Many businesses have admirable visions, enticing goals, and meaningful purposes, but still fall short in attaining success. Most of the time, it is caused by a lack of a well-targeted business mindset. Domenic Rinaldi talks with Michael Zipursky, the CEO of Consulting Success, in discussing how to redirect your focus, hone an effective message, maximize outsourcing services, and pinpoint your target audience in order to start an effective, self-managing team. Michael also shares some useful tips on buying another business and coping with the business challenges caused by the pandemic.

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Listen to the podcast here:

Michael Zipursky: The Power Of A Well-Targeted Business Mindset

Understanding your businesses, ideal client, how to put a value on your time as a business owner, and the importance of operating a self-managing business are a couple of the topics I cover in nowadays episode with our guest, Michael Zipursky. Michael has had a very successful career consulting with clients in a broad range of industries about how to operate a more valuable and gratifying business.

Having built and sold several of his own businesses, Michael understands the challenges on entrepreneurs face such as identifying the ideal clients, how to acquire those ideal clients, building marketing messages and systems, trying to balance both your professional and personal demands, and being stuck in breaking through barriers for growth. Michael is a wealth of knowledge and he offers some very practical advice in this episode. I know you will walk away with some ideas you can start implementing in your own business immediately.

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Michael, welcome. I’m so excited to have you here.

Domenic, thanks for having me. It’s great to be here.

I’m interested to get your perspectives knowing that you’re a consultant and you’ve been for a long time but you’re also a consultant to consultants. You teach consultants how to help business owners prepare their businesses to increase value. There’s a lot to cover here. Let’s start off with how did you get into this business? What got you into consulting? We’ll dive into some of the meatier topics I want to cover.

A fair bit to cover, we’re going back many years when I started my first consulting business with my cousin and business partner to this day, Sam. That was web development and design company is our first foray into running our own business. This was out of high school for me. It gave me some experience in working with clients and doing the marketing thing strategically. Sam was more on the creative, design, and development side of that business. It was a great experience. A few years after that, we then moved into starting a second business which was called Kankei Culture.

Kankei is the Japanese word for relationship. We’ve always been very focused on relationships and the importance of focusing on that when you’re building a business. That business took us overseas. I went over to Japan and opened up a branch office for that company. We were doing branding, visual design, and strategy for organizations. While in Japan, I had the opportunity to work with some very large organizations like Panasonic, Sumitomo, the Dow Jones, and Financial Times in Japan, and a whole bunch of others, advising them on how to enter English-based content in the North American and European markets with our products and services.

I spent about 5 or 6 years in Japan building that business then came back to North America and started another consulting business this time called Relagy Marketing that stands for relationship strategy. You can tell that the big focus on relationships there. That was around lead generation for professional services firms. A lot of clients in accounting, investments, and other consulting firms helping them to generate leads and helping them with their marketing.

At that time, Sam and I had built multiple companies together but that’s when I ran Relay Marketing. We were doing separate things. Sam was in Japan at that time working for an English language magazine as a marketing director role. He came back to Vancouver. We met at a family barbecue one summer and we were not just catching up on what we were doing. We’ve always been very close like brothers. We said, “We should do something again together but this time we should do it online.” At that point, we had been running brick and mortar, the classic consulting, professional services types of businesses. We both loved traveling. We both loved going to different countries, meeting different people, cultures, languages, food, drink, all that good stuff in life.

We thought, “Let’s do something online so that we don’t have to be in one place. We can run our business from anywhere.” We started with what became ConsultingSuccess.com but it started with the idea of, “Let’s begin by sharing information online about our experiences, running consulting businesses, and becoming consultants. The good, the bad, and the ugly. What was working, what wasn’t working?” In the hopes of helping others, we didn’t have a clear monetization plan. We thought, “Let’s figure it out as we move along.” We started as a side business. We both had other businesses or jobs that we were involved at that time. After a while, when we saw it, people said, “This content is great and we’re building a community around it.” People enjoyed it.

They said, “Do you have a course that I can learn or to go through to become a successful consultant?” We said, “We don’t but we’ll create one. Hopefully, you’ll find that to be helpful.” They did. They said, “This is a great course. It helped me to become a consultant. Do you do some coaching? Is there someone I can work more closely with you guys to help me and develop a customized plan around what I’m doing as a consultant?” We said, “No, but we’ll create one.” We create a coaching program for consultants.

Fast forward, since we launched Consulting Success, we’ve had thousands of consultants go through our programs. We work with almost 500 consultants in our Clarity Coaching Program. Everything that we do is focused on helping consultants to either make the transition from the corporate world into starting their own successful consulting business or working with consultants who have already been in that world for many years but want to take their business to the next level either in terms of revenue, scale up to make it more valuable for a potential exit, or create more leverage in their business so they can spend more time with their loved ones and enjoying life.

Along the way, you have done a lot of consulting yourself with privately held and even publicly traded companies. This is where I’d like to take the conversation because our audience is largely made up of owners of privately held companies where people who are looking to either acquire a business for the first time or acquire and grow their existing business. I’m interested to tap into some of your experiences around what do you see as the common pitfalls or places where owners get stuck in their businesses. I read a statistic not too long ago, 95% of businesses never get past $1 million in revenue. It’s some enormous number that never gets past this barrier. Where do owners get stuck and how can they get unstuck?

There are many areas that could prove to be a sticking point for people that are holding back from reaching that $1 million mark. In our world, what we care a lot more about revenue is profit. We could talk about ways and opportunities to reduce waste and to increase profits. A big thing that I see is a lack of focus. People often believe that the way to grow a business is through addition. Adding more products and services. In fact, it’s most often through subtraction. It’s through reducing things that don’t need to be there. When you have a clear focus, not trying to offer ten different things or products, or many different services, whatever it might be, it allows you then to start to create your marketing, your messaging in a way that will resonate with your ideal client or customer more.

That is one of the biggest areas that I see. If people go too broad, they try and service a large group of customers or clients. By doing that, you’re trying to communicate to a group of many different people, but your message is watered down because it’s not speaking to any one of a person directly. The first thing that we always like to do is to help people to get clear on who is your ideal client. Who do you want to attract more?

 

Who’s the most profitable? Who’s the one that you enjoy working with? Who’s the one that you’ve been able to achieve the greatest level of results with? Start by focusing on that ideal client, developing a message that will resonate with that ideal client, and then you can start layering on marketing that will accelerate. The big problem that I see is that people will often think about or work on marketing but they haven’t dialed in who their ideal client is or customers and what is the right message to get that person’s attention and interest. You want to do those two things first before you focus on marketing.

Some people call it your avatar whatever your ideal client. How often do you find that when you go in and talk to owners that they don’t have any idea who their ideal client is, you have to help them go figure that out?

It’s very common. I spoke to a client who has an amazing career. He got into the business and said what a lot of people say which is, “I have a lot of experiences. I can help a lot of different people but I have no idea where to start. Can I go after all of them?” The reality is you can but you’re not going to be successful in doing that because you’re not a multi-billion dollar organization. You don’t have that many resources to throw in and try stuff out in multiple different directions all at once. Let’s say, you choose five different areas to target.

You’re only going to see a 20%, level of progress in any given one whereas if you go all-in on 1 or 2 to try out and focus on. Now you’re going to have 50% progress. Back to your question, Domenic, a lot of people don’t have clarity around who their ideal client is. We have to work through that process. Other times, people will have a good sense of who their ideal client is but what’s missing is that their messaging doesn’t speak to that ideal client. They might say something like, “I provide management consulting to small businesses. What does that mean? How do you define a small business? How can that help you to connect with that ideal client or to find them.” It’s not going to. What you then want to do is ask yourself, how do you get more granular, specific, and detailed so that you can speak to your ideal client?

The reason that you can get a buyer’s attention is by speaking to what is going on in their mind. The conversation that’s already happening. One group doesn’t have clarity that they have too many different possibilities or options in terms of who they can target. The other group might already be speaking to who their ideal client is but their messaging is what lacks. There’s a disconnect between who their actual ideal client is and their messaging doesn’t fully incorporate or communicate in a specific and detailed way who that ideal client is and doesn’t use language that speaks to the problems and challenges, and what’s top of mind for that ideal client.

In that regard, is there a format that you recommend that people follow when it comes to messaging like identify the problem, solution, benefits? What is your messaging tree and advice for people?

I’ll go through two parts here for you. The first is around the ideal client clarity. We have what we call the Niche Scoring Method. That is to help people to arrive and to identify which area they should focus and specialize in. There are different criteria on that but a few of them, for example, might be where do you have the most experience, where you have the most passion, wherever you created the greatest level of results, so on and so forth. Once you’ve gone through that and you’ve identified it like, “Here’s where I have the highest score. Here’s where I feel best about.” You can now move to the messaging side and the message messaging side, the classic criteria is a three-part formula. It’s the three W’s. The first is, who is your ideal client?

The second part has two W’s which is, what is the problem that they have and what is the result that they will see or experience from solving that problem? The third big W is why which stands for, why you? They have a lot of options in that marketplace. Why should they choose to work with you? The third one is most commonly left out. People will often say like, “What they do or who they work with?” In many cases, not as focused and specific as they should be but that third party, the why you, is incredibly important. We’re in this day and age where there are more options for people. There’s more noise in the marketplace. There’s a lot of people that provide the same services that you do.

There’s a lot of business brokers, people that help with mergers, different consultants in all different industries and aspects of business and life, so why you. This is important for you to be thoughtful around to get clear like, “What does differentiate me from what others are in the marketplace?” That might be the number of years of experience you have. Typically, it’s not. It might be focusing on the results you’ve achieved for other clients where your competitors don’t focus on those results. It might be that you have a unique process, methodology, or system that creates a certain level of results but it might be something that others don’t have or something that others may have but don’t talk about.

There’s that classic example from the director of marketing days many years ago of Schlitz beer that was the lowest level of sales and market share. I believe it was John Caples if I’m not mistaken. He was the famous direct response copywriter that went in, looked at their process, and found that there are all these different things they’re doing from the steaming of their bottles, purifying water, and they get it from this location. The Schlitz beer executives said, “Everyone does this. We’re not doing anything different than anyone else.” What the copywriter and marketing genius identified is like, “Others are also doing this but nobody else is talking about it.”

That became their advantage and what all these ads were about. Their market share went from the bottom to the top over a period of years because they brought to the front what the consumer found to be very intriguing and valuable but nobody was talking about it. The why can be signed that exists in terms of true differentiation or advantage that you have, or it can be signed that others aren’t focusing on and bringing to the forefront, now all of a sudden, you get people to be compelled, intrigued, interest, and attention. Therefore, you can create a conversation.

As a business owner myself, the messaging is something we struggle with all the time. One of the things that I’ve noticed is copywriters are popping up everywhere, you’re seeing unique messaging out there, and there’s so much coming at you from so many different angles. It’s hard to differentiate especially with all these copywriters that have tapped into the hearts and minds of business owners and more are turning over to professional writers and you’re seeing incredible copy out there. It’s one of those things you have to be careful if you try to go it alone with your internal staff. Unless they’re skilled at this, you need to look at bringing in some experts.

I would say that messaging is one very important part but the other thing that’s critical to consider is that the most effective marketing is not a one-time at the plate, hit it out of the park, and you’re done. The vast majority of your sales or opportunities aren’t going to come from that first interaction with the customer or client. It’s going to come from the ongoing follow-up. Therefore, the messaging needs to be on point but you also want to be focused and ensure that you have a good system in place that gets you in front of your ideal clients and customers. I say ideal clients and customers because a lot of people be offering a product and they’re thinking to market more is customers.

Whereas if you’re in professional services, you’re thinking about your responsibility to the client, you’re advising and working more directly with them. Regardless of what your business is, you want to ensure that you’re not giving up. You’re not trying to have one great message or a few attempts and if you don’t get the client, therefore, you’re not going to. This is where having a marketing system in your business is critical that allows you to get in front of that ideal client consistently over time for as long as it takes for them to become a paying client.

Let me switch gears here a little bit. I know this is a topic that you talk about. It’s something that you’ve mentioned. I’ve seen it in some of your podcasts. It’s the importance of having a self-managing company. We’ve talked about this on our show and to our clients on a number of different episodes but I’d love to hear from you about your experience with helping clients with self-managing businesses. Why it’s so critical and what are some of the biggest stumbling blocks and people not achieving that important goal?

The big thing, even if we don’t necessarily always use the term of self-managing, is about creating a business that can operate or run without your direct involvement. That may not be 100% true of the time, especially for many consultants that we work with. They want to be involved in their business. It’s the reason why they left the corporate world because they want to make a great impact, do great work, and enjoy what they do. The big challenge for a lot of people is they think they need to do it all or they believe that they can get something done better or faster themselves. Therefore, there’s no need to hire other people. By no means am I suggesting that people have to go out and hire a whole bunch of full-time employees?

 

The big opportunity for everyone regardless of whether your company is small or larger or anywhere in between is to look at how can you leverage systems and other people whether they’d be freelancers, contractors, full-time, or consultants to help you to accomplish more of your mission, vision, and what’s important to you. The big thing that holds a lot of people back is they look at bringing in an external resource as an expense. They think to themselves, “I don’t want to pay somebody $50 an hour to do this work because that’s money out of my pocket.” I’m not a big proponent or a fan of using hourly fees at all but let’s say that your average hourly value was $250 an hour to make it simple.

If you could pay someone $50 an hour to do that same work that you’re doing, you’re losing $200 every single hour that are doing that work. The big mindset shift is for people to see that investing in external resources is not an expense, it’s an investment. When that becomes clear then it becomes exciting and liberating because you can start to see that you can spend a lot more time doing the things that you enjoy doing. Spending your time on creating greater value for the company and you realize that, “If my average value of what I can create is $200, $250, or $500 an hour equivalent. By unlocking myself from all that $50 or $10 an hour work, whatever it might be, I’m going to not lose that $50 an hour anymore. I’m going to now be able to increase the value of my company.”

This is where having better systems, processes, and not having all the business rely on you becomes not only freeing for you because you’re buying back your own time. Even if you never sell your business or don’t have the intention to ever do that, your company becomes more valuable because you’re now having a lot more time to either create more revenue and profit for the business or to enjoy life while the business is running and spend time on doing things that you want and enjoy doing.

However, if you do ever plan to sell your business, you’ve now increased the value of that company considerably because when somebody comes and looks to acquire, they go, “Can this business run without you?” If the answer is no then that business is worth significantly less than if you have good systems, team, and so forth in place because they know that there’s a lot less risk to them in that business when they purchase it and acquire it from you.

We talk about that all the time. When we look at valuing businesses, that’s one of the first things we’re asking. It’s how much involvement do you have in the business? You are required to be there for any piece of the process in the business. If so, it can bring down the value of that enterprise. I know that painting a broad brush can be dangerous but, do you have a simple formula that people can use on putting a value on their time? I don’t know a lot of owners that have ever done that where they put a value on their time.

There are a few different ways to approach this. If you go to ConsultingSuccess.com, we have a consulting fees calculator that you can enter in a bunch of different information and it’ll spit out what your fee or hourly fee is. Even though we don’t suggest to use hourly fees to arrive at a baseline but pricing and so forth is part art, part science. You can identify what do you want to be made annually and then work backward from that to figure out how many hours are you working. What are your expenses and so on? That can give you that baseline. The big opportunity for consultants who are working in this area is not to get stuck at that level.

That’s the baseline. That is where you want to be. You should want to start looking at what is the value that you’re creating? What is the return on investment that you’re providing to your clients? That now becomes a premium. You might go and save yourself on average for this project for it to be profitable for me. Based on what I’m creating, it’s going to need to be at least $15,000, but then you look at what is the actual impact that I’m having both tangible value and intangible value that I’m creating for that client or that customer. You can see it’s very significant. My fee here is the base of $15,000 plus the premium which is another $15,000. Now you have $30,000 for that project.

As long as the value is there for the client, you can charge whatever you want to charge if it doesn’t make sense to the client because at the end of the day, they need to see that the risk-reward ratio is intact. They feel very confident if they invest $30,000 or $500,000 or whatever the number might be, they’re going to have a greater return back on top of that. To answer your question, there’s no simple formula. You can figure out what the market standard is, what you want to be making plus how long something takes you and have that as your baseline. The big opportunity for most is when we see this with a lot of the clients that we work with, Domenic, where they might be coming in from an hourly, daily rate, or project perspective is that they’re not fully understanding the value that they are creating.

When they truly start to understand that, see how value works, and position that value in a way that their ideal client not only gets it but then becomes excited to make that investment because they’re focusing a lot more, not on what you are going to do in that project but what is the outcome and the result for them, the perception of value for the client increases significantly. Therefore, they’re now willing to invest at a much higher level. That’s where you can go. I have one specific client. She was going back for renewal with an existing client on a second project.

She was thinking $60,000, $65,000 for the project based on hourly fees. We broke it all down together, looked at what she was doing, and what the outcome would be for her client. She ended up winning that business after she went back at $240,000. She didn’t have to spend any more time. There was no additional requirement on her side. It’s the way that she repositioned that to her client. It was still a great value for her client because what they were going to get was considerable in terms of value and return on investment.

She was potentially leaving six figures on the table. That’s the real opportunity for most people to have that baseline to know what is the line in the sand that you need to be at in order for things to be profitable for you and for it to make sense for you to engage in that project but then to get clear on what is the value that you’re truly providing. What does that return on investment for the client? What happens if they don’t move for it? There’s a whole bunch of criteria and questions that people need to look at that will help them to frame up and get clear on what that value premium component is. You want to put those two things together. That’s where much greater results start to happen.

I can see how in the consulting world, that makes perfect sense but if I’m an owner of a manufacturing business or an IT business, I love the concept of what’s your annual number. What do you think you’re worth and now apply that down to an hourly basis so you can decide whether or not you should be doing those tasks that you’re doing? Should you be involved in handling inbound client phone calls? Unless it’s an executive situation, you could figure that out. I love quoting an annual number and breaking it down so you know what your time is worth. Put worth on yourself and then figure out how to get everything else done that’s below that.

You can also reverse engineer that a little bit. You can get clear and say, “Here’s where that number is. Does that make sense?” In order to achieve that number, what do I need to do? How many clients or customers they need to have? What products or services do I need to sell? What marketing do I need to support that? Based on that, you might increase your projection or you might say, “I want to make $250,000 this year. What do I need to do to make that happen? What would it look like if I want to make $750,000 this year?” Adjust the model based on that. Figure out what are the components that are necessary to create that level of results and then go and start working towards that.

I love that way of thinking and that model. That’s a good frame of reference for folks. Let me shift gears here on you. We’ve been talking mostly about people who own a business and how they can move the needle. Let’s go to the other side of the ledger. People who are looking to buy a business whether it’s their first acquisition or they own a company and they’re looking to merge something in their existing operation. From a consultant’s perspective, what advice would you offer to people who are looking to buy a business in regards to their integration into that business? What should their 90 or 120-day plan look like when they first take over a business? When people acquire a business, they’re trying to dig in deep and understand everything. They may make some decisions too quickly. Maybe give folks a good frame of reference on the first 120 days in a new business.

It’s going to depend on what was the purpose of that acquisition. If you’re acquiring a company for its innovation then the cultural fit is going to be incredibly important. If you’re acquiring a company for some technology that it has or for its customer base that you can take over then you might be focused on something different. It’s important to look at it from what is the actual purpose. A few things that are very important, number one is that cultural fit in many cases.

 

That’s going to be incredibly important to look at. The other is to have a very clear plan. A lot of people dive into things and they don’t have a clear plan. People also come in with very rosy expectations. They can envision. There’s an entrepreneurial mindset to a degree where entrepreneurs will tend to look at what they can envision happening. They get very excitable of the potential like, “We’re going to partner with this big company or we’re going to buy this.”

They’re always looking at the best-case scenario. Quite often, entrepreneurs don’t necessarily look at what is the worst-case scenario, what if this doesn’t work, or what are the actual steps that we need to work through in order to create that level of result. When you go through it, thinking that not the best-case but also the worst-case and everything in between, it helps you to ensure that when you do encounter a bit of resistance or a challenge and when you’re going to be merging, acquiring, or taking over, it’s likely not going to be a very smooth ride all the time.

You’re going to face some bumps and hiccups. Preparing for that mentally but also having a plan so you’re very clear on what needs to happen and how to work through things. It is very important. The other I would say is if possible, don’t try and do it all yourself. One of the greatest ways to accelerate your success. We’ve certainly seen this in our business to find mentors and coaches. People have done it before so that you don’t have to try and figure everything out yourself and reinvent the wheel.

I would recommend that people identify a mentor, coach, advisor, or somebody who can help them to see even before they purchase a business to look at and get a different perspective to formulate better questions. You can then go and ask that company or get that information through a broker before you make that decision because you want to have a much better understanding of that business or as best as possible. You can’t have all the answers necessarily but you want to have as many answers as you possibly can to your thoughtful questions before you go in and acquire a business.

I can’t speak from the position of purchasing a business. I’ve sold a couple of businesses. I’ve never purchased a business myself so I didn’t have that first-time direct knowledge. I’m speaking from what I’ve seen in terms of working with clients. What I would personally think about if I was to go and acquire a company. Understand the financials and marketing plan is very important. Getting clear on how is this company acquiring their clients and what is the value of each of those clients. Personally, as a marketing person, what I always like to look at is where is their leverage?

Where is their low hanging fruit? What can I do to go into this business and make a few tweaks that they’re not using or not benefiting from? By making a few adjustments, we’re going to see a much better result. I’m always looking for what does that low-hanging fruit. Is it they have an email list and they’re not sending many emails to that list? They’re sending emails with those emails that don’t have a good call to action. What is it that they have in terms of their assets that are not being fully utilized that we can turn a little dial, pull the lever, and get a higher yield or a better result from?

I was consulting with a buyer, they were looking at acquiring a staffing agency and there was some low hanging fruit in that agency that would a little bit of effort could have a meaningful impact on that acquisition almost overnight. We got into talking about that and they’re now building a plan for how they’ll go execute against that. If they can pull that off quickly, they might pay for the entire acquisition which is a tremendous result. The other thing that I would add is when we talk to people about integrating into a new business, somebody has to be in charge of the integration. You can’t disperse it. Somebody has to own that process and the buck has to stop somewhere.

There is an owner to make sure that all the pieces fit together that you talked about culture, marketing, client acquisition, all of that stuff. Michael this has been great advice and great information. As we wrap up here, what thoughts would you have for business owners who work with potential business buyers during this COVID environment? What are you telling folks to be aware of and prepare for? It looks like we’ve got a vaccine that obviously is going to be hitting but we’re going to live with this for a while. Any advice that you’re offering the folks?

Back in April of 2020, I wrote a new book called ACT NOW: How Successful Consultants Thrive During Chaos and Uncertainty. I wrote that book to help the consulting community. I interviewed six friends and experts in the space to see if their thoughts aligned or were different from what I was having. It was very interesting to see that almost every single person that I interviewed said the exact same thing when it comes to what you should be doing. This, to me, is when you look at successful people, they don’t put their head in the sand when times are tough. What they do is they take more action.

That’s why I call it Act Now. Anyone that wants a copy of that book, we’re offering a free copy at ConsultingSuccess.com/actnow as a way to help people. You can also buy it if you want but there’s a free digital version there. The main thing that came from that is we wrote the book down to three areas. These are important and beneficial regardless of whether it is COVID, some economic collapse, any turbulence, or chaos in the marketplace.

The first is you want to extend your runway. You want to look for ways to be lean, profitable, and remove waste. That’s one big theme. The second theme is relationships. If you’ve invested in relationships, you’re going to be a lot better off than those that haven’t. If you’ve had a very transactional mindset and you don’t have a strong customer or client base, they’re going to jump ship as quickly as they possibly can.

They’re not going to even think about you in terms of that relationship because they never had one with you. If you invested in your relationships with your clients or customers, you’ll be in a much better position. The first thing that we did when COVID started, I was walking up and down my neighborhood blocks, calling clients on Saturday, and checking in, “How are you doing? How are things going?” The more contact you have with those that you serve or those in your ecosystem, the better. The third thing is about planting seeds now that will create the result that you want down the road. Most of the actions that you take now in the consulting and the marketing world, you’re going to see the benefit of those actions 30, 60, 90, 120 days from now, not tomorrow.

Even though you might be in a challenging situation, this is the time to act. Don’t wait for things to get better. Start doing things now. One of the best things that you can do is to be visible. Every single person can be a leader. It doesn’t matter if you are cleaning somebody’s house, you are leading the company as a CEO, or you’re a junior person in an organization, you still can be a leader. The true test of leadership is not what you do when times are good because it’s very easy to be a leader in good times. When times are tough, when there’s chaos, that’s the time where you want to step up, you want to lead by demonstration, and show people.

One of the greatest ways to do that is through action, creating content, thought leadership materials, and intellectual property. One of the things that we have done a lot for many years, especially during the COVID time, is we had lots of webinars, LinkedIn and YouTube Lives, and different content. The reason that I wrote the Act Now book was not to make money. The reason I wrote that was to help people. That’s why we made it freely available to people. We’re not expecting that someone reads that book and it goes, “I’m going to sign up.” We know that we’re planting seeds and we’re adding value. That’s the way that things work.

When you do that, good things will come. The big recommendation that I have for people is don’t look for excuses. COVID is a challenging time. Many people have lost loved ones. I know people who have lost loved ones. It’s a very hard time but life is filled with tough times. It’s very easy if you have the mindset of what’s always wrong. If you look for the negative glasses or you put on the negative lenses, you’ll always find something that could be better or something that isn’t a reason for saying not to happen. Instead, if you put on the positive lenses and you always look at what’s good about the situation and what can I do, then you’re going to take more action.

Action is what creates results. Thinking and planning are not what creates results, action does. My encouragement to people is to embrace action. Take more of it, think about how you can get closer to your ideal clients, how you can create more value even if it doesn’t lead to revenue growth or profit growth for you right away. Planting those seeds now is what ultimately will create a lot more value for the clients and customers that you want to serve but also for you and your business.

This is a period of tremendous opportunity. The opportunities are going to pop up everywhere if you’re looking for them. If you’re worried about controlling things, your mind is going to be closed, your eyes are going to be shot, there are tremendous opportunities if you’re open-minded and as you said, you’re acting so great advice. Michael, I appreciate you being here. If folks wanted to get in touch with you, how could they reach you?

ConsultingSuccess.com is home to everything. Lots of studies that we put out like articles and videos. We have the Consulting Success Podcast as well. You find on Amazon the books. Also, you’re welcome to reach out on LinkedIn. Put a little note in the connection request so I know that you’re coming from Domenic’s podcast and where you’re coming from. If anyone wants to dive deeper into the world of consulting, we have a 47-page blueprint that shares some of our most popular articles around how to get into consulting and grow a successful consulting business. You’re welcome to access that at ConsultingSuccess.com/Blueprint.

Michael, thanks again for being here. I appreciate it.

My pleasure, Domenic. Thanks so much for having me.

I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you enjoy our content, please remember to subscribe and review our podcast. I look forward to seeing you again in the next episode. Until then, please remember at scaling, acquiring, or selling a business, it takes time, preparation, and the proper knowledge.

Important Links:

• Michael Zipursky
• ConsultingSuccess.com
• ACT NOW: How Successful Consultants Thrive During Chaos and Uncertainty
• Consulting Success Podcast
• ConsultingSuccess.com/Blueprint

About Michael Zipursky

Michael Zipursky is the CEO of Consulting Success® and Coach to Consultants.

He has advised organizations like Financial Times, Dow Jones, RBC, and helped Panasonic launch new products into global markets, but more importantly, he’s helped over 450 consultants from around the world in over 75 industries add 6 and 7 figures to their annual revenues.

Over 35,000 consultants read his weekly consulting newsletter. Michael is also the author of the Amazon Best Sellers ACT NOW: How successful consultants thrive during chaos and uncertainty, The Elite Consulting Mind and Consulting Success®, book.

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