Seven Figure Consultant with Jessica Fearnley

Are you reluctant to ask for help even though you are overstretched?

So often we can be reluctant to pass on the baton. Rather than thinking about the fact we're not so keen on an aspect of running our business, or that bringing on additional team members is going to help us, we see it as cheating in some way.

At school if you had outsourced your homework or asked another child what the answer was during an exam, you would have been in big trouble. We carry that with us. Asking for help, or bringing in someone who excels in an area we do not, is not cheating in business. In fact, it's the way to get ahead.

I'm talking about creating leverage in your consultancy business with Doug C. Brown on the podcast this week. Doug is CEO of Business Success Factors and international best-selling author of the book Win-Win Selling: Unlocking Your Power for Profitability by Resolving Objections. He is a nationally recognized sales revenue growth expert and consultant who has consulted with companies such as CBS Television, Intuit, and Proctor and Gamble. His proprietary system has generated over $500M in sales, and he helps companies optimize their sales process and increase their sales by over 850%.

We talk about:

• How we get conditioned to believe certain things about running a business
• Creating more with the same amount of energy
• Investing in your business
• Putting processes in place and optimising them to achieve more
• Linking the value of your work to the return for your client

Useful links

Get Doug's Sales and Marketing Checklist

Find out more about Doug at https://businesssuccessfactors.com/

Get in touch with Jessica to discuss your consulting business

Jessica's LinkedIn profile

What do you think when people talk about 'overthinking'? If you're like me, you'll be puzzled about why considering all the angles and focusing on the details is considered a bad thing.

When you run your own consulting business, even if it isn't your name on the invoices, it's your reputation, framework and processes people are getting. That matters and you want to be sure every client is getting the best experience. Whether you are delegating service delivery, or relying on team members to support you in other areas of the business, you will have thought through everything involved.

You will know how you want the work delivered. If it's something you did before you reached capacity and brought someone in, you will have your own way of completing the task. It can be difficult to work with a team when you have effectively kept every aspect of your business in your head.

The result can be that you are still carrying the weight of all those tasks and decisions, despite not being the one delivering the work. Your team is not using their initiative, instead they are relying on you.

In this week's episode of the podcast, I am talking about being an overthinker surrounded by underthinkers and how this can affect your team dynamics and your ability to switch off.

I talk about:

• What's going on if your team needs you to tell them what to do all day
• Carrying the mental load in your business
• How this negatively impacts the running of your business
• Making it easier for team members to follow your processes
• Motivating your team members to achieve more

Useful links

Annalisa Barbieri's article in The Guardian

Get in touch with Jessica to discuss your consulting business

Jessica's LinkedIn profile

Do you talk down your desires? You've built your business to a comfortable level and you know you want to do more, but it feels greedy somehow. You'd like more time, more fun, and a 7 Figure consultancy to make that happen without feeling like you have to work long hours speaking to clients all day, every day.

You have a vision of what your life could be like. How do you bring more of yourself into what you do while enabling your business to run without you?

This week on the podcast, I am talking to Shayla Boyd-Gill about how to luxe your business. If you would love to bring more of your life and the things you love into your business and create an experience for your clients which makes a bigger impact, this conversation is for you.

Shayla went from bankruptcy to a multiple six-figure business. Now she is a Family Freedom and Affluence Mentor and creator of the Luxe Your BusinessTM Sales System and a sales strategist who shows women entrepreneurs how to have it all – family, freedom, and affluence – while doing what they love. She juggles being an entrepreneur with being a wife and mum of six homeschooled children.

She teaches her clients - service-based businesses - to restructure their businesses and lives by boosting their high-ticket sales so they can make more money in less time without a heavy client load.

We talk about:

• Creating the life you want
• Taking your laptop on trips away
• The messy middle of building your business to 7 Figures
• Making a bigger impact with your business
• Being strategic and knowing what to focus your time on

Useful links

Get Shayla Boyd-Gill's Sales Discovery Call Workbook

Find out more about Shayla at https://shaylaboydgill.com/

Follow Shayla on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Youtube and LinkedIn

Get in touch with Jessica to discuss your consulting business

Jessica's LinkedIn profile

Many of the women I speak to come to the topic of building a team from a really negative place. There are lots of reasons for that but if you have aspirations to grow past 7 figures, you are going to be working with a team.

Often we are thrown into leadership situations without any preparation or experience. As you transition from a solo consultant to a CEO your leadership style and performance will be something you intentionally work on.

But how do you know who to recruit? Who is going to be a good fit for your consultancy?

In this week's episode I am sharing two questions about building a team that have been blowing my clients' minds this quarter.

I talk about:

• Learning to build a team
• Limiting beliefs around recruiting for your small business
• Identifying what you need to bring other people in to do for you
• What you need from your team at different stages of your business
• Enabling your team to be more productive

This is episode 100 of the podcast! Thank you for listening. I am super excited for our NEXT 100 episodes as I feel like we are only really just scratching the surface of what it takes to get to Seven Figures as a Woman Consultant.

Useful links

Get in touch with Jessica to discuss your consulting business

Jessica's LinkedIn profile

Some things in business we are led to believe are 'the way' to get results. One of those is writing sales copy where you focus on your clients' pain points. You think about what's keeping them up at night and then you emphasise that negative and present your solution.

One of the things my clients say most often when we talk about copywriting and marketing is, I've seen it done this way and I don't want to do that. Do you feel like that too? That go for the jugular, masculine style of hitting people where it hurts just doesn't sit well with you.

There is an alternative. You can write sales copy which feels positive and supportive and still sells your services.

My guest on the podcast this week is best-selling, award-winning fiction and nonfiction author Michele PW. She is the author of 5 books in the "Love-Based Business" series that share how to sell more with love and build a solid, profitable business on a foundation of love. In addition, she owns a copywriting and marketing company that has sold nearly $50M worth of products and services.

We talk about:

• Tapping into love-based emotions in copywriting instead of fear-based
• How to acknowledge your client's situation in your sales copy without twisting the knife
• Using your clients' words to create connection
• Buying and selling from a place of emotion
• How to get people to act

Useful links

Get your copy of Michele's love-based copywriting template

Find out more about Michele at MichelePW.com

Get in touch with Jessica to discuss your consulting business

Jessica's LinkedIn profile

Are you wondering what it's really like to run a Seven Figure business? Are you also asking yourself whether it's possible to do that at the same time as having other commitments and interests outside work?

Reaching Seven Figures can feel like a mountain top. It's up there, in front of you, something to be conquered. You might picture yourself always working, or completely the opposite, off enjoying yourself leaving your team in charge of the day to day.

To give you a realistic picture of what it's truly like to run a Seven Figure business, this week on the podcast I'm talking to Paige Goss who has grown her company to over 10+ million in revenue in 4 short years.

Paige is founder and CEO of Point Solutions Group, a technology and engineering professional services firm based in Denver, Colorado. She started the firm in 2017, while her wife was pregnant with twins! She also invests in and advises multiple women-owned and lead firms. She is co-founder of Precursa, a SaaS platform. And she goes snowboarding in her spare time.

Paige shares what it's really like to grow a Seven Figure business and how in her words, 'that's when the fun starts'.

We talk about:

• Her journey to Seven Figures
• Starting a business at the same time as starting a family
• Dealing with negative self-talk
• How your identity changes as your business grows
• Challenging people's expectations of you

Useful links

Paige Goss's LinkedIn Profile

Get in touch with Jessica to discuss your consulting business

Jessica's LinkedIn profile

Scarcity can be all around us. Just read your news app and you usually get a huge dose of scarcity to get you going in the morning. At the moment the UK papers are all full of stories about the petrol shortages - that's gas for my friends in the US. They're also warning us that there'll be no food in the supermarkets this Christmas.

But scarcity isn't something that only exists in the media. It's instilled in us as children and we can create it for ourselves. Sometimes this is obvious. Every time we tell ourselves a client won't pay for our services, or decide that we will carry on doing tasks which should really be outsourced, that's scarcity in action. But it also hides in unlikely places.

Tackling scarcity is important for personal and business growth. If you can spot everyday scarcity, you will enable yourself to create the life you want more easily because these roadblocks will not be in your way. This is a key issue for women consultants whatever stage of business you're at.

This week on the podcast I'm sharing how you can break the rules that make us think life and business have to be hard.

I talk about:

• Examples of how we hide scarcity in different places in our lives
• The internal rules we create for ourselves
• What we need to do to support a growth mindset
• Focusing on what is really important
• Empowering yourself to act in your best interests

Useful links

Get in touch with Jessica to discuss your consulting business

Jessica's LinkedIn profile

LinkedIn is a platform that can feel a bit like Marmite.

I've known many women who say, I posted a couple of times, and no one commented or liked what I wrote. I felt like a loser. So I gave up and I hate LinkedIn because it doesn't work. However, I know from my own experience that LinkedIn can be incredibly effective for building your business. I became a LinkedIn Top Voice in 2019 and it's been an amazing experience.

But before that happened, I was using LinkedIn effectively to build relationships. Do you want to know how you can post for engagement on LinkedIn and build and leverage your network? Then listen to this week's episode. I am talking to Donna Serdula who pioneered the concept of LinkedIn profile optimisation.

Donna realised early on that the LinkedIn profile was so much more than just an online resume. She created her own methodology for how to use the platform in a manner that really provided results for the investment of time and energy. Donna and her team of over 40 writers have helped thousands of executives, entrepreneurs, sales stars, business leaders, and professionals from around the world create professionally branded LinkedIn profiles. She is the founder of Vision Board Media and LinkedIn-Makeover.com, and wrote "LinkedIn Profile Optimization For Dummies," published by Wiley.

We talk about:

• Deciding what you want to get out of LinkedIn
• Where to start with LinkedIn (it's not what you might think)
• How to become part of the community
• What LinkedIn is looking for from you
• Building a network: when to follow and when to invite people to connect
• How to start conversations and building relationships

Useful links

Access Donna Serdula's LinkedIn Headline Generator

Donna's LinkedIn profile

Visit LinkedIn-Makeover.com

Get in touch with Jessica to discuss your consulting business

Jessica's LinkedIn profile

Did you know that a business can have up to 50 employees and still be considered a small business? Or that a small business is defined as having a turnover of less than $50 million?

When you think about how 'big' a small business can be, it puts quite a different lens on what for many women consultants can seem a lofty dream - reaching Seven Figures.

So much of the online business world is geared around getting to Six Figures. But it all gets a bit vague after that. There's not much information out there about hitting your first $1 million and beyond.

That's why in this week's podcast episode, I wanted to lift the lid on what changes when you hit Seven Figures in your consulting business. It's important to be able to visualise the next chapter in your business if you're going to make it happen.

I discuss:

• What you will need from your team
• Having more visibility as CEO
• Keeping control of cash flow
• How we are all a bit weird about money
• Your identity as a Seven Figure business owner

Useful links

Get in touch with Jessica to discuss your consulting business

Jessica's LinkedIn profile

Many women consultants find they have created a business which exactly replicates all of the things they didn't enjoy when they worked in corporate.

They might have left saying, 'I will never...' but fast forward a year or more later and there they are. They were going to create a freedom lifestyle, instead, they are working long hours.

Often as high achieving women, we have got where we are by pushing ourselves really hard. We continue to do that in our consultancy businesses. And we can be the worst boss we have ever had. Not just working late, but forcing ourselves to overwork, not letting ourselves have time off, giving ourselves short deadlines, and expecting perfection.

You might think work is always like this and the anxiety that goes with it is just the way it is. If this resonates then this episode is for you.

My guest is Dr Susan Bernstein, who cultivates cultures of happy high achievers. She teaches individuals and organizations to craft their work and workplaces to be full of joy and fulfillment that ripples out to everyone.

We talk about:

• The stigma around anxiety
• Repeating patterns from corporate that you wanted to let go of
• The signs of burnout
• Identifying your unmet needs
• Practical steps you can take if you have corporate baggage

Useful links

Susan Bernstein's website

Follow Susan on LinkedIn

Get in touch with Jessica to discuss your consulting business

Jessica's LinkedIn profile