David Fields, Founder of Ascendant Consulting

>>>Visit MyQuestforTheBest.com for complete show notes and more expert advice and inspiring stories to propel your small business growth. My Quest for the Best is a top-rated small business podcast with over 300 episodes of thought-provoking and insightful interviews with today’s top thought leaders and business experts. Host Bill Ringle’s mission with this show is to provide the strategies, insights, and resources that will unlock the growth potential of your business through these powerful conversations.

David Fields talks with Bill Ringle on My Quest for the Best about how connecting with clients means recognizing that when it comes to consulting, it's not about you.

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Interview Insights

Key points that you’ll learn from this interview:

Why Emotional Connection plays such an important role in client relationshipsHow Making mistakes can make you more valuable to your clientsWhat it means to think “right side up.”Why being confident will get you more consulting clientsThe reason clients have difficulty trusting new approaches

Read the Show Notes from this Episode

00:59 Fields discusses his fanatical love of both chocolate and hockey.1:28 “I happen to love what I do, like many of us who are entrepreneurs. I just thrive on the business.”2:36 Fields recalls a story from his childhood about a word class mathematician who taught him how to use unit blocks in kindergarten. “This amazing mathematician would ride his bike to teach kids in kindergarten.”3:00 “I just think that the idea of teaching other people and giving your knowledge, not at your level, but at their level…you meet people where they are and help them.”3:56 [On his first job(s)] “I’m a numbers person, and I went into marketing research and learned a lot of great skills there.”4:07 “My first boss once told me, ‘David our job isn’t to say that the glass is half empty or the glass is half full but to say there is 6oz of water in a 12 oz glass.”4:33ç5:13 Fields tells about his time working as an interviewer for a dating service.6:05 “If you go back 30 years, the idea of meeting someone through a service, there’s a lot of stigma attached.”6:30 “It wasn’t the matching that got people there, it was the emotional journey.”7:00 Fields recounts the time leading up to spinning off from his original company to start a new consulting company with his partner Jim.7:40 [On the fate of the early venture] - “That worked incredibly well for about 4 weeks.”8:05 “Jim was the business development guy. I was the backroom engine guy. I was coming up with models and smart solutions to client problems.”8:19 “I was left without a partner, without clients, and without the skill set to develop clients.”8:37 “My first year running Ascendant was a disaster.”8:59 “Once you have some success and you’re smart enough to get help, then it gets easier.”9:25 “Unless you have failed, you can’t show that you have the resilience and the ability to get up.”9:43 “I wouldn’t go out of my way to try to make mistakes, but if you try to avoid them, that’s where trouble sets in.”10:25 [On Org Design] - “No design is ever perfect out of the gate.”10:33 “We’re better off putting it in place, getting it darn close, and then refining it. I don’t worry about the mistakes, I worry about creating high quality.”11:15 [On thinking right side up] - “Consulting is not about you, it’s about them.”11:35 [On what his experiences working in a shoe store taught him] - “It doesn’t matter what it looked like to you…it mattered what it felt like to them. It wasn’t about my shoes it was about their feet.”11:56 “If there’s one thing to take away from our discussion, I would say take that away.