Raising the Bar on Consulting in the Social Benefit Sector: Ethics, Principles, Lessons Learned is a series of blog posts that explores the work of consultants to social sector organizations who find the hard-hitting truths that will help these organizations become more powerful. The blog features the work of Shiree Teng, strategy and developmental evaluation consultant for the past 20 years. The interviewer and host, Naaima Khan also consults in the areas of evaluation capacity building/design and strategic planning. Whether you’re starting out, well along your path or at the edge, you’re welcome to offer your insights and reflections on our Lessons Learned as Consultants community!
Naaima: Welcome, Shiree. Thank you for taking the time to chat and share your wisdom and experience today. I'd like to start with a very basic question. What is the practice of consulting? Or what does consulting mean for you?
Shiree: Well, the consulting that I do is specific to helping organizations wrestle with their big ideas, big pain points or something that they feel like they need some external support for. I’ve spent 20 years honing my practice and I would say that consulting is really a critical friend, a tough lover, sometimes an extra pair of hands. Sometimes it is clients looking for radical honesty that people within their system and networks may not be so free as to be able to convey.
Naaima: If you’re trying to start out on the path to build your own consulting business, what are some of the things you need to consider?
Shiree: First of all, I would say, be clear on why you want to be a consultant. Be really honest about the why. You don't have to tell anybody else, but you have to tell yourself. Other than the autonomy of having yourself as the boss, why do you want to be a consultant? If you’re in between jobs, printing up 200 cards or setting up a website as an “in-between” jobs endeavor may not be such a great thing. Make a commitment. Work hard at being a consultant. Our sector needs that.
Second, get to know what you're really good at and what you love to do. There are always these areas of work - sweet spots - that we naturally, through our experience through our lives, gravitate toward. Name those sweet spots for yourself. What are they? What do you like doing? What are the things that you would want to roll out of bed every day and do that would make you smile to yourself? What are those things that you're really good at, and you want to bring into the world?
Third is, figure out how much money you need. Right? We live in a capitalist society. Money is real. Whether we hate the game or not - we’re playing the game. So until capitalism is no more, as a consultant, you have to practice. You are a business. So be really clear about the business that you are building. How much money do you need to make? I've always needed to work.
A friend, a long time ago, told me something really useful when it comes to money. They told me to name a number that you need to make, write it down, look at your calendar through the year, count how many days you actually wanna work without the weekends, vacations or whatever time off. Then divide those two numbers (the amount of money you want to make by the number of days you are gonna work. That’s how you come up with a day rate. So get that part of your business ready. Do not apologize for your rate. Know that you will bring value, well actually commit to that.
And number four, I would say, tell 30 people that you like in your network that you are starting a consulting practice and what is it that you’re going to do. in less than a hundred words, send it to all of them. The work comes through your network. If this is your year one, your friends are going to keep you employed, after that you need to continue building client relationships yourself.
Naaima: Wow. There's so much there I want to follow up with. I'll just choose one angle and start there. Would you say it's necessary to create a business plan? I know that, for me, this is something that I spent a lot of time considering because of all the advice out there that tells you to do so. What would you say based on your experience?
Shiree: No. If your learning modality is to write it down, because you need to read it later, write it down. But if your learning modality is talking it out, I would say, talk it out with somebody who’s going to mirror back to you and ask you tough questions to clarify your commitments. If your learning mode is reading, then read some other people's business plans. Whatever you do, you have to be intentional. You have to be clear. You don't have to write it down. But writing it down has advantages, you know. Three months later, you can go back and say, ‘oh, what was I dreaming about three months ago?’ And, ‘how well is my life actually like showing up that way?’
So it can be a kind of a diary, right? To track your own markers along the way. So there's really good things about writing things down. And you certainly don't need to write it down just to start it, if you have considered all the pros and cons and the ways to go. I would say business plans are made for a typical business that sells things.
Naaima: I very much resonate with that approach. After researching and thinking through the different parts of a business plan - I saw that one section is a market analysis where you consider the things that your business might offer and how they compare relative to other offerings in the market.
Shiree: So our market analysis is actually who we know and who they know and who they know who have worked with consultants. They're the best people to share their insights and wisdom with us. If they worked with consultants, they can tell you immediately the five top consultants in their network - “top” meaning the most popular or ones that they respect and will recommend to their networks. They can also tell us what they liked about working with these consultants, what they didn't like. They can tell us what people are charging and they can tell us whether they expect to hire consultants in the next 9 months and for what. So that's our market.
Naaima: Absolutely. And do you feel that it's important for people to work hard at first identifying their niche? A lot of business books really emphasize this idea of knowing your niche. That’s how you’re supposed to differentiate yourself - by speaking to this one target market, if you will. And for a long time when I started out, I really struggled with this idea because I had a few different areas I wanted to work in. What are your thoughts on identifying a niche?
Shiree: I would say our niche again is not like the typical selling things market, right? I would say our niche is the people we know, the work we have done and the work that we're committed to doing, moving into the future. So racial justice is an emergent niche right now (DEI). A lot of people want to get their DEI work together. So is that my niche? No, but am I doing that work? Yes. And why? Because I've spent my life bringing about equity and justice which requires diversity and inclusion. So I know it like the back of my hand because of who I am and my life, it's not my niche. I can still do it.
Now, when I started, I did everything. I didn't have a niche. I couldn't afford to have a niche. so I did facilitation, conflict mediation, learning community facilitation, which is different from a single organization. I did board development. Just lots of things that if I look back now, I would say, ‘Oh my Gosh, I was all over the place.’ You can say that or you can say, ‘Wow, I was pretty good at a lot of different things and I didn't necessarily want to sink my teeth deeply into anything.’ I'm a generalist just like in my personal life. I was organizing in a lot of communities among a lot of issues from the time I was 17 years old. So I've stayed a generalist.
Ten years ago I found my practice morphing more toward evaluation after my beloved Akaya Windwood asked me to evaluate Rockwood Leadership Institute. So over the last ten years, that's where I swim now - in evaluation and strategy. Now, if somebody that is important to me, running an organization that I may have worked with a long time ago, asked me, if I could facilitate a board retreat? Most likely not because I've gone on this other path - but I might. So I think staying more emergent to our own heart and our own intellect is important. Once you start doing something doesn't mean you need to just stay there and cement it in some brick and mortar. No, you can change as much as your clients change. Our client organizations, they morph and they change. So I think what's important is that we stay very in tune with what's happening inside us and to be free to stay emergent. We understand what people are struggling with.
We understand what people are talking about. We read about what's happening, like the latest copy of the Nonprofit Quarterly. It's all about being pro Black. And I have worked with a client for the last year who was moving toward, wanting to be in that pro Black identity themselves. And then this magazine comes out. And I realized, ‘Wow, okay, this is the future...’ So be very in tune with the trends in our sector, rather than be obsessed with niche. And, invest in your own development by attending conferences, webinars, read read read, and be in the know in the many interests that you might have.
Stay emergent, there are a lot of things I didn't know when I was starting out. And did somebody invest in me to go take classes, to read a hundred books? No, I did that. So as consultants we need to continuously plow resources into our own development. Otherwise we'll be dinosaurs. We won't be the ones that are bringing the needed insights and tough love to our sector.
If we don't have anything to offer, why would people hire us? So I spent hours - I would say, in a month, probably 20 hours on average reading on my own, listening to podcasts, attending webinars and trainings. So we have to constantly do that. And that's part of the business plan. That's a part of the financial income and expenses is the reality that we have to invest in ourselves because nobody else is gonna do that. Once you become a for-profit business, you are expected to do that for yourself.
Naaima: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. As always, there's a lot more that can be discussed. But I’m so thrilled that you’ve shared this thinking with us so far and can’t wait to dive into more specifics about consulting as a practice in our next post.