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:

Have you ever deconstructed the lyrics to a song?

I did that recently with Beyoncé’s Ring the Alarm from her 2006 album B’Day. In particular, the chorus/hook of the song.

If you’re not familiar, Ring the Alarm is about a woman contemplating whether to persist with a relationship that isn’t serving her versus walking away into the unknown (or in this case, with the understanding that she may be giving up on things that she’s grown accustomed to. Like Chinchilla coats, a Benz and the house off the coast, among other things.

Let’s look at it from a logic standpoint versus an emotional standpoint.

Logically, it doesn’t make sense to stay with someone that’s not treating you with respect. But emotionally, we’ve all lived through experiences where giving something up (in this case, a relationship) feels far scarier than ending it and going it alone. Plus, who wants to start all over?

I was asked recently if I’d ever gotten to a point where I wanted to call it quits from my consulting business. Yes I’ve gotten to this point plenty of times! I was also asked how did I know to stick with it.

Logically, I knew that I could always get another job. I had been with my agency for almost 6 years and it took around 3 months to land that position after graduating from my MSW program. Now that I’m a licensed social worker, I assumed it would take roughly the same amount of time or even less.

Emotionally, I’ve put a lot of time and effort into building my business and despite knowing what I logically know, it would be hard to let it go.

I realized it’s less about the time and effort you give to something. It’s about identifying your perceived return on investment (ROI). Here’s another way to illustrate this:

I’ve never had a client tell me that my social media presence influenced them to work with me.

In fact, there are really 3 ways clients find out about me (based on what they shared when filling out my prospective client questionnaire:

• Word of mouth: They asked their networks for someone who has my skill sets and expertise
• Internet search: The keywords they entered landed them on a page or blog post on my website
• I was off somewhere being useful: From email listservs, in-person meetings and events, or online forums, they noticed me sharing resources and information or offering advice

But like most people, I use social media. I started off using it as a way to connect with the people I know in real life and to make connections with new folks.

Once I started growing my blog, I needed someplace to promote outside of friends and family.

It’s interesting to see the impact that social media has played in our professional and personal lives. However, like most of us, I got caught up in the vanity of it.

Likes, comments, retweets, shares, clicks, and comments. They all play a role in how people view you. But as we see with social media as a whole, they don’t tell the full story.

I call these “vanity metrics“. While they are important to see how your content resonates with your audience, you don’t really know why they’re engaging with you.

When we get caught up in these vanity metrics, we develop this inflated sense of importance. Outside of comments, vanity metrics don’t really tell you why someone engages with you. Nor do follower counts tell you if the person following you actually supports you, likes your work, or agrees with your viewpoint. It’s weird to think that people will follow someone or comment on something they don’t like, but it happens.

With all this talk of shadow bans, algorithms, paying to have your content seen by the people who chose to follow you, and removing likes, we need to ask ourselves some tough questions about what we’re really doing on social media and why. And if you use it to promote yourself or your organization, we need to ask ourselves is social media the best way to marketing ourselves.

My answer is no. Especially since social media platforms can disappear at any time.

While I do believe that social media is a great way to connect with and network with others, my #1 rule for marketing yourself on social media is to not have social media be the #1 way to market yourself.

Instead of having social media drive your marketing, consider the following ways to market yourself while using social media as a supplemental avenue:

I was speaking with a friend recently, who decided to go back to the corporate world after consulting for over 5 years. Of all his reasons, the main reason was that he no longer cared about what he did and who he did it for.

I know this feeling well, because closer to the end of my time with my old organization, I felt it. I have a specific memory of having a new client sitting across from me, detailing her concerns with her housing and benefits. When I first started working there, I would go above and beyond to do what I could for a client. But listening to her (and taking stock of my place within the organization), I realized that I didn’t care.

I’ve always told myself that when I get to the point where I no longer cared about what I do and who I do it for, I would call it quits. So, I did.

But one day in early 2018, I was preparing to write a blog post, create an email newsletter to send out to my subscribers, and do some work for my consulting clients.

It was a snowy, cloudy day. As I waited for my laptop to boot up, I looked out the window and asked myself, “Why am I doing this?”