WHAT NOT TO DO: 19 Things To Stop or Avoid Doing

Learn from the many, many, mistakes I've made over the past 17 years of consulting. Here's what I've seen too many consultants doing - and should really stop.

Hi, I’m Rich. Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I share systems and frameworks for scaling your consulting practice from $0 to $1m+ in revenue.

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You Can Avoid Plenty of Common Mistakes

Seventeen years in, I have plenty of experience in what not to do.

Here’s a brief compilation of things I’d advise avoiding to save you time, effort, and misery.

I’ve put them into emotional, time, and money brackets.

Financial Avoids

It’s most important to avoid the things that consume vast amounts of resources with little to show for it. Here are some of the things I’d strongly advise you don’t do.

1. Don’t hire employees (until you absolutely have to). The quickest way to turn a successful practice into a struggling one is to hire employees. Just enjoy the healthy profit margins and stay small. Your life will be a lot less stressful and far more enjoyable. If you don’t plan to sell the business at some point, hire contractors only when you have demand.

2. Don’t spend much until you have revenue coming in. Before you invest heavily in pretty much any aspect of your consulting practice, you should have proven to yourself that you can generate revenue from it. You can start a consulting practice with as little as $ 5,000 to $ 10,000 if needed.

3. Don’t wait until the end of a project to get paid. Either take a 50% deposit upfront or receive payment at the end of each month. Anything else is inviting trouble. Things can change very suddenly. I’ve been on projects where the entire team we’re working with is laid off, and we have a six-figure invoice outstanding. Things happen. Also, be prepared for what to do if you don’t get paid.

4. Don’t attend industry events without a clear purpose. Events are expensive - don’t randomly hope you will run into the right people and have the right discussions. You should have a clear plan for how you will get incredible value from the event which matches your marketing strategy.

5. Don’t sell your time. Don’t charge by the hour. It will often result in clients asking for a detailed breakdown of your time and trying to make cuts in anything they feel isn’t essential. It’s also not possible to scale your practice if you’re selling a fixed number of hours each month. Charge by the project (and avoid the ‘value-based fees hoopla’)

6. Don’t let a single client be responsible for more than 1/3rd of your income. This is revenue concentration, and you’re now becoming a freelancer for the business rather than a consultant. Inevitably, you will lose the client and won’t have advanced your consulting practice.

Time Avoids

I’ve lost so much time pursuing opportunities that never materialised. These days, there are some simple ways to avoid this.

1. Don’t craft a proposal until you’ve gained some alignment on budget. Proposals can take a considerable amount of time to put together. You can often skip them entirely if you have an alignment on budget. Use the zero in technique instead.

2. Don’t send offers via cold calls or emails. Stop spamming people with offers. No one will ever buy a consulting service based on an offer you put together. There’s a more effective and ethical way to conduct sales.

3. Don’t offer free trials or audits. Everyone knows the recommendation will be for you to hire them. Serious prospects from big companies don’t ask for free samples - that’s what the sales process is for anyway.

4. Don’t chase after prospects who aren’t pursuing you. Don’t constantly follow up with clients who have gone cold on you. Chase once, possibly twice, and then let them be. The moment has passed.

5. Don’t spend too much time on LinkedIn or other social media channels. Generally speaking, LinkedIn can be somewhat of a distraction. You shouldn’t even be thinking about LinkedIn until you’ve appropriately crafted your service offering, website, and built lots of relationships. Think of LinkedIn and social media channels as the sprinkles.

6. Don’t agree to endless meetings. Weekly meetings are generally a good thing, but it’s essential to be clear from the start how many there will be and then stick to that schedule. If not much has happened in the past week or a project gets extended, ask whether they want to save one of their ‘weekly meetings’ for when there’s more to discuss.

7. Don’t invest time in groups of struggling consultants. A common trait of struggling consultants and freelancers is joining groups of other struggling consultants and investing significant time in them. If you don’t have any other support group, this is fine, but it will never help you progress in your career. Better to invest that time in finding a mentor, joining more exclusive groups, or taking relevant courses.

Emotional Avoids

These won’t necessarily cost you money, but they will cost you a lot of emotional energy, which is better invested elsewhere.

1. Don’t tolerate clients who mistreat you (for any amount of money). Clients who treat you poorly will cause you more stress than anything you’re being paid is worth. Working with a bad client is costing you time you could spend finding much better clients (and has a significant net negative impact on your life). I can’t stress enough how much a bad client can negatively impact your entire life.

2. Don’t let the money run out. You should always have a financial safety net of 6 to 12 months. Anything less will cause significant stress. Take side hustles or cut costs if you need to, but it’s 100% easier to attract and retain clients when you’re not desperate. Desperation often leads to worse outcomes, such as cutting fees to win projects, appearing too desperate in the sales process, accepting clients who aren’t a good fit, or agreeing to unfavourable terms.

3. Don’t assume, just ask. If you’re ever unsure about something, ask. If you’re unsure exactly what the client wants, how they want it, when they want it, or whether they have any specific expectations, ask. Embrace the principle of constant clarification - you might be surprised how effective it is.

4. Don’t try to ‘win the argument’ against a client. At best, you will lose the long-term relationship. At worst, they will terminate the contract and tell everyone they know how bad you are to work with. Your goal is always to find the best path forward for the project. Let them think they’re right if that’s the best path forward.

5. Don’t argue with competitors online. Only you and they are keeping a careful account of your arguments. To everyone else, it’s like observing a fight on the street. It just looks unprofessional. It’s best to ignore your competitors 95% of the time.

6. Don’t overpromise to win a contract. Your service and offering by itself should win the contract; offering anything more than that is usually a recipe for trouble. You will find yourself catering to clients' whims or delivering things that aren’t truly essential. The free extra bonuses you add in a proposal will never determine if they hire you or not, and usually cost you far too much.

Again, this isn’t a comprehensive list—but it might save you from making some of the mistakes I’ve made (often repeatedly).

Good luck!

Richard Millington

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