56. Learn from OUR MOST SUCCESSFUL CONSULTANT - Business Consulting journey with Phil Wicks

Business Consulting journey with Phil Wicks - Learning from our most successful consultant [Everything Business Consulting EP 56]

Phil shares lessons and his learnings as a consultant after being one of the most successful Business Consultants in our network.

Overview

2:22     Phil Wicks has been with ConsultX us for 3 – 4 years; he has been our consultant of the year for a couple of times and Number 1 consultant a few times, and is currently building a consulting firm in Waikato New Zealand

2:41     Phil talks about his background – his corporate career before he became a consultant, including his General Manager role in the US

3:36     Because I had a fairy strong career around people, leadership, marketing and sales and also managing businesses and I felt like I had a really good and divers enough background that I could actually offer something to small & medium size businesses – Phil tells us what attracted him to business consulting

4:08     I had pretty good experience starting off considering that I came into regionally I hadn’t lived before and I had no networks; so I had to create my own; I had pretty good attitude; and I was pretty determined to succeed and I think that helped – Phil tells us about his first 6 months as a business consultant after coming back from the US to New Zealand

4:59     Because I didn’t have network of people so I relied very heavily on telemarketing and Business Breakfast BNI system to get with - Phil compares how he acquired clients in the beginning and how he get them now

6:02     Probably the biggest benefit is that you’ve got whole information in one place - Phil describes the benefit that he gains from Business Success Programme

7:37     I’ve been working between 11 and 14 clients; they would range from a starter to 6 – 7 million turn over company - Phil talks about his clients and type of their businesses

9:33     Obviously we have to work with enough clients long enough for them to get benefits and for them to recommend to other people – Phil tells us how he started to get referrals

11:58    Phil talks about what he learnt from his client loss experience - I do think it’s important that you do keep on pushing the progress and not only pushing the progress, but also reminding them the progress that you actually make, you know, you can make significant positive changes to businesses very very quickly

15:50    Phil gives us some examples of how he helped his clients to build better business

23:24    I try to take Fridays off when I can; you have busy days and you have some quieter days and I think the fact that you have a bit more control of what those days would be does make a really good lifestyle…

25:50    Phil explains how he met and chose Business Success Programme - I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to have the best chance of succeeding I wanted to get involved in something that already has systems working and also with people that are already successful; having the system that you can actually follow is very very valuable and; trying do that yourself would cost a lot of money

27:57    You need to create a really good client acquisition plan and system. I think it is really important especially when you first start – Phil gives some practical advices from his experience to the listeners

Transcript

Julius: If you want to hear about the most successful business consultant we've ever met, you've tuned into the right interview. Phil Wicks has been able to build his own successful business consulting business, help many clients and get the lifestyle that he's always wanted. This interview was originally recorded in April of 2017 and now we've added an update on how Phil is going at the end. 

David: Welcome to Everything Business Consulting, a podcast dedicated to business consulting success. It's for those of you who already are a business consultant, and you want to improve your skills, are an accountant and want to offer consulting services, or you may be an ex-corporate who wants to get out of the rat race and become a self-employed business consultant, or you may have owned a business before and you now want to use the skills that you've learned to help others in business. I'm David Thexton.

Julius: And I'm Julius Bloem.

David: Everything Business Consulting is brought to you by ConsultX, a global business consulting company that has everything you require to become a successful business consultant or offer consulting services in your existing professional firms. If you'd like to find out more, visit consultx.com. 

Hi Phil, welcome to our interview section. Phil's based in the Waikato in New Zealand and has been with ConsultX for around about three to four years. Phil, are you fired up and ready to go? 

Phil Wicks: Yeah, David, how are you going? Yeah, I'm ready to go. 

David: Good, excellent. You've been involved with business consulting for some time now, and you've been our consultant of the year a couple of times, and number one consultant a few times. Please tell us what you were doing before you became a consultant? 

Phil Wicks: My background was corporate agriculture and I guess if I look at the last 15 years, those roles would have included being a national sales manager. I was a marketing manager, I was a manager of international and then I was a general manager based in the US. So I guess a fairly sort of standard, sort of corporate career.

David: And you were in the US when we met each other, weren't you?

Phil Wicks: That's right, yep, yeah. I was there for four years and I had already decided that when I came back to New Zealand, I wanted to start my own business. I just wasn't quite sure what that would be at that stage, although I was wanting to do consulting.

David: That's great. So what attracted you to business consulting? 

Phil Wicks: What attracted me to business consulting was, well, I guess I'd want it to do it, I had thought about it for quite some time. I felt that I had a because I had a fairly strong career around people, leadership, marketing, and sales, and also managing businesses. I felt like I had a really good background, a diverse enough background that I could actually offer something to small to medium-sized business. 

David: Well, that certainly proved the case because you've done very, very well. Could you tell our listeners, what was your experience like in your first six months as a business consultant back in New Zealand?

Phil Wicks: Generally, it was pretty good. I think when I first started you know, perhaps in the first couple of months, I thought it might be a little bit easier than it actually was, but then once I started getting businesses that flowed on pretty well. So I had a pretty good experience I think starting off, considering that I came into a region where I hadn't lived before I had no networks, I had no, you know, no people that I really knew.

So I had to sort of create my own. So I think from that point of view, wasn't too bad, you know, I think I did reasonably well for starting off. It was, I had a pretty good attitude, I think, and I was pretty determined to succeed, I think that that sort of helped. 

David: Tell our listeners, how you acquired clients in the beginning and it compared to how you get them now.

Phil Wicks: Yeah, that's quite an interesting one because like I said, I didn't have a network of people, so I relied very heavily on telemarketing and business breakfasts, the BNI system to begin with. And that worked pretty well in the sense that I was good at converting leads. So as long as I got the leads from telemarketing, then I converted them really well.

If I look at now, things have changed a little bit. I probably get most of my business from referrals, strategic relationships, just started doing some seminars, which is helping as well. And a little telemarketing, of course, I'm creating leads for myself, but also for my consultants. 

David: Cause you've got a firm, I didn't mention that at the start. How many people have you gotten your firm now? 

Phil Wicks: Four. 

David: Four, okay. And we were just chatting earlier on, they're doing quite well. You've got two brand new ones, I think haven't you?

Phil Wicks: Yes I have. Yeah, that just starting off.

David: That's good. So you've used the Business Success Program, right from the start. Can you describe to our listeners the benefit that you've gained from it?

Phil Wicks: Probably the biggest benefit is you got all, you know, you've got a whole lot of information in one place. It's got a very professional client acquisition process. The diagnostic is a very, very good tool. And, it's great in regards to ongoing consulting, so measuring client progressing, communicating objectives, that sort of thing.

I find that everything sort of works flows really well together. The first eight weeks that you work with a client are very important. So the Business Success Programs work very, very well with that. The ConsultX program moving forward has, I find very useful in regards to actually setting objectives for clients on a sort of a week-by-week basis.

And just keeping a record of our progress, how well we're doing, and just sort of mapping, looking back and saying, okay, we're actually accomplishing things. It's a very good reference tool in that respect.

David: That's great. I started building it in 2005, as you know, and it was, I built it for me because I had so many clients that I had trouble stuffing them all into my head and I felt like I needed to have a program that gave me a track to run on.

So I kind of built the, I suppose, the skeleton for it, and then the rest of the people in the network, and of course our clients, they all kind of contributed and that's the product that we've got today and it continues to be improved. Could you tell our listeners, how many clients do you have today and very quickly, what type of businesses they are so they can get a bit of a feel for who you're working with?

Phil Wicks: Okay. I generally, probably for the last sort of six or seven months, I've been working between sort of 11 and 14 clients at any one time, and within the group, they would range in regards to turnover from startups, right up to sort of, I think the biggest company I'm working with at the moment turns over about a 6 million, $7 million dollars.

And they range from, this is a huge range actually, there's retail businesses, there's an online business, there's quite a lot of trades. So I have a builder, I have a plumber that I work with, I have a powder coating company that I've been working with for about a year and a half now, I have a joiner that I've been working with for probably close to three years, I guess now, or at least two and a half years.

 I've worked at a branding, a rebranding for a real estate agent. That was a project that was a six-month project, I work with the largest rental company in Hamilton, so there's quite a variation. You know, I do, I find that the trades probably usually will make up about 60%, 70% of my business. And then you'll have few of these other bits and pieces that will be in there. 

David: Just going back to where we're talking a few minutes back about acquiring clients, you're moving into a phase now, well you have been for the last year or so, where you're getting a lot of referrals, aren't you? 

Phil Wicks: Yeah, I'd say that probably if I look back on the last six or seven months, I would say that any new business coming through 80% of it would have been referral business. 

David: Yeah, that's, it's kind of a hump you kind to get over. I think you got to get to about six or eight clients before referrals start coming in, or you can start chasing them.

Phil Wicks: Yeah, so I think it's just a matter of, obviously you have to be working with enough clients long enough for them to then get the benefits and for them to then recommend you to other people. And then what often happens, and like I've had a couple of referrals from an accountancy firm who I've actually got a partnership with now, but when I got those referrals, I didn't actually know where they were coming from.

And that was just due by chance that I was working with a couple of their own clients and they were very happy with the progress, but now I've got a relationship with them. So yeah, it is a hump that you've got to go through a little bit. You've got to create, you know, it's like any anything, any business, you've got to do the hard yards in the first sort of year. And then things start to sort of flow on once you've been working with clients for a while, you've made progress, and then you start to sort of reap the benefits of that. 

David: Going back to the people that are in your firm, some of them have grown surprisingly quite quickly. Do you think that's due to the fact that you're able to steer them in the right direction? 

Phil Wicks: Yeah, I think that's a really big factor. I mean, when I started, there obviously wasn't anybody else in the area who could guide me, whereas the people that are coming into the firm, they are getting, they have a lot more chance of success in the sense that I've learned all the things, all the wrong things, so to speak, I've already learned all that sort of stuff. And also, you know, there was a bit of help with clients that actually doing the odd session with some of their clients as well. So their clients themselves know there's a bigger network and a bigger support base.

And as a group, obviously, we contribute to ideas together. And I get some good things from them as well. You know.

David: Yep.

Phil Wicks: I'll take ideas from anybody. And, so I do think that I'm creating a firm model where there's a, I think I've got quite a good sort of success sort of progress line that they can go through.

David: Okay. Now on the negative side of things, everything's not a ray of sunshine. Can you tell our listeners about perhaps one or two client failures that you've had and, whether you could have done something if you had your time again, maybe you could have? 

Phil Wicks: That's an interesting one because I think generally I've had a pretty good run. There's probably a couple that I could have worked with. I had worked with for quite a long time and I could have worked with even longer. I just had trouble getting them to do things. And I think in the early days I was probably a little bit, I was probably a little bit soft on that. I'm a lot stricter on it now I'm a lot stricter on people completing their objectives. You've got to understand a business, from day to day. Sometimes there'll be certain times, certain weeks where they'll be very, very, very busy. But I do think it's important that you do keep on pushing the progress and not only pushing the progress but also reminding them of the progress that you're actually making.

You know, you can make significant changes, positive change to businesses very, very quickly. And I think it's important to occasionally just sort of remind them of some of those changes that they're making. I think also just framing up a business properly so you actually framing it up for a long-term type of plan unless you're doing some sort of project.

I do do the odd sort of project sort of stuff, but I think I've never, you know, I can't say, I don't think there'd be anybody I've worked with that would say that they shouldn't have worked with me. I had one client very, very early on, I've only been going for a couple of months and I'd signed up four businesses, then one of them dropped out almost straight away. 

David: Yeah. 

Phil Wicks: And, that was a bit of a shock. I didn't understand why, but I wasn't that worried about it. Cause the owner was very dour and I just didn't feel like we, we clicked for some reason. So I think sometimes some things are beyond your control.

David: Yeah. I had a couple of clients when I was consulting full time and we had to part company. One example was that he sold some shares in his business, and, one of the conditions of the investor was that I had to go, I had to be terminated because he could do everything that I could do. So I lost him and a year later they were bankrupt. And another one was where I discovered for myself actually that the owner of the business was running three companies and he had three companies essentially, so he could shuttle GST money through the companies and then pocket it. Just for those overseas, GST is a consumption tax in New Zealand and Australia.

It might be called something else in Britain, what are they called in Britain? They call it.

Phil Wicks: VAT.

David: VAT, that's right. And they'd probably call it something different in the states. I think they have state taxes, which is called a kind of a sales tax. Anyway, he was shuttling the money through and I kind of got partially wound up in this and, it ended up being a meeting at a coffee shop.

And I said, look, I said, you've got to stop doing this. I said, you need to understand that banks have very sophisticated software, and pretty soon, that he owed the bank about a million dollars. Pretty soon, they're going to be able to, the software will alert them that something weird is going on here.

And I said, you know, let's stop it now and run a legit business and he refused to do it. So I had to let him go rather the other way around. So, can you give us a couple of examples about how you've helped your clients to build a better business? Just a couple of quick mini-cases histories.

Phil Wicks: Yeah, sure, okay. I work with, let's see, a powder coating company and I've been working with them for about a year and a half, I guess. That company it's got an 80% owner who lives offshore and it's got a general manager who actually runs the company and owns the other 20% and who will soon be owning probably 40 to 50%. That company was sort of sitting around a turnover or between five and 650,000. It was very profitable at that but had sort of flat-lined in the sense that it probably needed to have quite a big change in structure if it was wanting to grow further. Now we're heading for about 1.1 million this year, and we've made some major changes around, had a very flat leadership structure.

It didn't really have any on-site admin, so that's all changed. There's a leadership group there now. There's a very good admin with the company. The infrastructure of the company itself has changed. It's got two ovens now instead of one. So its throughput kit is almost double.

And so we've managed to sort of maintain our profitability while increasing the turnover and also increasing the leadership, reducing the hours of the general manager, which was a really big thing. He was very, very stressed out. And so that all that has happened, I'm actually seeing the business after this interview today.

And it's the busiest time of the year. Now this time, last year, the business was under a whole lot of pressure. This year it is busy, but it's nowhere near under the same sort of pressure. So that business is worth significantly more now than it was a year ago.

David: Yeah, that's good.

Phil Wicks: Another business I work with is a plumbing business that turns over, well, we'll turn over about $2 million this year, it did about 1.6 last financial year. When I first came into that business, the main issues were around profitability. It was running at a loss, but it was actually leaking a lot of profit through things that were actually weren't that hard to fix.

So we spent the first few months just fixing all those things, and this was things around stocks, and job cards, and employee efficiency and those sort of things. And we got that company changed very, very quickly, the monthly profitability changed very quickly and the efficiency changed. And as a result, we've also started to increase the turnover as well.

So we're now turning over more, but it's actually profitable turnover and the company is in a pretty good place to grow again. We've created a good leadership structure within the company, which has taken a lot of the stress off the owner and, that's, yeah. So that's another example of a company that's going really well.

David: Good, of course, once you can start measuring the business accurately, you can report back to them these profit improvements, can't you? 

Phil Wicks: Yeah, well, one of the things I like to try and do once I've been working, and it does depend a little bit on the size of the business, but if you've created a bit of a leadership team is making sure you do have sort of progress meetings with the leadership team, but also with the owners, making sure you have financial meetings once a month with the owners. So you can actually, so you're always aware of, you know, of their P and L's for that month, where the business is going. 

David: Yep. So using the ConsultX Business Success Program, what's the average lifetime of your clients? Like what's the longest, and what's the shortest, and what's the average? 

Phil Wicks: The shortest one would be the one that I mentioned before, which was about two months, but this only happened once, and it was right at the beginning. I would have, I've had a couple of, a few project stuff, which has been five or six months, but I'm okay with that sort of thing. That's because you're going in there to do a specific job, you do it and it finishes. And then you move on. I've got other clients, my longest client, I mean, I've been doing this for just over three years, so close to three years, three and a half years close to three and a half years. 

David: Yeah. 

Phil Wicks: And my longest-serving client I've been working with, I think for three years now or close to three years. And so I've got a few of those ones that I've been with for three years or two and a half years or two years.

And, but probably on average, I would say, I'd say probably about 12 months, about a year, on average. I think what will happen is that average will go up the longer I'm consulting because what will happen is obviously the 40% that I consider the long-term business will probably grow. But I think it's always important to understand that, you know, you will stop consulting with clients for various reasons.

And it's not necessarily because they're not pleased with the progress that you've made or anything like that. It could just be simply that they might just feel like they need a break and you might've been with them for a year and a half or something like that or they might just feel that they don't need to see you as often.

So what I do is if I get into that situation, I generally will put them on a monthly type of program where I'll see them once a month. But, it varies. I mean, I've got other clients who just would not do without not seeing me every couple of weeks. And so I think the thing to be aware of is not to come into this thinking you're going to hit, you're going to get, you know, ten clients and you going to keep them all forever, is that you'll keep a percentage of them for a long time.

And that percentage will probably grow as you get more experienced. But there will be other opportunities that you shouldn't sort of turn down because they might just be, for example, the real estate agent that I did the rebranding for.

David: Yep. 

Phil Wicks: You know, that was a good opportunity to take, good income for the time I did it. But I think in general, if I look through everything, on average, probably about a year. 

David: Okay, just for the people who are listening, just to fill this out a bit more for you. We tend to work long-term with business owners, as opposed to perhaps a traditional business consultant who would do project or assignment work.

And they kind of in and out in three months, four months, five months. So we target to be with them forever. And as Phil said, it doesn't always work out their way, but that's all we try and do. Somebody asked one of our, I think it was Phil, Steve Potts the other day, and somebody suggested to him that they might like to take a break and he came back with some sort of an answer about the All Blacks, and he talked about the All Blacks coach and he says, now that the All Blacks have won 18 games in a row and they're world champions again. Do you think that they should sack their coach? And the business owner says point taken. Did you hear him talk about that? 

Phil Wicks: I've heard that before, yeah. 

David: Yeah, yeah, okay. Can you tell our listeners a bit about your lifestyle as a consultant today compared to normal nine to five employment? 

Phil Wicks: Yes. I would say that it's definitely better.

David: And I won't listen, I'll take the earphones out while you talk to the listeners. 

Phil Wicks: Okay, yeah, I definitely say it's better in the sense that I have a lot more freedom, that doesn't mean I don't work long hours sometimes because I do, but at the same time though, they're hours that I choose, I try to take Fridays off when I can. And that means I have a bit of a long weekend. That might mean my Wednesday might be a pretty long day or something like that. I find that if getting clients onto a fortnightly program works really well, you can look for a lot of businesses and still keep it and maintain a pretty, pretty good lifestyle.

I don't have the same sort of stress that I probably used to have in corporate. I'm reliant on myself, I'm not so reliant on other people. So from that point of view, I think it's definitely more enjoyable. No, I really liked the lifestyle that I have now, I think it's, you know, you'll have some busy days and you'll have some quieter days.

And I just think the fact that you have a bit more control of what those days will be, does make for a fairly good sort of lifestyle. 

David: Yeah, I've found that, in fact, I'm sitting in my home office now looking out at all the green grass and trees of south Auckland. So your office is a bit like that, you got a home office, haven't you?

Phil Wicks: Yup, and I'm looking at it as some green paddocks as well. 

David: Oh, here you go. Beats sitting in the car on the Southern motorway, doesn't it? 

Phil Wicks: Yeah, it does. I mean, today's a pretty good example. I caught up with one of my consultants this morning, this is a bit of a lighter day today, I must admit, but I caught up with one of my consultants this morning.

I had my powder coating company, was meant to see them at one, but they couldn't make it at one. And I suggested that we catch up maybe just after, at five. So I'll catch up with him for probably, they're very, very busy at the moment, but I'll catch up with him for an hour or so after five. And, but it's yeah, it's made for a relatively relaxing day, but it's not, like I said, not every day by any stretch of the imagination.

David: No, but you use the right word control. Like you're a hundred percent in control of your time and you can work late one night and take the next day off if you want to do that. So could you give our listeners a little bit of advice because there's thousands of people out there listening to this and the podcast is called Everything Business Consulting.

So we're talking to people who want to become a business consultant. What would your advice be to them on the best path to entering the consultant profession, and why? 

Phil Wicks: Well, I think that's a really interesting question, David, because I had exactly the same question when I was looking at consulting. So I made the decision, I want it to be, to get involved in consulting, but at that stage, I didn't quite know how to, what I was going to do.

Was I going to go in and just try and do it myself? And I came to the conclusion that if I really want it to have the best chance of succeeding that I want to actually get involved in something that already had systems working and also with people that were already successful. And so I actually did quite a lot of research and I kept on coming back to this program and I liked the way, I particularly liked the way the first eight, eight, or nine weeks worked, and how you could find out all the information you needed about the business. So having that formula I think was very, very important. And also having, I think now too, having people around you as well, that can actually, you know, you can have your own business, but have support.

I think it's also very important as well. It's almost like the best of both worlds. So, but I definitely think having an available, having a system that you can actually follow is very, very valuable. And, to be perfectly honest, to try and do that yourself would cost a lot of money. 

David: It cost us millions to get to where we are. And, yeah, it did cost a lot of money. And you mentioned earlier about trial and error. Like probably half of what we did was error. And we've eliminated all that, so that's what people are getting into if they decide to come with us. To close the interview, can you give our listeners a couple of gold nuggets of advice that will help them in their consulting career once they become a consultant?

Phil Wicks: Yes, I think you need to create a really good client acquisition plan and system. I think it's really important, especially when you first start. You have to be prepared to actually go and hunt your business. And I think having a really good system long-term that provides you with clients. Your aim is to consult with clients as long as you can.

But I still think you always have to keep the client acquisition thing ticking in the background because you'll have businesses that will sell, you know, you'll have a whole lot of different things that can happen, like the examples that you gave and the examples that I've given.

And so I think having a really good client acquisition program and honing your skills with client acquisition is really important. And the biggest skill for that is probably around making sure that you listen when you first meet potential clients and you listen to the issues that they've got and you show empathy. And I think that's really important. 

The second thing I think is also very important is that your aim as a consultant is to improve the business, say from that point of view, you're a consultant as opposed to a coach. And I always call myself a consultant in the sense that I'm there to improve the business.

However, the coaching aspects of what you do are some of the things that will actually keep your business long-term. And I probably should've mentioned this earlier, when you're talking about things that actually really, that you've learned because understanding people and understanding that sometimes you have to lift people up, you have to deal with a few personal issues that people have got.

And, that coaching aspect is what will help you keep clients for a long, long time. Your focus should definitely be on improving the business, you're not rah-rah person, as I call it, but understanding human nature and understanding when people might be stressed and that sort of thing, I think is a very valuable thing to have. And I think so that the coaching aspect is as important as well. 

David: Well, Phil, thank you for that frank and interesting interview, and I'm really sure that our listeners will have gained a lot from it. 

Phil Wicks: No problem, David, I hope your listeners enjoyed it.

Julius: Three and a half years on from the original interview Phil has continued to prove himself as one of the best consultants around. David, you recently heard from the man himself, how's he doing? 

David: He is doing very well, he now has 22 clients and he's got it honed to absolutely perfection to use his words. He has more referrals than he can handle. And he told me that when the COVID started to bite early 2020, his phone went berserk. And he had people, many, many people whom he had not being able to turn into a consulting client ring him, starting to ask for help. So, I think he's locked off his account, he can't handle anymore and he's tells me that business is better than ever.

And he's also changed things a little bit and that he is consulting in person with his clients once a month, and he's making a big use of Zoom, by having also one Zoom meeting per month. 

Julius: So he's cutting down on those travel time and he's able to have a more efficient business basically? 

David: Well, yeah, yeah, because he doesn't have to drive to these face-to-face meetings, irrespective of the virus. He's able to achieve exactly the same amount of service that he provides by using internet technologies. 

Julius: And that's obviously what's allowed him and given him the capacity to get to 22 clients, cause that's a very hefty number.

David: Well, yes, yes. He's saving the driving time. He's saving the meeting time, because for some reason, doing a Zoom meeting tends to be a bit more condensed than the face-to-face meeting. 

Julius: Like a fine wine, David, Phil was basically shown that this is a great profession and gets even better with time.

David: Yes, yes it does. 

Julius: So if you found anything in this interview relevant, we'd love a positive review, comment, or thumbs up. We've now jumped onto Spotify. If you can hit the subscribe button there as well, that does some fantastic things and allows us to reach more people with our message. You can connect with us in all major social platforms, including YouTube, just search for Everything Business Consulting. 

David: Everything Business Consulting is brought to you by ConsultX. It's a global business consulting company that has everything that you require to become a successful business consultant or to offer consulting services in your existing professional firm. If you'd like to find out more, come visit us at consultx.com.