The Business Behind Consulting ◾ 121
meeting with a prospect, but it could be two months, three months, or six
months after that conversation before that client is ready to fully engage.
You work on their time frame, not yours.
I have a friend that’s starting a consultancy right now, and I’ve given him
all of my budgeting and planning tools, but he hasn’t used them. Instead, he’s
filling his calendar with coffee meetings, breakfast meetings, dinner meet-
ings, and all of that. I call it the shotgun approach and it won’t work. He hasn’t
developed a strategy around where the low-hanging fruit is, where he’s going
to get the business.
When I started out, I didn’t have the luxury of being able to fail. I had
worked in various organizations for twenty years, but it had always been
my plan to become a consultant. From the very beginning, I wanted to be
my own boss. I wanted to make a lot of money, and I wanted to havethe
freedom to do things like go to my girls’ track meets. I wanted to have
theopportunity for high income and freedom, freedom of the wheres and
the whens. That doesn’t mean that I don’t work crazy hours—I do—but I
find the harmony in the flexibility that comes with being a consultant.
I’m the sole earner in our household. We have a fairly expensive lifestyle
simply because of schools and elder care and all those things that go with
raising a family. For me, the consequences of failure would have been very,
very serious.
And so it wasn’t a question of “Can I make a good deal of money?” It was
this: “If I’m going to do this, I have to make a good deal of money.”
I had been in business for two years before I went through Odyssey.
Afterwards, my revenues increased five- or sixfold.
What Odyssey did was it helped me get clarity around what I was good at,
what areas of consulting I enjoyed, and where I could make the most money. It
showed me how to work—in Odyssey parlance—at Levels 3 and 4, how to find
the right prospects, and how to create a strategy for getting in front of them.
Odyssey in Action II
Vicki Lauter, Managing Partner, Strategic Human Insights, Atlanta, Georgia
The Test Comes When You Quote Your Price
When I started back in 2001, my business was retained executive search for
the healthcare industry. I had worked in that area in Accenture, and in Ernst