Episode 9: Common consulting challenges and how to deal with them, with Sharon Connolly.

Think consulting is going to be all smooth sailing, working with great clients as you type on your laptop and sip cocktails by the pool?

Think again!

The reality is there are many, many challenges with consulting, and many challenges with clients that you will face.

In this conversation, Sharon Connolly shares her extensive journey in change management and consulting, discussing the realities and myths of the consulting world. 

She emphasises the importance of understanding client relationships, navigating challenges, and the need for clear communication and boundaries. 

Sharon also provides valuable advice for new consultants, highlighting the significance of finding a unique value proposition and being prepared for the realities of freelance work.

Follow Sharon

• Sharon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharonconnolly/ 
• Change Superhero website: https://www.changesuperhero.com.au/ 

Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Sharon Connolly
03:03 Sharon's Journey in Change Management
05:56 The Myths of Consulting
09:05 Navigating Client Relationships
11:53 Dealing with Difficult Clients
15:01 Advice for New Consultants
17:48 Finding Your Unique Value Proposition
20:56 Final Thoughts and Recommendations

Connect with us on LinkedIn!

• Fady Ramzy
• Mel Loy

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Transcript

0:06

. Well, hello Reinventors and welcome back to the podcast. My name's Mel Loy. And I'm Fady Ramzy. And we are joining you while I'm joining you from Brisbane or Meanjin as it's known. And Fady is joining us. Where from today? Fady, today from Cairo. And we always proud to say from Cairo to Brisbane and everywhere in between. That's exactly right. Um, and funnily enough, we met in Southeast Asia, so you know, this is the type of world we live in. It's pretty global. Uh, and speaking of global, we have a global guest on today, do we not? Sharon Connolly, she is the GOAT of consulting and, uh, originally hails from England. And I dunno about you Fady, but I reckon this chat was maybe one of the best conversations we've had. What did you think? I agree a hundred percent with all of the hands-on practical insights that she shared out of her experience. So nothing generic, no fluff, just hands-on, practical, right. To the point experience. Yeah, that's right. And the reason we wanted to have this conversation, uh, was because you are going to. Challenging situations. As a consultant, you are going to face, uh, clients who aren't paying well or who aren't paying at all. Sometimes, um, you're going to have challenges with the type of work that you're doing when you're there, how they treat you. Um, Fady, I'm sure you've had some of those challenges yourself. Everyone has those challenges and sometimes those challenges, although a little bit expected, but they're shocking. So that's why this episode is extremely important to set your expectations. Yeah, and I know you've said it a few times, but that Instagram image of somebody you know, sitting by the beach sipping cocktails on their laptop while working, it's never that smooth sailing is it? It doesn't happen in reality. No, absolutely not. So let's do a quick intro for Sharon. So for those of our listeners who may not have heard of Sharon, jump onto LinkedIn and give her a follow, because she always shares really insightful stuff on there, plus a bunch of free templates, which is always lovely. But Sharon is a highly accomplished change manager based in Sydney with a global footprint in training and keynote speaking across 12 countries. She started her career as an IT trainer specializing in Microsoft office, and over that time she's developed this really deep passion for leveraging technology to simplify and enhance everyday work. And you definitely see that in the work that she shares on LinkedIn. Now in 2019, she founded Change Superhero, and initially she was sharing resources to support change managers during the early days of COVID, which we all remember all too well, I'm sure. And now today, she is one of Australia's leading change managers offering 12 courses and sharing over 500,000 templates worldwide to empower change managers. And alongside running Change superhero, Sharon continues to work full-time as a change consultant and trainer. So she is, uh, just incredible. She's had a really brilliant career, continues to have a really brilliant career, and in this episode we dive into some of the common challenges that we face as consultants, things like. Now, as I said, clients trying to screw down your price, constantly changing scope, not listening to your advice, all those sorts of things as well. It really was a great conversation. I think our listeners are really going to enjoy it. Uh, you made me even curious to get back to that conversation immediately. Well, without further ado, let's get into it. Here's Sharon drum roll. Sharon Connolly, welcome to Reinventors. Hello. Hello. Good to be here. We are very excited to have you here. Uh, for those who though may be living under. A rock and haven't heard about you. Tell us a little bit about what you do and how did you get to that stage? Uh, so I, I have a day job as a change manager. So many of the people in my audience, they help people get from where they are now to where they need to be. So whether that's a new system or a new building change, managers like me are the people that handhold them on the journey and work side by side with the project team. So that's what I do. But about six years ago, I started to share some resources with people who did that same job and it just went a bit viral. So most people in the change industry now know who I am and I help them on, I help them take other people on the journey with artifacts that I create and when PowerPoints and things like that. Yeah. So Sharon is downplaying her level of skill here quite considerably. Uh, she posts these amazing videos of her creating these. PowerPoints and they are anything but boring. They're pretty incredible.'cause you do a bit of work with Microsoft too, right? I do. Um, since I started posting the, um, the, the PowerPoints and sharing the PowerPoints and sharing my knowledge about PowerPoint. Mainly PowerPoint, but also Outlook, Excel. And these days, co-pilot, um, Microsoft awarded me this very prestigious award called an MVP, which is a most valuable professional. And, uh, MVPs, we are really given that award for how we help the community. Hmm. And you absolutely do. There's, uh, we'll put a link to Sharon's website in the show notes because there's loads of cool resources on there and training, but you weren't always a change manager. You've had a very interesting career path. I mean, there's a fashion like angle in there. Yeah. There's all sorts of things. Tell us a bit about that. Well, I, I mean, if we go back to my early career, I was actually doing similar things to what I'm doing now. I was an IT trainer, which. In those days, what we didn't have change managers. We called it a trainer or a learning professional, or maybe even communications. They were all lumped together. But I was actually a change manager the way that I did it and the organizations that I worked for, we really did consider the learning journey and the longevity of what we were doing. So rather than just doing a training course, how would these people continue to learn when we left? So that's what I did. I did that for about 15 years. And then, um, I decided that there's only so much excitement that you can have over an Excel spreadsheet. I mean, I was wrong about that. I still get really excited about an Excel spreadsheet, but I just needed a bit of a break and I thought, I don't know what shall I do? And, um, I retrained. Not intentionally. I was just trying a few things out as a hobby and I ended up being, um, an image consultant. So personal styling, personal shopping, and then me being me and, you know, leveraging it and moving it to the next level. I had a studio, I was on tv. I, um, when they would do a breakfast TV segment and they would, you know, have a politician wearing a particular tie, I would be wheeled out to say, well, well, Sharon. You know, what do you think of this tie that they're wearing? What do you think of those shoes? So, I was a sort of commentator for hire, but I used to take people shopping and go in their wardrobes, which was, which was fabulous. Uh, yes. And it sounds like you've really been doing the consulting thing in many different ways for a very long time. Really forever. Um, since, like forever. Forever. I, and I mean, since I came to Australia in 2014, I've been employed as a contractor, but. Prior to that, uh, 23 years, I was doing consulting in various consulting, running my own consultancy, individual consultations. Basically a bit of a scrappy entrepreneur for, for 25 years before I came here and started to be game fully employed. We do love a scrappy entrepreneur, mainly. Mainly juggling, mainly juggling around kids. That was the, you know, the, the, the driver is, is I've, I've got two. They're grown up now, but it, it's mainly because then you, there weren't jobs that that fitted around kids. So if you wanted to work, you had to invent it yourself and make it work for you because there was no childcare, no childcare and no jobs that accommodated you. Yeah. Yeah. So we, we reinvent how, how, how do we work? Yeah. And that's, that's the, the brand for our, but char this is very inspiring and interesting. Uh, when you said like 23 years of consulting on different fronts, apparently the journey is extremely rich journey. So that brings me to the question across this long inspiring journey, what are the most clear myth that, that you have seen about consulting? The myths, the main one, and this would particularly, I mean I still get this now with change management, but particularly with image consultancy. People thought that it was a really glamorous job, you know, because it sounds glamorous. I mean, even the glamorous bits where you are shopping with people, you are fetching and carrying clothes and taking bags backwards and forth, and you are, you are like scrambling around in the bottom of people's wardrobes trying to pry a black t-shirt out of their hands. So, but, but even the glamorous stuff. Most of consulting people don't get to do what they signed up to do UN until they become very successful. It is marketing and advertising and networking and trying to figure out where you fit in business and having a niche offering. And if you don't have a really niche sought after offering, it's fighting for your place in the market. It's, it is all about, I mean, even, even now, I spend a considerable amount of time, I mean, when I started, had the, when I started. Internet hadn't really, it wasn't, I'm sure it had been invented, but it wasn't out there. When I first did a, um, set up a training room, uh, with 10 PCs, they weren't connected to each other. There was no way to, I mean, the only way that they were connected was via the power cable around the outside. My first computer training room didn't even have a. The com, uh, like we didn't have, we didn't have mice then, and we had to load the, um, the discs on what, uh, 10 discs to put in word. Perfect 5.1. But whatever job I have done, it is all about, it's less about doing the job, it's about doing that marketing and advertising and setting up your websites and now SEO and social media out networking. There is so much to do. And, um. When people figure out how much they're going to earn, they, they cost that, or they think about that working five days a week, working eight hours a day or whatever they've decided to do. They don't factor in that. Probably, I don't know, 30, 40% of your time is doing all of that stuff around it. Now, a lot of people will say, we'll, hire a va. You know, that's, that's okay. That's good, but. The challenge is a lot of the time you haven't figured out what it is you're gonna do yet. So when you hire a VA or, or um, any type of assistant, this person has to have processes and instructions that you need to follow very, very carefully. And when you are just in that business going round and round, you can't give this person a process 'cause you have no idea what works unless you're trying to follow somebody else's process and then that won't work. Sorry, that's, I wasn't coming off mute for me. Uh, yeah, I think it's one of the things, you're right Sharon, you need to, uh, I think switch your mindset that you are going to run a business. Mm-hmm. It's not just you going out there doing your work and see you later. It's the. You gotta do the marketing, you gotta do the finance, you gotta do the, sometimes you have to do the HR on yourself or others. Uh, and you know everything. Yeah, you do your calculations is what we'll earn. I'm sorry. You're gonna lose a big chunk of that in tax too, so, yeah. Well, I guess. That depends on where you live. Yeah, that's true. It depends on where you live. Where are your bank accounts based? Yeah. Yeah. I, I did live in, I did live, did live in Singapore for six years and that was Oh, nice. That was much less of a chunk to disappear. But, um, yeah. And, and I know that people can set up businesses and then most people who go into a consulting role don't go in with a ward of cash behind them. No. They go in going, okay. Uh, something's happened. I've been made redundant or I'm going back after having kids. There's normally some type of life event where they think, do you know, I'll, I'll try being a consultant for a while. And they rarely, rarely have. Um, a, a large amount of money behind them to set up everything correctly. And I do know somebody a long time that I, a long, long time ago that I worked with that had the luxury of having a, a large nest egg and to, and they, I watched this with interest. They were clients of mine and they spent a long, long time designing this perfect business. Everything perfect, the processes, the end to end, exactly how it was gonna be. And you know, the thing was that they weren't able to, what we would now call be agile and pivot. They weren't able to pivot and they designed it and they got so far into it and they spent so much money on things like brochures and websites designing it perfectly, that when they got like a, a year in. And then feel like then figured out, actually that's not what we really want to do. It was, it was too difficult for them to back engineer. And for us, for sort of more of your scrappy entrepreneur, you try something, people don't see what you try and it doesn't work, but you try something and if it doesn't work, you just go, oh, I'll do this instead, or I'll do this instead. And if you overthink your business or you overinvest in it, you don't have that luxury unless you have a huge amount of money. Yeah, a really, really good point. And I think one of the other things, and this is what the topic of conversation is about today, is it's not always smooth sailing with your clients either as much as you, you know, would love it to be. It's not the case. I wouldn't say gather. I have, I have lovely clients. No, I just say it's not, it's not always. I have some difficult ones. Yes. Yeah. And we've all had them and I, I guess over 23 years you've probably had your share too. So we would love to get your perspective on how to deal with what we see as some of the common challenges. And the first one is when you are bidding for work or you're putting a proposal and the potential client is basically trying to screw down your price. Mm-hmm. What's your approach when that happens? Um, just don't work with them. But I'm saying that now because my business is su successful and I'm successful. However, in the past particularly, I've done a lot of speaking so ke, you know, to put myself out there as a keynote speaker on various subjects, predominantly when I was teaching image. And you know, anybody who's a speaker out there will completely relate to the fact that people will say, come and speak for free. It's exposure. There's all these people in the audience, they're bound to book you. Well that almost never happens, but a lot of people expect you to speak for free. Well, you, well you just speaking. I mean, how hard is it to turn up and speak for half an hour? Really? How hard is that? Um, so a lot of people will try to reduce your price. Um. In that way, and when you are starting out, it's really difficult. When you are established, have boundaries and think about, I mean, there are clients that I think are, am I likely to get repeat business? My TRA for repeat business that I've used a couple of times now, people will say, we are gonna book 10 courses with you. Can we have a discount? And I say I look forward to working with you. I'll do nine and you can have the 10th one for free. Okay? That's a good way of knocking in your 10% discount after I've done nine. You can have the 10th one for free, otherwise you deliver one or two at that discounted price. When you are starting out, if it's something like a free workshop or um, a free lunch and learn session, think about. Are there other benefits? Is there anything else that you can leverage? So if somebody wants to you to come and speak for free, can you go back and hire one of their, have one of their meeting rooms for free that's worth probably $1,500. Can you appear in their newsletter? Can you get their mailing list? Can, if it's a big venue, uh, will you be videoed? Um, then you can have it for your show reel. So I think that people need to, to, particularly when you're starting out and even for me, isn't gonna put me in front of an audience that is going to help me going forward, or is there, are there any other benefits for me speaking? Um, when I did more speaking and, and even now, sometimes people will fly you places and put you up in a hotel. Go away for a weekend with a hubby, you know, that's, that's it. So think, think further than that, but, but in my day to day work. I now turn people down. I now say, and then what I do is I refer them to somebody else. So I'll say that's, that's not for me. That's not at my price point. Can I refer you to this person who is more in line with the fee that you are looking to pay? Um, but that's so easy to say. When your bank balance is healthy, it's not easy to say when you're starting out. And you know, when we look at speaking, I think when I started out. Um, and also image consulting as well. I would go and do fashion shows and all things for, for, for no money. You know, speaking. If enough people stood still on a corner for long enough, I'd start speaking to them. I would take every opportunity that I could because it's learning, it's honing your skills, it's, it's practicing as well. So are you building your craft or are people just like taking the piss? Don't let them do that. Yeah, I, I, I think Charlie, while you are talking, that brought me some, some good memories for, from the old age of being a consultant and then this company is just with the old ego. We are giving you the opportunity to work with us, you know, so you should narrow down more prices because you are working with accent. That was a myth that I bought in like 20 or, or 25 years ago. But there is another. Type of challenging client who is constantly and frequently changing the scope. And this is always, always a painful client. Yeah. How do you deal with that? Well, um, you learn from it and you don't let it happen too many times. Um, I think one of the challenging things, and I haven't figured this out. Is that, um, if, I'll have to give you an example of a, of something where this happens so that we have context, but I would deliver a workshop as, as you would, I guess, Mel, I would deliver a workshop for an organization. So the organization says, Sharon, can you come and deliver this workshop to our leaders on the 15th of May? And then I will quote them for that. Now I will. I will always include some type of customization because every client is different and I want to make sure that I'm addressing their audience. I will first of all, have a call with them and I will say, tell me what the problems are, what problems are you trying to solve? And I will ask them very precisely if 20 people are in the room or on the team's call. When they leave, what do you want their takeaways to be? What do you want them to be thinking, feeling, questioning, challenging. So that's how I start so that people know that I'm there to fix a problem. Because if you're not fixing a problem, you're just a comedian, and I'm not that funny. So I, I help the client to understand that I'm there to fix a problem for them, and then that should be it. Maybe a quick check in. Before the event soundcheck, but I do have a number of clients. I have had a number of clients now where between me doing the initial brief and then delivering it, I've had maybe four or five one hour meetings with them just when they want me to talk to somebody else and just when they want to talk to me, somebody else, that's an extra five hours of my time that I didn't factor in. That's five hours that I'm not working for another client. So. I'm not sure. So I need a tighter terms and conditions than I have had previously, or I need to factor in more time there. So that's a mistake that's happened to me a couple of times. The other bit, um, to do, and this is actually coming from our work in projects and I think that probably sometimes we are just a little bit too accommodating. And if a client said, and this has happened before, you weren't gonna talk to us about this, but. Could you now include some copilot or could you do some of that? And I would say, and this is where it's handy if you do have an assistant, because you can outsource this bit. And I would say absolutely. But that would be a change request if you could just fill in this form, um, to detail the change, and then I'll let you know how that reflects the price. And you can sometimes just say that. Because you, you, it's, we have, I have a process. You signed on this. I have a process, and if you would like to change it, there will be an additional cost. Let me tell you what that would be. And quite often No, no, no. We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll stick as we are. But clients think that they can change their mind and that they can change the scope because it's easy for them and they don't realize. Another thing that happens quite often when you are speaking is at the last minute, you'll submit your presentation and they'll say, or could you just put it in our template? And that can take a speaker. A day to do that. And also if you are speaking for free, even if they tell you that in advance, if you've got your own material, it can take people such a long time to switch things. And I think that we underestimate, we need to be clearer about our scope. When a client changes the scope, we need to have a process that makes it, and this is, as I mentioned before, it's easy if we have an EA because, or you could just pretend to be your own ea. Say, Sharon's asked me to send this change request form just so that we could understand the new scope and quote you accordingly. Um, I, I don't do that, but it does sound like a good idea to have your own pretender eat age. Well, that's what AI's for, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Um, so look, I I, I, I don't have that, right. I'm still learning from, I'm still learning from mistakes and I do things and I think, uh, like her just explained to you that I now say to people if they would like multiple workshop discounts. I will say, absolutely I'll deliver nine and you can have the 10th free. But that's because I've previously quoted people and then they've decided, oh, we've changed. Yeah, we've gone a different direction. Um, oh, we, we, the budget has been cut for that, and you've just delivered them three cut price workshops. So be kind to yourself and when you make a mistake or you hear somebody else has made a mistake. Try to, try to learn from it. Hmm. I think there's some excellent learnings there. I, I think there's a challenge as well there in the fact that I want to be very flexible and amenable to my clients and approachable. And if I can, I want to be able to say yes, and I want to be able to say no problem, because that's the type of relationship that I have with them. But it has bitten me on the backside a few times, but not too many. I, I also will give people their money back, not now. Um, well, I would give them their money back. Hardly. Nobody asked me for my money back. Actually, somebody took a course and she messaged me and she said, that was not what I was expecting. And I said, no problem. And I immediately refunded her. And I said, here you go. Here's a refund. And I said, from what you've asked me, I think you should have had this course instead. So I refunded her, her initial, uh, fee, and then I gave her another course for free, um, which she said, yes, that's exactly what I wanted. So she had not the best experience, not the experience that she was expecting. Whether that was my fault or her fault, we don't know, but I immediately gave her her money back and then gifted her so that she had a good experience. Um, otherwise I have had in the image industry wranglings with somebody who asked for their money back. That has gone on again. And for, and I just, and I can remember looking back thinking, I've now spent days and days and hours and days trying to put this right for a client that will never be happy. They will never be happy. I should have just given their money back on day one. Hmm. Yeah. And, and that's the thing, right? We often learn from our own mistakes, uh, as much as we learn from other peoples, hopefully as well. So I think those are great tips. One thing I've found, uh, like you mentioned with the workshops, I've had a. You know, experiences where thankfully somebody's given me a heads up and said, look, they are going to want to have like six meetings with you before you run this. So, factor that in. Um, and I actually really spell it out in the workshop proposal saying, we'll have an initial meeting here. We'll do this, then we'll have another meeting, blah, blah, blah. And if they want more than that, like that's fine, but that's, you know, extra. Whatever. Yeah. So it's up to you. You can have the extra and pay for it or not. Doesn't bother me either way. Yeah. Um, and the other thing is too, with projects, you know yourself, Sharon, the change changes as it's changing. Nothing's ever linear. Um, so I've found if I can convert them to a retainer where we go look, well it's this many hours a week, and I'm pretty flexible with them, you know, if we haven't used them all in a month, then we'll roll some over. And I'm also like, you're not locked in for six months. We just. We do this for as long as we need to. And most, uh, you know, once you explain that, you know, the, the scope is challenging to price, then they're pretty comfortable with, with that arrangement as well. Because they still know what they're paying. They know how exactly how much they're paying every month. Uh, it's just, you know, what the deliverables are might change as well. And if somebody, mel, if somebody doesn't use their hours, if they've paid you for 10 hours and they don't use them. Do you roll them over or do they lose them? We roll 'em over for one month. Okay. So, yeah, so, and that happens, you know what, it's like the, yeah. The change project stalls because all of a sudden there's no funding or, you know, decision's been made and then it's changed and those sorts of things. So we understand that stuff happens, but it's still, you can't, like you say, take the piss and then just keep pushing, kicking the can down the road. That is, but that's challenging because if they don't, and this is also challenging for me as a consultant, is if you think about. The, your ideal where you have lots of clients that have bits and pieces is actually fitting them together? Mm. When, uh, today I am at a client site. Today I am on a, a full day at a client site, and then I have to have a meeting with another client. And I'm always upfront to let them know, just to let you know that I do have other clients and I will need a degree of flexibility. But it works both ways because the client that I ha that I'm working for today. I don't work for them Mondays and Tuesdays, but if they want me to do something on a Monday, on a Tuesday, I will go and do it. Yeah. At, you know, being flexible with the other clients, it is tricky. Mm-hmm. Beating all of those pieces together, and when you are in a day rate or a weekly rate, you give yourself thinking time, you know? Mm-hmm. If, if somebody's paying me for a day. I will be at my desk and I will do a day's work, but if I, if I need to pop out and get a cup of coffee, I don't think, oh my goodness, I need to work an extra half an hour. Yeah. I'm thinking and ideating whilst I'm having a cup of coffee. If I go downstairs and put the washing on whilst I'm listening to a team school or something like that, I'm still working when I'm doing. More like a retainer work. I tend to only charge for the exact hour that I've worked. Mm-hmm. And sometimes you end up thinking, I seem to have worked 10 hours today, but I've only charged for four. Mm-hmm. And you have to figure out how you are going to, how you're gonna navigate that almost. Ding, I've started a buzzer. Yeah, you can't do that because as you are wandering to the coffee shop, you're thinking about exactly another strategy or another approach or, um, so that, I find that challenging as well when you have multiple contracts and you're trying to piece it all together so that you're still earning a really good, a really good wage for all of the work that you are doing. Um, but you've got that flexibility with the clients as well. Yeah, char, with all these, these challenges, it might look like really tough journey to start your own consultancy journey. So having said that, if I'm just starting the journey as a freelancer or a consultant, what would be your top advices for me not to fall on, on those pitfalls, but what would be a list of advices to guide me here? Do your sums. Okay. Mm-hmm. Really make sure that you will earn. That you have the potential to earn what you want to earn with the skills that you have. And the reason that I say this is that, um, people in communication and change like Mel and myself. We can earn depending on where you are in the world. I know there might be a, a, like a, a big variance, but it's not uncommon any, anybody can go and look on a job site now and they can see that a change manager or a communications person can earn between likely 180 and $250,000 a year as a full-time contractor, maybe a little bit less than a permanent employee. If you want to be a consultant, it is really hard to glue those pieces together, to earn that much when you have all of that other stuff to do because you have all of these expenses too. So my first thing is be really, really clear about why you want to become a consultant. You won't work any less. You really want, I mean, I take tons of great holidays, but I am, I am piggybacking on all of these years of being a consultant. And in the last five years, considerable success. And I've been doing it for a long time now, but when you are starting out, you will work your butt off doing stuff that you have no idea what to do. It's very lonely, it's very frustrating. And you will have cost after cost after cost, and you'll have to figure out your it. And there's so much. If you think you are going to make more money as a consultant, most of the time you are mistaken. Don't do it for that, do it because you have something different that you want to say. You have a different area that you want to work in. You wanna work around kids or animals or something to do with your lifestyle, whether you wanna do a, a number of things. But for most people, you will not earn more money as a consultant if you already have a highly paid job. Um, I, I look at. Th we would all see loads of things on Instagram and now LinkedIn saying, follow my 200 page blueprint, and you can get a course delivered by the end of the week, only 40 hours. There's no fail platform. Um, these never work. They absolutely never work. I mean, maybe they do for some people, but I, I don't think that they will work. And for most people, if you, if you are, if you're a dog walker. Okay. If you're a dog walker and you're earning $120 a day, then maybe selling an online course for $16 a copy maybe will make you a little bit wealthier. But if you are, um, uh, an established communications and marketing expert, you are unlikely to earn more money. Certainly in the first five years, what would you say now? Five maybe? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Um, you are unlikely to, and you're gonna put tons of work in for very little return. Um, and you have to find your secret sauce. What makes you different than anybody else? Or how do you do the same thing differently? Mm-hmm. I think that's the key, isn't it? It's because it's a flooded marketplace out there. There's a lot of. You know, personal branding experts and, and comms people and change people. Mm-hmm. Uh, and a lot of them sell courses and, and that's fine. It's more about, as you say, what makes you different. And I kind of think of it like, um, as you say, it, it, what's your secret source? For me, it's like a Venn diagram. So you've got those three circles, and it might just be a combination of skills or knowledge that you have that not many other people have that combination as opposed to one specific thing. So for me, it. Uh, the communications background, it's the change management background and it's the behavioral science stuff. So that's my secret source is where those three things meet on their own. Lots of people doing that stuff. I, I think it's right time, right place, right person as well. Because if we think about some of the courses that I do right now, PowerPoint, Excel, uh, creating newsletters. I used to deliver these courses in the UK and I used to deliver them in Singapore as well. And, um, when I was doing Excel training in Singapore, I had this special thing way that I, I did it. I delivered them at the Hard Rock Cafe. Uh, the Hard Rock Cafe had this little meeting room upstairs and I used to run Excel, that rock. PowerPoint that rocks and a Singaporean audience is, is quite different than a, than an Australian audience. But anyway, people would be up on the stage, like playing an air guitar and stuff during the Excel course. We would bat balloons around doing all of these activities, but I wasn't, it was fun and I made a living, but I was not phenomenally successful because Okay. Even though that was a bit different, it wasn't. Niched enough. Yeah. I then rebadged almost exactly the same courses and I called it Excel dashboards, and I did this by accident, by the way. I just react. I didn't plan to do it. I just, I, I source. Somebody asked, I had a number of people asking, Hey, how do I create that change dashboard that you created? And I just put on a course saying Excel dashboards for change managers, PowerPoint for change managers. I was selling exactly the. Core, exactly the same course. I just shifted the audience and I shifted the marketing, and that's where it became really, really successful. Um, I don't only have change managers on my courses. I have loads of small business people, coaches, learning designers, project managers, but all of my marketing says Excel, PowerPoint for change managers. And people will say, Hey, I'm a, I'm a a coach. Would this be okay for me? I'm like, absolutely. But you have to find your sweet spot. On the other hand as well, sometimes people just, oh, go crazy over trying to find this sweet spot, and you just have to put it out there sometimes, and you have to deliver a course to loads of people. Figure out which one you enjoyed the most. Where did you get the most feedback? Sometimes as well. Your niche is whoever will pay you. Oh, I didn't realize, I didn't realize that. I'm all of a sudden a specialist, change manager for hairdressers. Wow. Who'd have thought. Well, Sharon, thank you so much. That's there's so much gold in this conversation from you. Thank you. Now we have three questions. We ask each guest. Oh, okay. I've forgotten what they are and I have read them, but I've forgotten what they are. That's all right. We will read them to you. So the first one is, if you could wave your magic wand and change anything about freelancing and consulting, what would it be? Hmm. Oh, I think I just, I think I would just like the, the, the client fairy. Could I just have, could I just find some, a client fairy living under a plant at the bottom of my garden? Um, and then I could just go, I could go out there and I could go, oh, I'll pick a client. Yeah, I have a client fairy please. Okay. Client ferry, I'm here for it. That's, that sounds interesting. So moving to the second question here, Sharon. Um. Who, who is the freelancer or a consultant that you top admire and why? I remember this question now, and I don't, I look, I don't have one. Um, I don't have a freelancer in that way. Um, I think the only, uh, an entrepreneur that I think is. In some ways accessible and many of our change audiences will know her. I do really admire the way that Trinny Woodle does. Trinny London does their makeup and fashion, and one of the, the lessons that I have from Trinny is that to give so much away unconditionally and then it comes, comes back, it should come back to you. You can't guarantee that it'll come back, but I, I love. The way that Trinny puts herself out there as this really accessible person to help you. And I, I couldn't tell you how I could tell you there's a load of Trinny products out there in my bathroom there. But creating this relationship with your audience, I think that's what I admire. And I also see, I didn't seek to do that. I didn't set out to do that, but I see, oh yeah, I do that as well. I create relationships with my, my audiences. They say to me. Um, so interesting as before we came on the call, Mel was talking about somebody that she had somebody that knew me, and a lot of people are like, wow, you're really normal when I meet you. What did you think? What did you think I was gonna be, did you think I was a different person on a podcast than I am when you meet me? Yeah, no. People are surprised that, that you are the same person. Um. So yeah, I think that authenticity around Trinny, but I don't really look at anybody and I admire lots of people, but I don't think, um, oh, I wish I did that because we all, anybody successful is really treading their own path. Love that. Great answer. Last question, the most important one. This is consulting conversations over coffee. Okay. So what's your coffee or tea or hot beverage of choice? Espresso martini. Makes sense. Straight answer. It's on brand. I love it. Yeah. Well, Sharon, thank you so much for joining us today. If people want to learn more about you, what's the best way to do that? Um, probably they can find me on LinkedIn or I do have a website, uh, change superhero.com au. Love it. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks. Bye-Bye. Well, Fady, that was quite the conversation with Sharon. She's just full of energy and ideas. What did you think? Uh, a consistent flow of energy ideas and lessons learned. Absolutely. And she certainly had a very varied career, which I love.'cause she, you know, you take lessons from all this stuff. Um, so are key takeaways from today's episode? Do you wanna go first? Today we have the three Bs. So, yeah, that, that's, that's quite interesting. And it was difficult to distill all the knowledge that she shared. But if we put it in three points, I would say the first B is be aware of your numbers. Be prepared to earn less, at least for. The start, keep an eye on, on the numbers, keep a close eye on the numbers, and see what works and doesn't work. And always, you know, take it from there. I, I would say that's the first point. First B, what about you? Yeah, uh, yeah, like. You said, uh, it's in numbers, but also be super conscious of your time. So, uh, sometimes we quote for things not realizing there's going to be extra meetings and extra scope creep and all those sorts of things. So there's different ways around that you can factor that into your quote. You can, uh, I loved what Sharon said. You know, have your assistant, even if they're not real, put through a change request for you so that you are actually getting paid for the work you're doing. And the third B, which was really deeply insightful for me because sometimes we miss it as consultants, is be kind to yourself. You know, treat yourself kindly because you'll make mistakes. There will be a pitfalls, there will be mistakes, but you always learn as, as we always say, it's either we succeed or we learn. So take it easy. Be kind to yourself and do not be afraid to pivot and try something else. Sometimes you know, a new direction can be a totally. New, empowering, um, journey. So be kind to yourself and do not be afraid to pivot. Love it. I think we've nailed it. What do you reckon? Uh, that's, I think that's a summary for a whole, whole masterclass that we got today. Yeah, that's exactly right. Well, thank you so much again for your time, Fady. I always love these conversations with you and our guests. It's amazing always to have these consultant conversations over coffee with people from all over the world. So tune in for our next one. We do have more guests coming your way. Stay tuned.