Success Mindset For Consulting Founders (Consulting Mindset)

How does a high 6 or 7-figure consulting business owner think?

At Consulting Success, we teach consultants about more than how to get more clients, raise your fees, or build a team.

At the foundation of your business is your consulting mindset: how you think and make decisions.

Everything you do stems from what’s going on between your ears. Your actions are the echo of your thoughts.

The exciting part? You can recalibrate your thinking to resonate with success. It’s a skill you can learn and hone.

In this article, you’ll learn…

• What a successful consulting mindset looks like;
• Actionable steps to improve your mindset;
• Consulting mindset stories, examples, and mental models;
• The power of networking: immersing yourself in the right company to mold your mindset.

By nurturing your consulting mindset, you can cultivate the art of thinking, behaving, and ultimately winning, like the best consulting business founders in the world.

Ready? Let’s dive in…

By nurturing your consulting mindset, you can cultivate the art of thinking, behaving, and ultimately winning, like the best consulting business founders in the world.

What Is A Successful Consulting Mindset?

Let’s decode ‘mindset’.

Your mindset is your habitual thoughts, attitudes, and the way you approach situations.

Now, swap ‘situations’ with ‘your consulting business’: that’s your ‘consulting mindset’.

Mindsets are not one-size-fits-all.

A great example is the contrast between a growth and a fixed mindset.

A consultant with a growth mindset believes they can evolve and improve their current skills and capabilities. They’re not afraid of challenges or risks. They understand that growth lies beyond their comfort zone.

On the other hand, a consultant with a fixed mindset perceives their skills and capabilities as set in stone and limited. They shy away from risks and challenges, preferring the cozy corners of their comfort zone.

Let’s illustrate this with two consultants: Adam and Samantha. As you read their thoughts, think about who embodies a growth mindset and who has a fixed mindset.

How Adam Thinks

• “I’m a disaster at sales. I just don’t have it in me. Why even bother trying to improve?”
• “Failure? It’s humiliating. I’d rather play it safe than risk making a fool of myself.”
• “They got promoted? It must be sheer luck. Their hard work had nothing to do with it.”
• “I’ve always been hopeless at public speaking. It’s a talent you’re born with, and I clearly wasn’t.”
• “The economy is in dire straits. I should play safe. That’s what everyone else seems to be doing.”

How Samantha Thinks

• “Right now, I may not grasp this concept, but with time and persistence, I will.”
• “Mistakes are stepping stones to success. I welcome challenges; they’re my best teachers.”
• “Success is the fruit of hard work and persistence. I respect and learn from others’ achievements.”
• “Public speaking can be mastered with practice and learning. I am committed to honing this skill.”
• “The economy is in a downturn, but that spells opportunities for me. While others play safe, I choose to seize the moment and build for the future.”

Reading their thoughts, can you sense that Adam and Samantha will achieve different outcomes?

How might their thoughts translate into their actions — and ultimately, their success?

Samantha is more likely to outshine Adam purely based on her thought process.

And here’s the kicker: like any trait, your mindset isn’t cast in stone. You can improve it!

How To Improve Your Consulting Mindset

Now, I’ll share some practical strategies to enhance your mindset.

As you read this section, reflect on your typical thought process.

Recognizing your own thinking patterns is the first step towards consciously shaping them for success.

1. Think Long-Term Instead Of Short-Term

Success in business is almost always a long-term game!

Remember the marshmallow test from childhood?

A child is given one marshmallow now or the promise of two if they can wait 15 minutes.

This Stanford experiment underscored the power of delayed gratification. And those who could wait longer generally had more successful life outcomes.

In the world of consulting, a long-term mindset is mandatory if you want to succeed.

Thinking long-term helps you stay the course, undeterred by the inevitable short-term challenges. A long-term mindset gives you a definite plan, one that keeps you moving forward despite short-term setbacks.

On the other hand, short-term thinkers tend to throw in the towel too soon, chasing quick rewards over lasting success. They seek immediate gratification. When times get tough, they take the easy way out.

As a consulting business owner, create a bias in yourself to think long-term.

Sure, it’s going to be time-consuming and uncomfortable to reach out to clients, create content, and put yourself out there — but in the long term, all of the actions will benefit you and your business.

2. Act As The Person You Want To Be, Not Who You Are Now

To build a thriving consulting business, you must think and act and make decisions as your future self – the successful consulting business owner you aspire to be.

Many consultants fall into the trap of making decisions rooted in fear based on their current circumstances and current way of “being”.

But the winning mindset lies in action and decision-making modeled after the successful person you’re aiming to become.

For instance, you might be hesitant to delegate tasks to an administrative assistant despite knowing it would free you up for higher-value work.

The successful version of you would make the hire, trusting that this will ultimately lead to greater leverage and business growth.

The future version of you makes different moves than the current version of you.

So, choose to make the moves that the future version of you would make — and you’ll begin reaping those greater rewards.

Recognizing your own thinking patterns is the first step towards consciously shaping them for success.

3. Lean Into Discomfort

Discomfort and growth are synonymous. The faster you embrace it, the faster you’ll be able to grow — both personally and in business.

Moving into a new version of yourself is never going to be comfortable, because you’re venturing into new, unknown territory.

When you learn how to reframe this anxiety as excitement, you’ll seek out new experiences and challenges, and benefit from the growth that comes.

Successful consulting business owners don’t shy away from challenges. They seek them. They understand that those challenges are what help them level up.

This could mean…

• Raising your fees by switching to value-based pricing instead of charging by the hour
• Spending 25 minutes each day to reach out to people who you’d like to work with
• Putting yourself out there by sharing your ideas and expertise through content, video, or audio
• Attending a networking or conference that is full of your ideal clients
• Organizing and running a presentation or workshop where you’ll be speaking in front of potential clients

These steps may feel uncomfortable initially, but they’re catalysts propelling your business forward.

Embrace the discomfort and you’ll witness exponential personal and professional growth.

4. Invest In Your Growth

If you’re coming from a corporate job and have been on a salary your whole life, it’s natural that you tend to have a scarcity mindset.

You have a fixed amount of income, and everything is a cost.

However, as an entrepreneurial consultant and successful business owner, it’s critical to understand the difference between costs and investments.

When you spend your money on something and it doesn’t save you time or help you make more money, it’s a cost.

When you spend your money on something that DOES save you time or money, it’s an investment.

For example, if you invest into coaching and mentorship that helps you win more consulting clients, it’s not a cost. It’s an investment.

Here’s a simple exercise to help you think through this.

Would you spend $1000 on a course if it helped you win a $10,000 dollar client?

That’s a 10X return on your investment — one that you’ll almost never get through traditional finance investments like stocks or bonds.

Learning to allocate your money to investments that will help you grow is crucial as an entrepreneur.

I can personally attest to this, as we’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on coaching and programs and we continue to invest today – in fact it’s one of our company core principles or values

And what we’ve learned from these investments has been one of the single biggest factors in the company’s growth over the years. You need to surround yourself with and learn from people that are already doing what you want to be doing.

There’s a reason why all-time greats in any field (sports, business, writing, etc) invest in coaching to improve their results. It’s because they understand the right coaching and investments will help take them to the next level of who they are wanting to become – and much faster too!

People who don’t invest in themselves and their businesses fail to do so because they are stuck in the employee or small business owner mindset. They fail to differentiate between spending money on things that will help them make more money and things that won’t.

So, if you want to speed up your personal and business growth, invest in people, programs, courses, and coaching that know how to take you to that next level.

You need to surround yourself with and learn from people that are already doing what you want to be doing.

Consulting Mindset Examples & Mental Models

Here are examples of some of the consultants in our community and how they’ve leveled up their consulting mindset.

1. A. Nic Campbell

A. Nicole Campbell’s advisory firm, Build Up Advisory Group, specializes in strengthening the organizational infrastructure of nonprofit and philanthropic organizations.

When she first started her consulting business, she was dealing with a few challenges:

• Gaining clarity around her ideal client profile
• Creating specific offerings for her ideal clients
• Setting profitable fees not based on hours worked

At the root of these challenges was her mindset: she was bogged down by an endless process of refinement.

But through our Clarity Coaching Program, we taught Nic the mindset of taking imperfect action.

Instead of endless planning and tweaking, Nic began taking relentless action toward solving her problems and reaching her goals.

This mindset freed her from perfectionism. And, as a result, she doubled her number of clients — and her consulting business continues to grow past the 7-figure mark.

As Nic says: “When you’re starting out in business, you question yourself a lot. Consulting Success® gave me the confidence to be authentically who I am, and they’ve provided the support and resources to set me up for success.”

2. Tony Velasquez

Tony Velazquez is the CEO of Angelus Advisors, which provides guidance on ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software for large-scale Fortune 500 companies.

In his previous career, Tony spent more than twenty-five years in project management, with the last ten years dedicated solely to implementing a specific ERP platform. When he decided to step out on his own as a solo consultant, he was taken aback by all of the challenges he had to deal with as an independent consultant.

Tony knew how to deliver his expertise and solve problems for his clients — but how would he build an entire business around that?

Throughout the Clarity Coaching Program, Tony learned how to clarify his business goals — and align all of this energy toward achieving those goals.

Sure, we helped him with all of the practical stuff: structuring his offerings, communicating his value, and refining his messaging.

But most importantly, we taught him to think like a consulting business founder — and not just a consultant.

As a result, not only has Tony increased his revenue by 2.5X, he’s grown beyond a solo consultancy to building a consulting firm by adding full-time employees.

Now, he can put together customized teams made up of both his own employees and subcontractors to provide exactly the kind of help individual clients need.

According to Tony, “Working with Consulting Success has been great. They’ve taught me so much about the importance of setting aside time for learning and training, and they’ve given me the opportunity to connect with other consultants. As a result, I am constantly improving. If you’re a consultant who wants to structure your business and grow, then I highly recommend Consulting Success. Even if you’re not a consultant yet, but you’re thinking about it, they can ‘light the way’ through their coaching and training programs. And you’ll meet some really nice people, too.”

3. Damien Wilpitz

Through his business, Experimental Design Consulting, Damien Wilpitz is a consultant for biomedical research scientists, helping them with the business side of their research so they can stay focused on the science. As such, he creates business management strategies that are adaptable, teachable, and, perhaps most importantly, don’t require an experienced lab manager.

Like many consultants, Damien was a subject matter expert. However, he lacked confidence when it came to selling his expertise and charging based on the value he was creating for his clients.

In the Clarity Coaching Program, we focused on helping Damien build up his confidence in everything he did.

He began framing his value proposition in a way that communicated the long-term value of his services.

He stopped charging by the hour, and instead, charged based on the value he was creating for his clients.

Instead of charging $10K, he began charging $35K-$60K per project.

The best part? His clients happily accepted his new rate — all while he was spending fewer hours per project.

Developing your confidence as an entrepreneur and consultant is one of the most powerful ways to get the results you desire.

Here’s a statement from Damien sharing his newfound results: “I decided to level up again by investing in the coaching program. I was able to land $30K in client contracts which easily was more than 3x my investment. I anticipate making so much more throughout the year with the tools that I invested in.”

Level Up Your Consulting Mindset & Business

Improvement in your consulting business fundamentally begins with a shift in your mindset and then action based on that mindset.

Unless you learn how to properly think about marketing, fees, and offers, you’ll be stuck with thought patterns that don’t serve you as an entrepreneurial consultant.

The best way to improve your consulting mindset is to surround yourself with other like-minded consulting business founders who are committed to growing themselves and their businesses.

We’ve been building this community for the last 13 years: our Clarity Coaching Program.

In our Clarity Coaching program, we’ve helped over 850 consultants to build a more strategic, profitable, and scalable, consulting business. Those consultants now make up our community, and are more than happy to share their knowledge and experiences with you.

We’ll work hands-on with you to develop a strategic plan and then dive deep and work through your ideal client clarity, strategic messaging, consulting offers, fees and pricing, and business model optimization, and help you to set up your marketing engine and lead generation system to consistently attract ideal clients.

You’ll also get access to our community functions, which include a private forum, weekly discussions, live events, and many more.

Learn more about Clarity Coaching by clicking here — and get in touch to talk about your situation and goals.