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Episode #238
Sarah McVanel

How To Replace Yourself & Scale Your Consulting Business

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Summary

Do you want to scale your consulting business? Michael Zipursky welcomes Sarah McVanel, the President and founder of Greatness Magnified. Sarah shares that before you scale, you first need to discover if doing so will bring you joy. If you figure it will start by growing your team. Hire the best talent suited to your business, and never begrudge them a penny. Invest in your assistants to encourage them to deliver amazing work quality. If you want to learn more about scaling your consulting business, this episode’s for you.

I’m very excited to welcome Sarah McVanel. Sarah, welcome.

Thank you for having me. I’m so pumped to chat about success when it comes to this.

You are a recognition expert, professional speaker, coach and author. You’re the President and Founder of Greatness Magnified, where you help leaders leverage the power of recognition. You have many clients and some that are very well known like Oracle, Shopify and the government of Canada. You are located in a beautiful area on Niagara-on-the-Lake or the Wine Country of Ontario, which is such a beautiful part of the world. A big welcome to you, Sarah. I want to start with associations because you’ve done a lot with them. You’ve leveraged associations to build your business. Could you start by talking about the impact that associations have had on your business?

The great thing is associations have this wide group in terms of a membership base. If you’re consulting and have a very specific solution that you can offer, there’s usually an association, perhaps dozens of associations, who need that exact solution. My area of expertise is recognition and the way in which I can help organizations and different associations solve that problem can shift over time. It’s the Great Resignation and industries like the tech sector, healthcare and not-for-profits have a massive turnover crisis.

They tend to be the associations seeking out the type of support that my team and I can provide, yet that’s not always the way it’s been. For those who are reading and looking to see how I anchor myself, it’s not that you have to align yourself with certain associations. You may and that may benefit you. You serve the hospitality sector and maybe even sub-specialties within that, which is cool too. Many of us, as consultants and experts, can serve many associations. From a sales benefit, all the people in your audience are potential customers as well. They belong to other associations and often organizations.

When you say that being part of or presenting to associations has contributed significantly or a little bit, how would you rate the impact of you showing up and being present at these associations on the growth of your business and revenue coming into your business?

Post-COVID, 75% of my business, which has grown since COVID, has been from repeat business and referrals. Some of that comes from my corporate days and early on, those wonderful clients have kept hiring me. A far greater majority are people who have seen me. They may have seen me speak for this insurance group, healthcare group or tech group.

Yes, there certainly are companies, however, the majority of those referrals are people who hear me and that’s why a lot of consultants should consider being a speaker because you’re on the stage in front delivering your value to so many people who then could dive deeper from a company standpoint in benefiting from your expertise by then being able to execute on the solutions that you bring to them.

You have to make it so easy for busy people to make decisions. Click To Tweet

A key thing to think about is how they will experience this content in a breakout session or the keynote session for one hour and make them so hungry because they can almost feel the solution like it’s within their grasp but they need to work with you more. We closed our biggest contract, which was almost six figures in the first month of 2022. It was based on somebody who heard me speak for one hour at a keynote. He thought, “My organization needs that.” We had three conversations and it resulted in a significant contract.

Let’s say that one of our readers is a real expert. They’re very good at what they do. Maybe they already have an established business but they want to grow and get in front of more ideal clients. They’re reading to everything that you’re sharing and thinking of themselves, “I can see the value of getting in front of an association because there could be tens or hundreds of thousands of ideal clients in one room or joining a Zoom call.” Where should they begin to get into an association? How would you counsel or recommend that they go about landing their first speaking engagement, workshop engagement or getting into an association where they can then get in front of ideal clients?

Depending on the type of expertise you have, the answer may be super obvious. I used the example I provided about the hospitality sector. Let’s say you work mainly in fast food and rapid food delivery. There’s probably a whole bunch of associations in that swath. Michael Port wrote a book called The Referable Speaker.

He talks about how the trunk of your business has branches. You may start speaking for this small group of associations and then the people in that audience recommend you to other like associations. If that restaurant industry also has suppliers, you then start speaking in that. They can all scaffold onto each other. For others who don’t necessarily have a niche in an industry, you can purchase association lists and hire somebody to do some research to give you a shortlist. I’m happy to share with you how I got my start in working with the association.

I’d love that because I want people to be able to see it. Is it as simple as sending an email to the executive director of the association? Is there a different process? We could get as detailed as possible. What was your experience like? What would you recommend is the best practice for those who want to land those opportunities?

Gone are the days when you could send your tape. I use that word very intentionally. Back in the olden days of speaking, you would have a CD or a tape and you’d send it to associations. They would all sit around when they had a conference and watch it. Same if you have what we call one sheet where it has your talk and a little bit about your bio and send it off. That’s not good enough. People are too busy. They’re also attention-challenged to do all the work. You have to make it so easy for busy people to make decisions.

If you think about this, deciding who your keynote speaker is or are is a pretty high-stakes decision. You want to make it so that they can feel comfortable, trust you and like you. Do you want to know what I’ve been doing? I will give you the inside scoop. I’ve been sending videos. I use an app called Sendspark and send a video.

CSP Sarah | Scale Your Consulting Business

 

It will be something like, “Michael, I see that you are the President of the consulting association of Canada. I so valued your last newsletter where you talked about the importance of recognizing your members. I am 100% with you. Maybe deepening that message would be valuable at your conference that’s coming up next May 2022. If you want to have a quick conversation, I put a link below for a coffee chat. In the meantime, thank you so much for what you’re doing. I appreciate it. Take good care out there.”

How long was that? One minute? The video then gets embedded in the email. All you have to do in your subject line is say something like, “Your conference is so important for your members coming up in May 2022.” They’re going to open it because there’s some curiosity. It’s about the members. Your video is grateful and helpful. You’ve done a little bit of homework. I use Sendspark because I can see if people watched it and how many times they watched it. Maybe they forwarded it to other people because if nine people have watched it, there’s a good chance that the planning committee has made their way around there.

How do you find that? I love that approach and sign that we share with clients a lot, even in terms of the sales process or outreach to ideal clients to bring that personal touch and do it in a customized way, as opposed to mass automation. How are you finding that’s working when it comes to associations? Are you getting a positive response? If you were to send ten of those, how many do you think you would expect to hear a reply from?

We have a pretty much 100% open rate. When I say pretty much, I haven’t charted it but I see it in real-time when people open it. People are creating opportunities where they maybe didn’t even have a keynote spot or an event. I had an amazing client I did one of those videos. I genuinely wanted to follow up on how well the two events were delivered previously. They created an event that they hadn’t even planned to have. Know that not only is it helpful in being able to get an event that’s scheduled but they may decide that this message is so valuable.

Your expertise is so valuable. They can’t wait until the next conference. It’s successful, fast and easy. What’s the harm that you waste an hour and don’t get a booking? They will remember you. Remember, the medium is your message. If your medium is delivering value through the spoken word, then speak your word.

You can type your words. However, everybody can type. How many people can send a compelling message that entertains and captures them for one minute? Subconsciously, they’re thinking, “If you got my attention for a minute and it’s an email, what might this person be able to do on the stage?” None of it is manipulation. I hope nobody thinks when I’m talking about this that we’re manipulating people to open emails. This is not clickbait or click-through.

It’s a great differentiation strategy. It’s personable and takes a little bit of time. It doesn’t “scale” as other things may but in a world with one ideal client, the average value of an engagement is significant. You’re not selling a $100 course, book or pair of underwear. You’re selling something that has significant value. Therefore it makes sense to invest a little bit of time to do things like that. That’s fantastic.

You need people to feel like you get them and that you've done the work in customizing. Click To Tweet

During the workshops, keynotes or engagements you have with these associations, you’re focused on providing value so that they’re feeling so close like, “This is great. I can see how we’re almost to that next step, breakthrough or inside.” That’s why we need to bring Sarah in to go to that deeper level of engagement. Is there anything else you do before, during or after an event that you find as a critical, best practice or a tool essential in your tool belt that helps create great results?

I always film a welcome video that people can use out in their promotion of the conference. I talk about how much effort went into it. It’s very short. It may be minutes long. I encourage people to register if that’s one of the messages that a client wants. If it’s not registration required, I talk about how much effort went into it. I’ll put from a consultant standpoint that the benefit is not only a high relationship value thing. You and only you can do that because you’re the speaker for them. They don’t expect it because they didn’t ask for it and don’t pay for it. It’s adding to the psychological contract.

The reciprocity is, “If you’ve done something nice for me, I’ve done something nice for you.” If they did something nice for you, they hire you. If you did something nice for them, film the video. It’s not equal. However, psychologically, we’re starting to balance out the relationship equity there. In the body, I put my videos on Vimeo so that you keep people on your channel. If you put it on YouTube, they can watch whatever latest thing they watched last time and then get distracted away from the conference. Keep them on your channel, which means you can send them to other related views.

If you liked that topic, maybe you can have a little playlist of related short videos or vlogs related to the topic you’re going to speak about. It’s further reinforcing your expertise. At the bottom of the description, not only include the description of what they can expect. Maybe you want to encourage them.

Let’s say your session is sponsored by an actual sponsor. You could put a link, “Special thanks to Philips Oral Healthcare for sponsoring the session,” and send a link back to their website. That’s a total value add. If you want people to go and get a downloadable resource, put it in the description. One person may bother to look at the description. However, one person is better than no people. That’s one strategy of a whole bunch that I use but see how it scaffolds all these other opportunities on top of that one strategy.

The other thing that comes up oftentimes is people might be great at delivering a very powerful talk. They’re giving immense value. Time and time again, I’ll speak with people who don’t necessarily generate a lot of leads or engagements from that talk. Is there anything you find that you do specifically during the talk or after the talk that tends to create more lead flow or conversations and therefore, more clients? Do you use a very specific intentional call to action? Do you do something afterward? I’d love any insights and experiences on that.

I use QR codes that I customize. I use something called QRCode Monkey. I’ll put their association icon in the center and send them over to some bonus value. It could be a survey that exists on somebody else’s website or a downloadable resource, copies of my book or eCopies of my book. That’s one thing that you can do but more so, it’s the prep.

CSP Sarah | Scale Your Consulting Business

 

I changed the slides to have images that represent that organization. If I’m speaking for childcare versus call management organizations and the same key points are hit on, maybe 1 story or 2 are tweaked. However, the images say, “She gets us and cares about us.” Mash it with stock images and they’re all very random. People sitting up dust, typing but none of the people in your audience have work environments like that. A key thing is you need people to feel like you get them and that you’ve done the work in customizing.

If you don’t know the association audience you’re speaking for, go interview and ask the planning committee, “Could I have five superstars? I want to spend fifteen minutes racking their brain about the most important things people need to leave this session with.” That can be the only thing you talk about. You then quote them, “As I was speaking with Michael, he mentioned how hard you’re working on such and such.” Wouldn’t you be glad to have a solution to this? You would have shared it anyway.

The point is you made that person who spent a few minutes with you the hero. Ask their permission so that you can mention them. Occasionally some people are very humble and don’t want it. Most of the time, people don’t mind. You have those stories so you are brought back not necessarily another one but the same association because they have loved you so much that you get a chance to continue to reinforce your message at a deeper level or a slightly different take on the topic. By deepening that and through that connection, people feel something on a different level.

Everyone can deliver content where we think about it. However, the way our memories work is we encode them much deeper on an emotional level. If I’m delivering a keynote to you, there’s a moment where you’re almost like, “She gets me and the biggest pain point in my business without making me feel guilty but from a place of empathy.”

People are going to remember that as opposed to, “I may have the best six-point strategy.” It’s just six points. It’s forgettable. You can’t be forgettable. If you’re forgettable, you should be in a breakout session because that’s where they’re taking notes. They’re looking for the how-tos. If you want to be brought into the organization, people have to believe without even necessarily knowing that you are the one that they can trust to solve a solution or an issue that’s keeping them up at night, robbing their profits and stealing their people. Big-time stakes have to be on the line here.

I want to transition to your business. We’re moving away from associations for a moment. You offer speaking, training and coaching services. Do you find when you look across the lifetime of your clients or the years that you’ve been in business that most clients tend to start with one of those as opposed to the other? Is it typically coming from speaking first and then into one of the others? Is it training first and then speaking? How do you find that flow of services?

I have a speaker manager who also does her prospecting on my behalf as well. To all of the great questions you’ve asked here, it leads to all the other things. People will hear me and they’ll say, “I have to ask you a favor. Would you consider having a conversation with me about coaching?” There’s only so much capacity I have to be able to have coaching clients. I never have more than six at any given time.

You don't need to build a huge business; just do the work that you love. Click To Tweet

Sometimes the ask will be very different, “Do you ever coach somebody who wants to be a speaker but they’re going to work in HR as a Human Resource Officer for the next five years?” That would be a very specific thing to have on my website. Everybody has their formula. What’s been most successful in my business is the speaker is a credible expert in a very specific area of expertise which then leads to other things that could be broader than that area of expertise.

It’s also more scalable because you can always be the face of that expertise as a keynote speaker. As your time gets compressed, that’s maybe where you increase your speaking fee. Others can be delivering the training, coaching and consulting services as your mentees that were subcontractors that you trust, value and take care of your clients. It’s very hard to go the other way around. If you’re the trainer, it’s hard to have a front person for speaking.

Have you gone down that path yourself or is it an area that you’re considering in terms of having others deliver training or coaching services using your framework, system or IP? Is that something you’ve done or thought about?

I have subcontract coaching, in particular, when it’s not a coaching arrangement where I could do my best and when there’s can be a conflict of interest. If I’m already coaching the CEO and there’s somebody else in your organization, it’s probably not a good idea that I coach people at different levels of the organization. When there’s a volume issue, it could be a contract so that’s part of it.

From a training standpoint, what we’ve started to put in our proposals when people request that is we’ll say, “These are suggested based on what you’re looking for. It seems like this would be a great fit to the sessions they deliver.” There could be others that we negotiate that are more important or others that you would like to see and then we will find an amazing expert. It won’t be any impact on the investment you’ve already made. I use the word investment, not cost. We put right in our contracts that we work with a group of other subject matter experts in the field.

What’s the experience with that? Has it been going positive? Where are they to this point so far as you’ve been working through that process?

People want to start as they go on. If you started as the coach for the entire middle management team, they probably don’t want to switch mid-contract to having other people. Know that you’re trying to build the business where you want to be. If you’re at capacity or almost there, that’s probably when you want to subcontract because all it takes is one more contract and then you don’t get lunch or dinner with your family anymore. You potentially have to turn business away. That’s one thing. The other thing is, as I had mentioned in the contract, I may end up delivering all those sessions. However, I want to reserve the right to negotiate with my client for them to be happy.

CSP Sarah | Scale Your Consulting Business

 

I’m not saying, “I’m going to send my people a surprise.” It’s about the relationship. Our relationship is, “I will always do right by you,” even if you have to give them options. For this session, these people will be extraordinary. I vetted them already. I’m confident they will be a good fit. Most people trust you. You’re the one that they’ve invested in and they’re too busy. Even at the beginning of a contract where they say, “I want to make sure we’ve got all of our trainers and we have them all go through this. Our committee wants to review this.” They don’t have time for them.

One thing that does come up in this kind of situation is that the expert feels, “It’s my IP. I’m being brought on because I’m the expert.” At times, there’s some resistance or hesitation on the part of consultants to have others deliver that IP. Those who have been through that process know that what matters most is the result. It’s not about who’s delivering it. This is why if you look at any established consulting firm, you’ll never see that the CEO or the founders are doing all the delivery.

That’s not possible. They wouldn’t be able to grow if that was the case. For someone who’s reading and joining us and is maybe wrestling with that same idea, “I want to build a team. I need to have others also deliver because I can’t do all the delivery myself,” but they’re feeling a bit of that hesitation because the belief is that, “I’m the expert. Will my clients pay for somebody else to deliver that?” What advice would you offer them? Is there anything you did to overcome any of that resistance that you may have felt or faced at that time?

Ask yourself what type of business you want to have. Do you love doing the work? If you don’t mind working in the business, great. You don’t need to build a huge business. Do the work that you love. You only get one go around in life so it might as well be the best go around. Build your business according to your design.

However, if you’re thinking, “I don’t know if I’m going to want to be doing this forever. Not every part of my curriculum I love. I love this and that part but the stuff in the middle, this content over here or that audience.” There may be a particular audience or another language. Your program is so amazing that people who speak multiple languages are going to want it or a global company that has offices all over. At some point, you’re probably going to have to decide, “Am I going to turn down that contract?” Unless you’re going to use Duolingo and learn Mandarin in the next weeks, you can’t deliver it.

Ask yourself what kind of business you want to have. If you want to do the work, there’s nothing wrong with that if you don’t care about scaling. Do the work and have a blast. Know that you’re not going to close global companies. Maybe sometimes you’re not going to have dinner with your family because you are constantly on location with your clients or working on the weekends to catch up because you worked all during the week in the classroom. You get a chance to decide. It starts with what business, lifestyle and income you want. That may help people to get over their IP issues.

Anyone can steal your IP at any time, including internal people. Don’t think your IP is safe just because you haven’t trained anybody else to deliver it. I will never forget losing out on a keynote spot because they already had somebody doing a breakout session on FROG, my brand Forever Recognize Others’ Greatness. I thought, “That’s strange because I own the trademark.” They’re like, “We’re not going to pay for a keynote when we can get it for nothing in a breakout.” I’m like, “I’m not your person.”

Say no respectfully if someone's not willing to pay you what you're worth. Click To Tweet

What did you do in that situation? Tell us because I can’t change to a different question without going a little bit deeper down that rabbit hole. What happened? Did you reach out to that other person? Was there legal action? How did you navigate that?

I decided that this was the impact I was trying to have in the world. I want to do myself out of a jam. I want recognition hard-wired into everybody’s relationship, every workplace and association that they don’t need me anymore. I thought, “Maybe this is happening faster than I needed it to.” On the surface, it seems like somebody is playing dirty or they didn’t know any better. It’s a brand new person who had heard about it and thought, “That’s a cool idea.”

Imitation is the best form of flattery. It’s what they said. If it were a huge company where they are trying to go to market by product, then you can’t be making hundreds of thousands of dollars on a trademark that I own in the US. However, those of you who are looking at trademarking or who own a trademark are only trademarked in the countries it is trademarked in. I only own the trademark in two countries. Guess how much money would be in a trademark across multiple countries? Let’s say you normally do work in a few other continents. Maybe you want to trademark in a few. I need to sell a lot because that’s expensive and a lot of time too.

The advice you offered before about getting clear on what business model is the right one, not for everyone but for you. What do you want out of life? What do you want to be doing? What do you enjoy? Where’s the fulfillment going to come from? It’s such an important question that oftentimes people don’t lead with. It’s amazing how clear you can get and start to figure out what should your next steps be based on the clarity and confidence that comes from asking yourself those questions. I’m glad that you brought those up.

When you look at the last months in your business, is there anything you’ve done that you feel has had a big impact on the business and the success that you’ve seen or on being able to increase fees? Is there anything that you’ve done that led to a major increase in revenue or something else that you feel has an overall positive impact on the business?

I’ve been growing the team. I don’t have them employed full-time. I have amazing people for who I either pay for their hours or a commission-based structure. The sales piece is a speaker manager. I keep struggling with the words because she’s so much more than this speaker manager but that’s what her title is. She’s a speaker manager. She works with me and only two other speakers but I’m her primary speaker. I have a learning specialist who helps me. Every event that I am on virtually, speaking as a keynote, a webinar or as a training session, she’s on there.

She puts links in the chat and answers questions. I’ll make promises to groups and say, “I have a resource called such and such. We’ll make sure we get it to you.” She’ll make a note behind the scenes and then send it to the head planner within an hour of the session or when it’s a contract where she has everybody’s email to the whole group of folks, which makes my life easier. I can be this Uber focused on my job of serving them. I can find additional ways to serve without me going, “Don’t offer that because you’ve got a session right after this. You may not remember to send it and you’ll break your promise.”

CSP Sarah | Scale Your Consulting Business

 

I have a virtual assistant. I’ve worked hard to find the right virtual assistant. I’ve had many and she’s great. She’s building her business. She does all of my newsletters, proofs them and sends things out on social for me. I do a lot of my social and LinkedIn is my social media platform. I want people to feel like I’m talking to them. However, when I write an article, a LinkedIn article or a blog post article, she can be the one who sends it out to all the different channels. She schedules that.

I have a videographer and a photographer so every single image is original. No stock photography. We spent days on short videos, longer-form videos and pictures. Even though she’s instructed my team on how to do their headshots at home and then she’s editing it, I never begrudge a single penny. I invest in those amazing women. It’s not intentional but all of them are women, although I’m a proud feminist.

We have a great team. Every penny is worth it. Every penny demonstrates your level of professionalism and allows you to charge what you’re worth. Say no respectfully if someone’s not willing to pay you what you’re worth because you’re putting in your money and time into your business and delivering amazing quality value, even if it’s a free value like videos or blogs.

Did you always feel that way? You’re investing in your brand considerably. You’re creating this perception of value and image in the marketplace, which helps us support you when you want to charge premium fees and be known as a premium provider of the expertise that you have. Is that something that always came naturally to you? You’ve been running your business since 2014. Was there a point in time where a switch got flipped and you decided, “I need to invest more. I can’t get by with the minimal amount,” or were you always like that?

I had a father who was an entrepreneur and I never saw him. I decided that I wasn’t going to have a business, going back to that discussion about deciding on the business you want. I love my dad. He worked so hard for us. My mom raised us. That was a different relationship than we have as a dual-income family. I came out of corporate working as a senior leader and worked way too many hours. I was not going to be exhausted in my business so I hired a bookkeeper right away.

Before I made a dollar, I hired a bookkeeper because I’m not good at that stuff. I don’t want to ever be audited by CRA, Canada Revenue Agency, for those of you who are not Canadian. I also wanted to manifest that this business was going to be profitable. I hired a bookkeeper to handle all the profits that I didn’t have because I didn’t have any clients yet. That was the first thing. The other thing is that I invested in an accountant to do the books when I had books to do and incorporate the business.

Before I had a single dollar, I was already in the red because I knew I wanted to be able to have the tax shelter of up to five years of not making money and potentially use that loss towards the income. I have not yet had a year with a loss, not the first year of business or as soon as COVID happened when all my speaking engagements got canceled or postponed. Those are the things that I would not begrudge the expense ever. I’ve always had a bookkeeper ever since that I hired that person. The very next hire was a virtual assistant because I’m not detail-oriented. You have to know what you’re not good at.

If your wellbeing matters to you, you better start measuring it. Click To Tweet

Know all the things that you hate to do. For some people, it’s social media. They’re very private and introverted. You detest social media so hire a social media person. Maybe you want to do your books but somebody does your social. Know what isn’t your gift because you’re going to stand in the way of your business success. If you don’t want to do the books, you’re probably not going to work hard to sell them.

Let’s say you hate writing. Hire somebody who can do some content writing or buy an amazing content writing AI tool that can at least get you part of the way there so that you’re doing what you need to do for your business. Purchase the tools and hire the people to get out of your way so that your business can keep growing and be successful. You’ll enjoy it so much more too.

When you look at your performance daily, what are 1 or 2 things that you do that are habits that contribute to the success, productivity and performance that you see on a daily or weekly basis?

We use a Trello board to keep ourselves organized as a team. I use that for my own. Part of it is that things that are on the to-do list get off the list. Unless there is a good reason, I get back to my team within the same day, preferably within the same hour or two. Email zero is my goal every single day so I don’t have any emails that aren’t dealt with. It’s anything that is to-do gets put into the Trello board so that it gets filed.

I want to leave the office with no emails in my inbox. I want to have a minimum of one month of content curated in the queue that I proofread or ask somebody else on my team to give a second look at so that it is ready to go. I never have to worry if all of a sudden I get sick that I will break my promise to my membership subscribers and not have content. If I want to create something timely, I can either modify a post. The most important thing is that it goes back to my dad as my role model of a successful entrepreneur. However, the lifestyle thing is a different goal for me.

I have to leave the office at the time that I said I was going to. For me, it’s 4:30 because my husband and I have a snowshoeing date and it’s a beautiful day. I have an app that holds me accountable for how many steps and what my calorie and water intake are. You can’t lie to an app. What we measure matters. If wellbeing matters to me, I better start measuring it. That’s what I’ve started to do over the last months. It’s a game-changer in work-life balance.

What is a top book, it could be fiction or nonfiction, or anything that you read or listened to that you’ve enjoyed, has been inspiring, motivational or helpful in some way?

I have been consuming books like I have not been consuming carbs. This has been my carb replacement. My favorite book so far in 2022 is Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty. In 2021, my top book was The Book of Joy, which was also the Buddhist. I’m not Buddhist. I don’t have a specific faith. However, the insights there is very relatable content for those of us trying to ground ourselves in goodness, hope, generosity, love, being a high-performance person, a good human and unapologetically allowing us to be both of those things. I have such a long list of books but that would be the one if a reader had to go out and read besides my books, get Jay Shetty’s Think Like a Monk. If you like audiobooks, listen to it because he reads it himself. He’s so pumped about his book.

Sarah, I want to thank you so much for coming on. Before we wrap up, I want to make sure that people learn more about you, your work, your book and all that good stuff. Where’s the one place that they should go to check that all out?

Come over to GreatnessMagnified.com. Join me on LinkedIn because I’m super active there. That’s where a lot of my intellectual property, content and the conversations we’re having are. I’d love to be connected. That’s how we got connected.

Somebody connected us. I’m trying to remember who it was but that’s how it works. It’s connecting with good people and getting new connections. I appreciate you coming here and sharing some of your story and journey with us. Thanks again.

Thank you.

 

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About Sarah McVanel

CSP Sarah | Scale Your Consulting BusinessChief Recognition Officer & Founder

True acceptance is believing people are worthy before they’ve earned it. Imagine a workplace that extends acknowledgment and appreciation to its employees before they even start.

I’m a recognition expert, professional speaker, coach, author, recovering perfectionist, and movement maker of F.R.O.G. Forever Recognize Others’ GreatnessTM. With 25+ years of experience, I invigorate companies to see their people as exceptional so that, together, they can create a scrumptious, thriving culture where everyone belongs.

As the founder of Greatness Magnified, I’m proud to have built a thriving organization that specializes in providing training programs and certifications for employees at large. By being solution focused and resilient in changing times, we can help to build a healthy and recognition-rich team.

Here’s the fact: recognition is the single, most effective, and cost-efficient way that organizations can decrease burnout, sick time, change fatigue, and hiring costs. The reward? Increased employee retention, safety, innovation, and customer satisfaction… and that’s just the starting point. What organization doesn’t need this in a competitive marketplace with a talent shortage?

And it gets better. When you practice recognition in all areas of life, especially at home, it turns even the most difficult challenges and greatest tensions into opportunities to connect, commit, heal, and belong.

 

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