122 ◾ Odyssey—The Business of Consulting
and Young before that. And when I started out, it was great. I made a lot of
money, I loved my clients, and I loved what I was doing.
In the US, people were having a hard time finding the right candidates
for the right roles. But what started happening with me is that I ended up
giving away a lot of services for free. You don’t know what you don’t know,
right? There was so much I didn’t know about building a business, about the
financial side. I just loved what I was doing, and I wanted to help people as
much as possible.
The thing is, you’re providing a huge amount of value. They know it, so
they’re taking advantage of you in a sense because you’re not smart enough
to recognize that you should really change your pricing. For some clients,
Iwas basically doing the HR job and not getting paid for it.
So I went to Odyssey in 2011. The program helped me to realize that
I was providing more value than I was being paid for. We know that all
business is not good business, and while it’s not fun to lose a client, you
can’t waste your time on somebody that doesn’t really get your value, some-
one who’s thinking, “I’m getting a whole lot and she’s not smart enough to
know to charge me more …”
I always remember John Butler in the marketing webinar saying, “When
you quote your price, the test is going to come.” I thought that was interest-
ing at the time, but I didn’t really understand it until I came home and actu-
ally put it to the test.
After Odyssey, I got my ducks together. I had the fee conversation, the
one John set so much store by, with two different companies. Was it uncom-
fortable? Yes, it was. I got sick to my stomach. But the one thing that I real-
ized, and the one thing that continues to hold true today is this: I know that
I provide tremendous value to my Ideal Clients.
One client just didn’t get it. I told them that I could no longer work with
them as I had in the past. But they didn’t want to pay the money, so I said,
“Well that’s okay,” and I walked away.
The other client was a consulting firm in the healthcare sector. The proj-
ect involved taking their recruiting process and completely reorganizing it.
At first, they balked at the fee. They were like, “Wow. Really? That seems to
be a lot of money.”
I just said, “Well … no. At the end of the year, you’ll see whether or not
this makes financial sense, and if it doesn’t, I’ll give you your money back.”
They had been in a massive, ongoing struggle to find and retain the right
people. But by the end of the project, their turnover rate was down to 10%.