a lot of the things I was spending time on and I was missing the work with students and families. So I began gradually scaling that back until eventually it was just me just doing college counseling.
Speaker 1:So you grew the team to 15 and then went back to being solo.
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, and then I'm in the process of growing again, which we can also talk about, but that's sort of the big picture arc of the story of my business.
Speaker 1:I love it. So you started in test prep and tutoring. Do you still do test prep and tutoring, or is that no longer? No longer?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did it for more than 20 years and I never really loved it. I liked the academic tutoring. I liked we did what we called study skills and organization tutoring, which we would now probably call executive function coaching, and I loved the stuff that I felt was more durable, where we were teaching students things that would take them further. And the other thing about test prep was sometimes the interactions with parents were truly painful because, no matter what, it just came down to that one score on that one day, so much of which was beyond our control. Not to mention you wouldn't support a student in a 250 point SAT increase and then have a parent screaming at you that it wasn't 400. So that really transactional nature of test prep was not a fit for me. I'm so much more interested in working with students in a growth and developmental kind of model, so it was never a fit really, and it took me a very long time to figure that out. So, yeah, no test prep.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Yeah, a lot of people who are starting college consulting businesses think about adding test prep or tutoring. So I think that's good information to think about, like what are my strengths, what am I good at, what do I enjoy doing? I think a big challenge and I don't know if you encountered this too is growing a team. That does obviously change the nature of your work. Right, you're spending more time managing your team and less time with the teenagers, as you identified. That's the part that you enjoy, and I think what I've heard on the tutoring side is that filling spaces and being able to meet demand can often be a challenge, along with scheduling and all of the logistics of tutoring. So any other words of wisdom for folks thinking about adding test prep or tutoring?
Speaker 2:I think that you know, if you enjoy it, it can be great and it can be lucrative. Particularly if you're doing group classes, that can be a pretty profitable piece of your business. I'll say the things that I found the most frustrating were how hard it was to get and retain really good people, Because if they were good enough to meet my standards, they were probably good enough to work on their own and I didn't know anything about how to build a kind of culture where people would want to stay. But I also think tutoring is. There are certainly lifelong professional tutors who are amazing, but a lot of times it's a transition thing that people are doing two years between undergrad and grad school.
Speaker 2:And the thing that I found probably the most difficult was ultimately being responsible for other people's work and the quality of what they were delivering when their standards were different or they were there for a different reason than I was. And I think that's a personality thing. You know I'm at my Myers-Briggs type is an INFJ, so I tend to take everything personally and that was really hard for me. But I think different personality types, you know, can do that and I would also say it might be smart if you're trying to grow in that way to actually bring on a person who will manage that piece of your business, and let them do that separately, Because that was something I contemplated for a while is bringing on someone to run that side of things.
Speaker 1:Makes perfect sense. Remove yourself from it, or at least be one step removed. Right, very smart. So tell me how long has it been since you've been college consulting, only just to give a bigger picture perspective.
Speaker 2:Let's see, I was looking back at when I joined HECA, which was 20 years ago, so it was probably a couple of years before that that I started doing college counseling, but that was integrated with tutoring until gosh probably about 2013 or 14, something like that is when I started doing just the college counseling, but it was integrated with what I was doing before that.
Speaker 1:And from a marketing perspective, when you made that switch to only college consulting, did you have any kind of marketing plan? Did you do any community events or were you relying on word of mouth from your tutoring business?
Speaker 2:I was very fortunate to have an existing network of referrals, so that was pretty seamless for me, and that was something that this mentor that I've mentioned said. At one point she offered me her business to buy her business, which completely freaked me out because it was way before I was really thinking about this and I just freaked basically and didn't do it. And she told me later you should do it anyway and you didn't really need to buy my business and that's because you have an existing referral network. So that was pretty seamless actually.
Speaker 1:Oh, about. One of the questions that a lot of folks ask when they're getting into this business is establishing curriculum. And what do I do? Like I've learned all of these things and then how do I know what to do with my students and when? Can you just share how you developed your curriculum or the things, the activities that you do with students, and how that's evolved over time?
Speaker 2:So I am probably just a terrible example, because I always intend that I'm going to develop this beautiful, perfect curriculum and then implement it. And apparently that is just not how my brain works. I just start and I do what is in front of me and then I retroactively develop what the curriculum looks like. And as I've grown my business and I have a couple of associates now I did the same thing. I intended to go into that with a really well-designed curriculum and I couldn't develop it beyond an outline and the way that ended up working best was to have them shadow me. And then we worked on and refined it kind of after the fact and I'd say that's the way I've always worked is I just try and refine, try and refine, try and refine.
Speaker 2:As I'd been in the test prep space, there were so many things that I was already doing. I already really knew the calendar and the timeline, I really knew how to think about, you know, curriculum advising, and so a lot of that was not that difficult for me to add in. It was really just developing my own knowledge of the college landscape and working on the applications. So I mean it's also been a long time that and I don't really remember. I think I just kind of started, you know, and I did really appreciate the professional organizations because that helped me realize that there were some resources, although not many then, yes, and there were training opportunities and there were.
Speaker 2:Back then Naviance, which I think most people know as something in schools, was actually available to IECs for a while. You probably know that because of your back, you know so it was. It was again gradual, not intentional, felt like it sort of happened organically, you know. I know in Summer Training Institute I once said that my business kind of developed organically over time and our friend Mark Slara was mortified that I said that because that's not what we're trying to teach people in Summer Training Institute. But I think everybody's different and that I have finally, after all these years, made peace with the fact that that's how I operate. Best Is to start to feel my way through, to do what's needed in the environment, in the situation, the setting to trust that I'm going to know what to do or figure out how to do it and then codify and systematize it after I've road tested it.
Speaker 1:I love that, stephanie, and that is the perfect answer, because so many people are worried about having all of the things ready before they launch and we talk about in the Berkeley course that I teach. I'm like, don't worry about having it all finished, you can. Whether it's the best strategy or not, you can fix the plane in the air, right, like you can still be developing things while you're flying the plane. So don't feel like you have to have everything nailed down before you begin, because otherwise perfection gets in the way of progress. Right Like you will never start if you feel like you have to have it all figured out before you launch.
Speaker 2:That is, I think, really an important point, and I talk about that in Summer Training Institute and also in the Berkeley classes. Is that just start? And when I used to train the tutors, I would say, as long as you know more than the students, as long as you're at least a chapter ahead in the book, you're going to be fine.
Speaker 1:Exactly. Just stay one step ahead of your clients and you're good. That's right. That's right. Yeah, can you talk a little bit about your services overall, maybe a little bit about what makes you unique, or whether it's your approach with students or the particular population of students you're working with?
Speaker 2:So you know it's interesting because when clients, potential clients, ask that question what makes you unique?
Speaker 2:I struggle with that question because kind of like the way we advise students when they're worried about being unique with their essays is is it critical that you're unique?
Speaker 2:Maybe not, maybe it's just critical that you do a really, really good job. That being said, I think I and now we have some really core philosophical principles about you know what we believe, about what higher education is for, what we think about the student's role in the process, as I mentioned, that we really see the college process as one of personal development and growth and we're not particularly interested in a more transactional way of doing college counseling. We have kind of three levels of service, but our comprehensive service is the one that we do the most and that is a very kind of high touch white glove service and it's built on a personal relationship with the student, meeting the student where they are and supporting them to grow into the fullest self that they can in the short time we have with them and to have that manifest in their college process, with the understanding that that's going to look different for every individual.
Speaker 1:I love that, yes, and I have to tell you that I was poking around on your website. I love your FAQs, and one of them is about the parents' involvement in that process. So you're talking about personal growth, which that's what triggered this comment or question. I love how you framed parents' involvement in meetings in ninth and 10th grade and then in 11th grade, you very politely asked them to take a step back. Can you tell me a little bit more about the parent relationship and how you either embrace that or how do you help those parents take that step, and what challenges have you had with that?
Speaker 2:That is such a good question and in fact I teach a whole unit on that in the Summer Training Institute on working with parents. So I'm always thinking about that and I think my ideas on that have evolved, because when I started working with students I was in my 20s, you know, and I was closer to the student's age than the parent's age and my attitude was, you know, parents keep out. And now I am, you know, older than most of the parents that I work with, and even though I'm not a parent myself and I don't know what it's like from the parent perspective to go through the stress and anxiety of the college process, I see I have come to see parents more as allies and I also see a very important part of our job as parent educator. You know, so often the anxiety and what can turn into even conflict between the parent and the IEC is because of a mismatch of expectations, which almost always comes out of a lack of understanding of the current college landscape or, more painfully, a lack of understanding of their own child on the parent's part. And so we're a little bit flexible with parents, and the way I frame it with parents is when we're working with your student.
Speaker 2:If you don't hear from us, no news is good news. We'll keep you updated. We have regular emails that we send out about what we're doing and things for them to do, you know, with financial aid and that kind of thing, but basically no news is good news. If you would like to know what's going on, reach out. We'll be happy to talk with you. We send out an email at one point saying we're working on the list. If you have any suggestions for colleges, please send them to us. Do not give them to your child. We will integrate them at the time.
Speaker 2:So I guess, to sum it up, really there are two things. One is to manage expectations really, really clearly. You noted that. It's on my website. It's also in my initial phone conversation with parents, the initial phone conversation. I say the following Our favorite amount of parent involvement on the essays is zero.
Speaker 2:Love that, stephanie. I pause and I wait to see what happens, and that is sometimes the end of the phone call and, thank goodness right, we saved each other a lot of pain. Most of the time it's either oh thank, that's exactly what I want, or tell me more about that. So I'd really get that out very, very, very early in the relationship. So, managing expectation number one, number two, recognizing your role as parent educator. And I'd say three recognizing parents as allies because they do know the kids better than anyone else. Recognizing parents as allies because they do know the kids better than anyone else and in that, giving them things to do that are not intrusive, like, okay, here's what I go fill out some net price calculators, here's how to plan your spring bake visit or whatever. But it's sort of a constant negotiation and different parents need different things and I think it's important to be sensitive to that.
Speaker 1:Yes, I love that. I'll never forget. At my very first HECA conference, I was in a pre-conference session for new IECs and Bob Dannenhold was speaking and he said you know, you've got to give parents things to do. Get them out of the room, tell them go and do you know something related to financial aid, or tell them your job is to organize the campus tours, or, but you've got to give them something to do, otherwise, if they're, you know, if their hands are free, they're going to be involved in the parts of the process that you don't want them to be involved in.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and you have to remember that up until this point, they have had to do a lot for their kids and they're used to that, and also it's how they express their anxiety about the process is by trying to take action.
Speaker 1:Exactly, exactly. So can we talk a little bit about your business growth? So you mentioned growing a team. So you have two associates right now. Yes, so can you talk a little bit about how that evolved, like, how did you know that you were ready to take on associates? How did you make that decision?
Speaker 2:Just share a little bit about that I had no plans for doing that. I did not make a decision happen. So here's how it happened I had in fact decided that I wanted to work less and wind down a little bit. What was kind of wearing me down was the intensity of this comprehensive process that I've described. That is very, very, you know, as I said, it's very hands-on, it's very high touch and that feeling of never being able to be off for a week and that kind of thing. So I started to think about how I could get more work-life balance. So my first idea was to develop a couple of non-comprehensive packages that are much more skeletal. And I did that and I implemented those and I still do those and I really enjoy them. So that was my plan and I had actually stopped taking comprehensive clients. I was really moving in that direction. I knew I did not want employees. I knew I did not want employees. I knew I did not want to grow because of what I had not liked about my tutoring business experience.
Speaker 2:So then someone that I had known tangentially for years, who was a test prep tutor and we had had many clients in common and been on many group emails, who had a fantastic reputation, reached out to me. He was doing the UCLA course and one of the assignments was to interview somebody who has the kind of job that you want. May I have 30 minutes of your time on? Zoom Turned out he lived nearby. I said why don't you you come over? I love to meet a person. I have a outdoor office on my patio. I'm in Southern California, yes, and he came over and we talked for three hours. Wow, and it was like one of those it was almost like a first date where you just go, there's something here, and we both felt it and were very energized by it. Like I got a beautiful thank you note, like the next day, and I couldn't stop thinking about it and thinking about him and I thought, okay, I think I need to do something with this person. I have no idea what that is going to look like, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. So I said I basically said that I reached out to him and said okay, this is what's happening, and he said well, that's happening for me too, so let's start talking.
Speaker 2:It took me a long time to figure out how I wanted to structure the business, because I knew I did not want employees, I think and maybe it's just my own limited experience that boss employee relationship has a lot of built-in challenges, and in California we have very strict rules about independent contractors, so that's kind of not an option. So I had to really think about how I could bring somebody else into my business Also. This person said oh, by the way, I don't think I want to do this by myself. There's this other person that you should meet. So I met them, oh my goodness. And I was like, oh my goodness, so I brought her on too.
Speaker 1:So at the same time you took two at once. Okay, I don't know it, just felt it just felt right.
Speaker 2:So I did eventually figure out how to structure it. It's more of a profit sharing model. I did eventually figure out how to structure it. It's more of a profit sharing model which I think has a lot of benefits, including that they have a sense of ownership in the business and it really does kind of skirt around a lot of those things that can come up in an employee relationship. I mean, I should also have said that one of the reasons I was quite sure I wasn't going to grow was because of all the horror stories I'd heard from our colleagues about taking on partners and things going south in a thousand ways. And this was happening to really smart people I respected and I thought, well, if they can't do it, there's no way. So I was incredibly leery and terrified and I worked and worked and worked on my contract with a lawyer and I finally realized you know what. There's only so much a contract can do and at a certain point you have to trust 100%, Stephanie.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 2:And there is a leap of faith that you just have to take at some point. So I leapt into the void and it's been incredible because and I've heard this from other people it is all about the right people, and when I share this with colleagues, I say how did you find them? I'm like they found me. It was just about sort of yeah, that's all I can say. So that's how that happened.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:And how long ago was that I think we're coming up on three years. Yeah, and it was a very slow process. They shadowed me for over a year, and then we also have worked together to codify our curriculum documentation and that thing is now I don't know how many pages long 50 or 60 pages long which has been a great exercise, because I'm the one who never has a plan. Now I have something which you know, if we did want to grow or bring somebody else on, it'll be a lot easier next time.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, exactly. I completely agree with that. I did the same thing when I hired my first employee. She helped me develop our curriculum because it was all in my brain and I had some worksheets and things, but then she really helped me pull it all together and and it forces you into that Right, and then, as you, mentioned.
Speaker 2:if you've been doing it a long time, you have forgotten what you needed to learn. You don't recognize the nuances that you're adding as you go along, but someone else watching you can say where did that come from? You never mentioned that, you know, and that having that, I was talking to somebody about this and they said it's kind of like if you want to write a biography and you can't write your own biography and you need someone else to interview you, and it's kind of the same thing.
Speaker 1:I hadn't thought about it that way, but you're completely right. Yes, so can you talk a little bit about when you first started, some of the business challenges that you had, and maybe how that's changed and morphed, and maybe what are your business challenges today? Like, what are the things that you're thinking about now versus when you first started?
Speaker 2:Well, always is, you know, thinking of myself as a business person and accepting that. And I think a big theme whether it's business or any any other way I think about doing what I do is how important it is to be true to yourself. You know how important it is to make decisions about building your business that fit you, and again, this was I learned this by from the tutoring company and how much of that did not fit me. I also had hired a business coach because, again, I thought I'm not good at business. In retrospect I was really not philosophically aligned with that coach and so I kept trying to do things that I thought were correct business but they were not correct for Stephanie, you know. So I'd say that theme is should really pervade all your decisions, including your business decisions. To answer your question more directly, like figuring out how to bill, how much to bill.
Speaker 2:I was a little bit unconventional, I think, because I'd come from the tutoring space. At the time that I started, everybody was doing packages and flat fee packages. I didn't really understand how to do that, so I thought let me charge hourly for a while and then I'll figure out what my package fee will be. The hourly has worked so well that I've never changed it, and I've talked about it so much now as I've taught other people. I think it's becoming more common to do charging in blocks of hours, which is what I started doing.
Speaker 1:I think Can you share a little bit more about that? I'm curious for the listeners who are thinking about pricing and packaging, because this is a hot topic. Yes, so what you're saying is your comprehensive package is really a block of hours, correct?
Speaker 2:So yeah, as I said, it was really kind of orthodoxy that you must charge a package price. And I couldn't figure out because I didn't know what I was going to be doing yet, because I had built my curriculum and I was flying the plane. While I was building it, I didn't know what I was going to need to be paid for it to be worth my time. So my intention was let me do hourly for a couple of years so I can figure out what my package price was. Well, what I discovered is that by billing hourly, I was actually making more per client by at least a factor of two than all the people in my area who were charging packages. Even people had a lot more experience than I did. So that was the first big aha. So the way I do it is this and this again came from the tutoring model I basically, once people sign a contract, I have them put a four-hour block of time on account. I always get payment in advance. Never, ever, ever am I collecting in arrears. And as that four-hour block of time is consumed, we have a credit card on file, we just charge another block and you repeat that process over and over until you're done. And there are a lot of things I like about that because first of all, it's less scary for the client they're not putting down a big chunk and also I like the idea that if something is not working out between the client and me or the client and us, that we can go our separate ways without having to untangle a bunch of complex financials. It rarely happens, but I think it gives people confidence to come into the relationship that they're not committing a four-hour block.
Speaker 2:And the way I describe it is that and sometimes consultants are confused because they say okay, if you're charging hourly, how is your process comprehensive and how are people not sort of picking and choosing what they do with you? That goes back to what I was saying before about managing expectations. We make it very clear that this is a full curriculum. We estimate the number of meetings that we think it's going to take, we're very clear about our expectations and that you can't do one part without the other and that while they are paying on an hourly basis. It is a comprehensive process and that has worked really well. I've also noticed that when I talk to other consultants who say, oh, I have a package price but I have an hourly cap Like well, that's hourly, so what do we even mean by package? But I think again, it just goes back to how clearly you communicate your expectations. Does that make sense? Is there clarification? It does.
Speaker 1:Yes, the other thing that I love about this, Stephanie, is that it also helps with the students who are taking a lot more time. You know the high achievers who are applying to many selective schools and IVs and all you know, and you know that the work is going to be much more time intense, versus a student who's applying to five or six public universities, right? So I think it does protect both the consultant and the family in that case to know that maybe your time is a little bit different and you don't have to pay for a huge chunk of time that you're not going to use and you don't have the situation where a family has exceeded the maximum hours. And then what happens, I think, when consultants get really full, is they have to be able to anticipate their workload right in the fall and the busy season. So if you have a lot of students going over their packages, you're in a spot where sometimes it's tough to even just get a meeting on the calendar.
Speaker 1:And we've had this issue in my own business where I have a consultant who is at her max with clients, because if a student reschedules, it's like where do I put that student? Or a student needs more time for something. Where do I put them? My schedule is literally so. Anyway, I love that structure. I think it's different. I've heard hourly. I've obviously heard packages, but I love that Like you're committing to a comprehensive package but I'm going to bill you in chunks of hours.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it also. It's just you know cause I I recognized back in those early days when I realized that that I was ending up billing more than my my colleagues in my area. It's like I could never get somebody to commit to a package price upfront of what this is ending up Of that.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:So, but people can manage it if it's coming in smaller chunks. I mean, this is something that Mark Sclaro says is if it's coming out of their checking account and not their savings account, it's a lot easier for them to feel that the cost is manageable. But yeah, I like the flexibility of it on our part too, If we're having difficulty with a client and we need to part ways, and also the fairness that you're only paying for what you need. And my hurdle was breaks for these colleagues. I see in the fall on the listserv at places about like I'm overwhelmed, I can't get everything done. I'm like well, that's you know, if you charge hourly, you don't feel resentful of your students when they need more from you.
Speaker 1:That's so true. It does change your perspective too. Yeah, and you?
Speaker 2:never want to be resentful of your students.
Speaker 1:No, no, so tell me a little. So that was your challenge initially. Do you have any challenges right now, Like what are the things that are? What are you thinking about in regards to your business decisions that you need to make?
Speaker 2:So one of the challenges is rebranding, as us, not me.
Speaker 2:Yes, that is an ongoing challenge because I very intentionally built my business to be a reflection of me.
Speaker 2:My principles, my orientation, my philosophy and the people that I have brought on board share a lot of that, but the way I've branded and marketed has been very closely tied to me. So that is an ongoing process. We quickly added them to the website, but right now now I'm in the process of working with I have a wonderful virtual assistant who helps me with things like this working with how we're going to more robustly rebrand, because occasionally, when I'm doing initial client sales calls, there's a bump in the road when they find out they're not going to be working with me, and so you know, that's happened a lot less than I thought it would, quite honestly, but that's probably, I would say, the biggest. The biggest issue and I'd say the second thing is trying to understand what my job is now, because who, what is my job as as mentor, supervisor, coach, guide for these associates? That's very, very different job description that I had just three years ago. So I'd say those are the two things I'm wrestling with the most right now.
Speaker 1:Yes, those are all transitionary yes Challenges, I think, but a good problem to have. What I noticed, too, is that even your business name I feel like having a name that is not your name helps in that branding process. So not that you can't have, you know, mead Associates if that were the case, but at least you have a name that stands on its own, which is great. That was lucky. Yes, yes, so tell me. Yes, yes, so tell me about your client load. So you mentioned the struggle of your role right now. Do you still work with clients?
Speaker 2:So the way we divide it in our practice is my two associates take all the comprehensive clients and I only do those smaller packages that I talked about before and then work with the team as they continue to grow into their more independent consulting selves. That part of it's pretty clear cut.
Speaker 1:So do you have any productivity advice? I know a lot of folks who get into this work and especially when they start taking on clients, they feel like, oh, I just wish that I could be more efficient and they use that term very loosely. But can you tell me, just thinking about your process, what are the things that keep you really sane and feeling like you're keeping it all together?
Speaker 2:That you're making an assumption that I feel that way, but Very true. There are certainly days I would say that for me, having admin support of some kind has been critical. I can be organized, but I don't think I am naturally super organized. So when I had the bigger business, I had a part-time admin person physically in the office who managed a lot of logistical things for me, and when I was on my own there for a while I was doing all of that and I just recognized that I didn't mind doing the admin work. But it was a terrible return on my time in terms of being able to take another client Because obviously what I could pay someone to do that admin work versus what I could bill hourly, that just was dumped.
Speaker 2:So bringing on admin support, I think, is a great place for consultants to start and that can look like a lot of different things. You know, I know consultants that have other people do their billing. Finally, my virtual assistant does a lot of the first steps of contacting and onboarding new clients, which I recognized. I did some time tracking to try to figure out where the leaks were, where my time was going, and a lot of it was the onboarding process. So I worked with my VA to really systematize what that looked like and figure out what pieces of it she could take, which was really a lot actually, and it was more systematized than I had realized. So I would say that's a good place to start and also, I know this is advice you hear all the time, but what are the things you don't like?
Speaker 2:What are the things that are core to you having a good that you have to do personally to have a successful business? And how can you farm those things out? And that can be an assistant, intern, a student helper, a part, you know, whatever. But I would say you know that's the way to think about when you start to get busy. What is it that can be taken off my plate the most easily?
Speaker 1:Yes, I love that. Stephanie, can you share how you found your virtual assistant?
Speaker 2:I love that. Stephanie, can you share how you found your virtual assistant? Yes, it's actually through an organization. It's called AssistU Assist capital U, as in university, and I believe it still exists, and it is an organization that actually helps women who need to work from home and need to support themselves learn how to be virtual assistants. Very cool, yeah, awesome. And you fill out an extensive questionnaire and we had a long sort of courtship process and I've been working with my VA now for, I think, eight years.
Speaker 2:I finally met her in person for the first time this year, which was a joyful Amazing, so, so fun. Lived in three different parts of the country since I've been working with her and she has also grown. She, you know, and her she has a background in design and she has now moved fully into marketing with her own business, which has been a big stick for me because she's absolutely spearheaded my web redesign and now that I need to think about this marketing and rebranding, she is right there with me. So that's how I found her and she's more expensive than an admin person, but she brings so much more. I often refer to her as my assistant slash boss because she'll often be the one that's anticipating, you know, okay, we need to be doing this next. You know, now that you have all this content, how can we turn it into marketing material, you know? So, anyway, that's been invaluable to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what a great pairing of having the virtual assistant skills but then also marketing. That's a dream, total dream. That's amazing. I love that it just happened. Yeah, that's so cool. So, stephanie, are there any questions that I have not asked you, that you wish that I had, or do you have any other words of wisdom for the audience on business, consulting parents, anything?
Speaker 2:Well, I could talk for hours on all this stuff, but I won't. You're a wonderful interviewer. I can't think of any questions I wish you'd asked me, yeah, but I think I would just like to reiterate this point, which is the thing that was the steepest learning curve for me and that took me out of my way that was the biggest detour was not trusting myself and that I could build a business that worked for me, even if it didn't look like what anyone else was doing or what wise people were telling me I needed to do. I just didn't. Because of this idea that I didn't know what I was doing as a business person, I didn't trust that. For too long I wasted a lot of time and energy and, frankly, the other thing I should have said about the tutoring company is, when I had the big tutoring company, I wasn't making any money.
Speaker 2:Oh that's not good, that's a topic that growing does not necessarily equal more profit. The smaller my business, the more money I was taking home. That's maybe a whole other topic for another time yes, absolutely. Does growth equal greater income? And not necessarily so. I made a lot of really painful mistakes and expended a lot of energy because I simply didn't believe or trust that the way I saw things however unconventional, the way that I wanted to do things, the things that felt right to me, were enough to build a business on.
Speaker 1:Fantastic advice, Stephanie Trust yourself.
Speaker 2:Even when everyone else is telling you you're wrong.
Speaker 1:Right, exactly, exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Great advice. Stephanie, it's been such a pleasure hearing your story. Thank you so much for your time and for sharing all of your words of wisdom. This has been excellent.
Speaker 2:This has been a blast, I thank you so much for inviting me. I've enjoyed every second of it.
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 and in the meantime, take care.