Why You're Not Landing Public Health Consulting Clients | The Dr. Des Show

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Why You Haven't Landed Your First Consulting Client | The Dr. Des Show

If you're a public health professional who keeps applying for contracts and coming up empty, the problem probably isn't your qualifications — it's a few fixable mistakes you don't even know you're making. In this solo episode, Dr. Des breaks down the real reasons public health consultants struggle to land their first client or build consistent work: writing proposals like federal grants, leading with credentials instead of outcomes, and showing up without a portfolio that actually proves what you can do. She also shares how to use AI tools to sharpen your one-sentence pitch and why getting out of the house to network might be the most underrated move in consulting right now.

In This Episode, You'll Learn

1. Why treating a nonprofit proposal like a federal grant application is costing you contracts — and what to do instead
2. How to lead with your expertise (not your degrees) when you're in the room with potential clients
3. The one-sentence pitch formula that makes your services instantly clear to non-technical buyers
4. How to use AI tools like Claude and ChatGPT to build a client-specific portfolio fast
5. Why your resume and portfolio need to be outcomes-based — not task-based
6. The mindset shift around rejection that keeps Dr. Des applying even after "no"

Resources Mentioned

1. Subcontracting to Six Figures — Dr. Des's consulting course; join the waitlist at the link below
2. The Public Health Club — publichealthclub.com (7-day free trial; RFP opportunities, workshops on demand, mentorship sessions)
3. Claude — AI tool Dr. Des uses for proposal writing, portfolio building, and pitch refinement (claude.ai)
4. ChatGPT — voice recording feature recommended for dictating and refining your one-sentence pitch
5. Wisper — AI voice-to-text tool for recording your pitch in any software; installable on desktop

About The Dr. Des Show

The Dr. Des Show is the go-to podcast for public health career development, consulting, and entrepreneurship. Hosted by Dr. Desiree "Dr. Des" Strickland — DrPH, public health CEO, and founder of The Public Health Club.

Connect with Dr. Des:

1. Join The Public Health Club: publichealthclub.com
2. Instagram: @DesireeCourtneyJ | @the_publichealthclub
3. LinkedIn: Dr. Desiree Strickland | The Public Health Club

https://www.drdesshow.com/

https://www.publichealthclub.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

Welcome back to the Dr. Dez Show. I'm Dr. Des. Uh, for those of you who know me, listen, y'all have been rocking with me for a minute and one, love y'all. And I hope that this podcast has helped you to either grow your public health consulting business or figure out a new career in public health, right? Or just elevate your current career. That is the entire goal of this podcast. But today we are going to be talking all about why you have not landed that first client or why you are not consistently landing clients. Because it's simple fixes that you can make. But the major thing too is understanding that hey, you kind of need somebody to talk to and to work with and to think about these things. Get a thought partner, right? If you're on the fence, join subcontract in the six figures, okay? Listen and join the public health club because you're gonna get in the room with like-minded people and the amount of value that you get in that immense. But before we even get started, go ahead, make sure that you like and subscribe to this podcast. Click that button, please. Like and subscribe, and also leave us a comment, right? Leave me a comment because that is how other people find us, right? Let me know how you how you like this episode, how you like the previous episodes. I love to hear from you all. I check out all the comments. I do, I promise. Um, but yeah, so let's get started. Let's just dive right in on why you are not really landing clients. It can be honestly like any number of problems. But here are some of the top ones that I see. Number one, you are treating RFP or proposal writing like a grant application. And listen, my public health professionals, I love y'all. But okay, y'all know we know how to write some grants. We know how to get in on the grant writing, right? Um, on the even federal contract writing. So I will say the exception to this is federal contract writing because with federal, they of course want a little more. You might be right, you might be doing about 50 pages, right? But for my for what I'm speaking about, we're talking more about non-federal contracts. So if you're applying for a proposal that was submitted by a small nonprofit, maybe it's a nonprofit that makes about 10 million or you know, that makes about 5 million a year, right? And you're submitting a proposal to them, you do not need to submit a 50-page application because they're not gonna read it. They're not gonna read it, okay? When you are writing proposals, you always have to keep in who is the reader, what is who is the audience, who is the target audience, who is this going to be submitted to, who is reading it, and a lot of times for the ones that we post in the club because they're non-federal opportunities, they are going to be people without a very technical background, without a grant writing, without a federal background, right? These are people they're trying to scan it, they're trying to find the right person, they're trying to go, right? So your 50-page proposal, guess what? It's getting thrown out the window. They are not reading that, okay? But for those who do like, maybe you do a five-page proposal, maybe it's even like I've even seen some say no more than three pages. I've seen it, it just depends. Always make sure you're following their guidelines, but you want to make sure that when you're writing, we're not writing like we're trying to write a grant, right? Like we're trying to write uh even a federal, get a federal grant from CDC, our federal contract from CDC. We're not writing like that, right? We're writing like we know we have we have the answer to the problem that they want to solve, right? We're writing, we're making sure our language is clear, we're making sure it's concise, we're making sure, you know, it's visually appealing. The document is visually appealing, it's in our brand colors, right? It doesn't have to be all graphic designing, it doesn't have to be, but honestly, now with AI, y'all going to claw design, like you can make it whatever you want to make it, okay? But you know, we've had that AI conversation, and hopefully, you know, you've joined my AI intensive, or you're considering um joining and potentially getting the replays, right? Because listen, y'all, AI is here and it's going to make things so much better, even with proposal writing. Like, you can literally have an AI employee, you can have one that does federal proposal writing, you can have another one that does um proposal writing for nonprofits, like and y'all, crazy. But the thing about it is you have to train it. So I need you to know what it looks like, what a good proposal looks like, okay. And that's one of the things that we do teach in subcontracting the six figures. What does a good proposal look like, right? So, with that being said, I want to make sure that you're not thinking about proposal writing for a contract for your solo business or your small business, like you're thinking about writing these multimillion dollar federal grants for companies, which a lot of us are used to, right? It's just a little bit different. So that's the first thing. The next reason why you may not be landing clients is because you might be leading more with your credentials than your actual expertise, right? So now, you know, y'all, I got all these letters behind my name. Woo-woo, right? Don't get me wrong, I work hard for these. I love my letters. But I say that to say when I'm out and I'm meeting with like potential clients, I'm not saying, yeah, I got my doctorate in public health, I got my master's, um, you know, I work for the Florida Department of Health. I work contracted for CDC. I'm not giving them that. I'm gonna say something along the lines of depending on what services I offer. Yeah, I'm Dr. Dead. So I have a consulting organization where we help nonprofits um develop evaluations of their programs of their outputs to make sure that they get funded. Now, how does that sound, right? That sounds like, oh, funding. You wanna, we wanna talk about money, right? Like this is something we can build a conversation on, right? And then that lets them know I have a business where I do this, okay? And I may even, I may even start talking that conversation, throwing out, yeah, I help such and such client get this amount or whatever. Or maybe you do program design, right? Maybe I help organizations design training programs to make sure that their staff adopts AI more efficiently, right? So, hey, y'all wanna go ahead and build tap my consulting business with some AI training for y'all, y'all organizations, let me know. We might dive on in, right? But you know, just saying, like, I need you to get clear about what you do in one sentence. And a lot of times, if you watch some of my other videos, right, when we talk about consulting and how do you build a consulting business and all those things, I tell you about niching down, right? A lot of times we get so bogged down by we can do it all, right? We do the evaluation, we do the data analysis, we do all of it, that now when we're talking to somebody, we don't even know what to say because we do we talk about so many different things. Focus in on one area and then you can expand, you can grow. Because if I'm talking to a client about that, and they may say, huh, you know, we don't really need help with like getting funding, but we do need help with our evaluations. Or they may say, huh, yeah, this is great. I know like we've been having a lot of issues with thinking about our program design. Oh, really? Because we do that too, really. Like, let's talk more about what seems to be some of the issues you see, and then get like have the conversations, right? But you gotta be able to talk about your business. If you came to the Business of Public Health Summit that happened in April, if you were there, we had a session all about one marketing your service, and we had a session all about how to pitch your services. This is pitching. It's not pitching in the sense of your own shark tank, but it's pitching in the sense of you are in a room with potential clients or you are at APHA, you are at this conference, you're at that conference, you're at this event, and you're able to articulate what services you provide. And you're able to articulate it clearly. Like I think that sometimes we get really jargony and things, right? Like you can literally talk in circles about what you do. And that's one thing that I hate. Like, get clear on what you do because if we're saying something along the lines of, yeah, I do um, you know, I go into organizations and provide collaborative consulting services to help strategically increase the functioning of the organization. I don't know what that means. What do you what do you do? Like, what do you actually do, right? Stop trying to add all the fluff that we were taught in school to add to our papers to get to the word count, okay? And just make sure that you are actually telling people what you do and what your outcomes can be for them, okay? Get clear. If you gotta run it through Chat GPT, just talk. Like one thing I love to do, like, and I use Claude now, uh, but like if you use ChatGPT, like use ChatGPT, whatever. But I will literally talk to AI. So I press the little microphone button and I record. Now I will say at the time of this recording, now it may get better soon, but with Claude, that little voice recorder thing, I don't like it as much. It's getting better. I would say it's better than from like a month ago, but still not there. So a lot of people use Whisper, it's another AI tool. Um, and you can literally install it on your computer and you just press the little button and it records in any software that you're in. So I'm probably gonna honestly get that at some point because takes makes things so much easier for me. But use Whisper, use Chat GBT, their microphone feature is better, I think, than Claude's, but the outputs you get from Clyde are way better, in my opinion. But tell it what you do, just start talking about your business. Whether you got to talk for 10 minutes, just talk about what you do and tell Clyde to put this down into a you know two-sentence uh pitch or one-sentence pitch or whatever, and put it on an eighth grade reading level. And that's what you do because a lot of times, like we get so high up that we just forget. Like many of these businesses, it's starting just by regular people, and we're talking to regular people, right? Everyone is just a regular person. Uh, we don't have to bring in the scientific language if we're not in that space, okay? That's that's one of the major things, and then number three that I see often, I will say um your CV or your resume. You are really relying heavily on the things that are in your CV and your resume. And your the your CV or your resume isn't designed to show outcomes. So now we do have like a resume workshop inside the public health club uh to talk about your resume, but also inside subcontract and the six figures, we talk about all your assets. Your CV, your resume, that's an asset for you to consult with, right? That is one of your assets. And with that, one of the things I want to make sure that you're doing is this is outcome-based, right? Because they don't care that, you know, you um they don't care that you did this for 13 years or you worked at this place, whatever. They care about the outcome that you produced, right? So that is one of the reasons I stress people to make a digital portfolio. And especially if you are going into this, even if you have a website, have a digital portfolio, and tailor it to the client and what they want now. Well, AI, it makes it a whole lot easier. You can have an AI employee specifically for digital portfolio development. Hey, you heard it here first, okay? But I'm just saying, like you can have one and you go in and say, Hey, here's a client, here's what they need, here is, you know, it is loaded up already with all your stuff, all everything that you do. Go ahead and make me a portfolio that is specific to this. Let me know what assets I need to upload, like images or pictures or screen grabs or whatever I need to upload to you to put in here. But go ahead and build that out and make it and make it aesthetically pleasing because we want a nice looking portfolio. We want something that is not, I don't want 50 pages of words because I'm not reading it, right? We need some images, we need things to break up, we need things visually to keep our attention as humans, right? So those are things like you can visually bring into conversations. When I one of my um clients, when they asked to, you know, hire me. I met them at a conference when they asked to uh bring me in. Um, you know, she asked if she could see samples of my work. And so I said, yeah, I had a whole portfolio. Send in, edited that portfolio a little bit, um, really focus in on my programmatic um work that I've done, send it in to her. Like easy. It did not take long at all. I think I may have gotten it into her like the same day, right? So those are things like you know, you want to make sure that you are doing, that you are, that you are having on hand when you're talking to clients, when you're out and about, um, and you're able to easily present them, right? But it is outcomes-based. So show me the outcomes. So I don't know which one y'all have been like thinking about, or maybe like tell me in the comments like what areas do you think you can improve on? Is it the proposal writing? Maybe you were doing a little more grant writing than proposal writing, or is it, you know, your your delivery of your pitch when you're in person and talking with people, right? Maybe you're talking all the way around the world, or is it, you know, your your resume, your assets, are they not outcome-based? Are they not showing what you can do, right? Those are things I really want you to think about. And as you're thinking about these things, we help you with this in subcontracting the six figures. So at the time of this, like when this airs, we are in doors may be open, doors may be about to open, right? Join the wait list. Drop down below and join the wait list. And even if you're listening to this a month, two months, three months later, right? Click on that same link and you'll be able to get directed to the wait list and you'll know when it opens again and you'll be ready to join us in subcontracting the six figures, okay? So listen, y'all. I got you. This is not rocket science, but it is different than the things that you have done. So if you have not landed your first client, you're trying to find a way to get consistent clients. We got you. We can help you out with that. But I need for you to take action on it. And if you're thinking about, like, you know, going out in public and doing things, I encourage you to get out of your house. Get out of your house, go meet people, go network. One of the things that I'm considering doing is joining a co-working space. Um, I've toured a few of them around where I live at. Not super impressed. But I'm gonna continue to do that because at least one to two days out of the week, I want to go out to a co-working space. So not only so I can like, you know, just get out the house, change my scenery, but also so I can meet other professionals, other business owners, other people who could potentially use my services, right? We gotta get out. This remote work, I love it. Okay, I will be in my house all day. Like you, I will do it, but I know that in order to grow, I gotta get out and I gotta do the things, okay? All right, y'all. Hopefully, you took something out of this. Hopefully, you check out subcontract in the six figures. Hopefully, hopefully, hopefully, I see you in there. I see you also in the club because you have resources, you have connections, you got mentorship sessions, you have all the things in there to help you succeed and grow. But it takes patience, it takes time, but it takes your commitment and your consistency. And those are the things that are gonna get you to that next level. A lot of people, it gets hard. Oh, it's been a month. I haven't done anything. I got rejected. I get rejected every other day. I'm getting a rejection email. But guess what? I'm gonna keep sending emails because maybe, yeah, you rejecting me today, but you might not reject me in two months. You might not reject me in a year, or maybe it's gonna be somebody else that I that I find that you need my services, right? But if I stop and I don't keep going, then I will never know what could have been possible. All right, y'all. That's my little motivation for y'all today. But all right, I'll see y'all in subcontract in the six figures. I'll see you in a public health club. Let's go get you some mentorship. Let's get this money, okay? All right, I'll talk to y'all later. Bye.