It is hard to believe that it has been three years since I hung my shingle and ventured out on my own. Yup: August 4th, 2010 was the first day of what has turned out to be Explorics, for me a thrilling new life and incidentally the longest job I’ve ever kept.
I had just left a struggling startup that was building a product no one needed, and resolved not to enter a situation like that again. While searching for the right opportunity, I ended up creating it for myself.
Explorics is actually my second startup. The funny thing is, for a long time I didn’t really consider it a startup. I started the company as a collection of contract gigs, relentlessly pushing myself to build a bigger book of business and then see if it turned into anything. It took some time before I even considered it a “company.”
A funny story about that: in the early days, I would often ponder over dinner with my wife, explaining how “if I can just accomplish this next thing, I might actually have a real company.” This went on for about a year before she said to me, “Brian, you have been doing this for a while now. You have clients, and you are getting more of them. They keep coming back to you. You have an office, you are putting other people to work, and you’re getting paid for it. What will it take for you to realize: IT IS A REAL BUSINESS.”
Of course she was right. At that moment I stopped treating Explorics as a “what-if.” I was no longer running an experiment. I was running a business.
I’m often asked to share my experiences starting a consulting business. Today, on Explorics’s third birthday, I thought it’d be a nice idea to share the three most important pieces of advice I have received, all of which were instrumental in getting us to the point we are at today.
1. You can’t sell and deliver at the same time
I heard this directly, I read it in books, I experienced it firsthand. When you get a project, you want to focus all your efforts on doing a great job and delivering the best results you can for your client. If you are doing this, you aren’t out socializing and building relationships. You don’t have time to sell. Then of course, you complete that project, and it’s back into sales mode – at which time you aren’t delivering, by definition. This is a pattern you need to accept, because it’s almost impossible to do a good job at both at once.
2. Sell when you are busiest
This rule seems mutually exclusive with the first. If you can’t sell and deliver at the same time, how are you supposed to sell when you are busiest? But the truth is you are most effective at selling when you are busiest. You have lots of project knowledge to draw from, and the enthusiasm from being busy is a powerful source of energy in the sales process. You also choose better projects because you aren’t feeling desperate. There are a lot of reasons why you sell more effectively when you are busiest. Figuring out how to do that while you are delivering – well that may violate the first rule but it is exactly what you need to do.
3. Successful projects – and happy clients – are your most important assets
Do everything you can to make a client happy. Always deliver your best work, and if you can’t do it yourself, get other people who know exactly what they are doing to help. Selling to a new client is very expensive as it takes a lot of time to build up trust and confidence. So you want to think about the least expensive ways to sell, which are: selling to a previous client, selling to a referral from a previous client, and selling off a reputation of your previous work. Focus on doing a great job for your clients, and it will be the key to resolving the inherent conflict in the first two points.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that the lesson perhaps even more important than all of these is the quality of your people. The value a consulting business provides depends entirely on the team that delivers the work. So get great people, and do everything you can to keep them.
Happy Birthday to us!
