EP. 10 / From unemployed & pregnant to running a 6 Figure Business Plus Tips on How to Make More Money as a Consultant or Selling Courses! Kar Brulhart & Terry Rice
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Meet Kar Brulhart who went from pregnant and unemployed to running a 6-figure Instagram coaching business. How she knew when it was time to quit and how you should be using Instagram for your business. Plus Terry Rice, Business Development consultant & Entrepreneur Media Expert-In-Residence will teach you how to be a successful consultant, find clients, price your services and monetize your knowledge. In our Real Mom Moment, Rebecca enters her daughter into a costume and unfortunately finds her inner ‘momager.’
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Takeaways:
In the conversation with Kar you will learn:
How she knew it was time to leave her full-time jobs to pursue self-employment
How her income is doing since shifting from a startup job to working for herself
What she values most
Takeaways from Kar Brulhart, Instagram Coach
After being laid off once, and then her startup employer went out of business, Kar had her aha moment to start her own business: “I just never felt that I had total creative freedom or freedom to choose the direction and path that my life was going to take.”
What Kar loves about working for herself: “I'm working significantly less than 40 hours a week and making more than I ever made in corporate.” and “I create my schedule. I decide who I let into my life.”
Kar expanded her Instagram coaching business and revenue by offering digital courses and live group coaching sessions. She says you should not equate followers with success. While Kar has over 50,000 Instagram followers she reminds us that “My second or third biggest month ever, I had less than 2000 followers.”
Kar recommends all brands be on Instagram because it’s more like a search engine than it ever has in the past and is important for your business.
Kar’s advice for others: “When you lead from the heart then you can't really go wrong” and “You just have to trust yourself.”
Takeaways from Terry Rice, host of Launch Your Business Podcast from Entrepreneur Media & Business Development Expert
“Take your price and increase it by 20%” -- how to price your consulting services
How to Figure out what type of consulting you should be doing:
Identify your “Zone of Genius or Zone of Excellence” to find the skills you want to offer, or focus on how to monetize your knowledge. To do this, look at your past jobs and skills and organize them into Zones: Zone of Genius, Zone of Excellence, Zone of Competence, Zone of Incompetence. Only offer the skills you have that fall into that! (credit to “The Big Leap” book by Gay Hendricks)
What should your offerings be? They can include an ‘audit,’ consulting, implementation and retainer work.
Offer a discount to your first few customers to give you experience and confidence (the antidote to imposter syndrome)
If you want to sell a course -- and don't have a following, team up with a gatekeeper and give them a part of the profit.
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EPISODE LINKS:
Kar Brulhart Website | Instagram
Terry Rice Website | Instagram | LinkedIn
FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Kar Brulhart (00:01):
I'm working significantly less than 40 hours a week and making more than I ever made in corporate.
Kim Rittberg (00:08):
Yeah, that sounds good. Carr went from pregnant and unemployed to running a six figure business. Plus entrepreneur media staff writer, Terry Rice is here to kickstart your consulting. He'll teach you how to work less and make more money. That also sounds really good.
Terry Rice (00:26):
I would charge whatever you're afraid to charge and then add 20%.
Kim Rittberg (00:33):
Leave your lanyard and swipe card at the door. Welcome to mom's exit interview, a podcast for moms seeking fulfillment and contentment outside the traditional nine to five, whether you're considering taking the leap or you're already midair. This podcast is for you. You'll meet moms, poor consultants, entrepreneurs stay at home moms side hustles and part-time workers across various industries and levels. Plus every episode will have expert with tips so you can turn your inspiration into action. I'm Kim Richberg. I was a Netflix executive and former head of video at us weekly, and I'm a mom of two. I quit the corporate world and I've never looked back, but I'm still on this journey. So join me. We don't need a boss to give us permission or a promotion to lead the lives we want on
Kim Rittberg (01:32):
Work less and make more money. So that's basically the theme of today's show. Did you know you can get paid for your knowledge? It probably sounds obvious because if you have a job you're technically paid for your knowledge, but not really because sometimes you're just sitting in meetings all day, right? Meetings, more meetings. And honestly, sometimes those chairs are so uncomfortable at one job. A perk was getting an ergonomics expert to my chair, which was such a cool perk, but I really was thinking I'd rather just not be sitting in this chair for 10 hours. It turns out there is this whole world out there focused around getting paid for who you are, where you can get paid to do consulting or coaching or teaching courses. And I don't need being a professor, huh? For the show, we did a survey of moms across the country.
Kim Rittberg (02:28):
And a majority of you said you would shift to a more flexible work situation if you could. And the top reasons were flexibility and control of your schedule. That was a big reason that I decided to switch out of working full-time in media to work for myself. I wanted to take my kids to swim and not have to lie and say I was going to the doctor. I think, you know what I mean? So speaking of control and working less, but making more money, you're about to meet car Brillhart. She went from pregnant and unemployed to having a six figure Instagram coaching business Carr had done social media strategy campaigns for apple, the United nations, Michael cos. And she was recently featured on business insider. I have worked with Carr directly and she's incredible. Carr is originally from Canada and she's a mom of two in her own words. She is a Latina and a cross aunt lover. Oh, I love crossroads too. You'll hear how Carr realized it was time to leave her job at a startup, how she built her own business and how she's still pivoting and diversifying with various revenue streams car. You have a great story behind how you got to where you are. Tell me about your, your trajectory. What were you doing right before you struck out on your own?
Kar Brulhart (03:42):
I was nine months pregnant with my first child and I was working as head of partnerships and head of social media for a startup in Brooklyn. And they closed because of COVID. And so I lost my job two weeks before giving birth, and that was really the kick in the that I needed to realize that I wanted to go out on my own.
Kim Rittberg (04:04):
Carr, spent the first five years of her career as an accountant. And then she shifted into marketing. She worked at the United nations world food program, leading social media, brand partnerships, celebrity partnerships, and PR.
Kar Brulhart (04:17):
That was the, the moment of clarity for the first time in my life where I felt like I had arrived. And I'd really found something that I was passionate about and came really naturally to me. But then we moved to New York city
Kim Rittberg (04:31):
Because Carr is Canadian. She needed a visa, even though she had a lot of interviews, she took the first job that came her way.
Kar Brulhart (04:39):
And of course I, the highest offer at a ad agency, very New York of me. And I was in a role that I honestly had no idea why they hired me for it. There was just, it was a bizarre work environment. It was extremely toxic. And I was getting bullied by the people that were meant to be training me who were my age and my peers. And about seven months into that, I actually got, let go from that role. That's when I took the role at made for which was a vitamin, uh, subscription service. And I was their first us hire tasked with building up their social media, not just for the us, but also for their European markets, as well as coming up with their brand strategy for partnerships and also assisting with PR and communications. And so that was a, a great role. I was really what I thought was my dream job. And I was only in it for a year before. Um, everything hit the fan,
Kim Rittberg (05:43):
Hit the fan, meaning the vitamin startup went out of business. So no company, no job after two jobs in a row that didn't work out and a tiny baby. Now what car started realizing she wanted to be her own boss. I, I like to call it. Sometimes people say the aha moment. I like to say, what was your hand in your lanyard, badge moment?
Kar Brulhart (06:07):
You wrote that. And I had
Kim Rittberg (06:09):
No idea that's my lanyard. You know, those stupid swipe cards that are elastic, oh, those six swipe cards that you stretch to slide in a turns style. So you can
Kar Brulhart (06:20):
Eat. I started seeing all the things that I was capable of doing in terms of coming up with these ideas that were leading to millions of dollars of sales and revenue. And that really, it was kind of my personality and my experiences that were contributing to the growth of these companies. But I wasn't really seeing anything return wise. You know, I was getting a decent salary, nothing exciting. I didn't really feel like I had a lot of meaning in my life. And I really was feeling like I couldn't quite put my on what was off, but there was always something off. And now that I have my own business, I have my own small team. I realize that that thing that was missing was that I just never felt that I had total creative freedom or freedom to choose the direction and path that, and my life was going to take.
Kim Rittberg (07:20):
I think that's, that's such a, a great perspective. I have friends who are entrepreneurs or in startups, and they're just the financial rewards of building things can be much greater. I feel lucky that people have paid me to be creative. I feel like I feel blessed that I got to have those opportunities, but then once I realized, oh my goodness, I actually built a company within a company. And I did it really well. And I made them a lot of money and I had a good title and a salary, but I also have small kids. And it was like, oh, I maybe I'll, I'm gonna try to do this for myself. So I love that, you know, that you realized you had the clarity of doing that job gave you confide. It gave you the knowledge that you can do this for others. How are you doing financially, running your own business compared to when you're working for other people
Kar Brulhart (08:10):
I'm making considerably more money. Now I'm working significantly less than 40 hours a week and making more than, and I ever made in corporate. So I was fortunate enough to hit over six figures in month 10 of my business. And that's been a mix of one to one coaching, but about 40% of that revenue came from my digital course. But it's, it's definitely, uh, the most money I've ever made is also Testament to the fact that, you know, when you put your mind to something and you're creative and passionate and treat it like a full-time job instead of a hobby that it's super possible. And it's all there for us. I used to say like, there's money lying on the street.
Kim Rittberg (09:00):
I bet everyone listening is like, hit the road and shake that money for me. Can you estimate how many hours a week you're working?
Kar Brulhart (09:07):
So I would say the first half of last year, when I started the business, I was easily working 11 hours a day, uh, with breaks, of course I was able to bring on a VA actually end of the year. And so that is a VA is
Kim Rittberg (09:21):
A virtual assistant, a virtual, a
Kar Brulhart (09:22):
Virtual assistant. Um, and that has significantly reduced my hours. I will start my day around 10:00 AM. And then I end the day at 5:00 PM and there's still breaks in there, uh, time for walking the dog. And then I'm usually back online after Charlotte goes down. So back online for maybe one, two hours maximum, and then that's it. But you know, it's really, um, Wednesdays and Fridays. I don't work after 6:00 PM and it's, it feels really just flexible.
Kim Rittberg (09:57):
You're a parent. You will have two babies very soon. You will have two children. How does being a parent affect your decision? How did that affect your decision to go out on your own?
Kar Brulhart (10:07):
Yeah. I love that you asked me that because it was probably the biggest driving factor in the end. When I think about it, you know, I was in the delivery, had the baby, and then it was like, well, now what it really gave me the opportunity to reflect more and really meditate on what it was that I wanted to be for my daughter, what I wanted her to see in me, because my mom was also, she's an entrepreneur, um, has her own business and she was always around. She was always there to pick us up to make us dinner, to eat dinner with us, to put us to bed, to take us to swimming. And you don't realize how valuable that is. And so, uh, max and I always talked about, you know, what are the important things that we want our kids to have that we had, or that we didn't have. And once we were really clear about those things, it just makes it so much easier to also step into this uncomfortable space and decision because it's all coming from the heart. And I think that when you lead from the heart, then you can't really go wrong. And that's been my experience
Kim Rittberg (11:17):
That is so insightful. And I actually started thinking about my own parents and I haven't really thought about this so much. My dad passed away last year and he was an entrepreneur like that was a defining factor of his personality. And my mom is more of a creative. And I think I have sort of both my dad before he passed away, he was so proud. He said, and he had he's Israeli. So he had an accent. He was like, your kids never want to be entrepreneur, but now you all are. And so actually me and my two brothers, we're all working for ourselves and I never really thought about that. I'm just, I, I see it as I'm so blessed that my parents, my parents actually both worked, but I do remember my mom being involved and active and driving me to sports and just super involved.
Kim Rittberg (12:04):
I, I think that I have realized like, oh, I'm actually enjoying being a mom a lot more than I thought I would as like a type a New York media executive. I, I got more time with my kids when I left working full time and sort of took some time to myself. And I realized actually, my kids are cute and like fun and I'm enjoying watching them grow. And sometimes it's hard to be super in the moment and upset for their broken CRA cracker. And sometimes it's annoying to calm them for the tantrum. When you just felt like I just worked on a million dollar account and now I have to deal with this annoying stuff. But I did realize holistically. I like being with my kids and if I can create a structure and a, and a life that feeds my vision of my life, instead of feeding a certain title, that's better. And I guess that would be my follow up question for you. Do you have a vision for your life that you set?
Kar Brulhart (12:54):
My life? Vision is it's what I'm doing now. It, it can always change slightly. Like it doesn't mean that I'll always be a coach, right. But it really comes down to a couple of things. Those being that I create my schedule, I decide who I let in into my life, whether it be through friendships, but in this case, it's really my clients. And so now my Mondays to Fridays every day is different. Every day can feel like a weekend suddenly, and I'm still making money. I'm still, um, there for my husband and for my child and I'm happy. And so my vision is really about how can I keep up this, I guess, momentum and this pace, and still have the time to prioritize all those things that are so important to me,
Kim Rittberg (13:49):
My vision life is to have more time with the kids unstructured time. So I don't feel like every time I'm with them in has to feel special. Yeah. Um, and I wanna do work that I feel like has impact and projects that I've ownership over. So how that is, I'm like you, my goals this year are not, they're not hard goals, they're soft goals and they include money. I'm so impressed with you and these other women that I've been meeting, who I feel like are living and working with a higher purpose and a higher goal instead of the rat race hamster wheel Carr is an Instagram coach. When she really focused on her business at the start of 2021, she had less than a thousand followers. And she now has over 50,000. I asked her what it was like when she first started. And has she got clients? Talk to me about how you grew your business. How did you find the clients? How did you grow? You know, all, all of the, the nitty gritty that I would love for people to learn from you.
Kar Brulhart (14:46):
So Instagram now works more like a search engine than it ever has in the past. And the way I want people to think about it is that Instagram is now the new website everybody's on Instagram, whether or not they admit it or not. And people are using Instagram as a way to find services or products. And so if you're not on there, then you're really missing opportunities to connect with potential customers or clients. And so everybody, regardless of what their industry or their niche is, needs to be on Instagram, in my opinion, and the way that I was able to scale my business was really thinking like a startup. So luckily I have the startup background, but it was constantly looking at the plan and pivoting and making little tweaks along the way. So early on, I thought that I wanted to be an agency that I wanted to actually help people manage their Instagrams and do all of the done for use stuff.
Kar Brulhart (15:47):
And I did that for less than a month before I quickly, that that wasn't going to be how I was going to be able to trade ti or trade money for time or whatever that saying is right. I was trading too much time for money still. And so I wasn't really in alignment with what my overall goal was, which was to have more time. And so I quickly pivoted there. I kept, I've always offered my one-to-one coaching. So many coaches out there, or other experts say, oh, eventually you won't be doing one-to-one coaching. But that has really been what drives me. I love the interaction with my clients. I love seeing their results and having that relationship. And I end up becoming friends with almost everybody I work with. So it's like, yay, a new friend. So I launched a live version of my power of reels in the summer, and it was my beta group with 16 amazing women.
Kar Brulhart (16:42):
And then they were all like, this needs to be evergreen, more people need this course. So I filmed it all over the course of one month in the summer and launched it in September and had an insane, successful lunch with that. I have over a hundred students in there now. And so now, um, in order to keep scaling, I'm thinking about more digital courses, how can I continue to increase my passive revenue? So getting those people to buy that course, and then I will just be doing more of community managing and, you know, live group coaching sessions and still do what I love to do, which is my one to one, but take on a lot less of those. So that I open myself up to more creative energy to create products and experiences for people, which is why they follow me in the first place
Kim Rittberg (17:36):
Car stresses that it's important not to focus too much on how many followers you have.
Kar Brulhart (17:41):
It's also, I think really important to think about the follower count that we see. Yeah, it's really nice to say that I have this giant community of almost 50,000 and I'm so proud of that because I actually take the time to try to get to know as many people as possible. But when I was making, I would say my second or third biggest month ever, I had less than 2000 followers and that was early on. And I always have to remind myself to go back to that version of me, because that was really the, the probably the most authentic I've ever been. It was the most giving I've ever been. And that translated directly into to sales
Kim Rittberg (18:30):
Car. Any last tips for people who are inspired by your story?
Kar Brulhart (18:34):
Yeah. I hope it inspires somebody to take that leap of faith in themselves to really sit with themselves and think about what life do they want and to go and do it make a plan. Don't just, you know, start, let's talk about Instagram. Cause that's what I do. Don't just start posting, have a plan, build that business plan out and then go and do it. And you're gonna really surprise yourself because if you ever have been in a job where you have doubted, if you had that experie her, if you could do something or you were under a tight deadline, the truth is we always get through it and we always do it and we come out the other end. And so it's very similar in entrepreneurship or in this world, you just have to trust yourself that you're gonna do it. And when you're passionate about it, it, then it's just, you're laughing. So go for it.
Kim Rittberg (19:41):
I love car's story. And she's so great to learn from follow her on Instagram, check out her site. It's all car bro, heart, which is linked out in the show notes. Plus she's is gonna offer listeners a discount on her services. So just put in the code mom's exit interview. Carr mentioned earlier, the idea of trading time for money and Terry Rice is here and he is going to really dive into that. He's gonna teach you how to monetize your knowledge, price, your services, and find clients. All right. We're so excited. Terry Rice is here. Terry is a staff writer at entrepreneur magazine. He's also a business development consultant who helps entrepreneurs build their brand and revenue. He's also a father of four. I first met Terry when I took his course at general assembly and we've stayed in touch ever. Terry is here to teach you how to monetize your knowledge, be a successful consultant, price, your services, find clients and so much more. So Terry, you help people monetize their knowledge. What does that mean?
Terry Rice (20:45):
Yeah. Well, let's start with the knowledge that you even wanna monetize. And I think this is a problem that a lot of entrepreneurs have is, you know, they'll have some kind of skill they can offer and they just say, okay, cool. How can I turn this into a business instead of first thinking, well, all the skills I have, which ones do I enjoy sharing with people? And one way you can actually just do a quick audit is think about all, all the jobs you've had in the past, write those down and then assign all the tasks you've had to them to various zones of competence. So if you've ever read the, read the book, uh, the big leap by gay Hendrix, he talks about the four zones of competence. The first one is incompetent. These are things that you're horrible at. You're not good at.
Terry Rice (21:25):
You're never gonna be good at them. So please do the not sell these as a service. Next one is competence things you could do, but anyone else can do. 'em just as well. And you don't really enjoy doing it either. From there we go onto your zone of excellence, things that you're really, really good at you're recognized and rewarded for, but it sometimes stops you from moving into the last zone, which is your zone of genius. These are things that site you and give you energy as you're doing them. So for me, it's writing, it's speaking and you can read a thousand books about it and never get bored. So what you're gonna do is take a look at those jobs that you've you've had before or any role. If you a nonprofit could be some kind of volunteer and assign all your tasks to these various zones of function and what you wanna offer as a skill to monetize your net is things that are in your zone of genius or excellence.
Terry Rice (22:12):
Everything else, leave it alone. And then from there you can say, well, how do I wanna monetize my knowledge? And I have this list, this, this checklist it's called the action checklist. The a stands for audits, anything you've done at a job, maybe you're a, uh, email marketing manager have a process behind it. You can offer that as an audit to other companies saying, look, I'm gonna audit your email marketing process, make sure you're doing everything correctly. The next one is C consulting. That's the one that, you know, I love to focus on. And that's you offering more in depth guidance, maybe it's based on that audit that you had after that is T training. Now you're saying, okay, let's use these different to improve your, your email marketing could be MailChimp, convert kits. So on so forth. After that, I implementation now you're getting really nitty gritty saying, okay, let's connect this tool to this tool and make sure everyone knows how they work, how they're hard, how, how to use it going forward.
Terry Rice (23:04):
So and so forth. Uh, the O is ongoing retainers. I love retainers. You get paid for just existing. Maybe they need you. Maybe they don't. If you offering ongoing support in regards to whatever your zone of genius is or zone of excellence. And then lastly, N is new opportunities. What else can you do? Can you appear on stages for a company? Could it be monetizing your knowledge to due podcasts so on so forth. So that action model, I mean, you can really to start anywhere or pick and choose. Those are various ways to monetize your knowledge.
Kim Rittberg (23:34):
We did a survey for the podcast and one of the questions that came in, I thought Terry is going to love answering this. So can you answer, how can I work less and make more money?
Terry Rice (23:45):
Have kids I'll tell you why, because you are so time constrained, you are forced to become more efficient. So going back to 2020, when everything went, Hey, why or I have all these kids home, you know, all throughout the day and things are going nuts. That was actually one of the best years for my business to date. Because instead of me doing individual consulting, I'm like, Nope, everyone's gotta get together in a group. We're doing it Mondays and Thursdays. I answer your questions, that's it. So instead I had more control over my schedule instead of doing one on one stuff, I did group consulting and my income went up by about 40% versus 2019. So it's just really you thinking, how can I be as impactful as possible with my time? And there's various ways to do the at so there's no, there's no magic answer, but I always say to myself, you know, how can I focus on impact?
Terry Rice (24:30):
You know, what, what are some power moves? I can take that. Even if I, the answer is no, or I fail. If it works, hell, I'm making a lot of money off this. So it's that. And I think it's also beneficial to have some kind of passive stream of income. It could be you maybe have an online course where you're teaching what you do in your zone of knowledge or excellence, uh, sorry, genius or excellence. It could be even affiliate marketing where you're talking about some great tools for email marketing and getting paid through that. But what I found is when I already have some, some revenue banked, I could be more bold in my asks for other opportunities. So someone says, Hey, Terry, can you speak at this event? I'll say, sure. It's $10,000. If they say no, I can still pay my mortgage. I'm good. Do they say yes. I'm like cool, 10,000 bucks. Awesome. Right. So you don't want to have this scarcity mindset because then you will not be able to make more money and less time. You just wanna be more bold. Cause I'd rather get a, I know from someone who I'm charging $10,000 than I know from someone who I'm charging 2000,
Kim Rittberg (25:33):
Okay. So let's say on this show, the people who are listening are moms. They are like, you said, time starved. And if they wanted to start tomorrow or next month or six months from now, what would be the first steps they should?
Terry Rice (25:48):
Well, the first step would be just deciding what you wanna do. What kind of skill you wanna offer? Let's pretend, pretend it's like mal marketing and then make your network aware of this, right? Say, Hey, I have this new offering. I do this for this audience. They'll have this outcome. If you can have that clarity, cuz clarity's the precursor to confidence can then reach out to your existing network and say, look for years, you've known me as someone who does this. Now I'm doing this, you know, someone who might need my services and what I would encourage you to do. And this is a kind of a controversial approach is I would take on the first few clients either for free or for a very discounted rate. Because the reason why people's suffer imposter syndrome is because they're posing to be someone they're not. But if you're saying, look, I'm brand new with this stuff. I'm probably gonna mess up. You're getting a discount in, in exchange for you educating me when I do, you're not an imposter. You're just someone who's like, Hey look, I'm brand new. And
Kim Rittberg (26:43):
How do you scale? Let's say this person's charging $300 per educational session. I mean, to make a full time income, you need so many clients. So how, how does it scale when you're talking about consultants, sessions, things like that.
Terry Rice (26:57):
First of all, what's your baseline for your rates? I would charge whatever you're afraid to charge and then add 20% fear. Plus 20% is the magic formula. Because again, we have this self limiting belief that holds us back quite often. That's what I would do.
Kim Rittberg (27:12):
If you don't have a huge social following, can you create a course and make income that way?
Terry Rice (27:17):
Yeah. If you don't have a huge social following, you can still sell your online course, but it would be who view to partner with distribution channels. It could be an, an influencer who works in, who has that audience and say, Hey Kim, if you promote this to your audience, I'll give you a 50% cut. Right? That's one way of doing it. So it's gonna be partnerships. You can also do paid ads, but I mean, if I'm brand new, I wouldn't bother doing that. I would look for or organizations that my audience belongs to. So let's pretend I have this online course that helps assisted living facilities increase their retention of their, their, their clients. I would reach out for the like organization of assisted facilities in New York and say, Hey, do you guys wanna sell this course? Whatever it is. I mean, this is a very obscure of example, but find the gatekeepers to your audience and say, do you wanna partner up? I have this course. What do you say? Because then you don't have to worry about the, the, the scaling aspect as much. It just, those relationships you're building with the gatekeepers.
Kim Rittberg (28:18):
I think since I started working for myself, it's just been a, a real mental adjustment to time and money. I want you to explain to our listeners why it matters. Like why is it important to monetize your knowledge versus, okay, someone's paying you a weekly wage or an hourly wage and you're doing three days a week. Like why, why does it matter? Why is it important for someone to monetize their knowledge? And how does that impact their life?
Terry Rice (28:42):
I mean, I would say the first thing is if you're monetizing your knowledge, the content you create is an extension of your knowledge. Therefore just like a post on Instagram or LinkedIn is a form of marketing. And when you constantly create content, you're forced to constantly create content, which means you have to consume more content because you must consume to create. So you keep on getting more and more sophisticated in your under standing of the industry. So that's that, I mean, there's, there's, there's that part of it, but your knowledge is a hub and there's several different ways to monetize it. It could be through actually I get paid to write content organizations. I get paid thousands of dollars to write blogs. So not even like, you know, videos and stuff like that. Um, I also get paid a lot of money to create videos for various organizations.
Terry Rice (29:26):
Obviously I do consulting and speaking, but your knowledge is this hub and you can monetize it several different ways. And another benefit is just the flexibility. I mean, sometimes you know, it's like when you have kids, great, my kids are homesick. I don't have to explain to my boss, my manager, my team, Hey, you know, my line's sick again. I can just do it be fully present. So it's, it's great to have that, that, that freedom, I would say it, it also gives you enough opportunity to be rewarded for who you are instead of what you do. Because often when you're an employee, unfortunately you're just a cog in the wheel right now. You're only getting paid a fraction of what your knowledge is worth. The company's getting a cut too. They have to, that's how they stay in business. If they're paying you their full value, they would not make any money. So you're already selling yourself short by not even trying this in the first place. So whether it's a side gig or full time, it, it makes sense for most of us to pursue this.
Kim Rittberg (30:21):
Someone wants to become a consultant. How should they think about pricing their services?
Terry Rice (30:24):
There's a few ways let's start about the actual number. How much do you charge? Right. Good question. Few ways to figure that out one is Google it. How much does this type of consultant make? Right? Because that's exactly what your clients are doing. The next is go to competitor's websites because sometimes they have their rates on their website too. Right? So that's two ways. The third is, as you grow your network of other consultants or professional service providers ask them how much they charge. Lastly, if you know, someone's maybe hired someone for this role before you say, Hey, when you hired that financial, how much did you pay her? So that's more or less how you circle the rate that people might expect, but you don't want to aim for average, cuz whose plan in life is being average, right? You wanna think, what can I do to be even more premium?
Terry Rice (31:14):
So I remember one time I was reaching out to this woman kind of softly, trying to be her coach. And she's like, oh gosh, you know, Tara, I would love to work with you. I love you. I love your content. You know, so and so forth. But I already have a coach. I'm like, oh that's cool. Listen, I got a question. What could they have done to make you want to pay even more for their service? She gave me that answer and I put that in my service. So by being in conversation with people who are potential customers, even if they're not ever gonna work with you, you, you can become a more premium service provider. And for her, it was like, I wish the guy would record our meetings. I'm like, well, hell I got the good version of zoom. I can do that.
Terry Rice (31:51):
You know? Like these are not difficult things to accomplish. Um, so I think that's part of it. But another way to think about it is this. And I'll tell you another story. It's how many yeses do you need to get from clients thing? Yes, I will. I'll work with you in order to meet your revenue goal. I've talked to this one woman and she was charging $500 for social media audits. So look at your social media, tell you how to fix it. So and so forth $500. I'm like, okay, well, by the way, what is your revenue goal for this year? Oh, I wanna make a hundred thousand dollars. I'm like, all right, well shoot, if you're charging 500 bucks for these a hundred thousand divided by 500 is huge. I can't think that quickly. Um, 2000. Yeah, a lot. Thank you. I'm a little hungry. Um, um, but, but yeah, it's, it's, we'll
Kim Rittberg (32:39):
Rerecord that we're gonna rerecord that line where we're like obviously 2000 clients.
Terry Rice (32:43):
Yeah. It's it's 2000 yeses per, per year. Right? And that's like, what? Call another 200 per month? Just easy mail or easy math. Right? That's a lot of yeses, unlike you're better off charging $5,000 for these audits and finding 20 people that see the value that you have to offer them and you'll still make a hundred thousand dollars. So how many yeses do you need to reach your revenue goal based on where you're charging, knowing that about at least 33% of your sales calls call should end in a yes. So then from there saying, okay, well how many calls do I could book for week in order to get that? If I one new client a week, I have to book at least three calls, how am I getting these calls? I'm posting on social media and say, Hey, if you want my help click here. So therefore how many times should I post on social media? Or how many times should I reach out to my network? It all becomes a numbers game. And that's why I was saying at the top, it's so important to track these things somewhere, it be Google sheets, whatever it is, that way you can forecast what actions you must take in order to meet your desired revenue goal.
Kim Rittberg (33:46):
And, and, and like we were discussing before for that person, who's deciding instead of aiming for 2000 yeses at $500, she's now aiming for 20 yeses at $5,000. She's gonna start with warm leads through her network and then start getting some yeses, ask for recommendations from those people. So it's sort of it, that's again the path to finding customers when you're working for yourself.
Terry Rice (34:08):
Yeah. And we, and you might say, oh, that's a pretty big leap. I just told you a story about a woman who sticks, Xed her revenue on accident. So you can't tell me it's impossible to 10 exit on purpose.
Kim Rittberg (34:18):
Right? I mean, I saw someone, I was working with a consultant and their rate went from 100 to two 50 an hour. Within the two months I was working with them and I said, all right, okay. You know, it's that, that seemed right to me. I'm like, okay, I guess you're very in demand and good for you. You know, I, I think people don't really understand that if you are too busy, you need to raise your rates. Someone took our survey and asked the question, how can you make a career shift while being the main breadwinner in your family? And someone also asked, can you even quit your job to become a full-time entrepreneur? Knowing your family depends on your health insurance and income. I thought this is a perfect question for you.
Terry Rice (34:55):
You're gonna have to have some very strategic patients because you can't quit immediately unless you have X month's worth of expenses saved up, which is tough these days, right? Because with the current environment, you never know what's gonna take you two months to get traction or three months or whatever. It may be. Something might come up. So what I would highly recommend is doing it initially as a side gig. And you might think Terry, you know, I'm already stretched kind of thing. You know, how do I do that? You gotta find the time. I'm mean there's times when I wake up at 4, 4 30 in the morning start working because I need to make time to do something. So it's that you do it as a side gig. And you want to get to a point where you're generating revenue, but you're generating revenue from a cold audience, not just your network.
Terry Rice (35:39):
And there was another question, you know, how do I quit my job when I'm the sole breadwinner? And my family's counting on me. Things for like, like insurance. Well, again, first of all, wait, till you hit that point where you have enough momentum from your business going that you know, you'll project, your is gonna be X, Y, Z for the next couple months. Another thing is get creative with your partner. If you have one, because what you could do is hire your partner to do some kind of work, but then pay them with benefits such as health insurance. So maybe your health insurance for your family costs $2,000 a month, which very well could be. That's what you give your partner an exchange for compensation. That way they're not paying taxes on it, but you're actually getting a tax discount. And I'm not a tax pro, as you might have guessed already, but like this, this is the way that you kinda work around these things.
Terry Rice (36:29):
Because for me again, I got four kids. There's six of us. If we lose our health insurance, Ugh, that's real. You know, it's like everyone don't judge anything. Don't do anything dangerous. Cause you know, what's gonna happen. And you, you will struggle for a while. But I think that struggles, the entry cost to a new life. You know what I mean? Cause in two years you're still gonna be two years older, but you could be two years older with your own business. More free time, more autonomy in the ability to scale your revenue better. So it's not gonna be easy. You know, it's gonna be challenging, but it shouldn't be confusing because there's so many other mentors out there.
Kim Rittberg (37:03):
Your tagline is I help professional service providers monetize their knowledge. They can grow their business without sacrificing their health, family or personal interests. Is that what you're doing for yourself? Do you feel like you have balance on the whole?
Terry Rice (37:17):
I don't have balance every day on a micro level, but I do have it on a macro level. And that's the thing I see. Like there's certain times when you have to grind, there are certain times when you have to let baby like TV babysit your kids no matter what anyone else says, but overall things are going very well because I remember back, you know, when my daughter was young, I would go on field trips with her at her day a care. Because if your kid was under two years old, you had to go with them or under three years old, you had to go with them. Remember one time I'm like going there. And I'm about to get on the bus with my kid. And this guy's like, isn't your daughter over three now. I'm like, yeah, but I want to go. And in that moment I'm like, that's why I'm an entrepreneur. Because if I want to go to the zoo with my daughter, I can not because I have to go. And the guy looked at me like, oh wow. You know, like I could tell like that, that hit him kind of hard. And you know, not, I wouldn't do someone in, in a negative way ever, but I'm like, that's why I do this.
Kim Rittberg (38:13):
I always love learning from Terry Terry's info is in the show notes, but you can follow him on Instagram and linkedin@terryriceandhiswebsiteisterryrice.co. You can also listen to his podcast, launch your business from entrepreneur media. I like to end the show on a really fun note. So here is one of the most hilarious representations of parenthood and pop culture. This is Kristen bell from the movie, bad moms.
(39:00) Funny Story by Rebecca: Avocado dress up party realizing she’s a momager.
Kim Rittberg (39:20):
Hi there. If you're still listening, you definitely enjoyed this podcast and you can probably hear my kids in the kitchen in the next room over. So please subscribe and tell your mom, friends and leave a review. You know what? Don't stop at your friends. Share it with your enemies too. That's fine. You can find our show notes at www.kimrittberg.com. Plus connect with me on Instagram at Kim Rittberg and visit my website. www.kimritberg.com. This episode was produced by Henry street, media edited by John Hoz with producing and publicity assistance from Aliza. Freelander. See ya. Next time.