July 16: Consulting in Practice Episode 3

On July 16, 2019, Kasie and Shennice welcomed Stephanie Vokral of Critical Transitions Wealth Advisors into the studio. Here are the show notes:

Theme for day:

Financial Pitfalls for Independent Consultants

Agenda review:

• Get to know Stephanie Vokral
• Independent consultants & the challenges of revenue
• Common errors independent business owners make in financial planning

Segment 1:

We’re excited to welcome to the studio Stephanie Vokral, a financial consultant who specializes in helping women recover from devastating financial circumstances.

How did you get started working with women? (click here for more on this)

What services do you offer?

What’s next for your practice?

We understand Stephanie is opening a new practice, so let’s talk a little bit about how they can reach out to you and get you on their financial services team.

Wanna work with Stephanie? Click here to learn more about her practice.

Segment 2:

Last week on the show, with Adrienne, we talked about making the choice to focus on a single “big fish” client or to continue to pursue multiple opportunities.

We said:

• You can patch together inventory to reach your required income. You just have to identify what you need to sell and then sell it.
• A lot of consultants go after the big fish — the one or two clients they need to comfortably make their income. But they forget about building their pipeline for when these short term projects end.
• A lot of consultants work too hard for small fish, the kinds of small, budget-constrained projects they think will lead to additional higher-value work but find the audience in these smaller projects isn’t the right one to be “wowed” by your expertise or experience. So the small gigs stay just that — small gigs.
• Our friend Angelique Rewers calls this “bagging antelope” and “chasing mice” respectively. The big deals bury you in work and ruin your pipeline. The small deals worry you to pieces and don’t lead to anything bigger.

We’ve also had this conversation with Dr. Larson from Flex Chiro — volume-based versus value-based services.

Tell us about your practice and some of the women you’ve worked with. How did they make a choice between several smaller opportunities or one big one? Did they have a balance? Is there such a thing?

Segment 3

Let’s talk Small and Micro Businesses as lifestyle choices, as career choices, and as retirement investments. You have experience working with individual earners, independent / solopreneurs. Tell us about some of the risks and challenges you’ve seen.

Financial pitfalls for business owners:

• Not getting good advice
• Not paying yourself first
• Not having the appropriate legal documents in place
• Not having the right business structure
• Not having the appropriate estate planning documents in place for death, disability or illness

What are some of the common errors you see business owners make in their financial planning?

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