Agile Coaching has evolved remarkably over the past three decades, reaching what many consider the Late Majority stage of innovation. With the landscape continually shifting, staying ahead means more than just keeping pace; it’s about redefining the game. This webinar is designed to guide current and aspiring Agile Coaches through the maze of opportunities and challenges in today’s market.
Transcript
0:00
See you all. Thank you, Alex for doing what you’re supposed to be doing and hitting record. So, I’m Cherie Silas, and I’m the CEO of tandem coaching. And we are happy to have you all here. Today, we’re going to do a great webinar that we hope can be very helpful to coaches of all kinds. Right? I know that that looks like a lot of you are agile coaches, but also a decent representation of miscellaneous types of professional coaches. And so we know that one of the most challenging thing for coaches is figuring out like, how to actually make coaching a business. And how do you get that business up and running? And how do you run it once you get there and actually, charge and things like that. And so, I’ve been working with URI for probably a couple of years now, we’ve been going back and forth, working on different things together and interacting a bit. And I’ve gotten to know his business pretty well. And what I’ve seen from him and the way he runs his business has been very impressive. And there were things that I wanted to learn from him selfishly. So I asked if he would do this webinar, and not just include me, but include all of you so that you could learn some of those things. So, Yuri, I’ll let you kind of step in and tell us a little bit about who you are. And then let’s just take it from there. Yeah,
1:32
sure. Thanks, Sherry. I’m blessed to hear those things from you. Because I’m, I’m recalling the way I found about you even before reading your your famous book that you and Michael, Mila MAs and Alex written on enterprise agile coaching. I’m recalling that I found your profile on LinkedIn, occasionally. And I was impressed that the person who combines CC certificate with the MCC exists, actually. So and as you say, you’re bridging to worlds of executive coaching and coaching. It’s truly impressive. I didn’t think that such people exist. Now I know that there is a few of them. So. And yes, we have a few years of collaboration of different kinds. And now I’m delighted to speak to your audience here about agile coaching as a business. So I guess the process I would suggest the following process for today, I will share my slides, I will walk through the deck. And I would encourage you to ask questions in the chat box. And Sherry will handle those because I will not read them. And in the end, we will have q&a, I guess some 10 Maybe 20 minutes. If I will be able to answer questions as they go, I guess we I will do pauses from time to time or Sherry, I’m letting you interrupt if you feel that this particular question should be best answered immediately. Okay. Sounds great. Awesome. So here’s what we’ve got going to speak today off, and the promised agenda. So what’s going on in the field of agile coaching in terms of, of the industry in terms of business domain, then career options for agile coaches, whether it’s employee, contractor or consultant. And here I would like to see in chat, your feedback. What role do you associate with so employee is for if you work in a company as a coach or Agile coach, contractor is the person who has less stability, who works with I don’t know, six or 12 months contracts and then has to find another contract or maybe continue the current contract. And consultant is a person who works with multiple businesses, multiple projects, etc. So this understanding this about you as the audience will help me focus on the right things in this topic. So you can simply put the number in chat, like one for employees, two for contractors and three for for consultants if it’s easier for you. All right. I’ll review it later as it’s done. But for now, I’ll continue sharing a few words about myself. So this year marked 20 years of my professional career. I started in tech industry as a technical writer I guess 20 years ago. And during next eight years, I’ve tried multiple roles like developer, business analyst, marketer etc and starting 2012 I’m in tech leadership roles. And then I switched to occasionally didn’t plan it. But I realized that my way of leadership is a coaching style. And when I got to my first coaching training, I was amazed how it works and decided to shift my career towards pure coaching agile coaching consultant. And next year, I started an agency called Agile drive. And this year we rebranded it. It also is connected to what’s happening with agile as an industry and to our services. So we no longer do only Agile transformations are trainings we do strategy development, strategy, execution, different types of trainings and coaching. And at one session, one of the client asks, my partner and Ema has a demo. Why are you called Agile drive, what you’re doing with us is not agile. So we thought, okay, it’s a sign to rebrand. And now we are optional partners, and I act in multiple roles or wear multiple hats as a CEO, business consultant, executive coach, or executive team coach, and again, my mentor for consultants, more for coaches in terms of challenges that they have in their practice in specifically about contracting business side of things, etc. Speaking about my company appeal partners is today, we have two offices in Ukraine in Europe. Each is run by this respective partner, me or Dima, we’ve done 50 Plus projects in multiple countries here, some logos from national and international clients. And I guess that’s enough bragging and not something I like very much. I want to start with and before that, I will read your responses regarding roles. Okay, we see other EC contractors, consultants, people combining multiple roles or employee who is working as a consultant. Hi, Alexei. Alright, good. So why am I doing what I’m doing? And should you or shouldn’t? Again, it’s a sort of precaution before the stock. So I’m not trying to talk you into starting a consulting agency or something, but I’m rather sharing my experience with hope that it will ignite a spark of inspiration you to be more and more courageous to do what you want to do. How did I get into this coaching call sound consulting thing, a short story that will explain you my motives behind it. So I’m recording my first coaching session as a client. intimate moment that I believe that most of you have heard, I hope it was memorable. And I was amazed how coaching works. So I resolve my issues and barriers in my head. And then I asked this lady coach, her name is Allah, and she’s like one of the top executive coaches here in Ukraine. I asked her out, what is what’s the business that you’re running? Is it a business? Is it a viable business? Is it a business at all? So she was, besides being a coach, she had this training and coaching agency, and she had a partner and she had some few people have the back office staff doing sales, marketing, finances, etc. And she laughs to me and said, Well, you’re it’s a bad business, frankly, bad. What do you mean? She said, You know, this, Sherry is laughing. I guess she’s she’s, she’s resonating with that. So what do you mean bad business? And she said, So, to scale my coaching business, I have to scale my expertise. I hate to scale expert people around me. So basically, how it worked for me for the last 15 years is, as I’m repeating my, my old pattern, every time I’m taking a partner, or a few of them, I’m developing them, they become expert coaches, and soon they leave me and they open their own business and they become my competitors. So if you want my advice, just don’t start it. So because I’m a person who is motivated by like complex challenges, I thought that okay, challenge except that if you couldn’t build it past I don’t know two or three trainers, then it’s, it might be an interesting challenge for me. So because again, if you want a lot of money, there are many easier ways to earn good for CIM rather than a scaling consulting agency. But again, we’re not working only for the money. But for other motives, my motive, again, is solving complex challenges that my mentors couldn’t. So that’s why I’m here.
10:16
And yeah, as the right in the some standard videos, don’t repeat this without supervision. But if you still want to repeat this, you can rely at least on my supervision processes, since I helping a lot to coaches and consultants. So let’s continue with what’s going on in the field of agile coaching and consulting just to get a sense of what’s going on with the industry. And what can we rely on if we, for example, agile coaches, working as consultants or insight? What can we have on this market? What can we count for? So hopefully, you know, this model, technology adoption curve by Everett Rogers, it basically outlines the lifecycle of any technology or any innovation and if we, so if you take agile, it was in the early market on the on the stage where it was interested in, provided and propagated by by innovators, it’s been here, I don’t know, maybe in the in the late 90s, right, or the early 2000s. But then it moved to a more wider adoption, and then it crossed this chasm, right, and became mainstream. And now I guess it’s even more than more here. So what it means when the technology or any concept like Agile is in the late majority states, it means that most of the companies actually have their own expertise in Agile. They’re on agile coaches, or Scrum Masters. And they now need different things from people who are in the consult consulting mode, see external agile coaches. For example, they occasionally demand some trainings by but they do not much. For example, here in Europe, they do not much rely on the consulting expertise because they have really good expertise developing site over the years. So this means that for me as an Agile coach, for example, that my clients now need something more from me not just running trainings, or explaining what Agile is, and running pilot teams or etc. So, so you can think if you’re an Agile Coach external like like me, or like my, my team members, you can think if you think in how to develop your business further, you can sing about the differentiators. So things that are early in the market, and the companies do not have, for example, internal expertise, and then they might demand that from you. Things like OKR, for example. So there’s a trend growing trend in Europe that people who couple years ago, they named themselves agile coaches. Now they claim themselves to be OKR coaches, because there is a demand Parokya coach, so I’m not the one to assess the level of expertise, right, but okay, I guess it’s it definitely crossed the chasm, and maybe it’s somewhere here. Or if you take AI, it’s probably crossing this chasm. And, for example, Henrik Newberg, well known agile Guru, I would say one of them, who has the famous videos on the YouTube about agile, like product ownership in a nutshell, or Spotify, engineering culture, he’s now claiming himself to be aI enthusiasts and AI consultant, not not the Agile anymore, right? This is actually a strong sign that in the industry is changing. You can read more more definitely have a comprehensive report on where each technology or each concept in software development culture and methods is on the info cube website. I’ll share the link probably afterwards, right. So these guys do those trends reports every every year and this, this current represents the state of December 2020 23. Just to to browse and to think, like, what, what am I as a consultant might be bringing into the company is that it’s still unique still from the early adopter, for example, stage so this is where companies still rely heavily on the external expertise rather than the the internal. Okay. And another recommendation here like is speaking of this Agile to OKRs which, for example, which is trendy in Europe, differentiate or die is actual as an as, as, as previously, right? So instead of selling the same lemonade just by changing your title on LinkedIn, think about some good example of differentiation like like Henrik number, right? So he’s, he’s thinking he is well known he has his company, maybe not even one so very crisp and pubs and clubs. But he still is thinking as a consultant what I will be selling during the next 10 years, and this will most likely will not be agile. Although these guys, this guy has participated in Spotify transformation, Lego transformation, Mojang, etc, like large companies. So it’s a short story about differentiators. But the next thing I would like to share is what’s probably more interesting is strategies to increase your impact and income. And in this webinar, today, I will speak a lot about the business side of things, but just don’t think that I’m obsessed about only about impact in income. Of course, what brought what is bringing in many of consultants into this business domain is rather desire to continuously grow and improve and impact and income is something that comes in parallel as a side effect. So as we have today, three different audiences my next. This is the framework that I’ve created when, when I was preparing to this, this webinar. So it basically outlines the recommendations or strategies for for three types of, of people based on four verticals. One is the core expertise would be leadership coaching, or agile coaching. Next is marketing and sales. Because Surprise, surprise, if you want to achieve commercial success, you have to play and improve in sales and marketing, rather than core expertise at some moment of your career. And the fourth area is how to how do we prove our expertise to to others to clients, for example, or to employers? So we’ll start with employees, do you see my screen? Well, I hope so. So as for employee, so here’s at least three things that are expected from employee to increase their input and income. Of course, it’s a no brainer, excel in Agile coaching. And we will not speak about this in this webinar, mentor and be mentored coach and be coached I guess, it’s self explained. And the next one is take charge for org level initiatives. I’m recalling being a scrum master in tech company and things that boosted my career was taking initiative about what’s not in my job responsibilities, I had something like running trainings for neighbor department, just from my initiative, because I’ve seen that it might help to collaborate with them. Again, speaking of marketing, again, taking charge for org level initiatives and being more visible on the organizational level will will help you this visibility help you build your internal reputation and the skill if you’ve never done this never spoke at the conferences. As a as a consultant, it’ll help you to, to, to pump this muscle experiment with side gigs. Again, I’m recalling that the first thing that sparked my my interest in consulting was a side gig. So I ran a workshop for a small company. And I was amazed how how, how quickly they grasp what I’m telling them because of site experience because of fresh look that I was bringing in there. So my people in my company from from from the teams that I was supervising were more reluctant to my ideas then then the the people from from the other company so this site, it wasn’t about the some big amount of money but rather it was about that testing myself as a consultant if I will be useful to people from another company.
20:06
And in terms of prove your expertise, typically, to grow. Like it’s culture wise, for example, in the US and Canada, it’s, it’s more important if compared to Ukraine, the amount and the quality of the credentials that you have on your resume. But what companies in my experience are typically getting is the assessment based credentials, for example, CSM or PSM, something where you got a training and then got some certain assessment 30 questions where 80 questions and you got the credential. For more seasoned consultants, this will not be that easy. So the their credentials will be more experienced based rather than assessment base. We’ll talk about this in a while. So for people that are working as contractors, again, it the popularity of this format is different. It varies from country to country, but beyond what’s expected from employee to increase their impact, for contractors to stand out on the market to differentiate and to prove your expertise to external clients. It’s expected that you not just attend conferences, but you speak at gatherings, the company, the conferences, the Atlantic coach camps exchange experience with fellow fellow coaches. And this is something that is bringing you those solo gigs or collaboration gigs and from, from my experience and experience of my coaches, from my circle, these collaborations are greatly helping you grow, actually grow and get to know other clients, etc. In terms of marketing, it’s expected from contractor to increase market presence to be active on social media to in unconference and what I’m observing. Work in marketing and sales is not very comfortable for for agile coaches or for coaches. So, majority of people in my circles would rather attend the Agile coaching conference, not a business conference, or speak at the Agile conference, not not at the Business Conference. But actually these things, speaking at the external events, means events where the audience consists of your clients, not agile coaches, this is something that is bringing you those clients, right, or even attending them as a as an attendee, not a speaker, will help you learn their, their challenges, their issues and the solution that they’re looking for, and help you actually hear better hear your client. As for sales skill, from contractor, it’s now becomes crucial to grow to develop your negotiation expertise and generic sales skill. Frankly, I often tell my not clients, but potential clients during the first meetings with them, where they are trying to negotiate with me over my rates or something. I frankly, tell them that I’m not a good negotiator. And this might be considered as a negotiation trick, but it’s really not something that I do every day, although I’ve been maybe in 100, negotiations or past seven years. But still when I’m negotiating, for example, with the CEO of the bank, or any professional financial expert, negotiation is their job. They’re doing this every day. And I’m not so I’m trying not to not to play this game directly, but rather, you use some other techniques that I will share in a few slides. But again, this this is crucial. And here I want to share a story of my friend Pasha who is the owner of probably the most known Ukrainian creative agency. Pasha has been the client of mine, we helped him restructure his organization to more agile ways of working. And he wants I was curious to learn from him his unique way to to price his creative projects. So I knew that their their rates of his agency are probably the largest in Ukraine. And I asked him how he came to this way of negotiating when he just bluntly naming the number out of his head says I believe that this project will cost this and that and he’s not playing like our leader. aides are something like meaning creative agencies do. So parsha is telling, we know that we are doing unique creative work. And we want a unique price for that. And I said, So how you come up how you develop this mindset? And how come of course they have to, to have an impressive portfolio, etc, etc. And he told me a story of, of his guru, the design guru called Stefan Sagmeister. I guess I have a separate slide about Yeah, here it is. So Stefan Sagmeister is a payment probably cream of the crop in the design world. He’s Austrian designer. He’s famous, for example, for music album covers for Rolling Stones, Jay Z, Aerosmith, etc. So my friend, Porsche, he was chasing that Stefan Sagmeister, to ask him a couple of questions like, How can you become such a cool designer? And he said, I found him on one event in Europe, I specifically flew there and I caught him for a few questions. And I asked him, What made you become the top demanded designer in the world. And what Stefan responded, it actually shocked my friend Pasha. Because he said, first, I thought that to be a well known, top designer, I have to polish my design skill. But soon, when my learning curve is almost flat, I realized that it is not the design skill that I have to improve to become a great designer, but rather my sales skill. And parsha was very much shocked and surprised. He said, As a designer, myself, I wasn’t keen on selling, it’s not my job. But I realized after that conversation, that this is something I need to I need to watch to my sales process to build myself to systematize my sales process, instead of thinking that my creativity will self sell itself. So this story inspired me to. So at some point of my self development journey, I started taking courses on negotiation on business model, etc, etc, on more business things, rather than purely develop myself as an Agile coach or a executive coach. So again, I’m pretty sure that for contractor role, negotiation expertise in generic sales skill is a must. And in terms of proving expertise, they typically deserve expert credentials. For example, CSP, which I guess is popular level of credential for contractors, is requiring three years if I’m not mistaken of experience, or PCC, ICF certification requires 500 I’m not mistaken hours of coaching logs. So this is not something you can pay $1,000 and get the next day based on some tests assignment right. And also, please know that for certain credentials, they depreciate over time means that having CSM on your resume 10 years ago and today means different things for employers or for your clients. And again, consultants so, to me, the difference between consultant and contractor is that contractor is still relying on long contracts and has contract after contract while consultant is someone that is helping multiple companies and there are different types of projects, contracts or consulting products. And here we go. So as for core expertise, what I think is worth considering on top or actually if we look at the image on the bottom of all of those things is consultants typically work on executive and strategic levels. So what it means I’m recalling a few years ago was
29:31
running an Agile transformation for larger enterprise. And I believe that facilitating a bi weekly transformation six sync up with the board is something that is important for me to facilitate personally. While the CEO after probably third session says URI I believe that one of our SCRUM masters can facilitate as well. So I want you to focus on more street Dziedzic things rather than tactical that we are describing here. And I had the internal conflict that I described discussed then was my mantra. But the thing is that working on strategic levels means that you don’t want to go into operational and tactical things, but you rather want respective people in their roles doing that thing. And you want the client to cherish you for to value for this strategic perspective, and not not falling into the operational level. What I mean by developing executive presence, it’s the posture, it’s the communication style. It’s the dress communication for the executives, or people who are responsible for the strategy so that they could be comfortable with you to open up with you to to share with you their what’s what’s on their mind, what what’s, what are their their challenges, right. And psychological growth. I can hardly imagine my work as a consultant working with higher rank, highly demanding clients without having a regular counseling or psychotherapy, that helped me helped me develop this psychological part of my rank as a professional. And again, poaching supervision, I guess, lies also here. So the core expertise of a consultant is extended with those things that are here on the bottom of the screen. In terms of marketing, it’s not any more just a market market presence, because consultants typically demand higher rates than contractors. And probably the negotiations might be tougher, the demand must be, I would say built, not just waiting for the clients to call you and say you’re UK, we have a problem. So thought leadership is something that will differentiate a consultant from a from a contractor, or an employee, which includes so I know Sherry, for me is a great example. She’s publishing books, she has her own personal coaching. She runs supervisions, mentoring for coaches, she’s doing herself transformation, work with clients, executive coaching, etc, etc. So it’s a number of services that have their own pricing models, they haven’t their own share in her revenue stream, etc. So it’s not just posting content on social media, but rather doing all things as complex, right? speaking at conferences, develop partnerships, for example, I’m recalling one of the most efficient partnerships in terms of marketing was giving classes in the business school on business agility. So I was running, I guess, three times per year for the class. And after every class, I was working with at least two contracts to clients, which is a pretty good conversion. And again, specialization just as we speak, spoke about Henrik never, for the companies to be able to pay you a unique price, you have to be unique. For example, what comes to my mind first is the offers of Team topologies concept, which is, I guess, gaining its popularity on the mass market now. They, their framework is somewhat unique, and it gives some important answers to their organizations in terms of org design, in their Agile transformations, and there’s little too few competitors in this so they can I don’t know what pricing do these guys are doing, but I guess they can feel their uniqueness. And they’re pretty demanded right now they offer so this concept team topologies. In terms of sales on the consultant level, you finally in the end of the day have to start working on your own business. So when I was a sole consultant, I was focusing mostly on businesses of my clients. I was checking of course financials in the end of each month to ensuring that I’m making enough but still, I’m recalling a few years ago, I was hiring a consultant and For consultants. So these guys asked me a question that that struck me and it was the following set theory, how much do you work? What was the percentage that you work on your business versus in your business. And it was very powerful, because I guess at that time, I was working on my business, maybe 10% of the time, and the majority time I was working in consulting gigs, or managing consulting gigs, where my coaches were working. So with this 10%, it’s not a focus, it’s rather your firefighting. And plus, you have to, to establish a growth growth machine, nice, stable sales pipeline, you have to continuously work in your market, tweak your business model, invent new products, optimize your financials. And And finally, when the team is telling you, you really need a strategy, you have to invent the strategy with them, right? So last year, I’ve focused on a few months on purely CEO role, to to fix the growth machine issue, to make our sales forecasts more predictable. And after a few months, I guess my CEO responsibilities shrink to maybe two days, two days per week. And the rest of the time I’m open to the client work now. So as we spoke with Cherie and Alex, before this workshop, when Alex intervened with the question, how do you combine CEO role and consultant role, I don’t believe there is a continuous state of balance between those two. So it’s this this balance is dynamic. So for now, this this quarter, my balance is 40%, CEO and 60% consult. But again, things might change, and I’m fine with this. This makes, and again, in terms of proving your expertise. The clients expect you from you something more unique than than just industry standard credentials, right. So developing your own frameworks, developing your own educational programs, or your own certification bodies, or writing books is something that is expected for a consultant to be treated as a consultant. I think I’ll stop for a while here, because it’s gets the major part of this presentation is done. Maybe there are some questions because I’m not monitoring chat too much.
37:52
We haven’t had any questions in the chat. However, I suspect that a few people do have questions. So if you would like to raise your hand or come up, come off mute and ask that question. That would be great.
38:16
Okay, then,
38:19
coming in now,
38:20
we have one. Yep. Daniel. Okay. Oh, no, I was just, I’m still digesting everything.
38:30
Okay, I thought you came off. You do? You’ve raised your hand. What question do you have? Yep. My
38:34
question would probably be like a transition between one of those from employee to say, contractor or consultant. What’s that? What’s that? Like? Because I’ve always been an employee and I’m curious to explore a different position.
38:54
Okay, have you tried to do anything on the site? In terms of your professional career?
39:00
Um, I’ve tried doing coaching on the side. Okay.
39:06
That was really be it. Okay, so do you think moving to towards a coach or leadership coach or agile coaching because these two tracks are different? What is closer to you?
39:23
For sure, agile coaching is still closer to me because I have more experience, but there’s something interesting with coaching and adds to the Agile coaching. Yeah.
39:37
All right. So if I’m thinking about the recipe, I think the famous phrase to get outside of the building is the first word comes to my mind. So trying to be active on social media and explaining what services can you offer on the site. Of course if your job contract is not intervening with these, because there are some exclusive job contracts that are stating specifically that you cannot share them. Well, there is no legal way. And we will not suggest illegal ways here, but seems that you have already some practice on the site and telling more about it or looking at any fellow coaches to do side gigs or talking to your friends and family. Maybe you know, guys, someone who might need services like this, and that, or at least establishing your own website, which is not a costly thing and sharing to the world that I’m huge. I’m doing this, this and that. So marketing is the way in short ways.
40:48
Thank you.
40:49
Or I’m recalling my first experience when I first experience of trying was the site geek that I spoke previously. But first experience of getting outside was speaking in the Project Management Conference. And sharing something I wanted to share. It was It wasn’t a blast. But it was a good. It was a good event. And I experienced this. Because I like being on the stage. I had the music career before it. And I’ve recalled that that feeling of being on stage and answering to tricky questions from the audience. I thought, Oh, that is life, not just working it out hours weeks. So then I pursued like started speaking more and more. Some some some speeches were terrible. And but they were the best learning experience for me. And then conference by conference, I started building on my personal brand and that those sidekicks started happening and at one time, I decided to jump off the ship, the huge ship to my little water scooter of my startup. But again, you have to you have to realize that the moment when you so I often get this question, how do I start my own consulting company or consulting practice, and based on the experience of my mentees and my colleagues on the market, I will now say that continue combining as long as you can, means that develop your financial buffer, because immediately when you go to consulting it, there’s a fallacy of beyond consultants that they’re totally waiting some mythical hourly rate, like mythical man months, right? They say, Oh, when I work 50 hours on this rate, I will earn more than my current salary that I will easily get 50 hours of work. But it’s not that in month to month, they are different and you have to have some financial buffer to recover when things are not going well. So then I’m that’s why I’m suggesting to continue combining two. And then some people combine and just don’t go they are fine with combining.
43:21
Alright, Shahab, you have a question.
43:24
Yeah, well, I actually I have to do but I’ll start the first one. So guys, I jumped quite late to the meeting. But you read the question to you. What was your experiments before you start to be a consultant? It’s like, it was like, something that you start experimenting, or it was just like, Okay, this is the time I’m feeling this wherever I’m feeling this.
43:44
Okay, so you’re you’re you’re pulling me even earlier in my career when I identify identified this passion for for intrapreneurship. So I guess the first, the first ever thing was combining the job and rock band, with concert shows, albums, etc. And that’s how I learned that. Like, I’m good at combining. I focusing on one activity on one discipline is not my type of thing. That’s just my nature, right. And the second one was in 2012, when I opened Forbes magazine, if seen regular guys like me, I’ve known some of them, and they were in the startup accelerator. And I learned about those terms. And I said, Gosh, I, I should have been here among them, because I know some of them why I’m not here. And the few weeks after I’ve seen the advertisement of a hackathon called garage 99, something like that. So went on this hackathon. I was In the winning team, and in a matter of weeks, we’ve raised the precede investment from the same accelerator that these guys were in the, from the Forbes pages. So the that’s how I went on the startup journey for a year. And we’ve, we’ve burned the money, we’ve didn’t build any, anything to find product market fit, but there was a ton of learning, and a ton of understanding that enterpreneurship is something that I want to pursue. And then I had a few internal startups in their organization said I was never successful. And I guess the next experiment was, I definitely knew that I don’t, I’m not ready to lose money means that I don’t want to go out and to experiment to burn my family budget to my experiments. So first, so I went out from the enterprise to become a partner in small but pretty famous at the time agile coaching agency in Ukraine, and after a year working as a partner, I realized that I’m finally this little bird is finally ready to leave the nest and, and find its own nest. So that’s three, I guess, major career experiments. And Jakob, thank you for this question, because it helped me realize what I’m based on. But you have I guess, second question, right? Yes, sorry. I
46:38
know that Raven is having hands up. The second is like, a bit provocative, but maybe it’s my false assumption, like, assuming that we are in the slight majority with agile, like most of the company fortune 500 already tried. What in your eyes? Let’s assuming that more experienced as a coach is what is the demand for agile coaching? In your eyes right now?
47:02
What what is the demand?
47:04
Yes. What’s the demand for agile coaching? Because assuming like the most of the big companies already tried Agile transformations, maybe I’m wrong, maybe now yeah.
47:15
Yeah, I have a maybe non conventional answer to this. Raven, and you gotta worry, we will have time, plenty of time to answer your question. Because I guess this is this one is important. So because there are many notions on LinkedIn, for example, that Agile is dead, right? Let’s move to something else. Right. So I believe that Agile has play its crucial role in the development of new, efficient and human oriented ways of working for the last 30 years, it definitely left this mark on the the way that people interact with each other in organizations. And it’s time probably for some new not version versions of it, for example, many companies that are pretty efficient, I don’t know, delivery hero for it. I don’t know why, but they come to my mind first. So many established tech companies, they say when you ask them, Do you run Angel? Do you run those standards? Do you know what PBR is? Their typical answer, oh, we want beyond agile, right? So and I guess this is the idea. So you learn the basics. And then after a few years of deliberate practice, you start improvising. And then in the end of the day, you invent something new. So many great companies have invented their own ways of working based on the Agile principles and values, right, while the laggards or the late majority or the sorry, banks and other institutions that are that have never been very efficient, not just in terms of it, but in terms of other things. Right. And I guess, again, you want it to be provocative, I will be provocative in response, that many large financial institutions with help of so called Agile transformation, they’re trying to fix poor leadership and lack of vision. That’s because I work with different banks and bank with a strong leader who is really wanting to build a great company. We just work for year and a half and they then leave to run their own experiment and they’re in a much better shape, but banks with very distributed accountability, say it out They were working with them for years. And they say we will better work with you rather than change this leader in this department because it’s very political as non budget. We know it’s it will cost us money, but this is the risk we are paying for. So something like this. Nice. Thank you. That’s a sensor. Jakob. Thank you. Thank you. All right. And Raven.
50:28
Hello, hello. Okay. So I want to I just want to, I guess, a comment more than a question. So back in 2019, I’ve always wanted to have my own business. But I was kind of pushed into it. There was a colleague of mine that said, Hey, I just landed this contract for agile coaching, I need some coaches. But in order for you to work with me, you gotta start your own business. And I’m like, what? Like, how soon he’s like, I need to get stuff set up within two weeks. You know, so it was it was it was, I was ill prepared. Okay. And so that’s what my business has been based on. Because I did not know a lot. I was just trying to set up and trying to work and trying to figure out and navigate entrepreneurship. Since that’s what my business has been. I have a partner over here, Raven, I need some help. I just landed a contract. Can you work with me? Yes, I can work with you. But my business is based on that. I don’t have that marketing component. I don’t have that sales component that I’ve landed. I maybe like landed one. But most of my businesses, strictly partnerships. So I’m just saying like, I’m just being transparent. I’m obviously I’m not bragging. I’m just saying like, it is very difficult. For me, I appreciate the partnerships. I’m trying to figure out how can I learn to be good at sales, be good at marketing, and land some of my own and be more self sufficient? That’s just my little comment.
52:16
Yeah, thanks. Thanks for even to add on that. When I first hired a lady for a marketing lead role in our company, I prepared her, I warned her that, Rania prepare to be a change agent here, because you will, here’s how it will work, you will reach out to coaches, which we have, I don’t know eight of them are more. And you will ask them to participate in some marketing activities like writing blog posts, running webinars, etc. And they will always tell you, they’re too busy with client work. So you have to learn how to engage them, because this is definitely not a pleasant kind of work for them. Right. And after two years of those experiments, and ups and downs, I must say that I’m in vacation right now, this week, and I was it gave me a chance to look at the actual partners, Facebook and LinkedIn pages and posts from the external point of view, not not not reading our slack. And I’m surprised that I’m looking at the outsider. And I really like what’s happening, right. So now we’re trying now doing the sales transformation we are. We are working with our coaches to to help them embrace the fact that they are responsible for sales too. And that’s another transformation for them. But again, when they leave, and sometimes coaches leave me, just like they my mentor told me, so they started establishing their own sole business. They definitely don’t want to build an agency, but they do well as a solo consultant and sometimes come to me in to mentoring on these topics. Thanks for even more
54:19
Can Can I add real quick to Raven before Igor? Raven, I would encourage you to embrace those partnerships, right? We can’t do it alone in business period. Right? It’s all it is all about partnerships. And in the world we’re in especially if you’re a solopreneur those bigger contracts, you’re not going to be able to do them alone. Right and so embrace those partnerships and in actually seek out more of that because that is where your your money is going to come from. It’s really hard for an individual to get a big corporate contract because the reality is they need more than one person You’re gonna have to figure out how to bring other people in. So just something to consider.
55:07
Thank you for sharing that.
55:12
And Igor, Yeah, hello, everyone.
55:14
So my question is I mean, I’m curious how you differentiate from other consulting agencies. And next question, what is your opinion about, you know, sometimes consulting coming to the market to client, do some few transformations. And after, after this, some people should come one more time, and maybe some coaches to help our organization? To feel better? Yeah, obviously, I’ve been on this move.
55:59
Can you remember the first question, because the second one is so hard? I have so much to tell you. The first one was how do we differentiate? Right? Yeah.
56:08
Are you differentiate from competitors on the market?
56:14
So as we started our subsidiary in Denmark last year, we started being more conscious, what works for us in Ukraine, and these are different things. So in Ukraine after seven years without an established brand, like every day, some request is coming in from multiple channels, right. So, we are not, but still we are active in marketing. But in Denmark, situation is different. We are no name like, we are nobody to them, right. So the terms are different, the type of activities are different, we are more following a client’s demands rather than dictating something based on our experience. So things like that.
57:06
How do we differentiate? First thing is that recalling how to translate because they are in Ukrainian, so
57:18
we are. We’re telling the client, we are with you, until the the end of the project in even further. And this is a partial answer to your first question. So the to your second question. So it is not uncommon for consultants to work for a certain period with the company in the transformation phase, and for example, burnout, or just want to terminate this contract because it it has grown to something unbearable for the consultant, for example, or the stakeholders have changed and they want these particular consultants out. So there’s so many reasons that that, to me, it’s it is pretty normal in the industry of transform business transformation, that it’s hard to complete those projects from from start to end, compared to any other like construction industries, whatever. So because if you’re even if you’re working in personal coaching with a person, it is not new for you that the single person is sabotaging their own ambitions, their own goals in some phase of your coaching. And now, if you’re speaking about large organization, everyone is going through this change curve, and is sabotaging their own or the goals of the others. And it makes it difficult for for a single coach or a single company or a team of coaches to change. So and another explanation to point number two is the what I call transformation phases. Phase one, we never tried this, we want to do some pilot teams to learn something etc. It’s like, more or less clear, right? And they might need one or two coaches or three coaches for this contract. They’re doing this they’re closing the contract, shake hands and they then they realize, Oh my gosh, we now need like even more coaches because more teams are demanding we have started seeing that more teams are demanding coaches. Do we contract with those coaches or we hire new or maybe we hire McKinsey because sorry, like another big consultancies because they tell us they know how to do it. 100 teams at a time. So again, it the client is maturing with as the transformation is moving, the client is maturing and now now after a year or two there request will be more more detailed, more conscious. And they might or they might realize that they want to continue with this coach or not. So I think I’ve been in, in different shoes in terms in shoes of a person, as you say, Go fix our transformation after XYZ or, or a person after which they’ve hired someone else. So that’s that’s just normal to me. That’s the nature of the transformation. All right,
1:00:35
let me jump in real quickly on the on the differentiator, because that topic is very near and dear to our hearts at tandem. We actually just came through the whole exercise of trying to figure out why the CAC us, right. And as we were thinking about that, actually, it brought me back to when I started my consulting gig. And that was not like, I wanted that I was just thrown into that. And it turned out to be okay. But I think as employees, we probably always, all of us feel that a question. Why do we need to hire you? Guy, the more aggravating version of that question. Why amongst all the candidates, you’re the best. And I want to give like a flippant answer. I don’t know all your other candidates. But if you want to, if you want to get hired, and you probably don’t want to give that answer, right. So the answer is that I don’t know other candidates. But here’s what I bring to the table. And you speak to Z desires into the problems can choose the pain points of a person in front of you. So what we learned that there is no one size fit all. And actually our tell them it’s not moral but tell them principle is that we build a custom program, a custom designed engagement for you specifically, we don’t do cookie cutters, we don’t do one size fit all we don’t we don’t teach you scrum because we think Scrum is the best thing since sliced bread. We actually our engagements run in two phases. The first phase is we come in, we talk to clients, we talk to stakeholders. It takes a month, month and a half. And after that we come up with a plan of engagement. And however meantime we did that, she personally heard that you came in and in first two or three weeks, you probably asked us more battle questions or know more about us than we do. And she’s like, I don’t Nothing, I’m just asking questions. And out of that, out of coaching stands by the way, that’s the fundamental coaching stance comes a customer engagement and comes the core of what we tell them is being hard. We actually speak to your needs, we come with a customized solution, not a cookie cutter. And we are with you all the steps of the way adjusting, growing and maturing as your organization is. So if you look at your background, I don’t think it’s that hard. Your si euro was talking about working in different shoes. Look at all the shoes, look at your shoe rack that that is in the in the hallway, and fix examine all those shoes. Those are some probably unique shoes. Just examine them and ask yourself, How did I grow? What did I learn walking in those and put that on your pitch?
1:04:11
Nice, thank you. So Richie.
1:04:18
Hello, everybody. I have maybe rudimentary question. What are the key challenges that you face while transitioning from a salaried employee to enterpreneurship? And how did you manage handling those How did you address those effectively without getting impacted on your full time job or whatever current job you were having at that time?
1:04:51
Just to give you a better sense of the question you mean the challenge that I had during the transition or after that transition. So,
1:05:01
there is always a phase right when you are already doing a salary job and then you are getting ready for jumping into enterprise, there is already always going to be that overlapping period. So, I would like to know the common challenges during that path and how did you tackle them also anything additional that you would like to provide as advice like, be cautious about the timing when you jump into an entrepreneurship? Or Okay, once you feel like you, you have completed the these days, then you are ready to jump into that kind of guidance. Okay.
1:05:41
Okay, thank you, sorry. Um, no, this this this intrapreneurial journey is contagious. So as you’ve tried your first side gigs, and you’ve received some extra bonus to your salary in turn, in terms of the pay, it is contagious. And my, my experience can be best described with one story. At the time, when I was almost ready to leave. One of my bosses I had to at the time, he came to Ukraine from us and set one on one with me. And we had some some challenges with the product. And I was the engineering manager. Sorry. And he, he sat with me and asked the theory. I know there’s few types of leaders, there are leaders who are string doers. There are leaders that are more of a thought leaders and maybe some third time that I’m not recalling, instead, see that URI Who do you most associate with? So he was sort of coaching me, although it was probably his first coaching attempt in our relationships. But this helped me realize that I associate myself more with the although I was a good doer, I can be a strong doer, right. But this thought leadership is something I cannot leave that I’m pursuing, in fact, into this direction. So with this story, I want to emphasize that as long as you start develop your side career, you start posting on Facebook or LinkedIn more often than previously, your co workers are seeing this and I know many examples when I’m watching such activities from from my network and I’m guessing when this person will be disbanded from his job or leave voluntarily and this always happens right? Because they cannot they cannot stop this intrapreneurial journey and say, okay, okay, I will be inside average, a salaried employee in that set. Again, it’s contagious, you feel this, this mix of increased freedom selection creates responsibilities slash increased potential of earning more, and you cannot go back so this is probably the the challenge is to ecologically manage this with your boss with your employer to ensure that they are fine that you’re doing side gigs and there, they know you will even maybe sometimes better than you do. And they feel like when I first came to my first boss, and she was more connected with me and I told her then I am probably getting an offer from Microsoft. She said URI I know that it’s great career option for you. I’m just asking you to stay for two more months not one months. It was a trick so she she said I know you will leave eventually. But for now I want you to stay in blah, blah, blah. So I left her one year just enough for her to to cope with started starting with nutrition and she later told me
1:09:28
Okay, thank you. I understood where exactly we need to be cautious. sharing your story. Yeah.
1:09:36
This to that, um, it’s really planning financially, right, know what you need, and don’t just jump in. Right. So moving from a full time employee to a contract. Yes, their security in full time employee, although that’s probably a bit of false security. Right. They can lay you off any day. That’s reality. But when we shift a contract, it’s more money, but it’s higher risk, right? They, you expect that they will send you packing at any day with no compensation package, right? So you have to have that buffer in place, know what you need in place to be safe, right? So if you quit your full time job, what do you need in place, so if you don’t have a contract for two months, or three months or four months, right, and preparing ahead of time, and often what will happen for you to make the big shift, like from contract work to consultant work, which is going from, I’m tagging on to somebody else, but I’m taking on the risk to I’m actually taking all the risk, it’s my company. Sometimes that is a you’ve got to do both for a while, until you can actually afford to go off on your own. So start preparing financially before you ever leave your full time job.
1:11:05
Thank you, Sharon, small addition on that. If you prepare three plans, like forecasts, like positive, realistic and optimistic or like negative of realistic and optimistic, and then plan financially, it shares it based on the worst scenario. Because this is what will actually happen. For the business, you
1:11:36
want to add one thing to make sure that this whole conversation is not about money, while jumping from employee employment, to contracting, ease, financial and a lot of legal consequences and all that. One thing that is helpful, and I coach people a lot on this one, it’s the mindset because people, even people being employees, they come and they say, I’m going to be contractor, I’m going to be my job. But my boss, I’m going to set my own hours, that’s going to be great. And I’m asking, so how much of that do you do right now? And they’re like, well, we cannot do that. Well, you can, you can do some of that. You can decide your own workload, you can decide where you want to grow, you can decide where you want to develop, you can decide what impact you make in your current company. How much of that you do right now as an employee, in a lot of people are really surprised that we don’t do that. So you’re telling me that overnight, you quit your job, you wake up, you go work for yourself, and that would magically appear.
1:12:54
You know what they say? They say if you want a promotion, start doing that job. Now. It’s the same thing here. You want to go contractor start doing the same job now. I go I go contract for
1:13:12
companies, or I’m an employee at the company. I tell them outright. Employment versus contract for me is just the way I pay my taxes. I do the same thing, regardless of my employment situation or the so it’s what you do right now. What might decide success or failure what you do tomorrow? Nice, slick, thank you. Can
1:13:38
I Can I just please add something technical, I promise I’ll be quick. So what I did was, so Well, I’m always a contractor for the vast majority of my career, but let’s just say I’m an employee, I would figure out if I’m not comfortable with doing things during the week, figure out how you can do something on the weekend. Maybe you say hey, I want to train and do an agile facilitation. I want to become a trainer to get my foot in, you know, in the pool, and then you may host trainings on the weekend. Okay? Now, when you get a little bit more comfortable as an employee, you figure out your schedule, my schedule tends to be free on a Wednesday and a Friday. So maybe you’ll have trainings, or break up your trainings to be four hours here four hours here until you complete that training, right? So there’s different ways, but also some things are just unpaid. And it’s about building your portfolio and your experience. So maybe you say hey, I’m going to do some free coaching and you advertise that on LinkedIn or something and people come and tell you your problems and then you that’s how you grow but you’re not getting paid yet. But you’re building your portfolio. That’s all I wanted to share.
1:14:42
Awesome. Thank you Raven and Mike. You’ve been very patient.
1:14:49
Thank you, Yuri. for your time this afternoon and Sherry And and Alex for hosting. I’m curious they’ll everything that’s been said while I’ve been waiting is actually, I think playing into the question I have, which tends to be the case when you’re patient, right? I’m curious, your if you can tell us a little bit about your experience, specifically with valuing your work, learning your strategies and pricing, right as it’s in the bullet point, and specifically to Alex’s follow up on that, not necessarily from a monetary monetary perspective, but from your own belief in yourself and momentum, and all that those great things. I see, you’re excited to answer this, because this is something I’ve just recently begun to overcome. And I think that that’s really what’s holding a lot of people back. I’d love to hear your progress through that. Thank you. X tree. And Alex, do you have something to add there? It would be great to
1:15:58
excellent question. Probably the best thing that happened to me in this consulting slash entrepreneurial journey is increased. Understanding increased self worth was Kevin, again, like 100 negotiations during last seven years. Oftentimes, clients are depreciating or diminishing or putting or questioning your price on my price, okay. That I’m telling them and working with those arguments, I mean, even in my inner dialogue, I’m not even talking in dialogue with them significantly increased minds are saying why am I costing what I’m what I’m telling them? And what I’m there are several factors that I’m so I’m for now my, how do I come up with price again, most of the things that I work are custom, just like Alex said, and I don’t have like a predefined menu with prices I have, I’m assessing the price of a complex project based on my intuition, rather, and taking into account several factors, like is this client interesting to work with and develop? For me, like developing the partnership, he or she develops and me to? means how much do I learn in this in this journey? Next one is do I believe that I can help them it’s pretty important because it’s not always the case. Next is Do I really want it or I have some restrictions? I don’t know maybe it’s a questionable industry like gambling or cigarettes or alcohol whatever. And are they bureaucracy heavy or not? So are they paying immediately Are they able to pay up front or they are paying like six days after so this the accumulation of those factors gives me some number then I go to my C for explain her the case. And we are doing planning poker with with numbers and since we are together for a while our numbers pretty pretty much coincide. And after this planning poker, I’m very much confident that this is if not just a single number maybe arrange that our falls into our zone of potential agreement. And this but it’s definitely not the strategy for for a person who is getting outside of the salaried employee and trying to to market themselves as consultants so it’s probably on the
1:19:14
moreover improvisation level of experience does it somehow answer at least partly a question or?
1:19:26
Yeah, I think Alex might have some follow up on it in Sri as well. Like I said, just because of Alex extra point, though, less of the less of the monetary amount but the purse like the confidence, I’m curious what your experience was in particular, that lead to you saying, okay, I can charge $21,000 a month for this. I can I can, I can come through on this Where’s that? What was that experience? Like? I just made up that number. But how? Necessary? Yeah. Thanks for the validation. Tell us your story of how you came to say, okay, yes, this is a win win for myself, to support myself, as well as with the client. And this will sustain me for maybe a number of months, but I don’t know where my next clients coming from. But I’m going to do a great job here. And I’m just curious if you can tell us, if there is maybe there isn’t a one story where you where you actually got that one check. But what was it like whenever you got to the point where you said, Here it is. And then it started being that? Yeah,
1:20:53
I’ll go first Alex, because he’s the CFO of and I fight with. So
1:21:01
I said the price.
1:21:04
I argue more with Alex over price than I do with clients over price. But I, I, for me, when I moved into this, my main driver was I’m never gonna do anything I don’t want to do ever again.
1:21:19
Right? And a lot like Yuri’s formula. For some people. If you want me you’re gonna pay because I don’t necessarily what you write. And so and along the line, even as I was doing my prices, if I got too busy, I was like, Okay, I have to raise my prices. Because I can’t serve anybody, everybody, and the ones who really want me or they’re going to be the ones who are willing to pay. And so every time I got too overwhelmed, I was like, time for a price increase. Right. And now, Alex, will tell the ugly side of me when I’m like, That’s too much.
1:22:01
And that’s, that’s, that’s probably the worst time to raise your prices because it’s too late. You’ve already been underpriced for six months at the lease, before you realize you need to raise prices. So for me the turning point well, I will speak for prices. And then I quickly speak on the cow. Can we do that? The turning point, we had a absolutely fascinating guest on our podcast, Cornelius shapely, and she runs million dollar coaching business. And she said something we asked her that question, how do you set your prices? And she said, it’s simple. And, Mike, when are you talking about like this and this and this, I keep telling coaches, you’re working too hard. This is very simple logic. You need to be charged with the price, you can say without giggling that’s it. If you can hold a Gago, that’s the price. Go for that. And on the other hand, I totally support three E L, we are not doing here. Anything that we don’t want to do. I don’t want to be in business of installing Scrum. I don’t want in business of helping people to manage their chair. I don’t want to be in business of professionally coaching out some employees. I want to be in business of executive coaching, I want to be in business off leadership development, I want to be in business of real Agile transformation. And we know how to do that. So we pick our clients can remember, as in professional coaching, your client coach relationship is always a two way street. Right? It’s a privilege to be in a position where you can choose your client where you can say no, can say no is an art and it’s a huge privilege. So we can tell our clients No, we don’t do that. We don’t want that. Right. So if you get to the point where you can afford that, and that’s a big E for a lot of people. That’s where you’re like, Yep, I got my growth. Yep, I can set my price. And then it’s a meeting of the mind and of the needs of the client and the consulting company or coaching company.
1:24:31
That’s all great. I still didn’t get one story of the experience though. That’s That’s what I was hoping to hear was like that experience where the check where the invoiced the check came through and you’re like, Oh,
1:24:46
my voice my voice always comes from
1:24:52
all right. So just take that entire journey of working finding, finding that lead, turning that lead into to a negotiation of win win, and actually depositing the check, and, and that also, you know, we’ve kind of we’re moving more and more towards the money. But I also Alex, I really appreciated what you said before about, this isn’t just monetarily, this is also like, you know, the books, the concepts, the frameworks, the you know, I hesitate to even post on LinkedIn, but I go to these things, and I listen to people ask the same questions. And I’ve already either I’ve just internalized it so much, or I’m just holding myself back. And I’m, I’m more and more on the edge of just like, Okay, I’ve just got to be willing to be I don’t know, face that. I don’t know that. I don’t know, you said like self worth. I think it’s just, I thought, I think everybody already knows this stuff. That’s my biggest problem is I don’t want to be just another voice. And I certainly don’t want to take the, you know, the Agile is dead Montra or the sarcastic Montra. Like, there’s all these different kinds of approaches. And I think, how did you find your approach? Maybe would be a good question. Right? So, you icon in Scrum, sorry to speak over you. But I’m telling you, you know, you were one of the first. You know, I don’t know if you remember, I earned my, my ACSM through you and my CSPs. And through you. And you were one of the first voices of Agile Scrum from scrum alliance that I remember seeing, wow, she must be the best. And well, I’m curious, how did she make those videos to make that content? You know, with some of the, you know, not necessarily the highest fidelity, you know, just but putting it out there.
1:26:53
So let me say first, I recognize that we’re at time. So I want to let anybody who wants to go you are thank you so much for joining us. We are thrilled to have you here. We haven’t done many of these sets, COVID. But we were will be bringing some more things back online. When everybody else went online, we were like they’ve got it, we’re going to do something else. But so now we’re kind of reaching back out to the community. And if anybody wants to stay for a couple minutes, I think we have just a few minutes. I personally have only another five, five minutes or so. But you’re welcome to stay on. So thank you, everybody, for joining. And thank you, Yuri. For your talk. See.
1:27:40
Thanks for having me.
1:27:42
All righty. So yeah, Alex, do you want did you leave? Oh, there you are. Sorry. You moved in. I didn’t know if you were still there. Do you want to answer that, Alex? Well,
1:27:54
so my only answer is, you’re basically asking a question for another talk and for another 45 minutes, right. But if, look, if we were working in a coaching capacity, I heard so many things. I could go in the directions. But my basic question for you, like I’m holding back, everybody knows, I don’t have anything else to add to the community? Well, a couple of things. First of all, we found that people are actually more engaged, and you bring in more clients, and you bring in more followers when you talk basics, not when you bring some accurate complex ideas to the market. Right. So look, Dave Snowden, like is paramount ly important, right? And his followers, or is the top of the pyramid, the whole financing the whole complexity model? And the bottom? How do we do complex things? How do we do complex development every day? How do we push that value into production? You start giving Kannada to them? And they’re like, Yeah, we have job to do. Right. So the basics are the most important, the most profitable, and the most nurturing to your audience. So that’s one thing. And the other thing when you start well, I stay away from posting to LinkedIn and I don’t have anything to say my coaching question to you will be what’s worse that might happen if you do?
1:29:38
What the experiment you might run to prove that because right now, it sounds like it’s here. Right and the proof for that?
1:29:48
Yeah, I’m so there’s an audience at every level. The question is, what audience do you want to speak to the people around you? Maybe at a high level, but those are you Your peers, those aren’t necessarily the ones that are learning from you. Right? There’s no matter what level you’re at, there’s always people who haven’t heard what you’ve heard. And it’s not about knowing everything. It’s about sharing the thing you do know, right, because others are gonna share what they know. And you’ll learn from others, and they’ll learn from you. And I learned from plenty of the people that used to learn from me. There is an audience everywhere. It’s just what do you have a passion about? Talk to what you know, talk to what you have a passion about? Don’t go read a book and then say, Oh, I’m going to tell you what this book said. Right? If you don’t have experience, and you can’t answer the questions, say what you’ve done, say where you failed, say what you’ve learned, say what you’re passionate about, say what you’re experimenting on. And when you don’t know something said, I don’t know. Or do like I do? Well, who else would like to answer that question? Right? Right. And so going through that, I will tell you that it can take years to get a contract signed with a big company, right? It can it can be it’s relationships you develop over time. A lot of the work we do comes from people like you referrals, people who have worked with us or who have been students, or people who like I was at a different client, and they moved to a new clients, and hey, can you come help us over here? You are very valuable to us. Right? Another way, Raven was here, Raven, you’re still here. Like with the partnerships, people are like, I’ve got this work, but I can’t do it on my own. Can we help? Yes, we’ll help you. Right. And so, in this business, the reality is, it’s about who you know, and who you build relationships, not just what you know, right? It’s it. I know a lot. But as Yuri said earlier, right, they’re not going to buy what I know. Right? I’ve got to, I’ve got to sell it, or they won’t buy it. And so it’s really about developing those longer term relationships. And you will be good for you know, at more contracts than you’ll land you’re going to bid on a lot of stuff and it takes a lot of time and you’re not going to get it but you can’t cry every time you just move on. Not every client your client and if you’re going to bid on stuff you don’t really want be prepared to do it. So make sure you’re charging the price that you are willing to work that work for if like you know like I’m not going to do that for this price but I may do it for this price up here. Right did for what you what you won’t be kicking yourself. Alright everybody. Well thank you very much for joining me. I appreciate you hanging in there. We’ll make this video available. And you have a great weekend and if you celebrate Easter and you get holidays, then have a great Easter weekend.
