292 | Breaking into Business Consulting: Upleveling in the Impact Space with Paul Zelizer
This week on the pod is our montly solo episode with Paul Zelizer. Paul is one of the first business coaches to specialize in working with social entrepreneurs and the host of the popular Awarepreneurs podcast. He's also been doing an increasing amount of business consulting with impact organizations and executive coaching with impact leaders.
This episode is sponsored by the coaching company of our host, Zelizer Consulting Services.
Resources mentioned in this episode include:
Breaking into Business Consulting: Episode with Paul Zelizer
NOTE: While it’s not perfect, we offer this transcription by Otter.ai for those who are hearing impaired or who don’t find listening to a podcast enjoyable or possible.
SPEAKERS
Paul Zelizer
Paul Zelizer 00:01
Hi, this is Paul Zelizer, and welcome to another episode of the Awarepreneurs podcast. On this show, we dive deep into wisdom from some of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. Our goal is to help you increase your positive impact, your profitability, and your quality of life. Before we get into today's topic, I have one request. If you could hit subscribe and do a review on your favorite podcast app that helps more people learn how to have positive impact through a values based business. Today, it's time for a regular monthly episode with yours truly, Paul Zelizer, the founder of Awarepreneurs. And our topic is Breaking into Business Consulting: Upleveling in the Impact Space. And I've been getting asked about this a lot. I'm going to tell you two stories and kind of what seems to be sparking the interest. Recently on April 1, actually, I started with a wonderful organization here in New Mexico called New Mexico Angels. And I was recruited for that position. Being a consultant to the organization by a colleague and a friend Drew Tulchin Drew is a B Corp expert. And one of the best known and probably the largest B Corp has ever come out of New Mexico. Drew was the first CFO for the organization. During his time there, they raised $120 million. Obviously, the dude knows some things. Big shout out to drew my role with New Mexico angels is to be a consultant to help with increasing memberships and sponsorships, as well as keep moving the needle in the direction of more positive impact in the New Mexico ecosystem. So that's scenario number one. And shortly thereafter, as that conversation was happening, another wonderful opportunity in a more corporate consulting space business consulting space came my way. And that was the SBA Thrive program. I'll put a link to both organizations, New Mexico, angels and SBA thrive in the show notes. Basically, they were looking for an executive coach for an Albuquerque cohort have this national program that's about accelerating business growth, the guidelines already have to have 250,000 of revenue each year, at least three employees and you're looking to grow. And they saw my profile on LinkedIn I had never heard of the program didn't know the people who were recruiting for was entirely they found me on LinkedIn, I believe they also checked out my podcast. And they had a sense that what I was talking about the values and the experience I had, taking a look at my podcast, as well as my LinkedIn profile that they thought it was a fit for New Mexico. For those of you who don't know about New Mexico, we're called the first majority minority state. In other words, particularly because of our large Latinx population, and the second highest Native American or indigenous population in the country, only Alaska has a higher proportion of indigenous state citizens, and a wide variety of other diverse citizens of New Mexico. They felt like the work that I was talking about was a fit for what the people who were running that program wanted to see. So there are several other things in the works that haven't been, you know, sealed and signed. But that gives you a sense, like my average, like, the revenue and scale of who I'm working with is going up and people are noticing that and asking questions. How is that happening? People are also noticing to make room for more in this kind of work. I recently made the decision in conversation with community members to sunset the larger aware printers community. One point we had over 250 members all around the world. And they were printers community has been an affordable membership community for people to support each other learning about aware partner learning about social entrepreneurship, and giving resources and feedback excetera. Over the course of like, coming out of COVID, we saw participation go down. We saw members starting to you know, decide to invest especially in more local communities that were meeting face to face and decided that wider angle community wasn't quite needed as when it was started five or six years ago. We are still doing an impact podcast community that's growing smaller community more dedicated, just has more. You know, it's more nuanced, it's more precise, and who it's looking to help people who have podcasts or want a guest on podcast, or some other marketing channels like a YouTube channel or a blog that are wanting to use that to grow their impact and their revenue that's growing but the wider community has time to sunset it and As I made that decision, public, people had a lot of questions about what's going on with your business. So here I am sharing a little bit. That's what's going on, pull back the curtain vault, getting more into business consulting, it's really fun really enjoying it. And people are asking me, How do you do that. So today, I want to give you three strategies that I recommend for anybody who wants to move more in the direction of business consulting, executive coaching in the impact space. And hopefully, this will be useful for your journey as well. The first suggestion I have is to give more granular attention to the issues that your ideal client faces. For instance, I'm working with a client right now. And the way we're languaging it and her coaching is to bridge from the mindset of a life coach, to a leadership coach. So what does that mean? A life coach might say something like, to somebody who's at work, you know, given what's going on in the economy and layoffs, and we're either in a recession, or it seems like we're headed towards one, if you listen to the experts, right? In that sort of more stressful time, to, you know, touch in with your people more, right to listen to them more. That's great advice, but it's very general, more granular, would be something like, I want you to touch in with your people 30% More than you happen. Those don't have to be long Kuchins, they might just be a couple of minutes at the end of a meeting. Or, you know, when your notice that person if you're working in the same office, or an email that just says, Hey, I'm thinking about you, I know you've been working hard lately, just want to check in how you're doing right? Give them some very granular suggestions of like, how often or what does it look like. And then you notice I gave some very specific example. So somebody who's newer or more wider angle, like a life coach might just say touch in with your people, somebody who's wanting to get into a more up leveled, more corporate more business consulting configuration of their work, I want you to be more granular, give examples, try to put some metrics without forcing it. But try to give them some idea. We're not asking them to do 1,000%, more touchings. But 20 to 30%. Is feels doable, especially if you give them a sense, like this isn't, write them a book. This isn't like spend five hours like give them some realistic examples and metrics that they can bake into their everyday life. And you'll notice that people start to treat you different than the person who's giving wide angle, no metrics, no examples. The second strategy I have, neither of these examples that I shared with you at the beginning that came through my business would be likely to have happened if I didn't have this podcast. People who know me, Drew has been a guest on the podcast drew from New Mexico angels. He's also referred other guests of impact initiatives that he's passionate about, or an investor in, he knows me better, partially because he sees that I'm out here doing podcast episodes on topics that he and the people in his network care about, and happened for years. 290 Plus episodes over the almost five years now. You want to move the needle into more robust business. positioning in the impact space and work with leaders work with whole organizations work with companies that have more revenue and are not early startups only. Then having a content channel where you're working on. Very similar to the first suggestions, the granular issues, bring guests on if you are doing interviews who have really impactful things to say, have great strategies and tactics and are not just saying the same thing over and over again, treat your people well, yes, treat your people well, but that's boring. Get into the nuts and bolts. You know, how do you people are thinking about layoffs, right? How do you lay somebody off, and you lay people off in a kind and compassionate way that doesn't destroy the morale of your company? That would be like you get a sense of like how somebody who's up leveling and providing value to impact business leaders and organizations. They have a way of showing up in the marketplace that's
Paul Zelizer 09:38
very different than, you know, a 13 word picture quote on Instagram. Not that that's a bad thing. But having a content channel where you do your deeper dives, whether they're solo episodes, or you're writing blog posts or you're interviewing guests that have real expertise they have real gravitas in The space that you want to increase your profile in, I know for me, my average guest is running a impact business, or is an investor at a level that's quite different than they were five years ago. I'll give you an example. We had a postponed because he's busy. But the founder of a Keto labs, wonderful AI, focused platform that helps get much better care, more preventative care, or follow up care for people who are unhoused, or marginally housed, or on the very edges of marginalized communities. All the Keto labs, they came out of the Y Combinator, incubator and accelerator system, they're up to 750 employees, I think that was in four years, three years anyway, you get an idea, this is a very robust impact business 750 employees have really been very successful at doing several rounds of fundraising. They contacted me, because I've been doing this for a while. But I've been moving in that direction very intentionally over the past number of years of going from interviewing a lot of early startups and some coaches and some consultants in the space to more regularly interviewing guests who have very impressive stories in the space that I want to make a difference in social entrepreneurship. Right. And that by it's called social capital, you're just making your reputation is growing, as you're interviewing people like that, who have more experience who have gotten some of the results that your ideal client wants, then when I was earlier on and wasn't doing that as intentionally and also didn't have the network to, you know, attract such guest, but now I understand what I was trying to get to, I see that that can happen much faster than I did, that was very, very good. For moving the needle on the average revenue size, let's say, for the clients that I'm working with. So having a content channel, being really regular about it, whatever your publishing schedule is, started that twice a month, I now do weekly for a little bit, I tried to do twice a week, it was too much. So it's not that it can't change. But if you have whatever it is a YouTube channel or a blog, or podcast, and you do an episode twice in one month, and you don't do anything for three months, and you do it twice, and you don't want you get a sense. That's not what Steven Pressfield in the book called Turning Pro that's not professional, that's an amateur way to approach it. Have a content channel, create a publishing schedule, get really intentional about who your guests are, if you're doing solo episodes, get really specific about the issues you're addressing, and really try to dial them in to where your ideal client, the upper end of who you're feeling comfortable serving, what they're struggling with what they're passionate about, but don't quite know how to be to bring about and land your episode there week after week after week, as much as you humanly can, and you're going to attract a much larger and much more restore organization to come knock on your door and say, Hey, we want to talk to you. So let's take a quick break on want to hear a word from our sponsor, and we come back, I'm going to talk to you about what our sponsor is going to talk about leveling your LinkedIn profile. It's no secret that I'm a big fan of LinkedIn. In fact, I've recently been sharing some of the experiences I've had of getting business consulting contracts from my LinkedIn connections. But let me give you your data points that will help you understand why I'm so excited. LinkedIn has users in over 200 countries, and 53% of LinkedIn users have a high monthly income. Only about 1% of LinkedIn users actually post on the platform regularly. Compare that to Instagram, where it's over 69%. So it's much harder to get your content seen. And lastly, marketers see 2x higher conversion on LinkedIn than any other social media platform. Maybe you've heard about LinkedIn and you've thought about using it but you're not really sure what to do. How do you attract higher level opportunities through LinkedIn? I've been doing a lot of sessions with people on this exact topic LinkedIn for Social Entrepreneurs. If you wanted to, you could use my strategy session format to do a LinkedIn profile review where we'll do things like look at your headshot, your timeline, photo, your bio, your about section and your experience and tailor them all to your ideal client. And in addition, we'll do a simple LinkedIn marketing plan. for your business based on your goals to help you leverage this powerful platform, if you'd like to find out more, you can click on the link below. And just let me know you'd really like to uplevel your game on LinkedIn and get more results. So welcome back, folks. And in this last part of the show, I want to talk to you a little bit about up leveling your LinkedIn profile, that is the third strategy we're going to cover today, you want to get into business consulting or higher level clients in the impact space. LinkedIn is been incredibly powerful. For me, again, the SBA thrive. opportunity came my way, because the person who was charged with finding client, finding coaches in markets where they were not necessarily very familiar with went to LinkedIn did a search and in the Albuquerque area, my profile popped up. So that's a real world example. There are many others in my business over the past two years, and especially over the past year, really gotten an increasing amount of value in what's happening for me on LinkedIn. So the main suggestions I had there is really, first of all, get clear on who is that next level client for you? In the business consulting, or leadership coaching or executive coaching realm? What are some of the specific issues they're facing or questions that they have, and really start to tell her what you're doing on LinkedIn, to be super helpful to them. A couple of data points about LinkedIn. One is that it's really helpful to know that 53% of LinkedIn users have a high monthly household income that's categorized as $75,000 or higher in the US. And the biggest thing to know is that only 1% of users post on LinkedIn regularly. On Instagram, that number is something like 69%. That's, I think, the highest percentage of users who post regularly on LinkedIn, if you're posting even twice a week, you're in the 1%. And hundreds of people, especially if you use things like hashtags, if you're posting regularly, people outside of your network will see your posts. And it also helps the algorithm say, Hey, this is a person who's really showing up on LinkedIn. So your profile gets an algorithmic boost in a wide variety of ways. For instance, let's say somebody's searching for a business consultant in Albuquerque, or an executive coach who does work with impact organizations in LA, or London or Chicago or Texas, wherever you live, you get algorithmic benefits. I regularly posting on LinkedIn, especially around consistent themes, my case things like social entrepreneurship, impact investing, podcasting, etc, etc. I've been doing that for years now.
Paul Zelizer 18:07
So getting clear on who your ideal client is what some of the questions they have about social entrepreneurship, or podcasting, or impact investing. And it doesn't even have to be your own content, you can reshare content from other people in your network. One of my favorite strategies is I use Google Alerts, which are free tools on Google, where you can set certain keywords, and you send your Google send you an email, so let's say social entrepreneurship. Once a week, Google sends me an email with some of the like, usually, like 12 to 15 of some of the more talked about more interesting things in the social entrepreneur space that other people created. That can be a YouTube video, that can be an article that can be something on LinkedIn that a lot of people are engaging with, right? Google crawls the web and says, Here's what people interested in social entrepreneurship are engaging with on the web sends it to me, I can pick one of those out post it and that's maybe one of the I tend to post on LinkedIn four to seven times a week, sometimes multiple times a day. And at least one or two of those comes from those Google Alerts strategy that I just shared with you. So sharing like your original content, my podcast, obviously, episode goes up every week, you use Google to get alerts, you should reshare stuff from your colleagues. You share something that came up in a session, or that somebody emailed you about and suddenly you're at three, four times a week posting on LinkedIn, and you're not even in the 1% You're in the point 1%, the number of people who will see your profile and start to engage with it, and the algorithmic benefits are off the chart. So those are three strategies that I would suggest to anybody who's looking to uplevel your work in the impact space, whether you want to get into business consulting, executive coaching, leadership coaching. In the impact space, you've got a platform in the impact space that you want people to use, I highly suggest these three suggestions. Again, number one, pay attention to the granular issues that your ideal client is facing. And really speak to those. And the variety of ways that you're in the marketplace. Number two, have a content channel and really lean in, whether it's a podcast, a YouTube channel, or a blog, something like that, go deep, do it regularly get good at it, make it a priority. And number three, really lean into LinkedIn. It's an incredible platform, with people with more financial resources and more leadership decisions. These are folks who are more likely to be driving the decisions in an organization about which platform to buy, which business consultant to hire, etc. So if you're on LinkedIn, and you're doing it with care and intention, and your profile is really optimized, then you're much more likely to get these kinds of up level contracts or gigs that people have been reaching out to me about. Before we go, I just want to thank you so much for listening and remind you that we love listener suggested topics and guests. Here's an example. My inbox has quite a few people saying, Hey, what's going on? And how did you get into this business consulting thing. So this came directly from you, the listeners reaching out. So if you have an idea for a topic, or you think there's a guest, that would be a great fit for the program, please go to the AWARE printers website. And on our contact page, we have three simple guidelines, particularly for those guest interviews, what we're looking for. So take a look at those and if you think it's a fit, please send in your ideas. We love it when our listeners make suggestions. For now, I just want to say thank you so much for listening. Please take really good care in these intense times. And thank you for all the positive impact that you're working for her in our work.