Tag: consulting

Too Expensive, Too Costly

Posted on by Carl Weber

(Image Courtesy of Pixabay.com)

“They said I was too expensive.”

It happens.

In the world of consulting, coaching, helping, serving, and assisting others you are going to be rejected.

People reach out, they need help.

You carefully craft a plan, program, event, or system.

You send that thing you created into the world.

You may or may not hear from them right away.

Sometimes they say No.

Sometimes they blame the price.

“It was too expensive. It was too costly.”

The first temptation is to lower your cost. “Did I charge too much?”

But your time, your talents, your efforts are valuable.

There is some truth to what they said.

It was going to cost them.

The cost of being accountable.

The cost of stretching beyond their normal pattern or rut.

The cost of doing the hard work, over and over again until they get results.

The cost of making sacrifices to change their current situation.

Maybe they were not ready because the cost was too high.

Rejection can be hard.

Don’t give up.

Keep consulting, coaching, helping, serving, and assisting others.

Keep creating plans, programs, events, and systems.

Your tribe, your group, and your people know that the change they desire will be expensive and it will be costly. They also recognize the true cost is their sacrifice and hard work, and they are willing to pay that price.

Becoming Equals

Posted on by Carl Weber

They needed some coaching, so you helped encourage and develop.

You needed to run your first 5K, so they helped you train.

They needed to lose weight, so you helped with healthy options, accountability, and support.

You needed assistance with strategy, so they helped provide perspective, options, and focus.

They needed to find a better career, relationship, or life-goal, so you provided some guidance.

You were a little scattered and out there, so they helped organize and ground you.

They were a little structured and serious, so you helped them be messy and fun.

These relationships start in interesting ways.

One of you needs something, and the other is there to help.

At first the roles were clear.

One of you is the expert, coach, parent, mentor, counselor, or consultant. The other one needs what you have.

One of you is giving, the other is receiving.

Typically this approach only works for the short-term. Once the need is met, you disengage and move on.

But sometimes, these relationship continue.

These relationships begin to change.

You are Becoming Equals.

What was once mentoring becomes mutual assistance or expertise.

What was once consulting becomes sharing ideas together.

What was once coaching becomes both playing at the same level.

What was once parenting becomes more like a friendship.

Becoming Equals doesn’t happen overnight.

Becoming Equals requires both of you to shift.

Becoming Equals allows both of you to shine.

One day you notice the person who use to run a few steps behind you is now at your side, and even ahead of you.

One day you are both leading.

One day you are both moving forward.

There is a time and place for the first roles.

But there is something more.

Something better.

Becoming Equals may be what makes relationships really great.

Becoming Equals may be what makes relationships last.

 

Parachuting In

Posted on by Carl Weber

MARSOC_parachutist

(Image Courtesy of Pinterest)

While getting coffee before a consulting gig, I happened to bump into two leaders from that same organization who were at a table sipping their morning brew. There was a brief pause.

“Hey, are you parachuting in again today?”

“Yes.”

Awkward pause.

“It’s not us right?”

“Nope, you are fine. In fact your departments are doing well.”

“Great. Good luck. We are just glad it is not us.”

Parachuting In: the new term this group jokingly uses when I stop by to help a division or group of folks in the organization understand themselves better, work through conflict, or learn to be a more effective team.

I kind of like it.

Parachuting in means someone is in immediate need of help.

Parachuting in means that you have come to help.

Parachuting in means that your mission or goal may be secret (you are not going to air another department’s issues when questioned).

Parachuting in means that your work is temporary.

Parachuting in means that you are bringing needed assistance, resources, and strategy.

Parachuting in means that it is their department, their operation, and their team.

That simple phrase has stuck with me. Partly because the work has been long-term enough to earn a nick-name.

What will your work’s nick-name be?

Is your art, your craft, your life, your relationships, your consulting, your business creating the right resonance to earn its own phrase or nick-name?

The other part that I remember is how happy they seemed that I was not there to see them.