Designing Your Dream Consulting Offer (Without Burning Out or Starting Over)

GGGR 317 – Final

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Career change, post-COVID, forced pause, financial freedom, women over 50, entrepreneurship,

consulting business, non-negotiables, income streams, relationship marketing, signature offer,

LinkedIn strategy, work-life balance, legacy, freedom plan.

SPEAKERS

Karen Yankovich

00:00

Karen,

K

Karen Yankovich 00:10

hello. Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Good girls get rich podcast. I’m your host,

Karen Yankovich, and today we have an interesting episode. You know we have so we’re living

in a world right now where things have changed, like post COVID. People don’t want to go back

to the job they used to be in. Companies are making changes. Maybe you’ve been laid off,

maybe, maybe there’s been a restructuring that doesn’t make you happy, and you just know

your next chapter needs to look different than this chapter. Or shall we just go along the Taylor

Swift lines and say your next era right is going to look different than the era you’re living right

now? And you know, it’s a scary thing. It’s a scary thing to think about. So, you know,

sometimes we can refer to this as like a forced pause. And I’m sure there’s people that are

saying, you know, if you’re somebody that’s that hasn’t been given a choice in this, you know,

oh well, it’s leaving space for something better, all that stuff. And, you know, I believe all that

stuff too. But also, you know, I’m guessing maybe makes you want to smack some of these

people a little bit, right? Because it is a scary thing to take that step. I did it, I did it. I did it by

choice, but I must say this, I did it by choice, but I didn’t really have a choice. I couldn’t stay

where I was. So, you know, it’s a long time ago now, but it was hard and it was scary, and I

didn’t have a net, and certainly didn’t have a financial net. I feel like it definitely was, for me,

the launch pad for freedom money, not just mortgage money, you know, and a life that’s

designed around the things I need to do. And, you know, this past year, you might have heard

me talk about this. It’s been crazy in my life, you know, my I mean, listen, I this is why I do what

I did, right? I wanted to be able to spend more time with my kids and grandkids. You know, I

have another grandbaby on the way, which makes six, which is crazy, but I guess that’s what

happens when you have four kids, right? You end up having a lot of grandkids. So How fun is

that? So that’s happening in a few more months. And you know, my parents were getting older.

We lost my dad at the end of 2024 it completely shifted my mom’s life. And this forced pause

that I had, even though it was a long time ago, it allowed me to build something that allows meto be where I want to be, when I want to be there, which I couldn’t have done any of this if I

was still at my paycheck job, right? So there’s no judgment anywhere. If you’re feeling

judgment, no, that’s not how I intend this. There’s no judgment at all. If you I mean, I believe

me when I tell you there have been times in those years that I have fantasized about a

paycheck, fantasized about health benefits, that you know, corporate led health benefits, which

is definitely not something I have right now, right? So, so actually, what are we talking about

here? Because here’s what we do know, okay, in 2024 more than 56% of women over 50 report

rethinking their career path after a layoff or a corporate shakeup. 56% of women, more than

half of the women on this planet, right? I don’t know. I’m not. I it was from this is AARP and

Business Insider quote, so I shouldn’t say I don’t know if it’s on the planet, could be in the US,

but it’s still a big number, right? 56% of women over 50 are rethinking their career path after a

layoff or a corporate shakeup. And you know, this is exactly what I did, right? And it’s so many

of my clients did, and it’s so interesting, because over these years, I’ve gotten a chance to work

with so many amazing, incredible, unbelievably incredible, and that I am so, just so

unbelievably grateful to be able to work with and I’ve seen so many different things, right?

There was one woman who left her retired, or, like, quit her job, and she wanted board seats,

on seat, on boards of direct, a board of director seat. And she got that so quickly that she was

like, Oh, well, I need to do more content. I’m like, really, because you just got what you want

already, right? Like so, so it can happen that quickly. There’s other women, another one I’m

thinking of who we started working together and repositioning arts. A lot of this is about how

you’re being seen, right? Your identity is tied into your previous world, right? So we’re shifting

which is an identity work, right? We’re shifting your identity to somebody new, and as we

started to shift her identity to somebody new people where she currently works, started

noticing and went going, like, Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I didn’t know this about you, and I

didn’t know this about you. And and ended up giving her these unbelievable promotions that

she couldn’t turn down and didn’t want to turn down. So she thought that she was going to be

shifting away from the the place that she was at work. Instead, they made her offers that she

was so excited to take up on right so there’s no one right path, because then there’s plenty of

other women who have left where they were before and stepped into a role as a consultant, as

a coach, whatever, right whatever it looks like for you. So I’ve seen it all. I really have. I’ve seen

it all, and what I. Love about this is that it is, it is fluid, right? We don’t have to know going in.

We have to kind of know what we want going in, right? We have to kind of know what we want

to be doing. But it’s okay to change it, right? It’s okay to change it. And that’s the point here.

I’m thinking of another woman now, who we were together, and she got so good at this

LinkedIn work that she started doing LinkedIn work for other people’s companies, and started

doing build a whole business around that, you know, and then now she’s doing some other cool

stuff. So just so anyway, we’re going to talk today a little bit about a blueprint that’s going to

help you take back your time, rebuild your income, because that’s important, like, money is

important, right? And design. We’re going to call this a consulting business, but insert whatever

it looks like for you that respects your real life, okay, that respects your real life, and I’m going

to check in on you on this, right? I’m going to talk about that later. On the end, I want to check

in on you in this so I know for me, when I left my job, I mean leaving that paycheck. I was

probably, I’m gonna say it’s probably also around the same time. My youngest was in college

and I was divorced, so I was there was child support money coming as well, and that went away

at the same time. So now I didn’t leave my paycheck. That was my I was at any child support,

but I was like, literally no net. Like, literally no net. Worried about that, worried if Was I too old

to do this right? What if I fail on my own? What if this doesn’t work, but here’s what I know,

here’s what I knew, and I had to continue to remind myself. And if you need a reminder of this,

then please use this as my reminder to you. This works right. It may not. You may have some

failures, but it works, right? It me, it just because this, like, maybe Plan A didn’t work. There’s

always, there’s another 25 letters in the alphabet, right? So this does work. It will work for you.The obviously, we want it to work as quickly as possible, because we’re nervous about it, right?

But it’s going to work, right? It’s going to work, because here’s the other thing. And I really

wanted to dive into some actual statistics for this, because I didn’t want to just be talking

smack here in this episode, because it’s an important topic. It’s an important topic. Here’s the

other statistic. Then also AARP and this time, Harvard Business Review are reporting that

women over 50 are the fastest growing group of new entrepreneurs in America. Women over

50 are the fastest, fastest growing group of new entrepreneurs in America. And 68% of women

say they wish they designed work life balance before burnout forced it right. And I think I can

totally relate to that too. You know, I don’t have any I don’t live in a place where I with regrets. I

don’t I mean, there’s certainly things I wish would have been nice if I did differently, but it is

what it is. I am, where I am. I have a beautiful life, and I’m not living with any regrets that being

said when my kids were little, I was never home. I was on home a lot, and I know that I missed

out on some things, right? So would it have been nice if I figured this out sooner? Sure, but

here’s the thing, when, when my kids were little, we didn’t have the same tools we have now to

be an entrepreneur, you have these tools now, right? You have so much. You have the same

resources available to you at very little to no charge that you know Pepsi does, right? And these

big companies have so know that this layoff, we’ll call it a layoff. Or maybe it’s by choice.

Maybe you just, you just not ready, you just can’t do another day there, which is who I was,

right? It can be a detour, or it could be a moment that you design, okay, it could be a moment

that you design. So sometimes maybe you’re getting some severance, maybe you’ve built up a

little nest egg, right? You can, you can build a an offer, which is my sweet spot. I love having

these conversations with you that is aligned with who you are and where your zone of genius is,

and brings you in a big paycheck. As I’m recording this, I just had a conversation with one of my

private clients who, for the first time in her life, is an inch away from landing a 25k client. And

it’s probably, I think the biggest she’s ever gotten was maybe 5k so the point is, it was

reframing it those those clients were always there, but other people were getting them right.

So I want you, you know? So she took this moment, she got laid off, she took this moment and

she’s like, and she’s like, I’ve got this I think she has some unemployment money. I’ve got this

much time to make this happen, right? So we just hustled and and instead of focusing, and

trust me when I tell you, I had to re I’m still refocusing her often. You know, stop talking about a

$50 thing. I know these $50 things could be valuable right now, but focus on where the money

is and it’s there for you. Because if you’re listening to the show, you are likely not somebody

that just graduated college. You probably somebody that has been doing this work for a while.

You deserve big, fat, juicy paychecks those. 25k and 50k and 100k offers are out there.

Somebody’s getting them. Might as well be you, right? So, so this is where we start to design

the this moment for you. Okay? And the first thing you need to do, and this is really important,

is map out your non negotiables. Okay, map out your non negotiables. What are non

negotiables for you? And you know, in our she’s linked up program, we have a marketing

training, marketing planning training, that we do the q4 every year, and we do it live every

year, and then it’s available to anybody that joins the program throughout the year as a replay.

And one of the first things we do is map out our non negotiables. What do you want your life to

look like? We can’t build your business until we know what you want your life to look like, right?

Do you want to have every every month see the ocean, right? Do you want to have Fridays off

every year? Do you want to have December off? Right? What is? What are your non

negotiables? You get to choose this because guess what? I you might find me working on a

Saturday morning sometimes, certainly, if it’s like a rainy, crummy day, I might work on a

Saturday because I might have taken Tuesday off. I’m trying to think this week I had two day

well, no last week, because this is I’m recording. This is earlier in the week. So last week I had, I

had two days with one of my kids and grandkids, and then I spent another day with another

one, and then this week, I’m actually going on vacation with my family. And this is all stuff I get

to do, like I work around that stuff, right? So the first thing you need to do is map your nonnegotiables and start with a blank calendar. Block your personal priorities. First, build your

client time around that. Okay? And think about this, you don’t. I am absolutely the anti hustle.

Okay? I’m all about this being feeling like there’s ease and building freedom into it. It doesn’t

mean there’s never hustle, right? But think about like maybe even building into your calendar

some rituals, maybe when you know if you want Fridays off, one of the things that’s going to be

non negotiable, it’s going to be Friday is going to be a pedicure day, or a massage day, or the

first Friday of every month is going to be a massage day, or whatever works for you. Like, build

in some tiny rituals that would feel luxurious if you never had to compromise on that again.

Isn’t that cool? I mean, does that sound amazing? Because this is what you’re building like. This

is what you’re building, right? I promise you, this is what you’re building. How cool is this I get?

Can you tell I get excited by this? All right, so once you’ve done that, once you’ve done the

outlaying, laying out of of what you want your life to look like, right? Then you have to start

thinking about your income streams. And you do not need 100 income streams. And here’s the

other thing you you need to be thinking about, like, shift your mindset from reactive hustling to

purposeful consulting or relationship marketing, okay? Like, the work that you’re doing is going

to be purposeful. You know, I often say, like, if you want to make pens, and you make the best

pen in the world, we are not going to hustle to send one pen at a time. We’re going to

purposefully put together a strategy to find you a distributor that wants to buy 100,000 of your

pens, because I don’t want you hustling to send sell one pen at a time, right? So you need to

shift your mindset from that. And I can tell you that one of the biggest mindset blocks and

identity blocks that my clients often have is that, well, I’ve never been a consultant before. I’ve

never said I’ve never signed Karen Yankovich Dash consultant to a contract before. So I how I

can’t charge that much money, right? But you can, because you’ve been doing this work all this

time, right? So there’s three kind of pillars to this. Okay? So pillar one is you need to have a

signature offer. You need and by the way, I have one signature offer. My she’s linked up

program. We have you can do that. We can do that in a day, like we have linked up in a day. If

you don’t want to take the 12 week program, really, it just comes down to how quickly you

want it to happen and what your budget is, right? I don’t have 100,000 different offers. I have

one offer, and there’s different levels of it, okay? You can do the same thing. And I did that

deliberately, because my strength is strategy, not creating 5 million sales pages to create a

$20 offer to try to sell it to a million people. It’s just not what I do best. I would rather create

one offer that showcases my best skill set and solves a real problem, right? And then build it

from there. And then the second pillar in this is thinking about and creating a mindset around

relationship based marketing. If I ask 100 people where they got their biggest client from. 90 of

them are going to tell me that it came from a referral, right? They come from warm

connections, not cold calls, right? I mean, we’ve got cold calls. I get cold calls. You pick do you

give them $10,000 to $25,000 No, right? That you it comes from this relationship. Partnership

based marketing. And you know, 70% of consulting contracts come through these warm

connections. So you need to have that built into as you’re building out your calendar, right,

building out your week. Have a strategy around that, around how much time are you going to

spend? And you know, for me, it’s on LinkedIn, building relationships, talking to people. I had a

conversation today with somebody I hadn’t talked to in a long time, and he was talking about

how horrible networking is lately. And I said, I completely agree, because so many people go to

so many networking events, but they never actually build relationships. They never actually

follow up. And then when I say, Well, wait a minute, I want you to be following up with 20

people from LinkedIn every week, they say, Well, I don’t have time for that. Like, yeah, that you

don’t have time for that because you go to too many networking meetings that you don’t follow

up from, right? Like, deepen the work you’re doing deep. And by the way, I don’t ever say that I

want you to meet 20 people in a week. As those words came out of my mouth, I was like, why

am I even saying that it’s it’s not, it’s totally unnecessary, right? But in any case, deepen the

marketing. Don’t like, deepen up broader is going to get you the higher ticket things. Whichbrings me to the third pillar, it is easier to close one $5,000 client than 10 $500 clients. My

client that I talked about earlier, that’s about to sign a 25k contract. I mean, I’m telling you,

she’s ready to go out there and hustle the street for $50 this, and $100 these, and $200 these.

And I am constantly pulling her by the back of the neck and going hand money. Let’s make

some you are worthy of these big somebody’s getting these big, fat, juicy contracts. Let’s let

them be you. Because here’s the thing, okay, consultant, let’s kind of like the word consultant

even better than coach right now. I think that consulting, if you can build what you do into a

consulting framework, I think that that’s going to serve you well at in 2025 like if you’re

listening to this, and you know, 10 years from now, maybe that’s not true anymore, but in 2025

I think that’s true. But here’s the other thing that’s true, women consultants earn 20% less than

men on average. And how do we close that gap? We ask for the money that we deserve. We

that gap starts that we shrink that gap when we start pricing like the pros that we are okay. So

I want you to think a little bit about your last role, right? Here’s a little mini homework for you.

What did that company pay for your expertise per month? That’s your consulting baseline, not

your selling. Because remember, even especially if it was a paycheck, was a paycheck you

need to build in your loaded labor rate, they’re paying your benefits, they’re paying payroll

taxes, right? That’s why consultants make so much more money than employees. Right? Now,

listen, as a consultant, I can tell you very clearly that $100,000 paycheck is a lot more money

in my pocket than $100,000 consulting contract. I need $200,000 consulting contracts to have

that same $100,000 in my pocket. Which is all good, right? Which other? Because we have

overhead, we have we’re business owners, we have overhead, right? But so does the business

right? So if you’re making $50 an hour, $100 an hour at your last role, remember that there’s

probably a 50% loaded labor rate on that, right? So think about that, and if you have any any

insight into how much they were paying consultants, find that out, right? And let that be your

baseline, because you have the expertise you deserve this, okay, but we have to show up

confident and worthy of those big, fat, juicy contracts, right? So as we’re moving through this, I

told you, it’s going to be a blueprint. So this is we’re going to continue to move through what

you do next. You know, you’ve designed your life. You’ve got some ideas, maybe around a

higher ticket offer, and you understand now that that you don’t have to, you know, go for the

low, low ticket. Things first. You can go for the higher ticket. Things go straight for the higher

ticket. Things right now, let’s think about what some flexible client structures might look like.

You know, there’s retainers, there’s projects, there’s groups, there’s VIP days, right? Clients

love clear boundaries and packages, right? So the best part about this, especially for somebody

new, a new business owner, or an or an expanding business owner or coach is looking to take it

to the next level. The best part about this is this comes from a conversation you’re having,

right? So follow me here for a second. You’re you, you do, you listen to my podcast, and you do

all the things. And you’ve, you’ve had some conversation, you’ve got some conversation.

You’ve got some people on your calendar from some LinkedIn strategy that you’ve done, and

this is not spamming them, by the way. This is very warm relationship marketing. Maybe you

got a referral, whatever that looks like, and they’re on your calendar, and now you’re having a

conversation with them, and you’re like, Okay, tell me what you’re looking for. Like, what is it

that you’re looking for? So they’re going to tell you what they’re looking for, and you, based on

that, are going to build them an offer. You are not creating the packages before you speak to

the clients, and that, by the way, means and creating 65,000 sales pages and thank you pages

and offers and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you have to do any of that. You’re going to just

create. You’re going to have a conversation. And based on that, you’re going to say. Okay, well,

we can either do this on a retainer as a project level, or, you know, and maybe you can even do

both, right? Maybe you can even do, well, you know, I think for $5,000 a month, for a minimum

of six months, I can do, you know, A, B, C, D and E. But I also think that I want to come in and

talk to your staff, right? I think you have a, you have a you know, you have a staff. I can come

in there, maybe do some assessments, and blah, blah, blah, so for that, you know, there’s adifferent rate, right? So you can mix and match this. But the best part of this is you don’t have

to know this before you’re going into the you’re not trying to sell them a pen that already

exists. You’re looking to sell them a a solution that works best for them. And sometimes it

doesn’t even have to be you doing that, right? Like, a lot of times when I work with people

privately, I bring in, like, my PR experts, right? And I’ll say, you know, they’re going to need

your help. I don’t write LinkedIn profiles. I have people that write LinkedIn profiles, right? So you

don’t even have to be doing all the work. Obviously, you want to make sure that there’s profit

to you as the business owner, as the company, right? Every single thing that you are offering

has to feed the goose, right, right? You gotta always feed the goose and and then from there

you go, Okay, well, this is how much I need to pay the profile writer. So this is how much I have

to charge per profile, because I have to feed the goose, and I have to pay the taxes, and I have

to do all the things, right? But you can create this in a flexible way. So you’re offering them all

this flexibility, which, by the way, you’re probably going to do the same thing over and over, so

you don’t have to redesign it every time. They don’t have to know that, right? You pro, you

know, once you start doing this, you can, you can use the same contract as you for other

clients and just modify them, right? Make sure you modify them, and don’t leave the other

clients names in them, but and modify them. So as long as you’re giving these prospects clear

boundaries and packages, you do not have to be on call 24/7 and your business is serving your

life, not the other way around, right? How cool is that? How cool is that? So here’s the deal. You

now have permission to build a consulting business that loves your life as much as you do.

Okay, 100% you have to be using LinkedIn for this. And you know, with we’re working together,

we’re also sprinkling in some PR, because I want you to have the credibility, because that

credibility helps, helps get to the Yes, right? It helps, it helps magnetize these opportunities to

you so you’re not out hustling for them. And it helps people say yes more quickly, because

you’ve built, you’ve got that credibility already built in. So what I want to know from you, first

and foremost, I want to know this. Okay, I’m serious about this. I want to know what your non

negotiable yes is, family dinners, beach days, volunteering. And how will you build your

business around this? And write it down, and then I want you to post it on your LinkedIn today,

and I want you to tag me because I want to cheer you on. I want to show you one. I want to

know before we even start talking about where you’re going to make money. I want to know

this new era in your life. What is your non negotiable? Juicy, amazing. Yes, that you are never

going to have to compromise on ever again. Write it down, then post it on LinkedIn and tag me,

because I really want to cheer you on. And if you want my eyes on this, on your consulting plan,

book a call. If you go to Karen yankovich.com/call you get to our calendar. I’d love to chat with

you. I want to make sure your freedom plan pays you well. And of course, if I think that I can

help you with that, I’ll tell you what that looks like. But mostly I want there to be more wealthy

women in the world. So this is my gift to you. Is to offer these complimentary strategy calls.

Karen yankovich.com/call gets you to that calendar. Here’s the thing, your next era is not just

about income. It’s about freedom. It’s about legacy. It’s about your favorite moments. And this

is what I want you to claim. Do we want income? We absolutely freaking do we want to fill your

cup and have it overflowing so you can serve from that overflow, right? But it’s the freedom

and the legacy and that and those moments, that’s why we can that’s why we’re doing this,

and that’s how we build amazing lives for ourselves. So I hope this was helpful to you. If you

think you have an audience of people that might enjoy hearing this, or might need to hear this,

or you have coworkers, maybe that are in the same place as you. I’d love for you to share this

with them. If you share it on your social media, please tag me. I’m at Karen Yankovic, so I can

see that you that you’re sharing it, and then I can share that with my audience. And this is how

we lift each other up, right? You’re getting my name in front of your audience, so I am going to

repay you by getting your name in front of my audience. So let’s do that. If you love this

episode, I’d also love your ratings and reviews. That just helps me understand what episodes

you’re connecting to in the show notes for this episode, we have a link for speak pipe whereyou can leave me an audio message. I love getting audio messages from you. I do. I respond to

every single one of them we get to have like, an actual chat. I feel like I. Love doing this

podcast. I mean, we’re on episode like, 300 and whatever, right? I love doing this, but I do

sometimes feel like I’m talking at you, and when you leave me a message via speak pipe, I get

to talk with you, and that’s my goal, and that’s part of that relationship building, right? So I

hope this was really helpful to you. I look forward to seeing you tag me on LinkedIn with your

non negotiable Yes, and I will see you back here next week with another episode of The Good

girls get rich podcast.