14 Nov, 2018

Ask Nicole: The #1 Question to Ask When Hiring a Consultant

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:21:44-04:00November 14th, 2018|Categories: Consulting|Tags: Ask Nicole, clients, consulting|0 Comments

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Let me tell you a story:

In October 2015, I had decided to leave my day job by June 1st 2016. On my list of things to do was updating my website and getting professional pictures taken for the website and my social media profiles.

I live in New York, and I have plenty of friends who are in the creative and entertainment industries. So I asked a few of them for recommendations for a photographer. After viewing the portfolios of several photographers, I hadn’t landed on one I really wanted to work with.

A short time later, I was looking at my personal Facebook profile. I looked at my profile picture. It was from an event I had attended several months prior. I can’t remember if I was speaking or laughing at something, but I had an interesting expression only face. It’s one of my favorite pictures and I’ve gotten many compliments on it.

I didn’t speak to the photographer at the events but I distinctly remember her walking around and quietly taking pictures. And then it clicked.

I went back to the host’s event album and wrote down the name of the photographer, Jen Painter. I found her website and contacted her, sending her the link to my picture in the event album. I asked if she was available to schedule a session with me for later in the month. She shared her availability and pricing policy, and instead of booking half upfront, I booked the entire fee on the spot.

I met with Jen a few weeks later in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn for my shoot. She was nice and accommodating, and I felt very comfortable with her considering it was my first professional shoot. I enjoyed working with Jen so much that it was difficult for me to choose 5 pictures out of the many she’d taken of me for her to touch up. I found my favorites, and these pictures are the images you now see on my website, newsletter, and social media profiles.

“So, what does this have to do with hiring a consultant?”, you ask.

You see, a consultant can write a great proposal or work scope that fits what you’re looking for. They can even give their hourly or flat rate (which I’m beginning to see is a flawed way for clients choosing a consultant). But ultimately, none of this matters unless you have identified the value you’ll get in working with this person. So the #1 question to ask when hiring a consultant is this:

What value will I receive in hiring this person?

Knowing someone’s hourly rate or flat fee isn’t the most important part. Yes, you’re a nonprofit and budgets matter (though we all know that budgets can be moved around, so that’s not an excuse). Here’s why:

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5 Sep, 2018

Ask Nicole: How to Deal with Imposter Syndrome

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:17:57-04:00September 5th, 2018|Categories: Consulting|Tags: Ask Nicole|0 Comments

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“Imposter syndrome” is a psychological thought pattern that causes us to doubt our accomplishments while also being plagued by an internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”. First described by psychologists Suzanne Imes, PhD, and Pauline Rose Clance, PhD, in the 1970s, impostor syndrome (also known as “imposter phenomenon”) occurs when feelings of inadequacies and incompetence come up despite having evidence that you really are competent.

Most articles about imposter syndrome focus on getting rid of it, but here’s the thing:

As you challenge yourself, you’ll start off feeling like an imposter. And it’s all part of the growing process.

The more I challenge myself, the fraudier I feel, initially. Plus, I’ve found through my own experience that feeling like an imposter is something you never rid yourself of. As you build your expertise, those fraudy feelings will come up. Here are my reasons why imposter syndrome may pop up and how to deal with it:

You don’t believe you’ve earned it

I love when a potential clients contact me about working with me. Regardless of how they were put into contact with me, it feels great when a client believes you’re the best person to work with them. However, I was speaking with a mentor a year ago about how it weirdly didn’t seem right to me. Why? Because I didn’t feel like I earned it. Logically, I’d rather have potential clients come to me or current clients renew a contract with me, but deep down it feels fraudy because most of us are used to going through some kind of process of selection. Or working hard for it. There’s a sense of achievement and satisfaction when you’ve been chosen out of a pool of candidates. Yet, you should feel special when someone contacts you directly because they feel you’re the right person for the job. So, what gives?

How to deal: Whether you’ve been handed an opportunity or you were chosen out of a pool of candidates, the reason why is still the same: You were the right person for the opportunity. How would you feel if someone were to say to you, “You know what? I appreciate you believing that I’m the best person for this, but I don’t feel that I’ve earned it because you didn’t choose me out of a pool of candidates”? It doesn’t sound logical. We’re used to the hustle and focus on making things happen that we don’t allow opportunities to come to us. If this still feels foreign to you, ask for the reasons for you being give the opportunity. You’ll see that the characteristics they see in you were the characteristics you saw in yourself all along.

You don’t have a frame of reference

When my consulting business was a just side hustle, I felt like a fraud because I didn’t really own the title of “consultant”. I didn’t think I had the experience under my belt to call myself that. Now that I’ve been working for myself for a while, I’ve realized that imposter syndrome was a problem then because I had no frame of reference for what it’s like to be self employed, let alone work as a consultant. I was basically mirroring what I’d seen others do. If you’ve been hired as an executive director of a nonprofit, and this is your first time being in a professional role like this, of course you’d feed fraudy, because you’ve never been an executive director before.

How to deal: When those fraudy feelings come up, continue to remind yourself that you were hired because you were the best person for the job. Someone saw qualities in you that would be perfect for [insert role title]. There may be certain aspects of the job that will require additional training or mentorship, but trust in your ability to do it. Which leads the next reason why you may feel imposter syndrome:

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6 Jun, 2018

Ask Nicole: How Do You Find Consulting Clients?

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:12:40-04:00June 6th, 2018|Categories: Consulting|Tags: Ask Nicole, consulting|0 Comments

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If you’re interested in working for yourself, having a side hustle while being employed, or you’re already responsible for landing clients for your employer, getting clear about who you want to work with is important.

In the beginning, I had an idea of the types of clients I wanted to work with, but I also took on clients who didn’t fit my “ideal client” because I wanted to build my expertise and confidence. I also tried to figure out how to market myself. I started with emailing and posting on social media to my friends, letting them know that I was seeking new clients.

Along with letting friends know I was opened for business, I also tried to figure out the whole marketing thing. It’s been an ongoing process, and I found myself being resistant to what I see many people do: send multiple emails about service and product launches, create paid social media posts, and host webinars that are marketed as free but serve as product pitches.

But that’s not the focus of this month’s Ask Nicole question. This month, I wanted to share my thoughts on how I find clients. Or rather, how clients find me.

The short answer: Relationship building

The long answer: My clients come from a variety of places, with the majority being through some kind of interaction or relationship. For clients who have come to me through referral, the people that referred them to me were people I highly respect or people who I may not know but they have some kind of connection to me (i.e. social media, my blog, or my newsletter, etc.) For clients that I already had an interaction or relationship with, they met me at an event (my workshops, a panel I sat on, a conference, etc.) And I have yet to pay for a sponsored post or blast my newsletter subscribers with promotional emails (yet).

Here’s what I know to be true for finding clients:

1) You never know where your next client will come from, 2) Clients may not be ready to work with you when you make an initial contact, but when they’re ready they will come back, and 3) It’s more fun when you allow clients to come to you instead of chasing after them.

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31 Jan, 2018

Keeping Your Sanity as a Solopreneur, Part Five: Work/Life Balance

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:08:26-04:00January 31st, 2018|Categories: Consulting|Tags: consulting, Solopreneur|0 Comments

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Welcome to Part Five of the Keeping Your Sanity as a Solopreneur series. In Part One, we tackled mindset by busting some common myths about transitioning from employee to self employed. In Part Two, I shared some of my current tools and processes that help me run my business. In Part Three, we went through an exercise to discover your passions and how they can translate into income, and in Part Four we focused on the importance of building community. To round out the series, let’s discuss work/life balance.

Before running my business full-time, I worked on it during early mornings, weeknights, and weekends while also working full-time at my day job. Needless to say, I had no life.

At my day job, I had parameters around when I could work on my business. When I eventually left in 2016, suddenly it felt like I had too much time on my hands. But I took advantage of it, throwing myself head-first into my business… only to hit a wall and burn out 4 months later. Fortunately, I had several months of income saved up, and was able to take a month off from client work and focus mostly on blogging, but I learned one thing: Without work/life balance, working for yourself can be a blessing, and a curse.

Sometimes, we tend to suffer from “greener grass syndrome”. This is becoming more prevalent in the age of social media, as we tend to envy the lives of other people. It’s very easy to admire someone from afar and to give accolades because leaving your day job to work for yourself is not an easy decision to make. It’s even easier to be at the beginning stages of your business and compare yourself to other business owners. But as lawyer and business woman Rachel Rogers of Hello Seven says,

“Say goodbye to comparing yourself to other entrepreneurs. Even me. We’re all at our own stages in our businesses and believe me, everyone has some kind of ugly sh*t going on behind the curtain.”

It’s nice to schedule my days how I want to choose meaningful projects and clients to work with, but when I was at my day job (before starting my business) I was able to “shut it on and off”. When 5pm rolled around, I was out of there. I didn’t have to think (that much) about my clients or co-workers, and if I wanted to start past 5pm to get some work done, I could but I tried not to make it a habit. If something were to pop up that needed to be added to my to-do list, I would add it but not work on that task until the next day at work.

These days, I’m not able to shut my brain off completely. I’m constantly thinking about my business. As a solopreneur, you’re the administrator, content creator, social media and marketing manager, media relations, client/customer service representative, and more.

As someone not quite ready to relinquish control of the many hats I wear, I try my best to be mindful of ways I can create a balance between my personal and professional lives. Here are some pieces of advice I’ve found for developing work/life balance. This advice works for people interested in starting a business as well as people wanting a better balance between their professional and personal lives:

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24 Jan, 2018

Keeping Your Sanity as a Solopreneur, Part Four: Build Community

By Nicole Clark, LMSW|2021-08-19T20:08:15-04:00January 24th, 2018|Categories: Consulting|Tags: consulting, Solopreneur|0 Comments

Have a question? Let me know.

Welcome to Part Four of the Keeping Your Sanity as a Solopreneur series. In Part One, we tackled mindset by busting some common myths about transitioning from employee to self employed. In Part Two, I shared some of my current tools and processes that help me run my business. In Part Three, we went through an exercise to discover your passions and how they can translate into income. Today, let’s talk about building community.

Building a business around something you love is exciting, but it can also be lonely. I thought as a introvert, I would love being by myself. While I still do, sometimes I reminisce on the days where I had co-workers to chat with and bounce ideas off of.

When I started entertaining the idea of leaving my job, I had a community of people (mainly two friends interested in leaving their jobs, my sister, and my mastermind group) who knew this was my plan. I sought out people who had made the leap to ask for advice, and when I gave my resignation notice I felt more comfortable going public with my decision.

Along the way, I’ve worked to build two distinct communities that have supported me:

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What value will I receive in hiring this person?

As you challenge yourself, you’ll start off feeling like an imposter. And it’s all part of the growing process.

You don’t believe you’ve earned it

You don’t have a frame of reference

“Say goodbye to comparing yourself to other entrepreneurs. Even me. We’re all at our own stages in our businesses and believe me, everyone has some kind of ugly sh*t going on behind the curtain.”

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