Starting out as a business owner can mean doing everything yourself, from website management to appointment scheduling to bookkeeping. However, there comes a point when you start to consider hiring the services of others. This can mean employees or contractors or consultants. These different roles can fill different needs. Today, I am considering the role of the consultant.
Anyone who spends any amount of time looking up business-related topics on the Internet is likely to find their feed filled with consultants and coaches offering to solve a myriad of problems. Some of them might seem like they are speaking directly to you (if so, my compliments to their marketing team), but how do you look past the shiny offers and decide what support is worth investing in right now?
May I suggest that you ask yourself a series of questions:
- What are your current goals in your business?
- Of those goals, what is your number one priority right now? (And I do mean one – none of this, “These five items are my number one priority” nonsense.)
- What is the biggest obstacle between you and that number one goal?
If you can’t seem to settle on one goal, try this exercise. Go through your list of possibilities, and for each one, imagine that nothing in your business would change for the next year, except for meeting that one goal. How you feel about these scenarios is likely to guide you to your number one priority.
Finally, do you feel confident that you can overcome this obstacle by yourself?
If no, what support do you need to overcome the obstacle? Is there a skillset that you don’t have? Do you need to spend less time and effort on other areas of the business so you can focus on your goal?
If yes, would there be an advantage to getting support in overcoming the obstacle? For example, could you achieve your goal faster with support?
If you have decided that it is worth getting help, take a minute to envision what the ideal support would look like for you.
- Information you can go through on your own?
- One-on-one help?
- Someone to just do something for you?
Now that you know what your ideal solution looks like, you can compare what is out there to that solution, and have much more clarity about whether or not someone’s offer is right for you.
How do you decide what support you need in your business? Let me know in the comments!