Make Money Online

So, you know more about this than I do. We have another wonderful reader question, and I definitely want to encourage anybody listening who has a question for us. Go to makemoneyonline. exposed. In the footer of the website is an email address. Email us and your question will be added to the pile, and we will get to it eventually, we promise. We love getting reader questions and we do a little bit of light editing on them. And this one boils down to how as consultants do you work with large internal teams? And this is a question that Nick is I think more suited to start the conversation out on about. So I’m going to pass it over to Nick. Nick, how do you work with large internal teams?

I personally try to know paddock. 90% plus of it. If I’m working on a project that involves a large team, in my contract, I specify that my primary point of contact is the person who’s Signing the check and who I’m directly working with. And I might integrate in conversations with other team members. Hey, I need you to explain how XYZ works because I’m Putting together a report that involves XYZ, but the other team members aren’t able to assign work to me, aren’t able to necessarily give feedback to me. It all goes through my central point of contact. And I’ve done that to sort of Isolate and sandbox me from different business units, different egos fighting each other, and it I could definitely say that it is not the perfect way to do it because I think a more integrated approach in some cases works better. But for my personality and for what I found the types of projects I work best on, Isolating myself in that way from the greater team in a company has worked well. So I could focus on doing the thing they hired me to do. Giving the advice, getting the information I’m searching for from these other team members, and then delivering it to my primary point of contact. I’ve been on consulting engagements before where The kickoff call was supposed to be two people and it ended up being nine people. There was one person on the Kai side and eight people on the other side, and it was a terrible, terrible kickoff call because we got two hours into the hour-long agenda. And I just threw up my hands and said, We’re going to redo this. One person on the call, let’s reschedule. Because there were too many people in the room and too many egos in the room, and we weren’t able to get anything done. And my job as a consultant is not to Provide an excuse to have meetings with multiple people. My job as a consultant is to help the client achieve the outcome they hired me to help them get closer to achieving. And I can’t necessarily do that if there are lots of stakeholders and lots of people feeling like they’re going to grab my time and attention and lots of people giving unsolicited input. So I want to. Silo and sandbox myself as much as possible. There is a literal wall of fire around me.

I remember one case study and Bad experiences I could share where I was brought on as a consultant, and as part of the consulting engagement, we were making a I think it was like a mid five-figure recurring annual purchase. It was a CRM integration that touched multiple business units. And there is a three-day long fight that I was involved in as like the person cowering in the corner of the room Between the CEO and the COO on whose business credit card to use to make the purchase. And I was the one making the purchase. So it was emails back and forth. Cai, use this one. No, use this one. No, use this one. And I just was like, My job is to stand over here and what the fuck is that? Yeah.

Can we put it on my card?

But there’s a lot that could come up when working on Teams, even when you don’t expect it, even when everything’s been perfect up until one point, because suddenly an ego gets thrown in the meat grinder. And what you thought was like, oh, I’m just going to say like the slider on the homepage sucks. You know, David spent three months working on that slider, and you just stepped on a landmine. It can be tricky to work with teams because you, as a consultant, are going into an existing relationship. Without understanding all the parameters and all the history of the relationship that these multiple people are involved in working on this in this company. So it could be very easy to accidentally shoot a sacred cow or. Accidentally push in the wrong direction. So, I think jumping back to your earlier comment, setting boundaries is so important, setting communication standards, communicating: you know, my point of contact is this person. I’m going to solicit input from these other people. But you are the person who is able to say, do not do that thing or do that thing. I will take input from other people, but I could discard it at will. It’s only you, dear person who wrote me the check, that gets to give that final authoritative thumbs up or thumbs down. That I found. Either makes people freak out, and okay, great, that’s a huge round MM. That’s a sign this is not going to work well together. You’re hiring me to, or you are bringing me on as a consultant to suddenly have four new bosses. No, hard pass. If they are open to that or say, yes, that makes perfect sense, great, you pass the test. This is going to be a better than average client engagement. But It all starts from a position of communicating this at the start of the engagement. You are not bringing me on as a consultant to work with eight different people as eight different bosses across this organization. You’re bringing me on as a consultant to help you achieve an outcome. To achieve that outcome, I need to be laser focused. To be laser focused, I need one point of contact and one point of approval, and authority to solicit input from other people on the team. That is the groundwork we need to start from. We can negotiate from there. Maybe you have a business partner who really needs to be involved in this discussion. Great, let’s talk through about why and how we can make that happen. But we need to start from a baseline and then move the needle. We can’t start from Client defines it, we’ll figure it out along the way. We really need to start from: these are the best practices that I am bringing to the table. Let’s negotiate on what works and what does not work.

We’re so sorry.

Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. And a lot of it comes down to the mental game of consulting, as it often does. Having the self-confidence, and to jump back to the previous episode. the mental approach to positions of abundance or an abundant position in your business to be able to make these I’m going to say claims to make these demands to put these requirements on the table. This is the way I work best. If they say no, you realize, okay, great. There’s a dozen, two dozen, ten dozen other clients out there waiting for me. This one would have been a bad fit and caused me to pull my hair out. I am happy that they noped on my requirements early on because it’s making the space for me to focus on my business, on my products. On other leads, on other project opportunities, or on completely non-business things that bring me joy in my life. So it’s a good thing, I think, if You have strict requirements around how you work with internal teams or large internal teams. Communicate those requirements ahead of time. And essentially, you’re searching for that no. You want to present it in such a way where they’re like, oh, we can’t do that. We need, you know, seven different people having authority over your decisions. No, sorry, it won’t work. Let’s end the conversation now. And then you move on to the next leader prospect in your blood.

What I found successful is, and this echoes what I advised earlier on in the episode. Carving out sort of a smaller group that you report to. So they might have a large marketing team, a 20% marketing team, and they want you integrated fully with that marketing team. Well, okay, what are the roles on the marketing team? And who do you actually need contact with? Okay, great. Let’s define that as the people who need to know that I’m involved on this project and that I’m in contact with. And That finds a middle ground where you’re saying, these are the people that I’m going to communicate with, and I’m not communicating with other people because you aren’t paying for me to have a meeting with Joe over in accounting about whatever he wants to talk about, you are paying me to help you achieve this outcome. If it relates to Joe, let’s have that meeting with Joe. If it doesn’t, let’s pull back and not have that meeting with Joe. But it comes down to having that strength of ego.

I found asking why. Is so important in those situations. This needs to happen now. Why? It’s on the calendar. Why is it on the calendar? We put it on the calendar. Why’d you put it on the calendar today? We thought you’d be available. Okay, so I’m not available. Here’s a link to my Calendly. Feel free to pick any time that works for you and your team, and we could have that meeting then.

But it comes down to. Confidence in yourself and having a healthy and strong ego. And those are sort of abstract things to be recommending, but I think they are qualities that anybody can develop. If you feel like you don’t have a strong sense of self-confidence or a strong ego, There are a dozen self-help books out there. There are a dozen resources. I highly, highly, highly advocate seeing a therapist or a counselor. It’s been one of the best investments I’ve ever made in my life.

See a therapist. Please. All of you. A great book I just read recently was: I can’t remember the author’s name, Fuck Feelings, just talking about the different ways we feel bad about things and deconstructing why. Do you necessarily need to feel bad about this? Do you need to take responsibility for what somebody else is feeling? Or do you focus on your own feelings and then say, Is this a necessary feeling for me to be feeling right now? Do I need to feel guilty or sad or angry about this? No, fuck it. And wonderful book. Highly, highly recommend Fuck The Links. I think if you suffer from having a weak ego or not having as much self-confidence as you wish you did, well, when you work with large internal teams, if either of those are true, You’re going to be more at the mercy of the team than not. So it’s important to work on radical self-development. So you are able to come in and be like, no, I’m confident. I’m here to solve a problem. If you aren’t able, dear client, to deliver on what I need to solve this problem, this isn’t my fault and you aren’t going to yell at me over this. I clearly said I need ABCND. You did not deliver ABCND. This is how we need to go. You need to get me A, B, C, and D. And be aggressive about it. Be pushy with it. You are brought in as an expert to help them solve a problem. So, as an expert, Be willing to define what you will and won’t do. Be willing to define what you need to move forward. And be willing to define who on the team you are working with or reporting to. Because if you don’t make those definitions, somebody else will, and they will make those definitions for their benefit. And you’re going to lose out on that game.