Chapter 16: Being a Consultant – Finally Finding My Niche

It was my husband, Martin, who suggested I set up my own business.

I laughed and said, “I can’t just do that!”

“Yes, you can,” he said

I was 36 years old and, at the time, would have been described by my friends as being very confident. Yet, instead of saying, “That sounds interesting, how would I start?” I was incredulous at the idea and said immediately that I wouldn’t be able to do it – how deep gender conditioning runs.

After we had returned from London to the Midlands, I had been working for Martin’s management consultancy as a freelancer, designing and writing self-instructional materials. His newly formed consultancy was getting contracts creating learning packages and helping companies to train staff using performance technology solutions. I had worked with Martin on the training package for a large supermarket chain – the first retail organisation to introduce barcode scanning at the checkout. I worked two days a week from home and a girl called Sunilla came in to look after Amy who was 12 months old.

After a year Martin had persuaded me that, of course, I could go solo. I decided to look at how I could put the skills I had learned from him to use.

Many organisations at the time had been given a lot of money to produce ‘open learning’ materials – training that was essentially self-instructional – but none of them knew how to do it.

I got the list of every organisation who had been given a grant and chose four of them that I liked the sound of. I wrote four letters on plain paper and basically said three things: 1) I see you’ve been given money to produce open learning materials; 2) I can help you to do this; 3) I can teach you how to do it also. I ended by saying that they should call me if they were interested. I hadn’t realised at that point that you never leave it for them to call you, you should follow them up yourself with a phone call a week later!

Within a few days I had two replies and two meetings. Martin was very excited. I wasn’t. I said, “Well, two of them never even bothered to reply!”

He said, “That’s a 50% return on a cold letter out, that’s fantastic. You don’t understand.”

I didn’t. But one of those two people became my major client for the first year of my business. My business was called Instructional Materials Development (IMD).

I remember my first client meeting. I was so nervous.

The project was a training package for nurse managers. I talked the client through how I would work with her to identify the modules needed, then how I would work with the subject matter experts to identify the content. I knew nothing about the technicalities of a nurse manager job, but I did know how to identify clear, performance objectives, identify the relevant content and put it in a form that people could understand – and learn from.

After I had talked about the projects I had been working on for Martin and the methods and tools I would use, we came to the point in the meeting where the client said, “And what’s your daily rate?”

Martin had advised me what figure to say. It sounded extortionate to me.

“£265, plus expenses,” I said.

The client was making notes on her pad. I fully expected her to jump up and shout “What?! Are you crazy?” But she didn’t. She just wrote down the figure and we started to work out how many days I thought we would need. I made £10,000 from that contract in my first year. I was up and running.

As I started to build my IMD business I realised all the organisations I was working with had many women employees but very few women managers. I decided to look into why this was the case.

I realised that women weren’t having access to the same training that men were and many women were lacking the confidence to put themselves forward.

I had seen at first hand the power of encouragement in helping women to grow, when I had worked in the Refuge. I set up an additional business called WIM (Women into Management) and started running workshops for women. I sold the idea that workshops for women would enable them to reach management positions so they could contribute more fully to the success of their organisations. I had a different headed notepaper from IMD and ran both businesses at the same time. There was only me – I didn’t even have a computer, never mind a secretary. People told me that I couldn’t have two businesses but I was already realising that in my business I could do what I liked!

I was the boss – the only boss – and I was loving it.

I joined women’s business networks and used to travel from the Midlands to London for evening meetings. I eventually did two years as president of the European Women’s Management Network (EWMD). I made influential contacts and found out what the issues were for women in organisations. Having slopped around in joggers and jeans since leaving teaching, I invested in some smart clothes and a briefcase. The persona of being a professional woman and a business owner suited my ego very well. Suddenly, I had status. I wasn’t just a mum. And, much as I loved my children, it was my new career that was personally fulfilling me.

In the late 1980s, organisations weren’t investing in women. The high-fliers might be put on a fast track but they had the problem of having to imitate men to be taken seriously. And if they also had children, it was nigh on impossible for them to succeed. There was no such thing as home/ work balance then. Women’s groups had to meet in the evening, in their own time, using badly copied materials. I remember seeing, in the offices of senior male managers, fancy training packs for communication skills and sales and marketing skills. I vowed that one day there would be fancy packs for women’s management training, right up there on the shelf next to them – a few years later, there were.

I persuaded my friend Cath to join me. She was teaching back in Lancashire and her husband, Stewart, was in the police. They had Emma, who was seven, and a baby on the way. I liked Cath’s energy and her creativity. We decided to form a company which we called Domino Training Ltd. (later Domino Consultancy Ltd.) and she was a director. They moved down to Loughborough, Stewart got transferred and Cath began working for me. I got on well with her and it was great to have someone to bounce ideas off.

Our idea was to develop the women’s workshops and promote them nationwide.

I had mentioned the idea to a couple of people who said that women wouldn’t be released for a one-day training and most of them were part-time anyway. So we designed 10 different half-day workshops and approached Leicestershire City Council. We offered to do the workshops for free if the participants would give us feedback that we could use in marketing materials. Our HR contact said she would try but didn’t think there would be any demand for them. Within two hours of sending out notification of the workshops they were all fully booked. We were on our way! Now we could produce a leaflet with the comments included and it looked like we were running them all over the place. We eventually wrote three books for women managers which were translated into 10 languages.

Pretty soon, I was asked if I did workshops on race discrimination too. Back in the 1980s, there wasn’t race training as such. There was equality training, focusing on law, discrimination and harassment, and race was only mentioned in relation to discrimination legislation. But no aspect of the equality legislation was being implemented well. This was primarily because managers didn’t have a clue what they could and couldn’t do and resisted being ‘wrist-slapped’. I found specialist consultants – Asian, black and white people who became part of Domino’s associate team.

Running workshops on discrimination and harassment became Domino’s bread and butter for years.

I was developing the workshops and consultancy side of the business and Cath was building up the design and development and production of materials, including training materials, handbooks and communication leaflets and posters. We were a good team. We were constantly changing with the market to stay current. Over time we widened our focus from workshops for women to equality workshops to diversity workshops looking at every kind of difference, not just those covered by the legislation. Our Domino Consultancy strapline was, ‘From Equality to Diversity to Unity’. I knew, even then, that ultimately, we would have to start to look beyond what differentiated us to what connects us. With my friend Mary in the US, I wrote a book called From Diversity to Unity to start to explore this.

Cath and I realised that we didn’t have any business experience or qualifications, and no sales and marketing training either. Richard Sutton entered our lives. Richard was the chairperson of my husband’s company. I had met him a few times when he had come to meet with my husband. It transpired that he was very interested in helping start-ups and was keen to help me, at no charge initially. I arranged for Richard to come and see me.

At that first meeting, I was terrified! He was tall with the easy way of walking and moving of someone who knows how good looking he is. He was smartly dressed and in an expensive suit. I never saw him without a shirt and tie. He was also charming and always smiling. I never saw him irritated or cross. I expected him to ask me all kinds of technical questions about sales forecasting, projections, profits and marketing strategies – words and phrases I had heard of but didn’t have any idea about what they meant.

There I am, in my jeans and t-shirt, and in he walks. Strong handshake. Clearly at ease with himself. I made him tea and he took out his notepad and pen. Here we go, I thought.

“Tell me about your life in five years’ time,” he said.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Tell me about your life. What car do you drive? How many holidays do you take a year? What do you like to spend your money on? How many days do you want to work during the year?”

I was much more comfortable with these questions and was able to prattle on.

He made notes as I spoke. After I had finished, he said, “Well, in order for you live the life you have just described and work only the x days per year you said you wanted to, you need to be earning x per day on the days you work, so we’d better look at how we are going to achieve that.”

He remained the only non-executive director of my company for many years.

He always came to monthly board meetings. Board meetings?! There were only two of us. He seemed always to be typing into his calculator. We would get our monthly accounts from our accountant. We didn’t even bother to look at them before board meetings at first as we had no idea what anything meant. Richard could look at our monthly figures and say, “That figure is too high and why is your gross profit so low? It should be 70% in a consultancy business.”

To his credit, he was never patronising and, pretty soon, with his patience, I realised I could look at the figures and see what was wrong too.

He also always asked the right questions. He knew absolutely nothing about diversity and equality or women’s issues, but he knew what questions to ask us.

Once he asked, “How big do you want to get – the UK? Europe? The World?”

“For goodness’ sake, Richard,” I replied. “There are only two of us.”

He said, “Don’t bring me your management problems. You are directors now and you set the vision for the company. That’s the director’s job. Once you set the vision then we look at how you are going to achieve it, that’s management.”

He gave me many insights about business, getting the sale and giving great customer service. I can still hear his voice in my head. I will always be profoundly grateful for his help and have passed on his tips to many people starting their own businesses.

In the beginning, I knew that as far as equality consultancies went, I was the new kid on the block. I knew who the main five were and vowed to be up there with them in five years. It took three.

I realised that visibility was critical in building a reputation before we could even get to the excellence of what you are delivering.

It was visibility I concentrated on in the early days. Pretty soon, that gave the impression I was more successful than I actually was. Customers don’t buy a product, they buy the promise that you can bring about the outcome they want. Customer perception of you is as important as excellence of delivery. I remember once being at a network meeting and realised that one of my main competitors was there. I had never met her in person so, at the coffee break, I went over and introduced myself to her and said how delighted I was to meet her as her company was such a leader in the field.

She stopped in her tracks. “No, it’s your company which is the leader. Everywhere I turn, I see Domino’s name,” she said.

We both laughed. But, clearly, my visibility strategy was starting to pay off. I offered to speak anywhere and everywhere – for no money. And a big part of my strategy was my personal appearance. I deliberately chose to wear expensive and smart clothes. As most of the people with power were men – I suspected many of them were conservative as well – I dressed to look like their wives: smart, fashionable, smiling and always wearing make-up. I didn’t want to give them any reason to reject me before they had even heard what I was going to say.

Once they had accepted my appearance they were forced to react to my views, which I knew they would think radical.

Women on the Board? Very radical in those days. I had started to dye my hair purple and pink before I became involved with diversity training. I kept it for over 20 years and it got brighter and brighter over the years as the colour soaked into my greying hair. More than one client thought I had deliberately dyed it to make a point about diversity. I hadn’t, but it certainly challenged people’s assumptions! I loved my hair. I loved being different and wouldn’t compromise on it. Once, at a conference in the US, as I was walking from a keynote into a coffee break a guy fell into step with me. We hadn’t spoken before.

He said, “I’ve seen you around this conference. You are so professional in how you carry yourself, so smart and impeccably dressed. But your hair…” He leaned forward and said quietly, “Your hair says, ‘Fuck you’”.

Was that what I was saying? I think I probably was.

I continued to give interviews to newspapers and magazines. We produced monthly newsletters, which we distributed widely. Someone once told me that everywhere they looked they saw a Domino Newsletter, one was even seen in a telephone box – a telephone box! That’s how long ago this was. Once, I received two letters in the morning post. One was from a competitor congratulating me on my success as they heard my name everywhere. The other was from the bank threatening to close me down as I wasn’t making enough money!

I didn’t let not having any sales and marketing training or a business degree hold me back.

There were some simple principles I based my work on: my job was to make my client look good to their boss, if there wasn’t a need for what I was selling I needed to create the need for it; initial client meetings were always about what was hurting the client, not what I had in my tool bag; you don’t own the problem, or the job – you do good work and walk away; if a client wants a Mini then don’t give them a Rolls Royce or you’ll under cost the project or over deliver – either way you’ll lose money. I learnt to involve my clients in partnership. NatWest (the first company in the UK to establish women’s management training) agreed to give me a member of their staff in Loughborough to come to my office one day a week so she could see first hand how a small business was operating. When I was President of EWMD, British Airways agreed to give me six flights a year anywhere in Europe so I could visit a lot of the countries where we had members – and promote BA in the process.

As the business expanded, I took on staff. Diane, who had doubled as my childcare support after school and my secretary, became full-time in the office and Paula took over her initial dual role. Then Paula became my full-time secretary, and we had an office manager as well. At its largest, there were 15 staff at Domino, nearly all of whom were women.

When I would be asked why I had so many women, I said, “Because we always hire the best person for the job.”

We took on marketing students to do specific three-month research contracts. We hired freelance trainers for long term contracts with particular clients. We said yes to contracts first, then worked out how we were going to deliver them. Flexibility was the key in my life, whether it was juggling childcare arrangements or hiring the right people. We took on Ann when she was eight months pregnant because we wanted her skills; we allowed people to work from home and not relocate; we took a nanny on the payroll to care for the children of Cath and myself and other staff who needed to come to the office for a meeting. For this we got a mention in the Financial Times. It didn’t last long. Cath was charged an extra £2000 in tax because the nanny was based at her house and a nanny was seen as a benefit. Of course, Domino paid the tax – and stopped the scheme. Had the nanny been a chauffeur it would have been classed as a legitimate business expense! We paid well and gave five weeks holiday a year, plus statutory days. We had a generous sick pay scheme – full pay for six weeks, half pay for the next six weeks, then a permanent health care scheme which paid 70% of the salary for life if they had to stop work completely. The fridge was always full and staff ate well every lunchtime. People could choose their own job titles, except for the title Managing Director. I never used that title either. I thought it was pretentious.

When I hear small business owners now complain that they can’t afford to give their staff a decent wage it makes me think that they shouldn’t be in business then.

I wasn’t easily stressed and understood that business would fluctuate from month to month. My mistake was in sharing all the financial information with the staff in my efforts to establish transparency. Some of them would freak out if the figures looked bad. I stopped sharing the information. It was my job to be responsible, and my job to fix it. I remember one particular client, Sarah. We had done work for her already – training packs on a variety of subjects. I got on well with her. A day came just before one Christmas when I realised that if I didn’t find £20,000 very quickly, we would go bust. I called her and said I was going to be in her location on a particular day and could I take her to dinner for a catch up. Of course, I wasn’t anywhere near her. I drove for two hours to get to her. It was good to see her. We were in a fancy restaurant she had chosen which was full of Christmas lights and good cheer.  We chatted and laughed about personal things. My stomach was tight and I could hardly eat anything. I said casually, “So, what’s going on for you here then? What are your priorities for next year?”

“Oh, you know how it is here,” Sarah said. “Things are changing by the day. I’m snowed under.”

I looked at her and said, as casually as I could, “Well, we have some spare capacity at the moment because a project was cancelled.” It wasn’t. “Anything we can help you with to ease your stress?”

“They’ve decided they want a new induction programme and I have to roll it out. I just haven’t the time to do it.”

“Oh, we can help you with that,” I said smiling.

“Really?” She was interested now.

I suggested the approach we might take to designing it and outlined what some of the elements could be. It would be a self-study booklet and audio with briefing notes for the team leaders. I said we could deliver it in three weeks.

“How much?” she said.

“Well, I would have two or three consultants working on it and pull out all the stops.” I did a quick calculation in my head. “We are talking in the region of £40,000, with 50% payable up front and 50% on completion.”

“Great,” she said. Send me your invoice for 50% tomorrow and I’ll pay immediately.

I sat back. “Glad to be able to help,” I said. Then I enjoyed my dessert.

I had loads of business support and advice from Richard and Martin as I built the business and took in everything they said to me. I’ve passed on many of those tips to others. One of my favourite tips was about when we would pitch for a job and be told we were too expensive. By this time, we were quoting for complete jobs, not days. A time-related cost doesn’t take into account the expertise-related cost. We might be able to do something in 10 days because of our expertise. Someone else might take 20 days, so if the client wanted a breakdown based on number of days, we would say 20. And if we got the sense that a client was going to be difficult we added on a 10% ‘hassle factor’ to account for the extra time we would have to spend on them.

I remember a client saying to me once, “We have your proposal and it’s between Domino and one other consultancy and to be honest, you are much more expensive than they are.”

“If we came in at the same price, who would you give the contract to?”

“Oh, Domino definitely.”

“How would you be able to decide so quickly?”

“Well, you really know your stuff, you’re a pleasure to work with, you keep to deadlines, you keep to budget, we know your work is excellent and we know we can absolutely rely on you.”

Pause.

“Well, that’s what you’re paying the extra for.”

We were prepared to walk away rather than reduce our costs. Sometimes, I would add, “If you can get what I can do for you cheaper, you would be foolish not to take the alternative. I don’t think you can find that, but that’s your decision. If the project runs into trouble, I’ll be here, ready to support you. But the price will be the same.”

More than once a client spent money on a ‘cheaper’ option, only for them to come back to us later, when the other supplier completely messed it up.

I learned so much about myself during my consultancy years. I learned that having been used to doing everything at the beginning, I had to delegate and not interfere. I learned that my ideas weren’t always the best. I learned that although I did all the right things, as regards to managing the staff, I hated it. I would talk to people, checking how they were and how things were going for them, all the while thinking, I could have made three sales calls while having this one conversation. I spoke at conferences all over the world and delivered workshops in many countries. Once, I ran training in eight different Middle Eastern countries in 10 days. By the end I didn’t even know what country I was in! And I learned that when considering any contract, I had to make sure I could answer ‘yes’ to at least two of the following questions – Is it easy? Is it fun? Is it lucrative?

I also made many mistakes. Once, we produced 8000 Health and Safety glossy booklets and then saw a mistake. We reprinted them all. Another time, three of us stayed up until 5am to be able to finish a huge report that eight of us had been working on for two months. It had to be couriered at 7am. When I phoned the client to say it was coming, the person at the other end of the phone told me that she wasn’t in until Monday and she’d get it then. That was the last time I ever worked late like that. We also had some notable staff hires that were a disaster. One was a business director who just wanted to swan around seeing people but hadn’t the first idea about sales and marketing, so never capitalised on her contacts. Another was a designer who we had worked with and then offered a job to. It was only when he joined us that we realised that he outsourced all his work. And then there was lovely Joanne – so sharp and insightful but she was a perfectionist. And she used to get very stressed. I knew it wasn’t going to work when clients were phoning me to ask how she was as they were worried about her! 

But I loved it all.

However, ultimately, I realised that although I had achieved a lot of my goals with my business – spreading the word about equality and growing a successful business, for example, there was starting to be something missing. I had had enormous personal growth, but I realised something else: my need for praise from strangers who met me or heard me speak but didn’t really know me at all was merely satisfying my ego and filling a gap I had inside of myself. It was time to look at how to fill that gap without being driven by my ego. That proved to be more difficult than I thought. Dropping my ‘consultant’ persona plunged me into an identity crisis.

Photo

Promotional photo for my company.

Questions For Reflection

Do you think you have ‘found your niche’ in terms of paid work? Has your career to this point been fairly straight or have there been lots of twists and turns? Do you think you will continue what you are doing now until you retire from paid work? Why or why not?

A Blessing While Your Reflect

May the light of your soul bless your work

With love and warmth of heart.

May you see in what you do the beauty of your soul

May the sacredness of your work bring light and renewal

To those who work with you

And to those who see and receive your work

From John O’Donohue: Benedictus