ļ»æOn today's Thriving Through podcast, I am interviewing Paige Webster of Webster Global Site Selectors. Welcome, Paige. I'm really delighted that you're guesting today on the podcast.
Thanks so much. I really appreciate it.
I want to jump right into the questions.
Okay. Yeah.
What was your path to becoming a self employed consultant?
Uh, well, I started with another consulting firm and, uh, worked for probably about 12 years in industry, uh, worked in public sector and private sector. And at that time, uh, by, uh, the gentleman that owned the consulting firm was going to retire. And, uh, so I was not ready to retire. And so I needed to find out what I could do.
I knew I could do. Uh, our services just as well. I just needed to break away and started that path in 2013.
Would you say that was the defining moment? Your partner deciding to retire was the defining moment that made you go out on your own?
Oh yeah, most definitely. Um, you know, it always takes, I think in consulting or starting your own business.
You have to have a foundation. Um, you can't. I mean, sometimes people break away and try to create, uh, a consulting firm or even their own company without really having the knowledge. And what do they say within the first three years? Uh, your business will fail. Um, but I think I had the background in the, uh, and again, the base, the knowledge.
Uh, and the foundation to go ahead and, and start my own consulting. So
you started with kind of a leg up when it comes to being an independent consultant because you were already an experienced consultant.
Correct. Yeah.
Okay. But running your own consulting business is different. So tell me. Give me a story or two about the biggest challenges you've faced and how you've overcome them.
Well, you
always, you always think whether you're running, you know, a business or your own consulting firm that, um, you, uh, um, you're going to make it big right off the top. And it's always taking small steps, but my first day out of the, out of the box of announcing, uh, our consulting firm, uh, you know, I was, my vision was to have a sign on the side of the building and competing with a large site selection consulting firm like Deloitte or PwC.
Um, and that doesn't always happen. Um, so I really kind of moved forward in trying to, uh, hire and bring on some other consultants to try to. Bring that consulting firm up by a level of, uh, number of employees and then COVID hit and that gave me a time to relax or review that I was spending more time training than I was really, uh, having the individuals go out and, uh, uh, build the pipeline of sales.
So, uh, a good learning experience. I've only got, uh, three people now and it's much more manageable and it's much more easy. Uh, from that learning experience. I also, uh, have gone to, um, actually recruiting, um, students in their 2nd and 3rd year or 3rd and 4th year in college so that we get the training done and they are typically interns.
Um, and then as they continue to get through the, the training process, they're ready to, Uh, come on board with full full speed.
Oh, cool. Okay. So, so it's sort of you have the internship program is a way of training the your future employees.
Correct.
Okay. Okay. I like and I'm also,
I'm also kind of teaching them that, um, as we know, in consulting, uh, your revenue is cyclic.
It's very peaks and valleys. And so, you know, I'm trying to teach them that that's what consulting is from a standpoint that, uh, it's not a weekly paycheck that you have to ebb and flow with the, with the projects that you have and, you know, some individuals like that, uh, some don't, um, uh, you know, in consulting, you have a little bit more freedom, uh, but you're not always being, you're not always generating that same, um, paycheck or pay flow every week or month.
Uh, you know, so, um, I think it's teaching them about consulting from a standpoint that some people are geared for it and some aren't.
And it weeds them out if they're not geared. It
weeds them out, but it also gives them, you know, when you're coming through school or getting your college education. You really don't know what the workforce or the what work really is.
I mean, they might be working in retail or, uh, fast food or, you know, in some, some form of, of, uh, service oriented, uh, projects are service oriented, um, companies. And, uh, now it's like, roll up your sleeves. It's time to put on. Put on the, the big adult pants and, uh, you know, you're either going to make it or you're not.
And that's what entrepreneurial is, is, um, is, and it's also, um, part of the consulting.
You mentioned a few minutes ago about the cyclical nature of consulting in revenue. How have you, I mean, that's so typical. So many self employed consultants really struggle with the feast or famine. They're either slammed or they have nothing so that they don't have a predictable monthly income, which is very uncomfortable.
How, how, how have you either, how do you manage your finances or have you been able to smooth that cyclical nature to some degree so that you have more predictable income?
Well, we, uh, I have a product, um, that I actually, uh, host for conferences around the country. And, um, it's actually with my competitors.
They're small. They're only maximum of 70 people at each conference. Uh, but we've been able to have that as, uh, a, uh, base, I would say. Um, so we focus on those and then that allows us to not have. Uh, the peaks and valleys because that revenue is already generated. Typically, those contracts are in place, uh, to between 1 and 2 years in advance.
And then, because we have that base income, uh, then we can actually work on some other creative. Uh, prospecting, uh, whether it's clients or whether it's, uh, we also do economic development consulting. So those RFPs that are coming through, uh, we have enough that covers basically our base income. Um, so really nobody is filling that cyclical peaks and valleys.
So it's almost a side business of the consulting business, but it provides a base. So you never have to. Well, if you don't, if you don't have the conferences and that base goes away, but if you keep continuing to have success with our conferences, uh, that's the base for, uh, doing site selection and economic development consulting
sounds like it also generates leads.
It does. It also provides education to us because we work closely with community states, got community and state government as well as, um. Learning about their communities because we help companies expand to different communities. So those are the ones that typically attend our conference. So we're keeping that door open, um, from a standpoint of interacting, um, with the communities, the state representatives.
Um, and then, uh, in turn, they're learning from us because we're telling them what they Projects we're working on. We typically have to keep them confidential, but we can give them what industry sector and if that community is trying to attract that specific industry, um, they, uh, they come to our conferences because they want the lead.
So, not only are we lead generators because we're working with. Companies that are looking to expand, but communities are also enticing us, uh, to bring the project to their community. And then in between, we analyze all that and then we make a decision
and that component those relationships with the communities.
Is important for you to do your job because you need that's an important element of knowledge element for site selection.
Yeah, there's so you're kind of there's 52, 000 communities in the United States.
That's overwhelming.
Yeah,
so for self employed consultants who are listening to this, I really want it.
I want to reinforce something that page is doing in his company. And that is these. These annual conferences. They are a another source of income. They are a way to get away from feast or famine, and they are wonderfully generator and Intel generator. So that is really important for self employed consultants to think about is what kind of money, what kind of services products can I offer that are not just be dollars for money.
You know, exactly for money rather. Yeah. Yeah. So I want you to think back over. You've been in business 15 years. All right. Yeah. I want you to think back over the 15 years or think back over the early years. If you could do one thing differently, if you could time travel back and do one thing differently, what would it be?
Well, I'm going to go back to the same thing I said earlier. I, I thought I was going to be the big king of the mountain. Early in, in, in this, in this venture. Uh, so I ended up hiring a lot of people and, uh, that wasn't the right case. You've got to really look at if you need assistance, um, you know, worth with workload, uh, to make sure that it's somebody that also has the same values, uh, as a consultant, from a standpoint that it's not only just about the pay, but it's also about the workflow.
Um, um, a lot of times in consulting, uh, you know, it's, it's from a time management standpoint that you have to, you might be working on a contract that you've received, and then you're also trying to manage continuing your, uh, your pipeline. And so you have to have a balance in that. Um, and, and really in, in consulting, it's, it's a lot of time management.
I would also say that, you know, you may have a break for two hours or three hours during the day, but, uh, then you may be working at nine or 10 o'clock at night and it takes a real strong individual. I think, uh, to say that, um, you do work 24 hours, but you don't, yeah. But you also get that kind of quality of life that you can have during the day that you wouldn't have as not being a self independent consultant.
Like you told me before we started that you took a walk today. Yeah. Because it's so beautiful there. Take a walk. That's the kind of time freedom you get as a self employed consultant. Yeah, and if you
weren't self employed, you'd have to, you know, try to do it on your lunch break, plus eat lunch, maybe make a few phone calls.
Um, I just think that self employment, it gives you the freedom throughout the day, but you also have to understand that, um, your work hours may change. Uh, I'm doing a lot of what's called foreign direct investment. tomorrow. I have a phone call at eight o'clock at night to Fiji, but that's on their time frame.
So, um, you know, that pulls away from family time. But What's what's an hour call? And in that at that time at eight o'clock at night when I should be talking to them at noon or one, I could go take a walk.
That makes sense. Let's talk a little bit about you. You talked a little bit about this and I want to go more in depth.
Is that you really as a self employed consultant? You've got three buckets. The business development, otherwise known as sales and marketing, generating leads, generating proposals, RFPs, Then you've got the actual client work.
Correct.
And then you have the running of the business because it is a business.
So you've got taxes and invoicing and following up on, on invoices and all of the bus, the business stuff. Yep.
Right. How do
you manage what percent, if you'd look at it sort of an average week? Yes. What percent of time do you spend on. Each of those in each of those buckets, would you? Yes.
So I would say that probably, oh, I would say probably 70 percent is is generation lead time.
I would say 10 percent maybe 20 percent would be, uh, actually writing, sitting down and writing, uh, during a week. But again, it could be all different hours. I mean, I might wake up at one a. m. and say, oh, this is something I need to put into it. Into a study that I'm doing. Um, uh, and then, uh, I would say 10 percent is probably, uh, administrative, uh, you know, taxes, taxes come up on, on you, you know, April 15th.
Uh, uh, luckily that if there's a situation that you can do an extension, but then you've got the, then you have to think of, okay, I need to get this done before October 15th. Uh, it gives you a little bit of leeway time. But, uh, you know, in my mind, since tax season's coming up, I know that I have to get my taxes ready, complete, try to put them through the system, and if they're not looking exactly the way I need to, you can always pull the trigger to do an extension, however the IRS looks at you.
Uh, if you continue to pull that trump card for extensions, and they kind of put a red flag on you to say, hey, what's really going on? So, you know, you want to, you want to follow the rules, but there is a, there is a small out. Um, and I would say that, uh, as far as administratively, um, you know, you just got to set specific time, you know, if you're going to be paying your, your invoices, or you're receiving accounts payable are receivables.
Because I do my accounting. However, I do have an accountant that also oversees offsite. So I still do administratively internally. Um, but it's also good. And I think it's wise to have, um, some services in the accounting and, and, um, uh, and like an attorney also, just so that you have those and, and really to set having them at your disposal.
But not having to rely on them on a daily basis,
looking at your daily, daily and weekly schedule. Do you have specific times of the week, for example, that you do the admin or specific times of the day that you do the sales and marketing?
Yeah, it's kind of interesting. Um. I used to do kind of the normal, Oh, I'm not going to make sales, uh, Monday or Friday.
Uh, most people are out. Um, so those were the days that I would do administrative or do, uh, you know, the, the actual portion of the work of, of writing. Um, uh, but I've kind of changed that around a little bit. And, um, I've noticed that some people are sometimes are in the office on a Friday and they don't have a lot.
Bombarding them. And so actually you get, uh, you, you, you actually can make those contacts and, and it does work on a Friday. Um, so I've kind of shifted the administrative to sometimes it's after hours too. It's, you know, after the five o'clock hour, um, after dinner, um, That you sit down and you you actually do more of the administrative side of things.
Uh, I find myself, uh, because we're doing a lot of, uh, international stuff that, you know, early in the morning, um, or towards the end of the evening is when my, my calls or my sales calls are. And in the middle of the day, it's less, uh, it's not as quite as busy and, uh, Okay. So that's where I, I find my time putting in the administrative or writing reports.
Okay. The actual client work.
Yes. Yeah.
Okay. It's
just, it's just interesting. I, I feel that doing international business as a consultant is a lot more interesting, um, because of the time zones. Uh, you know, they may have questions or they've reviewed something that we've proposed or written for them.
They're 5 to 6 hours ahead of us, and they may do that during the work period, and then we're getting up, and they've already responded to something, and so you really don't lose a full day, um, so, you know, that's, I, I like the, I like the international, uh, consulting.
Now I want to switch to sort of the client side.
What problems, well, first of all, tell me who you're, who are your clients? Who do you work with? Who pay you?
Uh, it's we get we get paid by two different sides of it. So we get paid by the communities if they need, uh, strategic plans done SWOT analysis. Um, so we do consulting for community states and regions.
And then, um, and I would say that that's probably about 30 percent of our business. And then the others, um, I would say 60 percent because we do the conferences. So that would be another 10%. So the other 70 percent is by customers that are looking to expand their business. Um, so that that would be the breakdown of, of, um, who our clients are.
Um, and then you said, what are. What are the issues?
Yeah. What problems are you looking to solve for your clients?
Yeah. So, uh, on the economic development consulting, we are helping the communities provide them with a toolbox of how to recruit the companies. And what's been really interesting a lot of times is the communities will hire us to do a strategic plan or.
Industry analysis. Well, they're smart because when they hire us, then we have to spend time in their communities and we get to learn more about what they are doing. And then the other 70 percent is when we're working with clients that are looking to expand. They don't really understand that if they hire an economic development or site selection consultant to work for them.
We get hands on of where they are currently located and you learn much more and you can connect the dots where if we're just analyzing communities, and we've never been there, um, it doesn't bring, um, what's the word I'm looking for? It doesn't really bring the continuity together, uh, to, to align a project with the community.
So if a community hires us. We have time. We might spend two weeks in their community. We get to learn where their properties are, the advantages, the disadvantages. But then that way we can recommend that to, uh, to the client. And I'll just give you a quick example. We do a lot of expansions for call centers, uh, in the world.
And, um, a lot of the countries outside of the United States are actually the. Uh, requesting our firm to come and visit so that when we are in the C suites, we're able to say they say, well, what's going on in Zimbabwe or what's going on in Sri Lanka? Um, if we've had that opportunity to be there, then we can actually give them our, our clients information specifically about those countries.
If we haven't been there, they don't really make the list.
Right. Right. Makes sense. Is your consulting practice delivering the lifestyle you dreamed of?
Uh, you know, when you're younger, your, your, your, your lifestyle is a little bit different. Um, I would say yes, ultimately. I mean, quality of life is good as a consultant. Um, you know, you always have a job, but you also have to wake up every morning and look yourself in the mirror and say, you're the one that's making it or not.
Um, you know, there's nobody that you're not going into a corporation or a company. Again, knowing that if you put in your time, you're going to get that paycheck. I mean, it's, it's a doggy dog world and you have to basically, uh, you look at yourself in the mirror every morning and say, okay, well I can slack off or I can hustle and make it work.
And, and it takes, it takes really strong attributes of your own persona to, to do that, you know? And if you get up and you say, oh, I'm going to slack off today. Then you can't whine and complain the next day that you didn't get a contract because you're slacking off.
Yeah, you don't get paid for mental health days.
Yeah, right, right.
When you're a self employed consultant.
Right.
Yeah. Do you think that you're ahead or behind of where you wanted to be by now? Fifteen years in, are you ahead or behind?
Um, I would say You asked me that question once before, and I really say that I'm kind of where I want to be. Um, I'm well known around the country and the world.
Uh, this call center industry sector is new. We started it in, in just after COVID. So it's a new sector that we're working in. I would say I'm a little bit behind the eight ball on that sector, but it also puts more, uh, I would say pressure to learn as much as you can about that sector. And it's, it's rewarding because at the end of the day, it's, it's a quick learning curve, but once you start understanding it, then it can be put as part of your portfolio to help companies that are looking to expand in that sector.
Okay. What sets you apart from, you talked about, you know, they're the big PWC Deloitte, big companies, and then there, would you consider yourself kind of a boutique?
Yes. Yeah, exactly.
Why should somebody hire you over a Deloitte?
Yeah, so what I've found is that, um, uh, they're going to be talking to me, the principal of the firm.
Uh, we're not, um, driven in specific layers. Um, so if, so let's say on the site selection side, a CEO is going to be talking to me, um, to make those sound decisions where You're probably, if you were to go with a larger firm, you're probably not talking to the CEO of Deloitte. You're probably talking to a project manager, or you might even be talking to, um, uh, a project associate, um, and I just think that the customer service, I don't know, even know if it's called customer service, but I think it's just, um, a level of playing field that, Um, you're going to get, you're going to get better service and you're probably not going to have to pay the billable hours that those large firms charge.
Okay. So
it's a, so it's cost related as well.
That sounds like a pretty compelling story. Save the money and get better service, better deliverables.
Yes. Yeah.
Yeah. Where do you see your practice now fast forward five years?
Five years.
Where do you see your practice in five years?
Yes. Um, I would say that, uh, we're, we're going to build a team, but it's going to be building a team differently than what I did when I first started.
Um, and really, ultimately. With the associates that are going to be coming on board. Uh, obviously there's an exit strategy and and hopefully if they like what they're doing and they want to continue on that, maybe they can take on, uh, the company name without the last name. Uh, we did. We did the last name in our company name because of the fact that, uh.
It does kind of separate you from, uh, some of the other, some of my other competitors, um, but ultimately that's our role I think is to teach, uh, and, and bring up the next generation in the, in this, uh, industry, um, to continue on, um, with that. So in five years, um, I'd like to say I'm retired, but as an entrepreneur, you never really retire.
Um, so then you might, you know, I might be in an advisory role versus, uh, really managing the firm if that makes
sense. Yep. I don't, I
just don't really see myself saying, okay, at 65, I'm going to file for retire. I just don't see that. So,
yeah. Well, it sounds like you're different from the gentleman that you worked with that you talked about at the beginning who had decided to, to retire.
Sounds like you're very different mindset from him in that you don't really want to retire completely from your company.
Well, and him and I never talked about continuing to evolve his name. I mean, he, he was 1 of the 1st site selectors, uh, in the early
70s, um, uh, but he didn't want to, you know, he had an opportunity to say, hey, why don't you buy, buy me, buy into me and buy me out eventually. Uh, but that that didn't work for he just I don't know if he didn't want that, or, uh, he just decided that, you know, he made enough income or money to just say, Hey, I'm going to retire.
So, he retired and closed his business.
Yes,
and that's another interesting point is. Do you have a succession plan or do you mean, I didn't have a succession plan. So, when I, I was like him when I closed my consulting company. I closed it. I didn't sell it. I didn't pass it on to someone else. It just it was gone.
Yeah, it just disappeared. Yeah.
Yeah. Sounds like you have a more, more planning for succession.
Yeah. I mean, it's, you've got a bit, a book of business. So why not? There's a value there. Um, and so why not take that book of business and, and, and let somebody else Start with it and you know, try to bring them up to speed.
I think there's enough transition in our field in this consulting field that you can do that. However, there's also in this line of business too, is that some of the bigger PWCs they'll acquire. So that could be an option too. I'm not in those talks right now, but. You know, they, they see the value of, of what I've done as a small boutique consultant, and so that acquisition of either the book of business or, um, or even the talent may be, and, and you see that in banks, I mean, you see that in, uh, you see that in architectural and engineering firms, you see that in construction firms, they're either merging or And that's really that's that success, or that, uh, not so much success, but succession, um, process with companies, and that's how they become large.
But you have no interest in being the acquiree, acquirer, so where you might be the one that would build a big company by acquiring other small boutique firms. That is not an area of interest?
No, I don't think so. It's just more brain damage, I think, because then it gets a, I'm a deal maker. So, uh, I'm more into chasing deals than I am trying to figure out how the structure of, of my consulting firm is going to, I, I, and that's why, uh, and that, you know, that's the difference also between a large firm and a small firm is.
I love business development. I love taking a spreadsheet and trying to figure out which companies are looking to expand, and we have a huge process in how we do that. Um, some people don't like that. They would rather take the, hey, let's bring on, or let's acquire some other people. That's not my cup of tea.
I like to do deals. I'm a deal junkie.
Okay, that makes sense. Let's talk marketing a little bit, or aka business development.
Sure.
What works for you?
I'm in all types. Uh, to be honest with you, we, you know, everybody, I think in consulting, you, you probably should have a presence of a website, but I would say that I've had less than 1 percent of leads come from my website.
Uh, and it's because I'm not selling a widget, I'm selling a service. And so, um, having the, um, having the relationships and that's really what this business is. It's all about relationships. But you still, you know, you have to go and spend 5000 for a website, uh, to have kind of that technical presence out there.
But other forms of marketing would be, um, we do a ton of posts on linked in. That's cheap. You know, it just takes some time to do it. Uh, we have, uh, I work with some different publications that are in our industry and, uh, sometimes it's interesting. Sometimes you have to pay to write, to be put in the magazine, but sometimes there's a collaboration or, uh, partnerships where you'll get an article written in, um, in a publication or a newspaper.
Uh, and then, of course, what parlay is off of that is once that's publicate or that's published, then you post that on linked in or other social media aspects. Um, I would say that I, we don't do any marketing, you know, like through Facebook, but I know that there's a lot of consultants out there that do that in their local, uh, in their local markets, uh, which I think is fine because you're still getting that message across.
Let's see, what other advertising do we do? Uh, we, we hand out a lot of, you know, shirts like, oops, wrong side, shirts like this, uh, you know, it's just getting the logo out and, and building that, uh, building that brand. Um, and it's brand building that takes, and I'll be honest with you. When I first started, probably the first five years, I didn't, I wasn't doing any.
Brand marketing, but the more you do, um, I think it just established you as more of a, uh, sound firm, um, that it's not just a fly by consulting, um, project. Uh, you know, so it looks more professional. Um, let's see what other things, uh, we haven't done any advertising on, uh, in radio or television. I mean, ultimately, if I were to get to the size that I would like our firm, I, I would love to, you know, be able to throw our logo on a Formula One race car or a NASCAR or something like that.
But, uh, those costs are prohibited right now.
Yeah. And you'd be reaching a whole lot of people that aren't your target audience.
Correct.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, I had another question just went out of my mind. Oh, it sounds also, it sounds like. You talked about the spreadsheet that you, you develop a spreadsheet for companies that are expanding, which is a way of, you know, determining who might be in the market for site selection.
Do you, how do you, do you then do direct outreach to those people that those companies?
Yeah, so we, uh, we've done some different approaches. Uh, this year has been actually, uh, kind of trial and error. Uh, we've. We've actually partnered with some call centers, uh, to make phone calls, uh, to introduce us. Uh, we've done email blasts, um, and honestly, uh, with the trial and error that we've done, uh, I really just believe that, uh, If you can connect with them on LinkedIn, they're actually looking at social media quicker than they are even at their emails and 70 percent of them aren't picking up a phone or they just goes into into voicemail.
Uh, so social media, I think whether, um, I probably should do a little bit more with the, you know, X or, or, um, what's the other one? Um, I'm not even on it.
Instagram.
Yeah, yeah, you know, but, um, I think if you do too much, then it gets kind of washed. So, uh, but I might be missing some of the audience as well because they're, I'm more of a LinkedIn guy, but, you know, they might not be, uh, you know, and it's generational.
I was brought up with Facebook. That's kind of been known as kind of your personal and your, and your family friends. Um, but when I started working with communities around the country, they didn't have access to LinkedIn. And so that was their form of marketing was through Facebook. Um, and then if you talk to my children, they're like, Dad, why are, why are you even on Facebook?
Yeah.
So, um, I think, I think you have to evolve, but, um, I think that it's, I think LinkedIn is, it's still a good professional, um, social media route.
Yeah. That, for business to business. To my opinion, LinkedIn still makes the most sense.
Yeah, and B2C, maybe it is, you know, your Facebook or your Snapchat or whatever.
Um, but ultimately, I think, like you said, B2B, I think it's through LinkedIn, and that's how we met.
Yes, exactly. So I have a question. A lot of consultants fail to create profitable businesses. And a lot of self employed consultants, the sort of the failure rate is similar to small businesses in general, that a lot of small self employed consultants don't last past five years at the most.
Right. Why do you think consultants fail to create a profitable business?
I learned one really good thing. Um, I dabbled in real estate and that's self employment. Um, when I was younger. And I had a really good, um, professor or teacher that told me you take, uh, 20 percent of the revenue that you generate and you put that into savings of your income.
Okay. And when you take that 20%, that should cover your taxes and it should also cover a little equity in your business. And if you continue to do that, uh, and you have a model of, of really managing your money, And that's not that 20%. It's not to say, hey, let's put it back into the business because then you've got the other 80 percent that you can roll back into your business to continue to grow.
But I think it's just super. And basically in real estate, what they said was take 20 percent of your of your commission and put that aside for paying your taxes because a lot of people that are self employed don't think They just continue to, to create general, uh, revenue, but then they will put it back or they'll spend it.
And then when tax time comes around, they're like, oh, my God, I've got a 30, 000, um, tax bill, uh, and they don't have that money. Then they're like scrambling to say, hey, how am I going to pay those taxes? And then you're in arrears. Um, but then you're also taking a portion of it, of that 20%, uh, to build the wealth.
Yeah, that makes really good sense.
Yeah, and there's
a segue into the last question.
Sure.
What advice do you have for other self employed consultants?
Yeah, um, you know, when I first started, I make sure that you have a business plan you, uh, and in that business plan that you have a vision and you have a mission of what you're trying to accomplish.
Uh, a lot of people say, Oh, I don't need that. I just can go out and start a business. But I think you really need to have. It might be in your head, but if it's down on paper, um, it really provides you step stones of how you're getting to, uh, even your first year. Um, and really what I did was I did a 5 year.
So not only did I do a yearly plan, but I did a 5 year plan. Um, from a standpoint of knowing where I was going to be year 1 to where I was wanted to be year 5. Um, and put it down on paper. It takes a little bit of time and sometimes you don't know. But those one year, um, plans lead into the five and then you can go back and look at each year of what you did, what you didn't do, and then see if you've really accomplished the five year, um, mission or, or plan of what you thought you were going to be in in five years.
Great advice. Great advice. Thank you. I will put your contact information, your LinkedIn information and your website. Into the show notes. So I'll leave you out there who know of anybody who needs site selection, you'll be able to contact page and any last thoughts you have. You get the last word.
Just make sure that, uh, If you go down this road, I would also say that, you know, after maybe reviewing this.
this process. Because my link will be there, always feel free to reach out. I think that ultimately, if you are thinking about getting into self employed consulting, um, there's always somebody out there that's willing to help, um, and use your network, uh, and get advice from your colleagues. I think that the most important thing has been Uh, I even I even pick up the phone and call my competitors, you know, even if it's something administratively that I don't understand internally, I'll call and you got to rely upon other Consultants because we're all going through it the same way.
It's just a matter of Where do you get those answers and sometimes books don't sometimes books are more Institutionalized where you could pick up a phone and and call a competitor and say hey, this is an issue I'm having and And, you know, if they know, if they've gone through the same thing, they're going to tell you what they've gone through, and then you can figure out, is that the approach you want to take?
So use your network.
Use your network. Ask for help. Yes. Mind, mind your finances. Those are the kind of the big things. And the important one, you devote a lot of time to business development. So you know, that's a secret to success that you have that met so other self employed consultants can learn from.
Yeah. The second additional revenue streams, there are all sorts of things that you do. You're a good role model.
Well and diversification. You know, if you put all your eggs in one basket, uh, and that basket gets broken, you know,
pushed over all your eggs are gonna be broken. So, so diversify. Um, and I, I've always looked at it as that's the way I'm going to manage my consulting firm to is to diversify a bit so that you're not always having to feel stress that you're not going to make that next contract, you know, just but because you can also say, Hey, I've saved Um, you know, 20 percent for taxes, and also I can dip into that.
But then you got to rebuild it. So
great. Well, thank you so much, Paige Webster. I really appreciate that you are where we're guests on the podcast today. Yeah. Thank
you for having me.
Thank you. Bye.
Bye.
