You probably subscribe and listen to a load of people who have job titles like "Consultant", "Coach", "Expert" and "Maven1". These are people who are constantly posting in-car videos on LinkedIn, giving out advice, releasing podcasts and writing blogs. They're obviously amazing at their jobs - why wouldn't you want to hand over thousands of pounds in cash to them? Don't you want that fantastic life too?

You can tell their lives are fantastic because they've sorted out their own work-life balance2.
You can tell their lives are fantastic because they then went on to save the lives of at least three of their clients3.
You can tell their lives are fantastic because their profits are going through the roof, and they're recording that in-car video in a Lambo.
You can tell their lives are fantastic because they spend three months of the year hiking through the rainforest. For fun4!
You can tell their lives are fantastic because their team never makes a mistake and is always happy and smiling.

I'm not like that.

I've worked for myself since 2007, because I thought my boss was making a mistake and should have been listening to me. Eleven years later and the jury's still out on whether I was right5.
I am very very good at what i do - especially when it comes to sorting out problems for my clients - but I've not really managed to sort myself out and have been winging it ever since.
I was really really lucky at the start, so I didn't have to learn about how to run a business for years - no sales, no marketing and as for finance, well...
I then started a company with friends and we got a load of money from investors, which we spent very quickly. And that's when things started to go really wrong.
I was sick of working alone, so I hired a team on the cheap6.
They didn't do a great job as I didn't know how to get them to do what I wanted7.
I spent all my money on these people working with me - they were cheap but took ages to get things done.
I was using up my evenings and weekends fixing mistakes8.

All of which meant I was ready to jack it all in.

Several times.

So this is the bit where I turn in to one of those amazing perfect consultant types.

Because I sat myself down, gave myself a good talking to and ...

spent a load of time and effort learning about sales
went out networking even though I found it really uncomfortable at first
I read that to do sales, you need a CRM system9. So I tried out 11 different ones and eventually found one that I liked
I suddenly realised that I had my sales process all wrong

The sales process that I had built for myself, that I implemented in my CRM, was based around the idea of promoting myself to people. This is what I do, I'm really good at it, it will save you time and money if you hire me. Please hire me.

Then I realised that actually, the clients I worked well with were the ones where we had a relationship. Where we trusted each other. So I switched my process around to look for people I thought I could work with. And it meant I was looking for excuses to say no at every opportunity.

That was when I had another revelation - the CRM isn't going to help you. Your process has to be right first.

This inspired me to put together a process for my team - a seven stage software development system - and I used expensive project management software to track it all.

But I totally failed to heed the lesson from before. The process didn't work for me. The software didn't work for me.

It just meant that I did the work I didn't like and the team did the work I did like.

The project management software was lovely. I could keep track of my overflowing to-do list and see how late every project was - and it updated in real-time so everything got later and later right in front of my eyes.

Again - my realisation was that the software doesn't fix things for you. I needed to get the process right before even thinking about software.

So I reset.

Now I've got a really small team who work on the things I don't really like doing and I've kept the things I like doing to myself.

I still pay for various bits of software but I'm very careful about how I use them.

And I don't set myself a ton of deadlines, which make me unhappy as they whizz pass, unfulfilled.

I have to say that I still don't make very much money - I have a problem with pricing my services which mean I give away a load of valuable work for cheap.

And I still don't have that much time - I take on too many projects and then get caught up trying to deliver them all.

And, despite all these revelations, I'm still rubbish at saying no. Which is why I have too many projects on.

But this is my story about how I'm working my way out of these things. Unlike those other consultants, those bloggers and vloggers and podcasters, it's not a picture of a perfect life.

It's messy and annoying and nowhere near where I want it to be.

Because I'm very good at solving problems for my clients - not so good at it for myself.

So, I'm Baz and that's what I'm going to be talking about over the next few weeks and months.

If you want to subscribe to the audio so you never ever miss my beautiful voice, just choose your podcast app and click below:

Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

I have no idea what that means ↩
if such a thing even exists ↩
they literally wrestled alligators ↩
Of course, they also adopt and save a whole village of brown children at the same time ↩
I was right ↩
Low wages in exchange for lots of training ↩
Don't get me wrong - all fantastic people and good at what they did - but I was crap at looking after them ↩
and weekdays grovelling to clients ↩
basically a giant address book mixed in with a sales process ↩

The Art and Science of Ruby

A confession