Turning Your Industry Experience Into a Thriving Consulting Business

How do you enter an established market with no brand, compete against legacy firms, and build a consulting business that actually grows year after year? Tim Viands did it by going where the incumbents were weakest. After spending twenty-five years inside independent schools, Tim founded IndySchool Consultancy because he believed the traditional executive search model was adding burden for clients instead of reducing it.Rather than simply selling access to candidates, he built a more relational model around the work that happens before a candidate ever reaches the client.

And so in this episode, you’re going to discover how Tim found his initial market position, turned his methodology into a proprietary framework, and built a seven-person team capable of delivering beyond the founder.

If you want to differentiate your expertise, systemize what you do, and create a consulting firm that can grow beyond you, you will enjoy this conversation.

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.

Tim Viands brings over two decades of experience to independent education as a former teacher, administrator, and Head of School. After successfully leading boarding and day schools toward sustainable growth, Tim founded IndySchool Consultancy. Driven by his own frustrations as a client of traditional search firms, he pioneered a transformative Competency Based Hiring model and The d4 Process for strategic planning. Today, Tim leverages his vast expertise in international education and innovative learning models to help independent schools thrive and secure top-tier leadership.

Connect with Tim Viands: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-viands-05371219/

Discover more about IndySchool Consultancy: https://indyschoolconsultancy.com/

[00:58] – What are Independent Schools?

Hey Tim, great to have you.

Thanks, Michael. Good to be here.

Before you started IndySchool Consultancy, what were you doing? What’s your background for everyone?

So, I spent twenty-five years working in independent schools, twelve of those as a head of school. I spent twelve years basically as a client of search firms before I ever started running one.

For those that aren’t familiar with what an independent school actually is, how would you describe it?

Sure. The best way to look at that is they’re non-public schools. Each independent school has its own governing board. The head of a school has one boss, and that’s the Board of Trustees. The board hires, fires, supports, and retains the head of school, whose job is basically the CEO of the school. Their job is to steward the internal program and the external aspects of a school.

When you decided to leave working in schools and start IndySchool Consultancy, what was the impetus for that? What did you see, find, or believe that maybe wasn’t working as well as you thought it could have been? Where did you see that value-add, that opportunity, and why did you decide to go off and start your own thing?

[02:10] – Finding a Better Leadership Search Model

Sure. When I was a head of school and I would engage or hire a search firm, I hired them to reduce the burden, and their processes actually added to the burden for me, for my team, and for my community. I oftentimes asked myself why I hired a search firm when it just added all of these different layers of complexities to not just me, but my team and the community.

So, I felt that there was a better mousetrap out there that could be built. A different leadership search model that was more relational and less transactional, and one that put the client’s needs and even the candidates’ needs ahead and paramount to everything else.

I know that I’ve had the benefit of being able to see inside your business as we work together and the value that you’re delivering to your clients, and all the methodology and the experience that you bring to it. But for everyone that’s joining us, could you maybe provide a little bit more detail of how you’ve gone about taking this concept, and essentially the gaps that you identified in the market, how did you then turn that into the business? If you could just walk us through the early days and what you did to actually get the business going.

Yeah, we basically stopped selling access to candidates and started selling the work that’s done before anyone even reaches a committee, before anyone even reaches a school.

So if I was just to expand on that, what I’m hearing you say, correct me if I’m wrong, is that a lot of search firms in your space would be very focused on just giving candidates. And that might mean you have a big volume of candidates and people to choose from, but if they’re not the right person, if the work really hasn’t been done before, which is what you really have the whole methodology and process around of spending that time upfront to ensure that maybe you’re going to get fewer candidates, but the quality of the candidates is going to be much higher, much greater. That ends up saving a lot of time for the actual school or the people that are involved. Is that correct?

[04:18] – Naming and Identifying Leadership Search Costs

Yep. What we did was we called out the costs that weren’t being named before. We named the opportunity costs that a school assumed when they would engage with a search firm, or when they didn’t engage with a search firm, or when the process wasn’t aligned with a school’s needs. For example, if there’s a head of school who is doing the search themselves, there are a lot of things that they’re not doing. They’re not spending time with their kids, they’re not in the classrooms, they’re not raising money. They’re not at that finance committee meeting because they’re doing all of these other things.

So, we named and identified the costs. Also, we created a cost calculator that gave schools an idea of what their direct, indirect, and opportunity costs would be if they did or did not engage a search firm. What that did was it showed to schools, it educated them, really, what they’re assuming when they do something themselves, or what they’re assuming if they don’t engage with the right firm.

Yeah, I think that’s really smart, and I think it’s a good note for everyone joining us to take and to think, well, how does that apply to your own business? Because what you’re talking about is not just focusing on the actual work that you do and how you do it, but what is the impact of that work, or what is the impact of not hiring somebody that can actually really help you? So that’s value, that’s powerful messaging and positioning.

The question that then comes to mind for me, Tim, is in those early days, when you decided to leave working in the schools and actually become a firm that helped to find heads of schools and others for these independent schools, you’re going up against established players. People that already work in the industry. They were servicing maybe even people that you had hired when you worked in these schools. How did you approach the independent schools to say, “Hey, my flag is now out, I’m in business. Here’s how we can help you.” What did that look like? What did you find worked best in order to actually start getting those meetings and being able to tell the story and get it to a point where people saw the value in hiring you over maybe more established players?

[06:39] – Competing Against Established Consulting Firms

Sure. Well, relationships matter. They really matter. And we first went where the incumbents were the weakest. We went where those legacy firms weren’t or where they weren’t strong. We identified smaller to mid-sized schools, ones who automatically assumed that they could not afford the cost of a leadership search. We went to them and shared with them our model. We shared with them both that cost-savings piece in terms of the cost that they would assume during a search. And we developed those relationships. So that’s where we started. Obviously, we had no brand, so we had to build that. We had to build that with early wins. And we got those early wins in the areas, like I said, where the legacy firms were not or where they were weak.

So it sounds like, and obviously very common, that your business started through relationships to the people that you knew. If we were to push fast forward from those early days to a year or two or so into the business, was it still relationships and referrals that were driving the business, or were you doing something else to build the pipeline at that point?

We had to move outside of just the relationships that I had. Early on, it was just me. Then we became two, then we became three. Now we’re seven. Our outreach models and how we share our value propositions have changed. Now that’s evolved into a framework which, both internally and externally, we rely on to keep us saying the same message, keep us following the same system, but also in a way that’s easy to explain to potential clients and returning clients.

So your business has been growing. I know we’ve had a lot of conversations about this. One thing that many people wonder as their businesses are growing is how to find great people. If you were to share your approach or what you have seen work best to actually attract qualified people that can get the job done, that you feel confident in, what has been your experience? What advice would you offer?

I never put an ad out on LinkedIn. They all connected with me and they wanted to join something that they believed in. I really believe what we’re doing is a movement. I believe that how we’re approaching leadership search and even consulting with independent schools is a new way of doing things. And everybody who is on our team is believing in this journey that was started just a few years ago.

Talk to me about quality. As I’m sure you’ve experienced, this is very common. As a founder, you have a standard of excellence, you have a level of reputation that you want to protect and ensure that what you’re putting out is always going to be of quality and high levels of satisfaction for all clients. But when you start hiring, when you have one person, you work very closely. When you have six, seven, and so forth, and the numbers start growing, for some, it could become more challenging to ensure that everyone across the team has maintained that same level of standard and of excellence in their delivery and in their work. What have you found has been most helpful there?

[10:09] – Scaling a Team Without Sacrificing Quality

Yeah. So if I could go back to day one or when I onboarded our first team member, Davina, I would go back and do things completely differently. This past summer, we brought on two new team members, two folks who just retired as heads of school. They’re amazing people and we’re so glad that they joined us. But I approached their onboarding a lot differently. I approached it with weekly standing meetings with them where they can ask me anything. We’ve walked them through what a search process looks like with real clients. We’ve handed them over bits and pieces of leading a search so they understand those. We’ve taught them our systems, we’ve taught them our processes, we’ve taught them our messaging and continue to do so.

I’ve learned through experience that onboarding is a super, hyper-important part of scaling and growing a business because, ultimately, my team members are the ones that I’m turning over business to, and I need them one hundred percent to follow the fidelity of our model and to ensure that the clients get everything they want and then some.

What have you seen in terms of the market and how it’s changed? Whether it’s just through the environment, have there been any big changes that have impacted your market? Maybe even just putting AI to the side for a moment. Is there anything else that comes to mind that you’ve had to learn how to navigate over the last few years?

Well, I think one of the changes in the market, and I think it’s more of a change just for the economy in general, is that there have been financial pressures that have been put on schools, just like any other businesses too. But I think for us, that’s provided opportunity. We’ve entered the market with a different pricing model. We’ve entered the market with transparent fees. We’ve entered the market with the capacity and the ability to never allow finances to be a reason why we don’t engage with one of our clients. So a shift in the market has actually provided an opportunity for us to capitalize.

I know we talked about, and you shared at a high level about the methodology and how you approach doing your work, but one thing that stood out to me in our early conversations, just as we started working together, was that you’ve done a lot of research into the market. You have a proprietary way of delivering and engaging with your clients. Can you just talk a little bit more about what that looks like and how you have developed this proprietary approach to differentiating your firm but also to really delivering great results for your clients?

[13:00] – Building a Proprietary Consulting Framework

Well, and again, this is something that I wish I knew and wish I did a long time ago, but I had to take time and put things down on paper. Everything was up here in my head and nothing was written down. So the moment I started writing down why I founded the firm, why we do what we do, the initiatives that we serve, our value propositions, once I started doing that, our framework became clear. It became clear that we have a defined process and can formalize that. It became clear that we did have a proprietary checklist in terms of what a candidate should have when they’re in a search. We developed what the school gets back, you know, the cost and the time and being with their community.

We put this all together into a framework that we call the ‘Perfect Match Framework’. And internally, it’s essential, because that is the framework that every single one of our team members follows from the first call to a contract being signed by their chosen candidate and everything in between. It keeps us on message. It keeps us using the same phrases when we’re writing emails or when we’re talking to a client.

Externally, in a very easy way, it shows what differentiates us from those legacy firms that are out there. It gives potential clients something to compare. So, everything that was in my head is now written down and that was turned into a framework that we now use.

That’s fantastic. How much change has your business gone through in terms of service offerings? If you looked at what you do today in terms of what you provide to your clients and what you offer in comparison to what you offered, let’s say, three, four years ago, have there been a lot of changes or has it been pretty consistent?

[15:11] – Expanding Your Consulting Services

There have been some changes in terms of what we offer. We started out exclusively doing executive searches for independent schools, some mid-level, senior, and C-level administrators, heads of school. And that’s what we started out with. And that was purposeful because I wanted to lead with doing one thing and doing one thing right rather than doing five or six things just okay. And I’m glad I did because what I learned is breadth is not the risk. The risk is having a service or an offering you do that doesn’t have an owner. So through time and through bringing on new team members, they brought different expertise to the table. Whether it was strategic planning consulting, whether it was executive coaching, or strategic enrollment consulting. But what each one of those elements has now is an owner to that.

That’s interesting. So could you just talk a little more about your mindset? Some people would look at it and go, that sounds like going from being very focused to potentially adding additional service lines. But you’re saying that as long as you have a clear owner of that, it’s worked for you. Is there anything else that you could share? Like if somebody right now has one main offering and they’re thinking, “Hey, I want to grow the business, I see opportunity to provide more value to the market that I’m working with, the clients that I’m working with,” what would your suggestion be in terms of how to think about launching that or being successful in that addition to their service offerings?

Any offering we have has one or two goals associated with it. Either it leads into an executive search or it follows on the back end of a leadership search where we’re providing additional support to a school in one of those contexts. So they’re all tied together. If, for example, we decided to offer a training camp for mid-level administrators that was an on-site conference, that wouldn’t match what our overall objective is. So if we tried doing that, that would have been a fail.

Right. When you decided it was time to start hiring more senior people into the company, how did you know that it was the right time? I ask from the perspective of, for many people, when they think about hiring especially senior-level people, they tend to hold off because the first thing they think about is senior equals very expensive. I mean, we work with many clients where they’re making that transition or they’re getting to the point in their business where they need to start thinking about making hires that might cost them six figures to bring somebody on at that level, and it’s an uncomfortable thing for them to wrap their heads around initially. I’m wondering for you, how do you think about that? What would your advice be? What did you learn from that process of hiring senior people?

Everyone who works for IndySchool Consultancy has been in that seat at an independent school. They’ve lived it, they know how it works, they’ve been involved in hiring, and they’ve worked with people like us. So they can speak with authenticity to a head of school or to a board chair about what our model looks like and how it’s delivered because they’ve been there on the other end, they’ve been on the receiving end. Most of the time, they’ve been on the receiving end with something they weren’t satisfied with. And that’s a large reason why they wanted to join IndySchool Consultancy. Because it was a breath of fresh air, it was a new approach, it was something exciting and disrupting at the same time.

Revenue was not the indicator of bringing on new consultants. At the end of the day, it was me being able to hand over a system and a process to somebody that they could execute and deliver and have the skill set and authenticity to do that.

Is there one thing that you found, and maybe there’s more than one, but one that stands out when you think about the growth of the business over the years, one thing that you’ve had to stop doing that maybe was hard for you to stop doing for whatever reason, but by actually stopping doing that, it’s created a lot more space for you to grow the business?

[19:34] – Removing the Founder From Client Delivery

Yeah. Well, I’ve stopped being the only one who can run a search. And getting to that point in time would not have been possible if I did not put what was in between my two ears on paper and develop a method and a framework. It meant writing down what I just felt was instinct, writing down what I just felt was common sense. But to somebody else, it’s not. Every one of the things, if I gave up something, it was something I was good at, and that was hard, and that took trust. And having a system to fall back on that my team members who work for us can deliver was entirely essential in order to do that.

I mean, we see that so often with people who are in similar situations. So that makes a lot of sense.

With the benefit of hindsight now, Tim, if you’re thinking about the last six years or so in the business, is there one or two mistakes, and I like to call them more lessons learned, but things that didn’t go the way that you expected that maybe were a bit of a setback for the company or for you personally inside of the business, what could you share? What stands out that you ended up learning from and you think maybe others could benefit from just hearing or seeing that experience to potentially avoid that themselves?

Sure. I assigned clients to consultants instead of teaching the consultants how to run a search. I got way in front of my skis, and it all goes back to onboarding and how I bring on one of our team members. I mentioned I wish I did things differently years ago, and I hope now that we’re doing things a little bit better in terms of bringing on our team members, teaching them the way, teaching them the process, teaching them the messaging, teaching them what being hyper client-facing looks like, teaching them all of this. That’s one of the mistakes I think I made that if I could go back, I would do that all over again.

Yeah, no, I think that’s great advice.

What are you most excited about looking forward right now with everything happening inside the business, the growth, the hires, the clients you’re attracting, what right now really excites you about the years to come?

Sure. Our scaling has been absolutely unbelievable. We scaled about 38 percent year over year, and I’m excited to see what the next few years look like. .

There we go. I’m excited for that.

Tim, I want to thank you so much for coming on, just sharing a bit of your journey and lessons learned for everyone. For those that want to learn more about you, about IndySchool Consultancy, where’s the best place for them to go?

Indyschoolconsultancy.com. That’s indyschoolconsultancy.com. And it’s not because it’s in Indianapolis or in Indiana. IndySchool is a play for independent schools.

There we go. Alright, we will link it all up in the show notes. Tim, again, thanks so much for coming on.

Michael, thank you.

Important Links:

Tim Viands: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-viands-05371219/

IndySchool Consultancy: https://indyschoolconsultancy.com/

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! https://www.consultingsuccess.com/podcast