Thrashing vs. Systems - What My Program Teaches About Attracting Clients
There's one very important lesson about building a thriving consulting practice that many newcomers overlook. And it's probably not what you might think.
This is a reminder that my Indispensable Consulting Program begins on Oct 27. We’re limiting this program to just twenty people. If you want to be one of them, I recommend you sign up soon.
The Most Common Type Of Consulting Story
An acquaintance decided to become a consultant after being laid off a few years ago.
She set up her website, listed her offerings, attended some events, and won a $40k+ client within the first month. She was delighted and felt well on her way to building her thriving consulting practice.
Alas, that client was a previous employer, and she only got halfway through the project before the budget was pulled.
After that, she began doing lots of different things. She joined an alliance of consultants, began intermittently posting spicy takes and deep-dives on LinkedIn, published a few blog posts, spoke at a couple of events (at a significant personal cost), and continually tweaked and updated the services on her website - hoping to find a target audience.
This is known as thrashing. And none of it worked. After 18 months, she gave up (without landing another client) and eventually found her way back to employment.
Trashing Is Far Too Common
Trashing is the practice of trying lots of different things in quick succession (or simultaneously) to attract clients and hoping one of them works.
Alas, it rarely does. It’s far more likely you will run out of energy, patience, or money and go back to employment instead.
Signs of trashing include:
Sporadic and intermittent posting on social media channels.
Constantly changing service offerings - rewriting your website every few weeks, never letting a clear positioning stick.
Chasing every new “hot” idea — trying to build a course, start a podcast, launch a newsletter, and run events all within a few months.
Over-investing in visibility tactics without a pipeline - spending money on conferences, ads, or branding work while having no consistent method of turning contacts into clients.
Jumping between niches - one week targeting tech startups, the next mid-size agencies, then NGOs, then “anyone who needs strategy.”
Joining multiple groups/alliances - hoping someone else will send leads, but not building direct client relationships.
Panic rebranding - changing logos, names, or messaging as a substitute for real business development.
Erratic outreach - sending a burst of cold emails or DMs, then going silent for months.
Measuring the wrong things - obsessing over likes, followers, or impressions instead of clear expressions of interest from prospective clients.
If you’re finding yourself doing any of these, my program will help.
Here’s A Secret To Success
One thing I’ve learned over the past fifteen years is that success takes time, and most people quit far too soon.
It takes time to build a connection, so clients come to you.
It takes time to improve the quality of your deliverables so you attract repeat clients.
It takes time for your newsletter or blog to build an audience large enough that referrals begin to flow.
It takes time for your LinkedIn posts to shift from polite likes to genuine inbound inquiries.
It takes time for a reputation to form around your name so that people mention you in rooms you’re not in.
It takes time for the first workshop you deliver to become the case study that convinces the next client.
It takes time for a network of five supportive peers to grow into fifty people who actively send you opportunities.
It takes time for the doubts and awkwardness of selling to fade, and for you to become confident in asking for the work.
But if you don’t give it time, you’re just trashing. You’re hoping for instant success. You’re jumping from one thing to the other, expecting instant results - and that’s just not how it works.
To quote Seth Godin:
A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner.
The best way to think about this is to expect the process.
This means assume that whatever you’re doing for the first time won’t be a success. But you’re going to do it anyway, so you can learn, build your skillset, get feedback, and then adapt accordingly.
This Is Why My Program Focuses On Systems
This story (new consultant lands a couple of clients and struggles to attract more) is incredibly common. That’s because when you launch your practice, you probably have a couple of close business relationships who are willing to hire you.
But the real challenge begins when you exhaust those initial relationships and need to build a steady pipeline of new clients comprising of people you don’t know today.
And that requires a system. Actually, it requires multiple systems.
These are precisely the systems we cover in the Indispensable Consulting Systems program. This includes:
Selecting the right niche (and continually refining it).
Ensuring you’re always offering the right services at that niche.
Establishing the pricing tiers you’re working within.
Positioning yourself to be distinct within your ecosystem.
Building awareness within that sector and earning trust.
etc…
Each system is something you set up and then stick to indefinitely.
Two Critical Things About Systems
There are two important things about having a system.
The first is that the system guides your daily actions.
You’re not guessing what you should be doing next; you’re just doing the next thing that the system tells you to do. There are mostly daily or weekly habits that build your consulting practice over several years.
For example, my habits include:
Reaching out to 3 to 5 people each week for research calls.
Contacting 3 to 5 former clients each week (1 per day) to offer more value.
Drafting each blog post/article a week in advance based on the current ‘theme’ or ‘campaign’ I’m running.
Contacting an event organiser each week about speaking opportunities.
Researching and benchmarking one organisation against best practices in my niche.
etc…
You get the point. These habits don’t work well if you just do them once and stop. But if you do them consistently for years, they pay off massively.
The second is that the system is highly adaptive. You should be constantly refining and improving it based on what is and isn’t working (and not replacing the entire system in the process).
You can certainly test and pilot ideas, but these should be deliberate tests given enough time to succeed, rather than thrashing from one idea to the next.
For example, you might…
Stick with one niche, but test which decision-maker responds best - the CMO, the Head of Product, or the Customer Success Director.
Keep posting on LinkedIn, but experiment with short tactical tips one week and longer case-study style posts the next.
Maintain your outreach rhythm, but vary the style, a short, value-first message versus a longer, consultative email.
Hold onto your core service, but pilot a lighter version (like a two-week audit) to see if it attracts new leads.
Stay committed to one community or alliance, but test different ways of showing up - hosting a roundtable, sharing insights, or running a Q&A.
Keep your pricing tiers, but change what each tier does and doesn’t include to see how it impacts interest.
You get the idea. This isn’t thrashing, it’s systematically learning what does and doesn’t work within the system.
And systems are the entire point. And it’s why the Indispensable Consulting Systems program is entirely about building the systems that are sustainable and deliver results over the long term.
This program not only includes the 12 critical systems over eight weeks, but also includes:
Access to personal mentoring and feedback from me.
Free access to our Proposal Mastery course ($500).
Access or our Indispensable Consulting community to collaborate and get feedback from your fellow consultants.
Attend live feedback and problem-solving sessions (recorded for anyone who is unable to attend live).
12 distinct worksheets to guide your thinking and develop your consulting practice.
The fee for this course is $950 USD. I think that’s a bargain.
I hope to see you there.
Note: When the 20 places are taken, we won’t be opening up any additional sports for this run of the program.