Thread by @humanworkplace

Lisa’s story

Lisa got laid off from a specialty candy manufacturer where she wrote website copy & did other marketing things. She applied for a few jobs, but she was burnt out. Lisa decides to try independent consulting for a while instead of searching for a full-time job.

Lisa gets a journal and writes in it. She thinks about the kinds of consulting she could do and which types of clients might need her help.

She thinks about how much to charge for her services. She was earning $48K at her old job so if she can charge $50/hr & bill 24-26 hrs/week

...she can just cover her regular expenses plus her own health insurance, a new expense. It’s a little risky but so is spending weeks or months looking for a new job. Anyway, she can still look for a new job. We are all partly consultants now and partly full-time employees.

Lisa has food experience on her resume now which is awesome, but she doesn’t want to limit herself to approaching just food companies. Still, it’s a reasonable place to start in her consulting outreach because her most recent employer is well known in the area.

In fact, Lisa thinks, maybe they could be my first client. Even if they only need a couple hours per week of my time, it will be great to have one paying client. Plus, it will be an important reference if they laid me off but they still need my help. (They just ran out of money)

The outreach to Lisa’s old boss is simple, but the other overtures will take a little thought and preparation. She starts researching food companies in the area, making a spreadsheet with each Marketing VP’s name and contact info + other details. She looks at their websites.

She reads their LinkedIn profiles. She reads their press releases. She gets a picture of each target organization in her head. She asks her friends about them. She does not want to make a cold outreach.

So she doesn’t. Based on her research, she creates a Pain Letter for the first target VP on her list and sends it in the mail. She figures there is about a 25% chance she will hear from the VP quickly but that’s OK, because it’s good practice and nothing is wasted

Her letter is not the slightest bit transactional so there is nothing to prevent her from writing again or making a connection another way in the future if it feels right. This is one advantage consultants have over traditional job seekers.

In addition to her Pain Letter research and creation, Lisa is networking her tush off. She got business cards & she’s handing them out. Every conversation helps her refine her pitch, her questions, and her branding.

After a few conversations with food industry folks Lisa is getting the feeling that website copy is not a big deal. It’s not a pain point. Almost no one is 100% delighted with their sites copy, at least not for long, but they muddle through. They need other kinds of help.

They need help organizing databases, setting up or updating newsletters and keeping product literature current. Lisa is more than happy to take on these projects. She also reached out to two contractors agencies but they haven’t had a suitable assignment for her yet.

Lisa’s theme right now is exploration, not transactions - although she wants and needs to close deals and is delighted whenever an opportunity pans out.

She has a little money squirreled away, but more than that she knows she is stepping out of a mental box she has lived in since childhood, where the message in her home was always Do the safe thing. Hunker down. Don’t take risks.

Lisa is in reinvention.

I chose this, says Lisa. My job is to stay calm, stay open & appreciate everything I encounter on my path.

Lisa keep journaling, resisting the urge to classify a day, week or meeting as good or bad. There’s no way to tell how all the pieces of this tapestry will weave together.

Lisa is meeting amazing people, along with a few people she could just as easily not have met but oh well, that’s how life works. A woman Lisa met in one of her first coffee meetings makes a referral to a company that needs some marketing help.

The client has zip to do with food but so what? Lisa is all about new experiences now. The client balks at Lisa’s rate so she runs some numbers to see if the work will be worth doing at a lower hourly rate. She’s not overwhelmed with work but what if someone calls tomorrow?

Lisa buys a generic consulting contract from a legal template site online. She incorporates under her own name for $75, also online. I like that I’m learning so much new stuff, she says. I hate that this is such new territory, she says.

Yet every time she talks to a client or prospect client she gets a jolt. She realizes how much she knows (and how much she knows but hasn’t been able to use in her jobs before).
I’m not choosy about projects now, Lisa says to herself, but I can see the path to becoming choosy.

Lisa’s cousin sets up her books. When she has a little money, she will pay a bookkeeper a small sum and sit down with an attorney, too. These are two of her first goals once her monthly income allows it.

My brain is getting re-wired, Lisa notices. I’m learning and my plan is to keep learning. I like being on the edge. It is scary, but it feels like being alive.

Lisa wastes time and money with a person who says they will do business development for her, but doesn’t.

Lisa is not someone who has said No very often in her life before, but she says no on a regular basis now. No thank you, she says. No, I do not want to work for two days handing out samples at a trade show downtown but thank you very much for the offer and have a fantastic day.

All love and respect to the folks handing out samples but Lisa has trod that part of her path already and does not want to revisit it.

Lisa starts dreaming about things she thought and cared about as a little girl. Holy mackerel, reinvention is a real thing, she says. It’s bigger than I thought it was.

And so are you, says the realest voice in her head