Raise Your Voice Blog | Nicole Clark Consulting

25 Jan, 2021

Ask Nicole: How Do I Get into Consulting?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T21:03:03-04:00January 25th, 2021|Categories: Consulting|Tags: Ask Nicole, consulting|0 Comments

Have a question you’d like featured? Let me know.

First off, (since this is my first post of 2021), Happy New Year!

Now, let’s get into this month’s question.

This month’s topic is an umbrella question based on several emails I’ve gotten over the past few months.

I’ve blogged about this here and there over the years, particularly in my Keeping Your Sanity As a Solopreneur series, and since I’m getting more emails and social media DMs about, I thought it would be useful to share my advice in a more broader way as this may benefit more people.

A Google search of any variation of the question “How do I get into consulting?” will yield hundreds of links.

In short, consulting involves using your knowledge and expertise to help someone or some entity become more efficient and knowledgeable in their practices by addressing a problem they’re facing. How this looks may depend on your chosen profession.

How consulting looks for me depends on the project or study I’m working on. In some cases, I may be reviewing someone and offering insight or suggested changes. In others, I may be more practitioner-focused by working with my client or partner in completing tasks (which can include developing and implementing trainings, developing research or evaluation questions, implementing evaluations, analyzing data and developing themes and recommendations, facilitating meetings, etc.)

So, how do you get into consulting? Here’s some things to keep in mind:

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4 Nov, 2020

Ask Nicole: The Best Time to Look for a Consultant

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T21:01:33-04:00November 4th, 2020|Categories: Miscellaneous|Tags: Ask Nicole, consulting|0 Comments

The best time to look for a consultant is before you need a consultant.

An observation I’ve made in the past few years is that nonprofits and organizations look for a consultant when they come across an opportunity to fund a project, and that’s not the most effective way to find someone.

It’s not effective because now you have to either 1) create a request for proposals, sit back, and receive responses from a lot of people who may not be a good fit (which may prompt you to continue to look for someone); o r2) ask around for someone who can do the tasks, contact them, and see whether the people you’ve contacted are even available to work with you.

The best time to look for a consultant is before you need a consultant, and here’s why:

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21 Oct, 2020

Try This: A Simple Way to Get Program Feedback

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2025-08-18T10:24:31-04:00October 21st, 2020|Categories: Research & Evaluation|Tags: program design, program evaluation, Try This|0 Comments

*Try this out and let me know how it goes.*

I enjoy coming up with things on the fly, and today’s Try This is one of those moments.

I was hired by a client organization earlier on in my consulting business to conduct several focus groups for their program participants, all of whom were young high school girls attending a 6-week summer program.

During the first two focus groups, one question I asked was, “What would you change about this program?”

Interestingly, the participants enjoyed the program so much that they didn’t have any ideas on how they could improve the program.

When I got to the last two focus groups, I decided to change the question.

Before I share how I changed the question, let’s make one thing clear: It’s very possible your program participants really do enjoy your program, and there’s a lot of information to glean from this. But this client organization specifically wanted feedback on how to evolve the program and they noticed that, outside of exclaiming they enjoy the program, participants didn’t give in prior feedback on what they enjoyed and what they’d like to see based on previous evaluations.

In response to my client’s request, I shifted the question.

This activity is ideal for:

Anyone responsible for developing, running and evaluating programs and services
Anyone interested in applying evaluative thinking

Here’s what you need:

Whatever setup you use for focus groups (though this can also be created as a survey, key informant interview, or as a World Cafe)

The steps:

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16 Oct, 2020

Self Care Corner: The “Well Done” List

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:57:53-04:00October 16th, 2020|Categories: Self & Community Care|Tags: Self Care Corner|0 Comments

My day-to-day didn’t change much, if at all, when the current pandemic began. As the months passed, my mental health and self-esteem slowly declined. Much of it, outside of the psychological impact of dealing with a virus that still has many unknowns and sheltering in place, was due to my own expectation to continue to perform optimally.

I had a laundry list of tasks to complete and tried to show up to my work as though a pandemic and racial injustices weren’t occurring, even when my clients asked for grace as they pivoted to support their staff and program participants.

While I still have many items on my to-do list, most of these items aren’t tackled on a normal day. As we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, I’m lucky if I’m able to knock out 1-2 high-level items. The more items I crossed off my list, the more accomplished I felt…but most of these items didn’t move me towards my bigger goals in any significant way.

Several years ago, I came across the concept of a “well done” list. I tucked the concept away and thought about it the other day as I looked at my ever-growing to-do list.

What’s a “well done” list? Similar to a to-do list, it’s a list of tasks. Instead of focusing on the number of items you cross off your to-do list, a “well done” list acknowledges the quality of what gets done.

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7 Oct, 2020

Ask Nicole: My Best & Worst Client Experiences

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:57:32-04:00October 7th, 2020|Categories: Consulting|Tags: Ask Nicole, clients|0 Comments

Have a question you’d like to be featured? Let me know.

As we head closer to the end of 2020, I’m starting to think about where I want my business to go and who I want to be, have, and experience in 2021.

Considering we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, it feels futile to plan anything out. Nevertheless, I’ve been thinking about the types of client and partnership opportunities I’ve had in the past year. With each year that passes, my projects and client interactions become more complex. I’ve developed a routine that affords me to be more intentional about who I work with, but that didn’t come without any hiccups.

I took my own advice and evaluated each project using the following prompts:

How did I feel about this project overall?
How did I feel about my role in this project?
How did I feel while working with this client/partner?

As I reflected on this year’s projects, I also thought of prior projects and decided it would be fun to share two experiences that I consider my best and my worst time working with clients.

Because I’m focusing on me, I won’t be naming the specific clients nor the focus of the projects (because that’s messy), but If you’ve been a reader of my blog over the years, you should know that my client projects tend to fall somewhere in the sexual and reproductive health, rights, or justice space, young women’s empowerment, and the like. I’ll focus instead on what I learned during these processes and how they’ve shaped my process in being intentional of who I work with, what I take on, and how I choose to work.

Let’s start with the worst client experience:

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Ask Nicole: How Do I Get into Consulting?

Ask Nicole: The Best Time to Look for a Consultant

Try This: A Simple Way to Get Program Feedback

Self Care Corner: The “Well Done” List

Ask Nicole: My Best & Worst Client Experiences

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