Climb In Consulting

This is the third and final episode of our three-part series in collaboration with Garwood Solutions and Honeycomb PS. In times like this you need to adapt and respond. The traditional consulting BD approach of meeting people for coffees isn’t an option and you have to do something different. That’s where effective digital marketing comes in! In this episode I explain how you can use digital marketing to help you respond to the current climate while setting your business up for long term success. I take you through the exact framework we use with our clients to help them develop effective marketing strategies that deliver results and explain some of the tactics you should be using right now to help you generate new conversations for your business. We had a ton of great questions as part of this session and highly recommend listening to the end of show to get all of the content that we shared in this one. Our 3 Pillars of Post-Lockdown Success webinar series was great fun to be a part of and I really enjoyed working with Rob and Deri to put it together. We got some great feedback from those who attended the live webinars and I hope you get just as much from the podcast versions too! If you haven't listened already, check out parts one and two of our Post-Lockdown series to continue the discussion about our remaining Pillars.

In the second of our three part series looking at what consulting leaders like you need to be focusing on to achieve post-lockdown success, Deri Hughes, founder of Honeycomb PS walks you through the exact frameworks he uses with his clients to create highly scalable, flexible and controllable operations functions. When it comes to operations, there’s two key areas to focus on: Flexibility and Control. Flexibility on costs, to respond to changing client needs, and to capture opportunities that present themselves. Control to manage the risks to your business – cashflow, people and clients. In this episode Deri explains: – How to identify the critical capabilities that you need in the new world – The proven ways to build Flexibility and Control into your operating model – The digital tools that you can deploy quickly, at low cost, to deliver immediate impact I hope you enjoy today’s episode and that Deri’s advice will help you to develop your own effective operations strategy as life returns back to normal You can find out more about Deri on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/derihughes/ You can find out more about Honeycomb PS at – https://www.honeycombps.co.uk/ If you missed part one of our Post-Lockdown Success series: ‘Renewing the V&P in your Value Proposition to accelerate your exit’, be sure to check it out.

Today’s episode, or episodes should I say, is a first for this podcast and one I’m really excited to share with you Last month, I teamed up with two of the industries leading experts to bring you a truly comprehensive series to explain what you need to focus on to help you succeed as we come out of Covid-19 and beyond. Over three webinars, myself and my co-hosts, Rob Garner from Garwood Solutions and Deri Huges from Honeycomb PS shared the three elements that you need to focus on to set your business up for success. If you’ve followed this podcast so far, or you’ve read our eBooks, you’ll know that at Create Engage we’re big fans of both collaboration and repurposing content. This series is an example of doing both of these things. Now, back to the series. If you’re currently building a consulting business, I suspect lockdown has thrown a spanner in your growth plans! Regardless of whether you were looking to scale your business or on a path to sale, the current pandemic has at best set you back or at worst, left your business close to edge. Fortunately, there is a way through – by focusing on the three pillars that you need to build the foundations of success for your consulting business post-lockdown. This isn’t just one of those made up models that seem to be cropping up right now though. This is based on real world, real life experience, building on Rob’s own journey as a consulting entrepreneur, and someone who has built and sold multiple 8 figure consulting businesses To help you understand what you need to be focusing on to accelerate your business out of lockdown, I teamed up with Rob and Deri bring you a series dedicated to the three pillars that you need to be prioritising right now: ✅ Your Value Proposition ✅ Your Operations ✅ Your Marketing In today’s episode Rob Garner explains the impact that Covid-19 is having on the growth, development and change of the professional services sector and what it means for you and your consulting business. He walks through the implications for your business strategy and why you need to be focusing on your client value proposition right now if you want to set your business up for success and realise the growth target or exit you’re aiming for. With all the uncertainty at the moment, I’m sure that you’ll get a lot of confidence and clarity from what Rob has to say. You can find out more about Rob on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/garnerrobert/ You can find out more about Garwood Solutions at – https://garwoodsolutions.com/ Check out parts two and three of our Post-Lockdown series to continue the discussion about our remaining Pillars.

For regular listeners to the show you’ll know that alongside the interviews from inspirational leaders in our field I like to mix it up and give you a range of different types of episodes to listen to. Early on in the series I shared a recap episode, bringing together the career advice from all of my guests up to that point. That episode proved so popular I decided to make it a regular feature on the show. Gathering up my guests answers to the last question that I ask in every interview. To give you a comprehensive guide to help you on your career, whether you’re just starting out, in the middle grades, or approaching partner. Today’s episode is round 3 of advice from the best in the business. Where my guests from the last 9 months give you their answer to a simple yet powerful question. What one piece of advice would give to each of the following three people, one just starting out in their career, one around manager and one who’s approaching Partner. In today’s episode you’ll hear the answer to this question from: - Richard Goold - Jess Frame - Rob Garner - Adam Blomerley and Rob Ferrone - Irene Molodtsov - Ian Price - Alex Gurr - Paul Collins - Chris Gibson - Simon England - Hannah Farrar And my own answers to these questions that I shared in episode 50. I’ve personally found the answers that my guests give to this question hugely helpful in my own career and I’m sure you’ll get a ton out of them too.

Today’s guest is Hannah Farrar, Chief Executive of Carnall Farrar, the specialist management consultancy dedicated to the healthcare industry. Hannah has recently been recognised as one of the top 100 women in healthcare leadership, so naturally I couldn’t wait to sit down with her for this interview and explore her incredible career journey. Following a successful career in the NHS, Hannah and her co-founder Ruth Carnall decided that the time was right to strikeout on their own and set about launching Carnall Farrar, or CF as it’s now known. Launching your own business is a daunting enough prospect but even more so when you’re a single mother with two young children to support. Something we go in to detail on in today’s show. Since starting the firm over 7 years ago, CF has gone from strength to strength, growing from just the co-founders in to a firm of over 70 consultants working across health care and life sciences. If that wasn’t enough, alongside her packed schedule running CF, Hannah is also a member of the Kings Fund General Advisory Council, and a non-executive director for Lantum. We cover a huge amount of ground in today’s conversation and there's a ton of valuable insights for you in this one, including: - Why and how Hannah made the leap from a successful career in the NHS to launch Carnall Farrar and her key lessons for anyone thinking of doing the same. - Hannah’s candidate experience of growing a business as a working mother and her advice for other parents out there, on how to achieve the often-difficult balance of creating both a successful career and a successful home life. - And the unique obstacles that women face in the consulting sector and Hannah’s take on what the industry needs to do to overcome them; both for junior consultants climbing the ranks as well as for senior leaders running their own consulting firms. As we recorded this earlier in the year, Covid-19 is actually the one topic we don’t speak about, but as I know many of you are getting tired of hearing about it I’m sure that’ll be music to your ears. That said, given the current environment, we couldn’t be releasing today’s interview with Hannah at a more appropriate time and it was fantastic to get her perspective from being on the front line of change and transformation in healthcare. If you’re a working parent yourself, thinking of moving into healthcare, or considering starting up your own consulting business as a result of the current economic situation then this episode is a must-listen. You can find out more about Hannah on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/hannah-farrar/?originalSubdomain=uk or Twitter https://twitter.com/hannahjfarrar?lang=en. You can find out more about Carnall Farrar at - https://www.carnallfarrar.com/ Specific things we discuss in the show: The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact - https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01N9OQOJ2/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 Stanford University Executive Education - https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/exec-ed David Gilroy at Conscious - https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidgilroybs8/

In today’s episode, I speak to Simon England, Director at Garwood Solutions, Former senior Managing Director at Accenture and Independent Director of HCL Technologies, the 150,000 person global technology and services firm. If you’ve been listening to the show for a while, you may remember that Simon’s colleague Rob Garner featured back in Episode 51 at the beginning of the year. I always like to ask my guests who they would recommend for the show and Rob pointed me to Simon. Highlighting his extensive career leading various business units for Accenture as something he thought could be of interest to my listeners, and he wasn’t wrong. Over the past 36 years, Simon has built up a wealth of experience in leading, transforming, and growing organisations across both the public and private sector. Before joining the team at Garwood Solutions, Simon spent 27 years with Accenture, leading various business units and helping to turn around others. Between leaving Accenture and joining Garwood Simon spent a year leading the stabilisation and recovery of Capita’s largest, and very public, transformational outsourcing contract with Primary Care Support England, overseeing a 900 strong team to turn the programme around. Given the current climate and Simon’s phenomenal track record of both growing and turning around businesses, I was super excited for this conversation and my gosh did it deliver. In today’s interview, we dive into a whole range of topics, including: • Simon’s uncommon path into consulting, his entrepreneurial streak and how starting out on his own helped him build the consulting career he’s had • His lessons learned from his 27 years at Accenture and what you can take from them to help you on your own journey • And Simon’s advice for consulting firms - big and small - on what you should be doing now to help you stabilise your business and succeed beyond Covid-19 While we’d recently started working with the Garwood team just prior to this interview, it was great to get the chance to speak to Simon outside of that, hear his insights on building such a successful career and have the chance to share them with you to in this interview. With all the uncertainty at the moment, I’m sure that you’ll get a lot of confidence and clarity from what Simon has to say. Whether you’re currently focusing on the short term health of your business or your long term career path, there’s tons in here for you to learn from and apply in your own life. You can find out more about Simon on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-england-88763376/ You can find out more about Garwood Solutions at - https://garwoodsolutions.com/ Specific things we discuss in the show: • The Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tao-Te-Ching-Hackett-Classics-ebook/dp/B005CW9YB2/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= • Getting The Balance Right: Leading and Managing Well by Peter Shaw - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Getting-Balance-Right-Leading-Managing-ebook/dp/B00AQD8KZI/ • Grown Up Digital: How the Net Generation is Changing Your World by Don Tapscott - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grown-Up-Digital-Generation-Changing-ebook/dp/B001FA0PMC/ • The Anarchy: The Relentless Rise of the East India Company by William Dalrymple - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Anarchy-Relentless-Rise-India-Company-ebook/dp/B07VPR8LS1/

Today’s episode is taken from an interview that I recently did for Sales For Startups as part of their fantastic interview series. This series, hosted by their founder James Ker-Reid, explores many of the key topics that anyone launching their own business needs to think about. Much like we do for climb in consulting, James interviews leaders from various fields to share their insights and experience with his audience. Giving them advice on everything from Fund Raising and accountancy to sales and marketing. As you probably guessed, James asked if I’d take part in the series to share my advice on marketing for consultancy businesses. In this conversation, I share much of the advice that we’re giving to our clients day in day out. I explain the Create Engage philosophy, our approach to marketing and give you our top tips for what you should be doing right now to help you create effective marketing that generates ROI. As James’s series is targeted at start-ups more generally, there is a little bit of build up at the start about what we mean by consultants and how that relates to the start up world. But as you’ll hear, after a short intro, we quickly dive into some really important points that are critical for you if you’re looking to grow your consulting business.

Today’s episode is a bonus episode intended to help you with your marketing during the current Covid-19 lockdown. I've been running a number of webinars all about how you can and should be using marketing right now and have received some great feedback on them. As not everyone who listens to the show is able to join these, I wanted to share the recording of one of the recent webinars I ran where I give you the exact marketing strategy framework that we use with our clients and share the tools and tactics that you should be using right now to effectively market to your target clients and fill your BD hopper back up for when the current lockdown ends. This webinar is packed full of helpful insights and advice and if you want more detail on anything I discuss in this episode, you can find it in our new eBook that we’ve just released on the same topic. Go to www.createengage.co.uk/covid-19 to get your copy. Now as this was a webinar, there is a little bit of preamble as people join the call but stick with it. After a short intro we dive in to the detail and cover everything you need to be thinking about right now to help your consulting firm. I hope you enjoy it!

In today’s episode I speak to Chris Gibson, Partner and Managing Director at PEN. PEN are a client of ours at Create Engage and having got to know Chris and the PEN team over the last 6 months I knew that he would make a great guest for the show. PEN are a really unique consultancy – and I’m not just saying that because we work with them. PEN was founded by a collective of consultants striving to solve many of the problems that they saw in the traditional consulting model – something that we go in to detail on in today’s show. Having launched the firm in 2012, Chris and the team have gone from strength to strength - successfully growing PEN from just the founding team into a consultancy that regularly has more than 100 consultants supporting clients at any one time. While I’ve got to know Chris well over the last 6 month it was great to have a chance to sit down with him to find out more about his personal journey, learn about the PEN story and find out about many of the pieces that I didn’t know. In today’s conversation we cover a whole host of topics including: • What led Chris and his fellow partners to launch PEN and how they’ve approached the growth of the business over the last 8 years to ensure they’re able to stay ‘in their sweet spot’ for both the team and their clients. • The importance of culture and what you need to focus on to develop, and maintain, a culture you can be proud of. • And Chris’s candid perspective on the pros and cons of joining a smaller consultancy, how they’re not right for everybody and what you need to think about if you’re considering making the leap. I really enjoyed this conversation with Chris and it was great to find out more about the journey that both He and Pen have been on. PEN don’t shout loudly about it but their success speaks for itself. From their awards for excellence in wellbeing through to their successful start up (ad)ventures business. Whether you’re looking for insights to help you grow your own consulting firm, or you’re earlier in your career, and you’re trying to decide whether you should make the move to a smaller consulting firm like PEN, then I know you’re going to get a ton from today’s interview. I hope you enjoy it! You can find out more about Chris on LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgibsonpenpartnership/ You can find out more about PEN at https://penpartnership.com/

Today's episode is one I recorded just under two months ago and it’s amazing how much the world has changed in that time. For some of you listening, today’s episode could possibly be the most valuable episode of Climb In Consulting that I’ve ever recorded. And while the topics we discuss may not be top of your list right now, the principles and advice that today’s guest shares will certainly help you when we start to emerge from the current crisis. So who is today’s guest and what makes this such a valuable episode? In today’s episode I speak to Paul Collins, Founder and Chairman of Equiteq, the leading M&A Advisory firm for the consulting sector. Over the last 16 years Equiteq have helped over 100 consulting entrepreneurs successfully sell their businesses. Guiding them on what they need to do to set themselves up for sale and then helping them navigate the often-challenging sales process. Paul's journey in to the world of Consulting M&A started with his own experience when he sold his Consulting business WCI to private equity for $100 million dollars in 2002. He saw first hand how little support there was available to consulting firms in the current M&A market and decided to launch Equiteq to help fill that gap. In today’s conversation we go deep into the world of M&A and dig in to everything you need to know if you’re growing a consulting business with the view to sell it at some point in the future. Even if you’re not building a firm to sell, much of the advice Paul shares is equally applicable for you and will help you build a stronger foundation from which to grow your business. To give you an idea of what’s to come, some of the topics we discuss include: - What determines the valuation of a consulting business and how small adjustments to your business can have a huge impact on the ultimate valuation you receive. - What you need to do to set your firm up for success from the outset and the key functions that you need to establish in your business if you’re looking to sell it at some point in the future. - And Paul’s candid advice, from his own experience, on how to balance growing your business with maintaining a happy and healthy personal life. In an industry as broad and diverse as consulting there’s very few people who are known ‘industry wide’, people whose reputation precedes them and are known by firms big and small. Paul is one of those people.  You can find out more about Paul on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pecollins/  You can find out more about Equiteq at https://www.equiteq.com/home/