You don’t need masters’ degree or unique certifications to break into corporate consulting or coaching. You also don’t need to become some marketing guru to land work with the C-Suite. Instead, if you want to start finding and landing executive advisory assignments with high-level leaders, you need to cultivate the following attributes that they find the most valuable.

1. Business Acumen

• Focuses applying expertise towards achievement of business outcomes (vs. implementing a methodology.)
• Knows how the various functions of a business work and relate to each other.
• Understands business drivers, challenges, competition, goals and strategies.
• Speaks the language of business – financials, data and analytics.

2. Political Savvy

• Can recommend solutions that consider the realities of the formal and informal power networks.
• Understands how the culture and power networks operate within the client system.
• Able to build relationships for mutual benefit and win support...

A couple of days ago I wrote an article that differentiates between consultants and coaches and the respective business models. 

I realized that I was remiss in pointing out one business model that both might choose: becoming a subcontractor.

Quick Recap on the Difference Between Consultants and Coaches

Consultants and coaches are both executive advisors. The difference between the two is the way that they advise their clients. 

Consultants are more focused on enhancing leadership and organizational capacity whereas coaches are more focused on the leaders themselves and helping them improve their personal and leadership effectiveness.

A consulting business is a "business to business" (BTB) model where you get paid to improve an organization's results. A coaching business is a "business to consumer" (BTC business) where you get paid to improve an individual's results. 

What is a Subcontractor?

A subcontractor is a self-employed consultant or coach...

When you first start your consulting and coaching business, you are likely to get a lot of referrals to potential clients. But referrals will only take you so far, especially if you want to scale up your business. Therefore, you need to create marketing routines that consistently generate leads and future clients into your pipeline.

Marketing has one job – to get qualified leads to know who you are and be interested in having a conversation with you. But when it comes to marketing as a consultant, you need to add one other thing: You need to establish your credibility. You are not selling widgets for low prices. You are selling your know-how in exchange for significant fees.

Therefore, create your overall marketing strategy that sets the context for you to be able to make a powerful promise and then deliver on that promise. Select tactics that give you the opportunity to make create a relationship to the right people that you can most help.

1. Identify Your Ideal...

All thought leaders have a big breakthrough idea that they contribute to global conversation. Brené Brown is known for her contributions of our understanding of "shame and vulnerability." Marcus Buckingham brought "strengths" to our awareness. Daniel Goldman did the same with emotional intelligence. Simon Sinek - your "why", Donald Miller - "story brand" and the list goes on.

What's A Big Breakthrough Idea?

At the core of what you do isn't your methods or techniques. It's not your certifications in different tools either.  It's your stance. Simply put, your stance is your position or point of view on how to create essential change or transformation in an individual or a group of individuals.

There are three parts of your stance:

1. What's the ideal state - what does individual and/organization health look like
2. What has gone wrong - why don't people live that ideal state
3. What is the best way to fix the gap

Defining The Ideal State

The...

As a mentor who helps people turn their life work into their own businesses, I meet a lot of highly trained and experienced professionals with both vision...and fear.

Their vision is that they want to take control over their career and use their time and talents towards building their own bottom line instead of someone else's. Because they have already achieved success - they are looking now for significance.

And they have fear. Of course they do. It's a big deal to leave the comforts of a steady paycheck for the unknown world of business ownership.

The challenge with fear is that is not that it's there. Its presence is actually a good thing. It's a sign that of growth and opportunity. It's fear unacknowledged or ineffectively addressed that messes with success.

Because fear in those situations gets passive aggressive and puts on disguises that seriously mess with success. Fear can look like integrity with claims that "I don't want to come across like a slick, used car...

Want rock-solid confidence that starting or growing your own consulting or coaching business is right for you? Use these questions to help you get it.

1. What is telling you that you want to grow your own consulting or coaching business?

Which of the following reflects your answer:

• I have always wanted to run my own business
• I'm burnt out
• I got laid off
• I just want more - more freedom, more control, more meaning

What your answers indicate:

The desire to grow your own business doesn’t happen overnight. It’s probably been going on for a while. A key indicator that you’re supposed to grow your own business is simply that you want to. You think that the idea sounds exciting and if you had it all your way – if fears about money and having what it takes were off the table – this is what you’d love to do.

2. What emotions do you experience when you think about growing your own business?

Which of the following reflects your answer:

• Excitement, Calm,...

The two most popular paths high achievers take when they leave corporate is to either start their own consulting business or start their own coaching business. In this blog post I want to help you understand the difference between the two so that you can you know which one is right for you AND set yourself up for success.

The Difference Between the Role of a Consultant and a Coach

Consultants and coaches are both executive advisors. The difference between the two is the way that they advise their clients. 

As a consultant - your role is to enhance leadership and organizational capacity. You help your clients by providing an independent point of view on the root causes to organizational challenges, recommending solutions to resolve those challenges and facilitating leaders to come to agreement on how to they will work together to implement those solutions.

Consultants are not leaders in that they are not accountable for the implementation of solutions. They may support...

"If your success is not on your own terms, if it looks good to the world
but does not feel good in your heart, it is not success at all."
Anna Quindlen

Have you fallen out of love with your career (or has it fallen out of love with you?) There is nothing scarier for a high-achiever than to hit the top of their profession and wonder what it's all for. 

If you're at this type of critical career crossroads - your thoughts might be overwhelmed with questions about, "What's next?" and "What's my purpose?"

You know you're ready for more - just not more of the same. You want to take charge of your career and time but how? Start your own business? Get another job?

In this blog post I take you through the 5 smart strategies that will help you figure out what's next and how to make it real.

Step 1: Make a Bugs List

Your career challenges aren't what they seem. On the surface they seem to be about the nutty way your company redefined your job (or took it away.) Or how the relentless...

Almost all the consultants and coaches that I mentor want to become an executive advisor. For some this means that they want to work with more senior leaders in larger companies. For others this means that they want all of their revenue to come from their ability to give expert advice to executives. For others they simply want to increase the value of their contracts and reduce labor intensity by offering more executive sounding board type services.

While these goals make sense - they are missing the heart of what it really means to be an executive advisor and what it takes to succeed in this sacred and noble role.

An executive advisor at its core is someone who speaks truth to power so that those in charge make decisions that benefit the realm.

The relationship between the Sovereign and his/her Advisors is an ancient one - one that is documented in both the Bible and in ancient myths. It's the story of Samuel and David, Merlin and King Arthur and Rafiki and Simba. ...

If you're a consulting or coaching business owner, you probably invest a ton of time, money and mental energy trying to find your perfect clients and convince them of your value. You might even stay up at night wondering what words you can use to establish instant credibility and how to market yourself so that what you offer comes across as irresistible.

And in the process, you're overlooking one key factor: A client/consultant or coach relationship is an equal partnership between two people. 

It can't just be about you working with anyone who will hire you. It also has to be about working with clients who are worthy of YOUR time and talents.

Two clients that pay you the same amount are not equal.

The clients that are the most valuable - the ones that make you feel like you make a difference are the ones that let you. They are teachable, open and will create the conditions for you to do fully show up and offer the range of support you are capable of. 

The clients who...