Is Your Expertise Killing Your Consulting Deals

How does a seasoned corporate lawyer and former General Counsel for a global foundation transition from a world of high-stakes legal and philanthropic work to building a specialized social impact consulting firm – all while initially harboring deep skepticism about the consulting industry itself? Scott Curran, Founder and CEO of Beyond Advisers, shares his nine-year journey from in-house counsel, where he saw many consultant relationships go awry, to creating a thriving practice that now operates almost entirely on retainer and 100% through word-of-mouth referrals.

Scott reveals the pivotal moments and mindset shifts that propelled him forward, from confronting imposter syndrome to his early client acquisition strategy of scheduling daily breakfasts, coffees, and lunches for two straight weeks. He emphasizes the foundational lesson learned: “The most important thing I learned is to not overlook the importance of the beginner’s mindset of your client… meet your clients where they are.” Today, Scott breaks down his path, from the initial $2,500 project to developing a high-value, retainer-based model, and why “simplicity is at the core of everything I do.”

In this episode you will learn:

• Scott’s move from corporate law/philanthropy to social impact consulting.

• The power of an “exquisite statement of work” and clear deliverables.

• Overcoming imposter syndrome: assessing risks, seeking advice, and planning.

• Scott’s 30-meeting networking strategy for early client acquisition.

• Identifying the market gap for “fractional General Counsel” services.

• Building a business on 100% word-of-mouth referrals over a decade.

• Evolving pricing: from a $2,500 first project to high-value retainers.

• Structuring retainers with clear opt-out clauses to build trust.

• Choosing fewer, higher-retainer clients over scaling into a large agency.

• Building a flexible team: core principals and “plug and play” specialists.

• Leveraging AI for research, like “Google on steroids.”.

• The value of a “beginner’s mindset” for deeper client relationships.

Welcome to the Consulting Success podcast. I’m your host Michael Zipursky, and in this podcast, we’re going to dive deep into the world of elite consultants where you’re going to learn the strategies, tactics and mindset to grow a highly profitable and successful consulting business.

Before we dive into today’s episode. Are you ready to grow and take your consulting business to the next level? Many of the clients that we work with started as podcast listeners just like you, and a consistent theme they have shared with us is that they wished they had reached out sooner about our Clarity Coaching Program rather than waiting for that perfect time. If you’re interested in learning more about how we help consultants just like you, we’re offering a free, no pressure growth session call. On this call, we’re going to dive deep into your goals, challenges and situation and outline a plan that is tailor made just for you. We will also help you identify where you may be making costly and time consuming mistakes to ensure you’re benefiting from the proven methods and strategies to grow your consulting business. 

So don’t wait years to find clarity. If you’re committed and serious about reaching a new level of success in your consulting business, go ahead and schedule your free growth session. Get in touch today. Just visit Consulting Success – Grow to book your free call today.

Scott Curran, CEO of Beyond Advisers, is a corporate and social impact lawyer who advises boards and C-suites on scaling positive impact. Formerly General Counsel of the Clinton Foundation, where he guided global initiatives, he now teaches a pioneering social impact law course and holds the first Master of Public Service from the Clinton School. Scott also co-founded Molis Coaching, a peer education platform, and supports causes through the Curran Family Impact Fund. He serves on multiple advisory boards, driving innovation and service.

Connect with Scott Curran

Discover more about Beyond Advisers

Hey Scott, Welcome.

Thanks Michael. So nice to be with you.

Yeah. Excited for our conversation today. I often like to go back in time a little bit in starting these conversations and I know that you had kind of a background in corporate law, legal strategic counsel. You worked a lot in the social impact space. First of all, can you just describe a little bit more of what you were doing at that time and then transition that to why you decide to leave that world and get started in consulting?

Yeah, happy to. And the short version is I spent five years practicing corporate law at a mid-sized corporate law firm in Chicago. I took a bit of an unexpected detour to go back to school and roll the dice a little bit on a brand new master’s program. I got a Master’s Degree in Public Service at the brand new University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service. I was in its first class. So, nobody knew what somebody would do with this brand new degree or where they’d go. And then that, that put me into a 10-year career in philanthropy where I started not doing legal work, I was doing programmatic work at a fast growing former president, former presidential foundation in the early 2000s, which was a golden era in philanthropy and wound up doing more legal work in that process and eventually left that position 10 years later as General Counsel around the 2015 – 2016 US presidential election, at which point the organization with which I worked, the Clinton Foundation, had quite a bit of scrutiny on it. So sort of my future from there was, was unknown and I was planning to leave before the election and I effectively did and couldn’t figure out exactly where I would go or what I would do next with this incredible experience I’d had for a decade plus and ultimately determined that the last thing I thought I would do was the next best thing, which was become a consultant. And I have been very happily doing that for the nine years since.

[02:08] – Lessons Learned From Bad Consulting Relationships

Well, let me then ask you because I know you shared with me before we hit record that you didn’t always have the best view or you didn’t think highly of, you know, consultants in the marketplace. Can you explain a little bit of where that thinking came from or that, or that belief or feeling towards the consulting industry or consultants. And then obviously, I find it very interesting that you had that view, yet you became one yourself. So talk about where that come from because I think there’s probably some lessons in there for, for everyone who is in the consulting business of what is, you know, how do people potentially view you externally or what are some things to, to be thinking about and then we can kind of transition that into why you actually decided to start your own consulting business even with that belief.

Yes, that’s true. And the story has a happy ending because I love being a consultant and I hope others listening do too. And if they’re thinking about it, I hope they have as much fun and as an exciting time with it as I have. But to answer the question of why I was skeptical about ever going into that space, you know, I was general counsel of a multinational that had, you know, thousands of people working in dozens of countries around the world and most of the states here in the United States. And we had a lot of consultants, a lot of consultants coming, going of every stripe and every variety. And when you’re in-house counsel and you have that many outside service providers coming in and going out, you also wind up in situations where you don’t have the best outcomes. And so as in-house counsel, you tend to get this experience where you’re helping people unwind or get out of consulting relationships early on. So I think just by virtue of the volume, the number of consultants we had coming and going where we were helping our in-house teams get rid of their consulting relationships, we had to, you know, deal with unfortunate situations where the relationship didn’t work. I will never put it all on the consultants for sure, right? Because it’s always a two way street in this business. But the outcome didn’t match the early intent.

And so I think that had overly colored my experience and I had seen that, you know, we had a lot of challenges and I found myself regularly guiding the in-house teams who would come to us and say, hey, here’s a new consulting relationship. I would say, “Well, hey, based on, you know, this other team’s experience, have you solved for this challenge or that challenge?” And I think that colored my perspective in a negative way and I’m just delighted that, you know, I no longer had that experience in our specific consulting.

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If you were to go back in time or even just based on your experiences over the years, what would have been music to your ears in terms of a consultant or firm reaching out to you? Like what were the things that you saw or didn’t see, but wish that you would have seen from consultants?

[06:05] – Writing Clear, High-Trust Statements of Work

I’ll go backwards and I sort of close my eyes and I see the agreements in my head sort of like in mass in this, like it’s almost like a subway train passing by you. I’ve seen so many of them. An amazing statement of work, right? The actual description or scope of work that gets attached to your engagement letter or your MSA, however you contract with the client. The ones that we love, the ones that we had really, you know, high hopes for or that worked out well, had exquisite statements of work or project scopes where we knew exactly what to expect along what timeline, with what deliverables. The more generic and nebulous sort of ‘taking it on faith they were’, the more you could kind of drive a Mack truck through it. So anything with a poorly written, you know, generic, inspecific statement of work was a red flag for us. And those that were crystal clear about what to expect and when usually brought our concerns down. And so I try to do that now in my work. Just really specific and exquisite statements of work, scope of work, deliverables, clear timelines, etc.

Anytime we saw a front loaded agreement with no ability to terminate it, so lots of fees on the front end with a restrictive time period and no ability to get out of the agreement or recalibrate the agreement if things weren’t working out, was usually a sign or an indicator after the fact that, that this wasn’t going to be a great relationship. And as a consultant, I understand the value of ‘go slow to go fast’, of ramping up and into an engagement and ensuring that we have, you know, a solid foundation to build on. So I do understand the importance of that. But anytime someone was locking a client into a long term agreement with, you know, no ability to get out of it or revise it, those tended to be some challenging circumstances for the clients with which we worked.

[08:02] – Overcoming Imposter Syndrome as a New Consultant

That makes sense. Okay, so let’s fast forward a little bit. You made a decision to leave being general counsel, right? You’re involved in philanthropy, you decide, “Hey, consultants aren’t that bad. I’m going to make a name for myself here.” In the early days, what did you find was the greatest challenge in building your consulting business?

Imposter syndrome. Insecurity. Being scared to death of trying something new and, you know, being out there and having friends, families, colleagues, knowing that I was going to do something where I might fail and that I was highly skeptical of in my sort of like, you know, 10 years prior. And so I think like any entrepreneur just starting out, I had a lot of the same fears everybody else did. And here I was, you know, in my 40s, you know, an experienced corporate lawyer, an experienced nonprofit lawyer, but I also had this vision and enthusiasm that was super, well, caffeinated, but rooted in some success where I thought, “You know what? I don’t think there’s people doing what we’re talking about doing out there. And I believe, and have good reason for believing, I think is valuable. So let’s give it a shot.” And it was like any other entrepreneurial adventure where it required a big leap of faith, but it was also a smart leap of faith.

Just a little bit more about- Let’s imagine that scenario where you’re in your home office or wherever you were in those early days and you have this great kind of career and background. You’re excited with the work that you can do, but you also have this voice in your head telling you, you know, ‘Are you really good enough? Maybe you’re not cut out for this.” Like all the stuff that plays in most people’s minds when they’re early stage. What got you past that? What did you do? What did you say? What did you invest in? Like, how did you get past that and ensure that you didn’t end up as we see a lot of people ending up who have desires, they have dreams, but the, the fear, the insecurity, right, all these, imposter syndrome ultimately holds them back from taking the action that would, would get them to where they want to go just because of how fearful they are. So what, how did you kind of deal with that and get through it?

The first thing I did and advice I often give is, you know, assess what the worst case scenario is and what your safety net or your backup plan looks like. And mine was pretty decent, right? I was an attorney and I could- The safest move for me was to leave and go to another major nonprofit or major philanthropic organization, go to a law firm, you know, practice law again. That’s a pretty good fallback. So I’ll admit to sort of having a privilege of a strong safety net that I could always go and earn a living as an attorney or at another nonprofit. But I think that’s important for everybody, right, because it does two things. One, it helps reassure you of knowing what your plan B is, what your bailout option is, what things will look like if you have to pack it in, admit defeat and move in a different direction to know what that looks like. But it also reminds you that you’re good at things, that there’s certain credentials and qualifications that you have and that you can lean on and rely on and incorporate into the business. So first thing I did was assess that sort of worst case scenario and the safety net to give you the comfort to be able to take that leap. So that was the first thing I did.

Second thing I did is I remembered one of my favorite quotes: “Success leaves clues”. And so I asked successful people who I respected and admired and worked with. A couple things: one, for those who are already consultants, what do you love about it? What do you do uniquely well in the space? And what advice would you give me if this is what I want to do within our space? So, you know, there’s no trophy for unnecessary struggle. There’s often a lot of rewards for the struggle that we all go through every day in every way, but there’s no trophy for unnecessary struggle. So I asked other people who are kind and forthcoming and excited to help me, what would you recommend I do? And I got so much positive encouragement from those people. And I saw myself differently as a result of those conversations. And I was reminded of one really critical factor that everybody listening should remember, which is that everybody wants to help. I mean, it’s rare that anybody says to us, “Will you help me real quick?” And we say, “No.” We almost always say, “Yeah, I’d love to. What can I do?” And so many people want to help other people succeed. It’s really true. And so I asked the people who were doing it well and doing it in ways that I admired how I could do it well, and they offered more than I ever could have expected.

And the third thing is I got really meticulous about planning the work and working the plan, knowing exactly what it was I would uniquely do in my consulting work and how I could deliver more value to the clients, over deliver that value to the clients, than I would ever bill them. And that was my measure for success.

[12:52] – How Conversations Sparked a Thriving Consulting Business

Okay, so three, three great things there for you to be thinking through. Did those initial conversations that you had with the people in your network, is that where you’re kind of first or second client or project came from, or did you do something different to get the initial kind of marketing engine going?

That’s a spectacular question I don’t think anybody’s asked me. And it’s an answer that is a good one to help others who might be on this journey. Yes. I don’t think I’ve ever put those two, two dots together. I picked a day to have a breakfast, coffee and lunch every day for 10 work days. So two full work weeks, Monday through Friday, I scheduled a breakfast, a coffee and a lunch. And I was still gainfully employed. But I said, “Hey, I’ll be gone for half the day these two weeks.” I had a very nice, very comfortable way of doing that. And I was fortunate, but I really took those days and those mornings to be intentional about it. And I got two things. One, I got leads and I got people who were eager to hear how it would go and asked me to keep in touch and were supportive of the cause, whether they were directly providing potential clients or not, or direct leads or not.

And the other thing I got is that when I was talking to other colleagues about what I was doing next, against all odds, like, “You’re going to go into consulting, you’re so skeptical.” I said, “I am.” They said, “Well, you know, who could really use your help?” So it wasn’t just the people I scheduled those breakfasts, coffees and lunches with. It’s the other people I was telling about the process and the journey, leaning into that discomfort and that vulnerability and saying, “Hey, I’m going to try something new and I’m scared to death.” The first client we ever got was from one of my then existing clients who said, “Hey, if you’re going to do this, I know somebody who needs your help.” And that’s where the first client came from.

Yeah, it’s, it never kind of ceases to amaze me that the- when you just reverse engineer how consulting works, where you land a client through conversations. So the more conversations you have, right, the more opportunities you’re going to create to define new business and, you know, problems you can solve and value that you can add. Let’s fast forward a little bit more into your journey. I mean, you initially built a business or got your first few clients through these conversations, through your network. What have you found over the last several years or even kind of current day, what’s working best for you and your company to generate leads, to build your pipeline.

[15:18] – Building a Rare, Valuable, and Simple Consulting Offer

Offering something that’s rare and valuable by, you know, that solves a problem somebody has and doing it as simply as possible. So, you know, simplicity is at the core of everything I do. I read a book around this time called Insanely Simple by Ken Segall, who had a background and experience working with Apple. So he pulled on that, which had a relentless focus on simplicity. And I realized that a lot of the consulting we were going to do, which was sort of new to the space. Yes, it’s in the social impact space and, but it also pulls on our background as attorneys, which is a little bit of a hybrid, right? Because I’m not a law firm, so I’m not allowed to give legal advice the way a law firm does. And so I have to remind my clients, I am a lawyer, but I’m not acting as your lawyer. You still have your lawyer, but I’m going to give you legal consulting services like an in-house general counsel. What I’m going to help you- issue spot, identify when you do, or ideally don’t need outside legal counsel when you have what you need in-house use these tools or learn how to use these tools, the advice guides and tools we were providing. And that was rare because most of the organizations we were consulting with, nonprofits, social enterprises and businesses that were launching social impact initiatives, didn’t have or didn’t need full time in-house counsel. So they didn’t have that skill set.

So we had this rare and valuable skill set. Either have to pay, you know, up to a thousand bucks or more an hour for one hour of time from someone at an outside law firm, or you have to hire somebody for probably a couple hundred grand or more in-house with a full time commitment to get this. We came right in the middle. You don’t have to use this forever. You can use us for a little while, but we’ll give you the same expertise. So it was a new and unique offering to the market that was rare and valuable. And we prioritized simplicity. Nobody wants legalese if you can speak plain language answers. Nobody wants a 10 page memo if you can give them a 1 page memo. I think almost every single one of us would prefer to have a one page or a one paragraph answer than a ten page answer. And so simplicity was at the core of everything we did in a field where people assumed that might not be possible.

I love how you’ve kind of distilled that down, right, and talked about your offer, your value proposition, kind of your, your messaging of how you’re going to the market, delivering value in a way that hasn’t been done – different. And it sounds like you identified a gap in the marketplace, right? And that’s what you, what, what you fed into. So a great kind of product market fit. But how are you getting that message to people, right? Were you sending emails, going to conferences, doing some direct mail, relying on kind of referrals in your network? What was the vehicle that you were using to get that message in front of your ideal clients?

[17:57] – Scaling Through Word of Mouth and LinkedIn

Yeah, it was definitely word of mouth. It was definitely leveraging relationships that existed already, but in different ways. So to your point, also emailing, I wasn’t Doing direct marketing or anything like that. I was expanding my horizons when, you know, I left a place where I was working for a decade. And so I felt like I was coming out of the basement engine room where I had been, you know, working for 10 years, but I knew I developed these relationships and opportunities to sort of, you know, the dirty word is network – it’s really relationship building, with people differently than I had before. So it was a combination of sharing with people what I was up to. So sometimes that was via those coffees, breakfasts, lunches, sometimes it was via email.

Once I put a website up, I started sharing that with people on email, then LinkedIn, which I still- I thought then and I still think now is one of the great places to be online and add value and share with people how you can help them. And that really cranked up that flywheel momentum for word of mouth referrals. And it didn’t take long in my case because I had had a bigger network than I realized I had developed over those years and the need and the market fit was so acute that it didn’t take long. And ever since then, we’re going into our 10th year now, and 100% of our work still comes from word of mouth referrals.

[19:17] – Moving From Hourly Rates to Flat-Fee Retainers

When you talk about the gap that you were filling, right. So somebody could pay for one hour, $1,000 an hour with an experienced lawyer, or they could hire somebody full time, couple hundred grand, probably minimum. How did you think about pricing your services, you know, in the early days, and then I’d love to hear kind of how it’s evolved to where it is today.

Yeah, very insecurely. I had no idea what to do. Again, that was a huge part of this imposter syndrome. And despite the positivity and support enthusiasm I got from people I trusted who I knew weren’t just telling me what I wanted to hear, I still didn’t know how to price it. Like, because I didn’t want to bill hourly. I left law firm life in 2005 and never wanted to see a timesheet again. I didn’t want to have to bill for my time. I also felt that it disincentivized clients from using you, right? If they want to save money, they don’t want to call you, but I want you to call me so that we ultimately save in the long run. But I really didn’t want to bill hourly. And so I knew I didn’t want that for me. It works great for some people, but I didn’t want it for me and for the team that we built. And so I had to figure out a different way. And ultimately what we knew we wanted to do was flat fee or scoped fee.

And so early on we said, “Well, show us what the work looks like,” and if it fit into what- we had three pillars, coaching, counseling and consulting. And for us, the early engagements were consulting, which meant that they were a specific project with the beginning and an end and a set of deliverables. And I said, “Okay, great. For that, I can scope that at – and I’m just going to speak to the truth of the first engagement – 2,500 bucks. My first client engagement was 2,500 bucks. I’m not sure I would charge less than 10 grand for that today. So just to time warp it, where we started in year one, that engagement was 2,500 bucks, because honestly friends, I had no idea what it should be, and I so wanted the first gig and so wanted an early win that I was- it had other value to me than just financial value. And so the first gig was 2,500 bucks. That same gig today would probably be around 10 grand. And so it was just trial by error. There’s so much power and truth in that good guidance we get so much of the time, which is ‘give it a shot, you know, be smart about it, but give it a shot.’ If it works out, then you’ll have made a good fee and you have a success story. And if it doesn’t work out, you have a great lesson that you can learn from. And so getting started has great power to it. Momentum begets momentum.

What percentage of your current, you know, revenue or project work, or actually to call it just work today, is in the bucket of defined scope, kind of project engagement compared to ongoing subscription, you know, monthly retainer type of work that you keep serving those clients. Because it sounds like the kind of work that you, you’re doing or could be doing would lend itself very well to playing almost like that fractional general counsel role. So what does that percentage kind of breakdown look like today?

[22:14] – Why 90% of Revenue Comes From Retainer Clients

It’s- the consulting gigs are 10% or less, and the retainer based counseling gigs, you know, sort of that fractional GC is about 90%. Yeah. And it very quickly revealed itself.

Right. So I’ll play the devil’s advocate for a moment or just to try and get your insight and thoughts on this. But let’s- I’m going to go back to when you were general counsel and the thing that you love to see was a very defined scope of work, right? “Here’s what we’re doing, exactly this timeline.” Now, I imagine the work that you’re doing today on the retainer, ongoing, monthly, may not have as much definition to it because things change. One month a client needs you a lot more than the next month. How do you handle that? How do you- Because also you’re not doing it on an hourly basis, right. Which for a lot of organizations, they want to know how many hours are you working, what are you doing during that time? You’re not taking that approach from my understanding. You’re saying, you know, “Well, here’s what our program looks like or here’s what our process looks like. We’re there for you, work with you for as long as you know you want our support.” But it’s quite- it might be free flowing. So I’m wondering how do you kind of package that and position that, to provide that level of detail that you yourself said earlier on as a buyer was something that you valued.

Spectacular question. And the simple answer is we provide an easy out. So if it was unclear in the scope of work, but grand promises of all this incredible service and work, you’re going to love it, et cetera, et cetera, you can let me go on 30 days notice. If I don’t deliver. It’s an easy out for you. There’s no downside for you right now. The truth is, because we have pivoted the business in recent years to a smaller number of clients at a higher retainer, that is now a 90 day out, but that’s still a relatively short period of time. And there’s enough work in process now, and we got to the point with those clients where we are with them because they started with either a more tailored scope of work that was specific and they said, “Hey, we like these guys, let’s keep them around for a while longer,” that we built that trust and that comfort with each other. But I still don’t think we have longer than 90 days for anybody to wind us down. And we have a wait list to pick up. So it’s a wind down of a current and a ramp up with a new one.

So the answer is if you don’t have a clear scope of work or you can’t commit to that kind of deliverable specificity, give an easy out. And what’s amazing is I find most clients don’t exercise it when, not if, but when you are delivering real value. And you’re 100% right, too, Michael, there’s months that are, you know, way busier than others, and it all evens out in the long run. And we know there’s value in the work we’re providing and the services we provide and the clients know that too. But, you know, it’s- we’re going, we’re recording this as we go into the holiday season, and those are usually quiet, especially for a lot of our clients. They shut down for usually an extended period of time, but they pick right back up at the beginning of the year. And that’s cyclical throughout the year. It might be the summer breaks or the summer months, but, yeah, it’s cyclical. But when you build that trust and you deliver that value, nobody’s watching the clock or the number of hours you’re putting in because they know the value you deliver and that you’re there when they pick up the phone to call or send you that Slack message or that email and you’re immediately available or reasonably available and providing a quick turn.

[25:36] – Raising Prices and Focusing on Fewer, Bigger Clients

You mentioned that you’ve made the intentional decision to work with fewer clients, but at higher value. So every engagement is more valuable. Do you remember where you were and what the situation was when you, you know, you, your team decided to, to make that shift, to start charging a lot more and work with fewer clients? What was going on? What kind of precipitated that ultimately? What allowed you or led you to making the decision to, you know, to go in that direction?

Yes, we were- We didn’t make a big move to go from a small dollar amount to a high dollar amount, but we saw the opportunity there and the clients were asking us to grow with them, or we were originally serving a narrower scope or a smaller time period. And they either said, “Hey, we want to keep you around. We really like you being part of our team. Can we do this on a retainer basis going forward, you know, for the indefinite future? We know we have some projects on the horizon.” We said, “Well, sure.” And that would necessitate revisiting that agreement. I’m a big fan of really good engagement letters or contracts.

So we saw the demand increasing and we saw it from more sophisticated clients that wanted that sort of fractional GC service or that ongoing executive coaching, senior leadership mentorship, you know, engaging with their executive or senior leadership team and/or their boards where we spent a lot of time. And we know that that’s a high value proposition. And we know what our competitors charge. We know what big consulting firms charge for this kind of work with larger teams. And so we knew that we could A) competitively price our services and B) still make a higher fee compared to where we had started or where we were pricing the smaller, shorter term, narrower deliverables consulting gigs at.

So we saw that pattern in front of us unfolding and it’s a riskier proposition, right? Because if you lose a single client in a smaller stable of clients, you have a bigger revenue hit. And so your pipeline of new work needs to be, you know, in place or readily identifiable or you have to have a nest egg for it. But the good news is we’vealways been able to transition from old clients to new clients with a great deal of comfort. Or you have to build a bigger shop and hire more people, which was also a choice that revealed to us at that same time, which is, or we can keep meeting all the demand for all the work and become a bigger shop, which would have changed my duties and role as a business leader into a growth stage. And we had to make a really intentional choice. Do we try to build a social impact super agency? And there’s several out there and I admire and respect them and I know most of their leaders and I admire and respect them for that work. But that’s different than being a service provider to a small number of clients where you’re really deeply embedded with their team.

[28:26] – Plug-and-Play Team Model for Specialized Client Needs

What does your team look like today?

Three principals, three to five plug and play – other consultants who are available to us who have specialized service capabilities, who might be good at data analytics, might have specific skill sets in certain social impact subject matter areas that we plug and play into different engagements. For example, when we have a climate focused NGO that we’re working with, we’ll pull in, you know, another member of our team who has a deep experience in the climate space. Same for data analytics, some HR work and things like that. So we have specialists who we plug and play into our core team, which is usually a combination of two or all three of our principals with some number of the add ons and then sometimes it’s just the three principals in some combination working together. But it’s beautiful the way we can pull people off the bench and put them into the game.

Yeah. And how do you think about or how you handle compensation when you’re dealing with these- so they’re external consultants, they’re not full time or part of your company, but they work with you? Do they sit down and say, “Hey Scott, here’s you know, what our hourly fee is,” or do they say, “This is what it would cost for us to deliver on this project, to be a part of it?” How do you, I mean, do you have a certain kind of a, I guess a formula or a way that you tend to manage the compensation of all these projects?

Yes, the three core principals all do make a predictable wage, so we’re all compensated a base level plus. And then the others who we plug and play are pretty regularly quantifiable. And so they, whether- it’s not usually hourly because again, we don’t typically transact- we say, “Here’s what the engagement looks like,” or, “Hey, I need to bring you in for a month or for three months,” or, “Here’s what they need some help with, right? They’re going through a transition period and they really need somebody to do this.” And then it’s really easy to scope that work and do it exactly like we would if I was going out and doing a defined consulting gig from, you know, start to stop in 90 days, 120 days, whatever the case may be. And so it’s, you know, typically, as you note, and I think reasonably so, an embedded hourly rate for the most part, because that’s what the client understands and that’s often what people in our space bill on so we can get there pretty quickly. And then, you know, given the way the core business operates, I usually have some flexibility to help that person if we pull them in a little more than we anticipated. We’re pretty good at scoping the work.

Well, so do you find, are you going to the external consultants that you work with and saying “Here’s what our budget is for this,” or are you saying, “Here’s what the project looks like. What do you think it’ll cost, you know, to have you involved in it?”

A little bit of both. So if a client comes in, we have one right now. So there’s a good example. I won’t name the client, but it’s a well known multinational NGO. And they said, “Hey, we need some help with this project. We just need some bandwidth.” And I know that because of their focus area that we need one of the members of our team. And so I said, “Listen, I think this, you know, we’ve talked with them, we had one introductory call and they said, you know, ‘This is really what we need. This is how we think it looks per week, per month, and we think we need you for, you know, one to two quarters next year.’” I said, “This is great. That sounds awesome. So, and I know what we charged them when we worked with them a couple of years ago and say “Oh, I think that’s still going to be right about in that wheelhouse and that would adequately compensate that person.” Now we bring that bench strength in, the specialty player and say, “Hey, does this sound right to you? This is what we think it’s going to look like. So let’s call it, you know, four to six hours a week for three months.” And if that’s right, I already know what that person wants to make for an engagement they say ‘yes’ to and then I know that’s well within the budget there.

So it’s a beautiful thing to be able to have different types of clients where you have the retainer based clients who provide a certain base that allows you to be more flexible in how you price the other engagements. And so that’s- it’s typically just a very open, I believe in scorched earth communication both with the client and with the team. I want, I’m fully transparent. I want everybody to know and I want that client to feel that they had a heck of a deal with us that we have over delivered for them and that they feel that they didn’t pay nearly as much as they would had they gone to a really big name brand social impact consulting shop out there that everybody knows. And so usually there’s enough in the middle for everyone. And that scorched earth communication early on, it’s always worth that measuring twice, cutting once in the early stages of exploring the engagement opportunity and talking with your team. I have found that the ounce of prevention is absolutely worth the pound of cure. And thankfully I’ve never wound up on the wrong side of it either.

[33:06] – Using AI to Accelerate Research and Save Time

What are you doing with or how are you thinking about AI, Artificial Intelligence? What’s, what role does it play inside of your firm? How are you using it, if at all, what are your thoughts?

It’s on everybody’s mind so you have to be in the space in some form or fashion. And so I, the first thing I do is I’m learning everything I can learn about it and I’m reading about it. I don’t, I have met people who said, “We’re never going to use it here. I’m never going to work on AI,” and it’s like, “Well, I’m not going to bury my head in the sand. I can’t do that. I don’t think that is a sound strategy.” So learn as much as you can, and dip your toe in the water of it in a way that makes sense. Here’s what that looks like for us: It is Google on steroids at the very least at the, and it’s doing a wonderful job. You still have to, you know, you can trust, but you still have to verify. And that is part of my nature and part of my profession too, which is to always be sure that it’s working well and that it’s accurate and true and et cetera. I have been incredibly impressed. So, so far there are some things it doesn’t do well yet and may not do well for a while, but there’s other things it does extremely well. And I’ve seen in just the past six months how it has become, you know, a search engine on steroids with identifiable sourcing.

Scott, what’s, what’s your use case? Give me an example. Like, are, are you using it for creating, you know, writing briefs? Are you using it for proofreading? Are you using it to create content?

Rarely on proofreading, not really on creating content. I’ll occasionally do that on social media. I’ll say something like, you know, give me relevant hashtags and some emojis that make this post fun for an audience that doesn’t want to hear from a boring lawyer, right? And so I do that on my own LinkedIn profile. I use more emojis than I ever have in my entire Life on LinkedIn posts to take the edge off what might otherwise be a nerdy wonky or perceived as, you know, a lawyer making a post about the law. And I’ll just try to take, you know, defy expectations there. So that’s a super fun, easy, basic.

I’ve occasionally taken a little original copy and said, “Can you edit this for length?” Or, you know, you’re, you put yourself in this mode. You know, the prompts are very important. “Revise this so that it is, you know, half the length,” but not very often. What I typically do is on research, where I’m validating research I already know. So I work a lot in spaces of governance and compliance. So board governance, you know, policies or, or some research for state specific information that I know is available through a Secretary of State’s website. But a Secretary of State’s website is often a terribly unfriendly place to navigate or find things quickly. So I might do a search to say, you know, “Find this, the answer to this question on the Secretary of State’s website in this state.” And in an instant, I mean, just an instant, it’s there. And you know, if I were to go to that Secretary of State website and try to find that answer, it might take me 5 to 10, maybe, you know, 20 minutes to find it. That’s a huge time saver for somebody who’s serving multiple clients that are moving quickly.

If you go back or even just think about, you know, the last several years in business, what is one big challenge that you encountered or one lesson that you’ve learned that you think or you believe really made a significant difference in the growth and the kind of trajectory of your business?

[36:28] – Beginner’s Mindset: The Secret to Client Loyalty

Remembering the beginner’s mindset of what you do uniquely well. So whatever consulting business you’re in, you’re probably at a master’s level or a PhD level or beyond, and you probably have just instant recall and recognition and ability to think through and synthesize it and believe that the answer is simple. And I think that’s awesome. That is- if that is you and you feel that way at times, that is your superpower. But the most important thing I learned is to not overlook the importance of the beginner’s mindset of your client and/or the audience you’re speaking to.

So my client is often a board chair, a CEO or somebody else in the C suite or senior leadership of my clients. But very often the audience is their team or a wider stakeholder group. And so even if my direct relationship, manager or direct client is that C suite person, that board level person, we are both often communicating a product or an outcome or deliverable for a wider audience that isn’t there. And I have been delighted in my consulting practice to find out how valuable it is to clients and their wider stakeholder groups to offer them that beginner’s mindset answer.

Instead of walking into a client and talking about governance and compliance like a really smart consultant, you go and say, you know, “How many people know that governance and compliance are a thing, but would be hard pressed to define one or both of them right now if I asked?” Almost always the hands go up. And I’ve asked really smart, experienced people that question. And then I had a, I’m like, you know what? I was probably well into my late 30s and maybe early 40s before I could have answered that question. Well, today I could start a masterclass on governance and compliance for a nonprofit right away, right now, without any preparation. But the audience isn’t ready to receive that, most of the audience.

So what I found is there’s a tremendous opportunity for consultants to start with that beginner’s mindset and, and friends, when it comes to your business and your scope of work, you may think you’re ready to start at step five, six or seven in the ten step process, but you might actually have a better, longer and more lucrative engagement that works better for both you, your team and your client if you spend some time in the beginner’s mindset and exploring that with your client. When I have done that, I have found that clients aren’t nearly as far along as I assume they are because my assumptions are based on my cumulative experience over time with lots of clients. But I have learned that there’s so much business opportunity for you as a consultant to meet your client where they are, really spend that extra time to find out. They will love you faster and longer for meeting them there and they will ask you to stay with them longer in that consulting relationship which is so good for your business and for your project team and your colleagues and for the long term value of that relationship.

That has been the biggest eye opener to me. It’s no, it’s nothing technical, it’s nothing legal, it’s nothing on the governance front or the compliance front, it’s not Covid and it’s not, you know, geopolitical changes. It’s meeting your clients where they are and identifying with them and then going and growing with them and how amazing that is for a consulting business.

Yeah, I think that’s a great reminder, Scott. Well, I thank you for coming on, sharing some of your journey with us. I know people will want to learn more about you and your company. Where’s the one place they should go to to learn more?

If you want to find me, please do come find me on LinkedIn (Scott Curran). I’m very active there and happy to meet people and to offer any assistance I’m able. I am the recipient of so much good grace and good guidance from others that I am absolutely on a mission to help others who are on that journey. If you’re a young consultant or a growth stage consultant or a pro and there’s anything I can do to be helpful, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I got nothing to sell you but lots to offer. If you want to look at the business, it’s at beyondadvisers.com

We’ll have all that linked up in the show notes. Scott, again, thanks so much for coming on.

Michael, thank you and thank you for your leadership in this space. The pod is awesome. I’m thrilled to be with you. Thank you again.

Important Links:

Scott Curran
Beyond Advisers
Insanely Simple by Ken Segall
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