Advicetap Blog

Today we caught up with the entrepreneur, blogger, and savvy business consultant Elie Kochman. Elie shares some interesting views on building a consulting business, power networking, and getting things done. Check it out!

What’s up Elie, welcome to the Advicetap Blog. First off introduce yourself and your company Optimal Upgrade Consulting.

Optimal Upgrade Consulting is about helping small businesses become larger by helping them with the technology aspects of growth. Along the way, information about the types of problems experienced by larger businesses is passed along, so that our clients not only get the solutions they need, but also understand why and how those solutions work.

The consulting balances the need to educate with the need for a real solution. What we offer our clients is that not only will they get the technical solution chosen, but we’ll also help them understand why it was chosen, its uses, its limitations. This helps them going forward because they know what they can and can’t do with the programs or systems we’ve set up for them, and we’ve ensured that it will last them well be being extendable as their business grows.

When did you decide to take the leap from working in a corporate environment to starting and running your own consulting business? What have some of the challenges been for running your biz and how have you been dealing with these challenges?

Well, truth be told, I’m only making my final break from the corporate world now, though I’ve been consulting on the side for the past two years. It’s been a long and slow transition.

The biggest challenge I’ve been facing is possibly the reason it’s taken so long to go fully solo. I haven’t figured out a way to really solve this problem, so I’ve found a couple ways to bypass it. The problem is that my ideal clients are usually completely unaware of the types of issues I solve, mostly because they don’t apply to them – yet. What I try to do is make sure that they never face those problems, or, if they do, that they’ll be properly prepared. But the problem remains of convincing clients that they need my services.

The two ways I bypass this issue are to use referrals from other businesses that offer complementary services, and to offer some complementary services myself. That’s why you’ll see information on my site about website development and custom software development – because these are the types of things that my clients typically also need. By getting them to talk to me about that need, I can often help them with some of the more fundamental issues they’re trying to solve.

On your blog you mention that you’ve come to the realization that “many small business owners do not have the knowledge they need to smoothly expand their businesses”. What do you mean by this and through your services how do you go about helping these businesses out?

It’s really just a question of exposure, and a need or want to know. The average small business owner will know how to run a business of their size, but without a background in larger businesses, they have no way of knowing the kinds of problems that face bigger companies. They also don’t know if some of these problems have already been solved – so they often think that they’re the first ones with this particular problem. Without a background in IT or spending huge amounts of time reading updates on the latest trends, they’ll also be unaware of what new programs or websites are out there that can help them grow to the next level.

In some cases they’re right, and they do need a fully custom solution, but often there’s already something out there that can be tailored to suit their needs, usually at a fraction of the cost. That’s one thing I do – I look for those solutions, and figure out if there’s something out there that will do the required job. I’ll also look at the reason I’m looking in the first place, and make sure that we’re not giving the right answer to the wrong question.

The most common example I come across is when businesses decide to expand to market and sell online. Most businesses would be happy to have more clients, but don’t understand that this can be a mixed blessing if caught unprepared. A client might be hoping that their website goes from making a couple sales per week to thousands of sales per day, but if this happens all of a sudden, things will go wrong, and it could cost them in the long run with unhappy customers.

So part of my job is to look at that potential for growth, and plan for it so that when it happens, the website continues to function properly, the customer experience is kept positive, and things are handled smoothly behind the scenes. The other part is education about what you can and can’t do with various technologies, and what’s already out there that’s been solved. Then the education continues with what it means to this particular client’s business, and what options they have.

This knowledge gap isn’t exclusive to small businesses by any means, but it is more common there. Also, the types of questions they’re asking, or need answered, are very different from those a larger company might ask. A small company is still building up its technical infrastructure, which is what I can help them do. Once they get bigger, then they get focused on the peripherals to their system, and need people who are much more knowledgeable about that system in particular. So I prefer to help get all the pieces in place so that when a problem surfaces later which could be solved with the right technology, they’re already set up to handle it.

The other thing I do is refer all my clients to check out my blog, because a lot of what I’m telling clients I’ve written about before. So it’s like having a library that I can tell clients to browse through, and gives them some insight into why I recommend one course of action over another, or read about some other examples of clients I’ve worked with in similar situations.

Speaking of your blog, I know that you post a lot of content to your blog: (http://blog.optimalupgrades.ca) Do you have a blogging strategy or plan that you follow and how do you come up with so much quality content? Any blogging systems or tips you can share with us would be great?

(LAUGH) This is probably the question I get asked most often about my blog!

There are really two parts to keeping a blog fresh: thinking of new topics, and then writing about them. For me, the hardest part is coming up with new ideas, but once I have a working title, writing the article seems easy.

Most of my topics come from what’s been going on in my business or my professional life. Also, I read a fairly large amount of material on a daily basis. My RSS reader pulls in over 200 items per day, plus I read the National Post daily, so I’m typically reading about 150 articles between the two.

The best tip I can give is to choose a schedule that you can maintain, and then stick to it. For me that’s 5 articles a week, for someone else, it might be twice that, or just one article a week. Also, try to stay ahead of yourself – I usually have 2 or 3 posts ready to go at any point in time. Then when I can’t think of anything to write about, I just use one of my stock posts.

A while ago in a conversation inside Advicetap you mentioned how you only give business cards out to certain people when you’re doing in person networking. Can you tell us a bit more about this strategy and your thinking behind it?

This strategy actually stemmed from a bad networking event, where I met about 30 people and gave each a card. I then got blasted with marketing emails from a bunch of mutual fund salesmen. I tried to get off their distribution lists, but it took months before that worked.

After that, I thought a bit about what it meant to hand out a card, and realized that for me at least, not everyone needed to have it. I can’t offer a service to everyone, and some people just won’t give you a reference until you give them one first, and sometimes not even then. I don’t need to hand cards to people just to have them land in the nearest recycling bin.

So I figured that a better way to handle this would be to convince people to ask me for a card. It pushed me to be clearer about what my business does, and how I can help people. When I give out a card, it’s because the other person wants it, not because I want to hand it out.

What I’ve discovered is that when I give out cards now, I’m often giving them out in bunches. I’ll meet someone who wants my card, and they’ll ask if they can have another for a friend or colleague. So not only did I establish a connection, I’ve even managed to get a recommendation out of the meeting.

When it comes to social media and networking what websites are you active on and which ones have given you the best return for time spent? Also do you have a social media tip you can share with readers of this blog to help them grow their businesses that has worked for you?

Of course, we have to start with my blog, one of the big words in social media. What with writing 5 articles per week, that certainly keeps me busy. It’s a way that I can establish credibility long before I meet my prospects, so even if it never brought in any leads, I think I would continue to write.

Advice Tap itself has proven to be useful, but not in the same way as some of the other social media sites. I find that most sites deal with quantity over quality, but this site is exactly the opposite. The questions asked are generally much more relevant to consulting and the answers deal with the reality of our type of business.

I have Twitter (@ekochman), Sprouter (@ekochman) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/ekochman) accounts which all see a fairly large amount of activity. I’m present on a few others as well, usually with the same moniker. Mostly I use those to interact informally with either peers, or other businesses.

I’m selective about which accounts I follow, because I do read the vast majority of the posts in all my feeds. There isn’t a particular criteria, but when I come across a new account to follow, I’ll look at their most recent posts and decide if they’ll add value. So if I choose not to follow someone, it’s either because the account is personal, and therefore not relevant to my use of the website, or in an area I don’t really connect with.

LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/in/ekochman) is one of my least balanced accounts. For a while, I was incredibly active there, answering over 50 questions every week. Now, I go on about once a week, and usually just for a few minutes. I think its biggest use for me now is to check out new contacts. I keep it basically as a resource for looking up people and trying to figure out what people really do, and what some of their contacts think about them.

You really get back from social media what you put into it. On a post I wrote a while back for WordTree Consulting (http://wordtree.ca/content/elies-return-his-time-investment), I mentioned that it took many months of writing blog posts before I got my first lead, but that’s now increased quite a bit. LinkedIn has also resulted in some leads, but that’s really hit or miss, and it takes a lot of time, at least for me, to make that work. So I keep a loose eye on my presence there, but at the moment, it’s not a priority.

The best advice I can give in this regard is to experiment, and figure out what works best for you in particular. As an example, I use LinkedIn as a resource for looking people up, but you can also do business through there. I know of several people who have landed contracts and jobs through their presence there. What works for one person might not work for another, so you have to try.

The second part of that is to try to create an expectation or milestone to help you measure progress. Otherwise, how will you know if your experiment is working or not?

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And there you have it folks – Thanks so much Elie!