Working Smarter, Not Harder — A Critical Mindset for Consulting Success

• Feeling like no matter how hard — or late — I work , I will never get ahead of the workload or receive an equivalent increase in income
• Scrambling to pull together the funds to pay quarterly taxes
• Resisting the option to outsource many tasks because it's ''just easier to do it myself''

• Get serious about finances. I've always done a good job of tracking my expenses (including having a budget in my accounting software), but I never consistently evaluated my income and expenses against that budget. Now, I regularly evaluate my budget (which I also fine-tuned) against actual performance each month. Just the act of watching my expenses more closely ensures that I'm making smarter decisions with my hard-earned money — both personally and for the business. I also tuck away 40% of my revenue to cover tax payments each quarter. This has eliminated a lot of stress.
  
  
• Work with a business coach. Hiring a business coach who understands all of the fundamentals of running a business gave me the perspective I needed to improve my business processes in a number of areas:
  
  
  • Establishing clear guidelines for when to utilize outside resources versus doing the work myself. I gained a clearer understanding of when it makes sense to outsource and also developed procedures for the outsourced work, thus streamlining the process of orienting new resources and avoiding the ''it's easier to do it myself'' syndrome. Moreover, I'm free to work on the tasks that make the most sense for me to do: account management, marketing, strategy, and analysis
    
    
  • Developing and managing a sound marketing plan. Defining the activities that lead to the bulk of my new business, establishing measurable goals, and regularly monitoring my activities in light of those goals, gives me a clear, concrete plan that's easy to follow versus fuzzy and easy to avoid.
    
    
  • Creating clear criteria for what constitutes profitable business versus work that isn't worth pursuing. I've always suspected that certain projects are more profitable than others, and analysis confirmed this suspicion. Projects that involve an ongoing relationship and repeatable processes deserve my priority focus, while onesy-twosy opportunities should be moved to the bottom of the list. A project's start-up process is always hardest, regardless of the project's size, so it's preferable to invest in that process once and then reap the benefits of an ongoing relationship.

A coach's true value goes beyond helping to implement best practices. My business coach holds me accountable and helps me stay strategic, preventing me from slipping back into the ''doing'' mode. And that's an invaluable benefit.