So in college, back during my days at Howard University, I got some consulting gigs from small and medium-sized companies, brands and a few churches that needed help with their social media and online presence for their business.
…They sucked at this.
…….I was good at this.
:::holychrist Batman!:::
………”Hey! I could help them with their needs!! And they can pay me money!!!”
It was a pretty dope deal.
The first few deals landed me a couple thousand dollars just to impart some knowledge. Kind of ironic that they thought this 19 year old kid was a grand wizard!
This added up to some nice side money, enough to let me take my lady on dates and not have to eat Top Ramen everyday (only on Wednesdays) Life was good, right!
Here’s where it gets interesting:
I QUICKLY REALIZED I HATED DOING THIS.
It was incredibly draining.
I was hired by the owner, Ron.
Ron had a head manager named Nick.
Nick had an assistant manager named Steph.
Steph had an even lower level manager then assistant manager named Mr….well his name wasn’t important. You can see the cycle.
I would schedule meetings, head over to the set meeting place and over a span of two hours break down the strategies to achieve the goals we discussed. Half of the time would be spent with me sitting alone as I was pushed from one manager to the next, eventually speaking with the youngest employee since they “should know” the most about social media.
Every once in a while I would be able to catch the owner to show him the progress we had made over the past week. Eventually I began to understand the system and learned to play the game with the best of em. My favorite was going to my clients who had a pizza shop, free food and drinks! But I learned something important from those first few clients:
I HATED HAVING MY TIME WASTED AND MY WORK NOT APPRECIATED
It completely sucked all of the life out of me….literally.
It’s not that I dislike what I was doing.
But rather I dislike how a majority of people think. They believe that because they are doing something that they are busy, when 99% of the time they aren’t actually doing anything productive.
Being busy does not always mean real work.
This caused the meetings to be long and tedious and no ACTION was being taken.
So I got out the game and started doing more personal projects. I vowed to myself I would never do that again unless I could make a greater impact. Fast forward 4 years and I accidentally stumbled back into the consulting game but this time I’ve been doing individual consults.
I wanted MY consults to be:
First.) Actionable. If there’s obstacles you are facing in your Superhero’s Journey, or press you want to get or a goal/dream you wish to begin chasing but are fearful of taking the first step…..why wait? Let’s jump into it and make it happen!
Second.) The Hard Truth, if needed. Tough love sometimes needs to be enforced even though people often don’t want to hear it, someone’s gotta tell you. Why pay money to get fairy dust?? THAT AIN’T REAL!
Third.) Only over video chat or in person. I’ve done the phone call game and it just feels very impersonable…plus I want to see that you’re actually paying attention to me and not watching Game of Thrones. Since we aren’t meeting in person, screen to screen interaction is the next best thing.
Fourth.) Having Fun! That is MY MOTTO. I completely changed how I run my businesses after feeling drained all the time because I wasn’t having fun. So, if you like having fun then we’ll have some fun and get things done! (But I’m not a rapper though).
To learn more about starting a business hit me up on Twitter.
