May 9, 2019
In this third episode in the series, Kathy shares an interesting distinction between being a contractor vs a consultant. At its essence, a contractor fulfils a known gap in a business that has well defined, predetermined steps. Whereas a consultant looks to add value by helping their customers to transform challenges into opportunities for progress, often without existing predetermined steps. She points out the consultants are effectively selling transformation to their customers, helping them to move from their current state to a new transformed state. She then points out why someone would want to be a consultant and its appeal to those who want to make a difference, earn income and/or pivot into a new career. One of the biggest mental challenges that most consultants have is how to find enough clients. Kathy succinctly outlines how this can be done and talks about becoming a "Lighthouse vs boat" with the inbound enquirer, and becoming comfortable with using support software such as HubSpot. She believes that this is one area where age and greying hair is an advantage and a worthy consideration for someone who wants to "ReFire". Lasts she councils anyone who wants to consider consulting to look at extensive data gathering from potential future clients and providing transformational experiences in a structured, systematic way (and doing so for yourself, also!)