14 ◾ Odyssey—The Business of Consulting
He says: “That’s when I discovered a passion for getting people from
point A to point B a bit quicker than they had been going.” When he left
college, he started his own business, bringing together his exercise physiol-
ogy major with his passion for coaching athletes, to create outdoor experien-
tial training programs for a wide range of clients.
He was, at that time, the quintessential Good Soldier. Enthusiastic, profes-
sional committed to doing the best job he possibly could. But inexperienced. He
had commoditized his expertise and was selling solutions to a client base that
could quite possibly have gone elsewhere for the same service.
When he discovered experiential learning, he diversified into executive
coaching and quickly collected several high profile clients, including United
Airlines and Mobil Oil. He ran corporate executive retreats, where he would
lead groups of execs on outdoor programs designed to teach them about
leadership and team dynamics. Whit’s Competent Warrior years were good …
but they were not great.
“I found that most of the work that I was getting was a one- or two-day
team building event. Or I’d do an open-invitation seminar, where anyone
could come along. I was making enough to pay the bills, but it was all very
short term. There wasn’t a whole lot of what I’d call stickability to it.”
Whit had the sense that he was missing out on something, that there was
work out there that was more valuable, more worthwhile, more fulfilling. So he
went looking for pathways out of what he was doing, and discovered Odyssey.
He signed up with the Odyssey Business of Consulting program and spent
five days in Dublin, Ireland working through the coursework with eight other
participants. “Most of my contracts were between $3,500 and $7,000 for a one-
or two-day program and a little bit of follow up. Within three months of going
with Odyssey, I secured a year-long deal worth $200,000.”
The transformation was dramatic. The one and two day programs fell away.
He stopped providing product-based solutions and began developing lasting,
long term relationships with great clients, clients who came back to him again
and again, and became his best referrers. Instead of talking to function heads
and HR people, he established direct connections with VPs and CEOs. Whit
changed the way he thought about his business, his clients, and even himself.
In securing that first $200K contract, he was, he admits, shocked at his
own audacity. “I walked into the CEO’s office of a small manufacturing
company in New Hampshire, gave him the price and he said: ‘Great! When
do we get started?’ I was flabbergasted. I walked out and got in my car and
yelled at the top of my lungs, I couldn’t believe it.”