Q & A from my Facebook Safety Consultant Private Group
August 23, 2021
In this episode, Sheldon answers question from his Facebook Private group. The questions was related to what is a safety consulting painpoint and pricing painpoints. Additionally, he goes over the importance of using a regulatory driver to grow your business.
Keywords: Sheldon Primus, Primus, Sheldon, Safety FM, EHS, Environmental, Safety, Health, Hazard, Workers compensation, employee morale, EMR, consulting, pain points, pricing, price point, marketing, OSHA, regulation, regulatory driver, EPA, Grants
[00:00:00] spk_0: Yeah, this episode is
[00:00:06] spk_1: powered by safety FM.
[00:00:14] spk_0: Yeah, welcome to the safety consultant podcast. I'm your household and promise this is to show where I teach you the business of being a podcaster. No, this is the show where I teach you the business viewing and safety consultant. See what I did there. Hope everything's going well with you. Hope you're doing well in this time of hot, hot, hot late, august. It's been like crazy trying to stay inside as much as possible. That is the plan. Right? So this week I do have something that I want to talk about. Actually what is going to do is truly two things. One I was answering a question ish from a group that I host on facebook, it's safety consultant facebook dot com backslash groups with an s backslash safety consultant and it's a group. I started a couple years back for people who are either safety consultants themselves or they play the role of safety consultant or they're ready to start getting into their safety consulting business. So I'll give you two things that came up and I was going to answer some questions for the group and then also just another couple of thoughts. So hang in there, no kid into it. Let's hate letting this one go. It's just one of my favorites. Yeah, basically wrote that one like a long, long, long time ago. If you guys had not had a chance to listen to the music episodes. Those are the ones that I've done. I've done two already and I think one was like episode 60 something and then, um I think the other one was episode 100. If I'm recalling right? Or maybe even 99 going into episode 100 which was on New Year's Eve last january 1st 2020. What, wow goodness. So that is truly when I was about I was thinking about doing is doing some more music, doing all kinds of stuff. I might, it is all right, so let's talk about what my topic was today. In the topic was answering a question. I posted the group. So as I said, intro safety consultant is a group. It's a private group in facebook. Yeah. I started it like um I don't even know when I started to tell you the truth. I um the idea behind it was this most times you're trying to figure out this consulting thing. A lot of the information isn't available to you. Open source or you're trying to uh find out how people price things or even what kind of services they offer or how is this name? Uh What industry should I go and think what certification has worked good for you. Uh Those are some of the things I was thinking about it. I was like wow, wouldn't it be great if you have a group together to get that information going. Uh So I started it and it's a private group. So you must actually answer three basic questions and the one question that you have to make sure you answer is do you agree by the terms of the group? That's simple, right? That should be right. So the answer should be yes. And if that answer is yes then you are going to be able to be part of the group. Yes. Part of the group like everyone else to be. Yeah, I will let you in. So that is truly what what it takes. So this group stays facebook dot com factionalized groups with the aspect slash safety consultant has grown so much and truly. We've got international membership and once you asked answer those three quick questions, you become a member and I believe right now we're up to let me take a quick look. It's into where 2500 members right now in this group. So uh come on join, get in it. Uh I've always had one of these like no promotion. Uh I don't care as far as promoting yourself for letting people know that you have resources. So the group is open in that way, but if he gets Pani then you know, obviously no one wants to keep hearing about the same thing over and over and over and then you know, we got to take some administrative measures. So it's being my buddy J allen from safety FM. He's monitoring the group as well. And then Travis Costello is from Costello safety in Houston. He's helping us out as well. So the three of us are moderating. So if you want to be a member, go ahead. So this is the question I posed to the group. So I figured let's answer this and just to also let you know the question that I put in, I'm going to read it for you, but it was taking taken in a way that is like figures, people just have to be comedians in some ways, but I think I know what they meant. So here's the question, what is your pain point right now for consulting? And then folks, I said, I'll use your answers in the podcast and find some solutions for you, thanks in the fans. So we've got a lot of likes, you know, which is good. And then I had two questions come in and one person just didn't really understand the question at all and I didn't understand the term pain point. And then the other one that came out was someone who was thinking, oh well maybe you mean price point now. But it got me thinking there are two things, if you were to think of it in the right context that people don't really know how to get over. So when I say pain point, there are some people who they have certain things when it comes to their business and they know they got to do it, but they're not a fishing enough right now to do it, but they're struggling it through and you're just doing it because they have to, they know have to get it done. So to them, that's a pain point and they're looking for any solution that's going to help them either eliminate this job and still get it done or find an alternative that's going to be a little bit easier for them. So generally what I do is when I do come up with people who have pain points such as that, it's one of those things where you got to think of, what is the pain point going to do if it is I take myself out of the equation, I put someone else in who may have more knowledge, experience resources that could take care of this thing and uh and then now I'm afraid to do something else. Is this thing still going to have the same power over me? If I make those decisions, chances are they won't right? So what I am gonna add or at least I'm going to turn that question and this is what is a pain point into an actual question that I can answer for, for this one is going to be, what is the thing that is truly making you feel like, man, I do that again, I know I have to, whatever that is, find a way to make it either easier for you to do it or outsource it in some way there's plenty of outsourcing companies out there, such as and the ones that I've mentioned before and I've even used before on both ends is up work. So that's one where you could be a consultant to a freelancer and people can hire you. And I have been hired through this system before and then I've also hired people through this system. So I'll give you guys a big, big example of a pain point. I had, I was doing one of my websites, I try to do it myself and it was very early on and I had an issue because wordpress what I was using had some kind of internal issue and I just could not figure it out and for us consultant rate our time is our money. So therefore our currency is a lot of time even when we go into our bidding. So here I am spending moment after moment after a moment into ours trying to figure this one thing out. And then I was like, okay, I'm done, I am done. So I truly wrote down exactly what I thought was the issue where I was getting to hang up, posted it on up work and just asked someone who I believe I put um I think I may have put it for $30 or $40 to help me with this one web issue. My dog Romeo trying to say hello to the podcast, he's one of those old man's right now who's barking at everything, but yeah, so anyway, what I ended up doing. Well, not only did I pose this, someone took the job, he was actually on a different side of the world for me and he was able to do it in like a day because when he took the job it was like night time for him, so he went back to sleep, picked up in the morning, 2.5 hours I think it was and he was done, I was working on it like 25 hours maybe before I was fed up. So in that way if you're thinking of your hourly rate times 25 I think it was a lot a lot cheaper for me to go ahead and you know pay the young man who did the work and we perfect amount of time and it was reasonable rate even tipped them a little extra for for getting it done that quick. So there you go. So for one of the questions I had in the group that talked about what is a pain point, That's an example of a pain point. And then also it's given you a solution for that pain point. The other one in the group was talking about price point, it wasn't sure what pain point was, but I came up with price point which is also being point for most consultants not knowing how to price thing. So here's a general rule of thumb on pricing first start with what do you want to make, just you know blank, what do I want I want I want to make out of this job, what is it worth it to me? So start with that number first. Then if at all possible you could do a market rate study that helps because in some areas you could charge more or you must charge less to be competitive. So yes, you've got to look at that too. I'm not saying to pick those prices and just saying it's a market, just a survey. Then the next thing you want to do for pricing after you you do those two things and then start homogenizing a little your expectations to actual market value and get all close to what's an acceptable range for you. Then the next thing you got to think about is all right. What is also going to be the expenses, calculate that really good. Make sure you got those expenses nailed down and then after you figure out your profit. Is that still closer to the number you want? If not then the best thing to do in your your actual pricing structure don't go buy ours, but you want to figure out how many hours it's going to take. You give yourself a suitable hourly rate and that is, you know something that you know that is if someone else you needed to hire, they would charge about this much and then marry those things together that you just did. So you figure out how much you want to make you figure out what the market rate is and then also you want to figure out at that time what your actual hourly time would be and now look at those prices together, Whatever you're thinking, go up, Maybe 20% of whatever that number is that you just came up with and then from there you're gonna nail this actual proposal and explain why you're worth that number, but never, unless you're doing a service contractor, you're going to try to break it down into hours. I hardly ever ever do that. But if it's a contract where it's a retention thing, meaning I'm going to give them a certain amount of hours worth of time in the month that I'm gonna be working on their project, then I'll mention that, but the rate is going to be done as a project rate versus the actual hourly rate. So if you're a consultant, get out of the hourly rate mindset, that's not going to help you in any way you want to think a project rate. So that's my answer to the two answers in my group. That was the question of what is your pain point right now is a consultant. So first I had to explain what was the pain point and then secondly, one was mistaken for price point versus pain points. So we went over some pricing strategies, so let's give you something extra that was not asked, but something that has been in my mind and one is drivers drivers for clients to actually take action. So drivers can be several things. But one of the things I think right now that is a big driver is regulatory compliance. Oh, she's starting to ramp up ep a starting to ramp up If you're looking at the news and listening to what's happening in the US, I should sing, um, if you're listening to the news related to Congress and some of the infrastructure bills like the hard infrastructure, the money that was just being appropriated or about to, I should say at the time of this recording, that means if building happens more regulation or oversight of actually more potential for hazards and Nico downed up, you know, that list, that rabbit hole of thought. Now, what that means is truly with your drivers. This is a great time to partner with some of those agencies that are stakeholders in this regulatory climate, that they may be facing a certain standard that's about to be updated or they're facing some sort of regulation that is coming down. Then if it fits your capabilities, partner with some sort of association that has a large member group number, membership number, then once you do that, you're going to work with that group provides service for their members. And then you could also get the backing of, you know, that group's name saying, hey, this guy is a consultant were even using it. So that will also help you get the most out of the drivers of regulatory drivers that people have to comply with, meaning if they don't look, you get cited or fined or even in some cases it's going to increase the hazard to the point where they could be a fatality or injury or illness that's going to affect your worker's comp and all that stuff. So good on the list. So at that point, if you can address the driver and find a way for you to be um if you could be in the conversation, if someone says consulting to someone else and someone would say, I know the right person for you, you want to be that guy. If everyone starts referring you, you know, hey, I know what kids, all that, you know, a guy then that's going to help you to. So that's the extra thought to this. So hopefully with those three things that we were just kind of going over, I feel like we should be able to capture some of this stuff in the future as far as you know, ask them questions and getting some answers right? It's just a dog. Again. Normally I cut this and get it up, but I don't want to Alright, a great rest of your week,
[00:17:30] spk_1: go get him. Mhm. This episode has been powered by safety FM. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast or broadcast are those of the host of its guest and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within the past hour are only examples. They should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as they are based on very limited and david, open source information, assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast or broadcast, maybe re pressurized, stored within a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the creator of the podcast or broadcast. Children brightness. Mm. Mhm and mm Yes.
[00:00:00] spk_0: Yeah, this episode is
[00:00:06] spk_1: powered by safety FM.
[00:00:14] spk_0: Yeah, welcome to the safety consultant podcast. I'm your household and promise this is to show where I teach you the business of being a podcaster. No, this is the show where I teach you the business viewing and safety consultant. See what I did there. Hope everything's going well with you. Hope you're doing well in this time of hot, hot, hot late, august. It's been like crazy trying to stay inside as much as possible. That is the plan. Right? So this week I do have something that I want to talk about. Actually what is going to do is truly two things. One I was answering a question ish from a group that I host on facebook, it's safety consultant facebook dot com backslash groups with an s backslash safety consultant and it's a group. I started a couple years back for people who are either safety consultants themselves or they play the role of safety consultant or they're ready to start getting into their safety consulting business. So I'll give you two things that came up and I was going to answer some questions for the group and then also just another couple of thoughts. So hang in there, no kid into it. Let's hate letting this one go. It's just one of my favorites. Yeah, basically wrote that one like a long, long, long time ago. If you guys had not had a chance to listen to the music episodes. Those are the ones that I've done. I've done two already and I think one was like episode 60 something and then, um I think the other one was episode 100. If I'm recalling right? Or maybe even 99 going into episode 100 which was on New Year's Eve last january 1st 2020. What, wow goodness. So that is truly when I was about I was thinking about doing is doing some more music, doing all kinds of stuff. I might, it is all right, so let's talk about what my topic was today. In the topic was answering a question. I posted the group. So as I said, intro safety consultant is a group. It's a private group in facebook. Yeah. I started it like um I don't even know when I started to tell you the truth. I um the idea behind it was this most times you're trying to figure out this consulting thing. A lot of the information isn't available to you. Open source or you're trying to uh find out how people price things or even what kind of services they offer or how is this name? Uh What industry should I go and think what certification has worked good for you. Uh Those are some of the things I was thinking about it. I was like wow, wouldn't it be great if you have a group together to get that information going. Uh So I started it and it's a private group. So you must actually answer three basic questions and the one question that you have to make sure you answer is do you agree by the terms of the group? That's simple, right? That should be right. So the answer should be yes. And if that answer is yes then you are going to be able to be part of the group. Yes. Part of the group like everyone else to be. Yeah, I will let you in. So that is truly what what it takes. So this group stays facebook dot com factionalized groups with the aspect slash safety consultant has grown so much and truly. We've got international membership and once you asked answer those three quick questions, you become a member and I believe right now we're up to let me take a quick look. It's into where 2500 members right now in this group. So uh come on join, get in it. Uh I've always had one of these like no promotion. Uh I don't care as far as promoting yourself for letting people know that you have resources. So the group is open in that way, but if he gets Pani then you know, obviously no one wants to keep hearing about the same thing over and over and over and then you know, we got to take some administrative measures. So it's being my buddy J allen from safety FM. He's monitoring the group as well. And then Travis Costello is from Costello safety in Houston. He's helping us out as well. So the three of us are moderating. So if you want to be a member, go ahead. So this is the question I posed to the group. So I figured let's answer this and just to also let you know the question that I put in, I'm going to read it for you, but it was taking taken in a way that is like figures, people just have to be comedians in some ways, but I think I know what they meant. So here's the question, what is your pain point right now for consulting? And then folks, I said, I'll use your answers in the podcast and find some solutions for you, thanks in the fans. So we've got a lot of likes, you know, which is good. And then I had two questions come in and one person just didn't really understand the question at all and I didn't understand the term pain point. And then the other one that came out was someone who was thinking, oh well maybe you mean price point now. But it got me thinking there are two things, if you were to think of it in the right context that people don't really know how to get over. So when I say pain point, there are some people who they have certain things when it comes to their business and they know they got to do it, but they're not a fishing enough right now to do it, but they're struggling it through and you're just doing it because they have to, they know have to get it done. So to them, that's a pain point and they're looking for any solution that's going to help them either eliminate this job and still get it done or find an alternative that's going to be a little bit easier for them. So generally what I do is when I do come up with people who have pain points such as that, it's one of those things where you got to think of, what is the pain point going to do if it is I take myself out of the equation, I put someone else in who may have more knowledge, experience resources that could take care of this thing and uh and then now I'm afraid to do something else. Is this thing still going to have the same power over me? If I make those decisions, chances are they won't right? So what I am gonna add or at least I'm going to turn that question and this is what is a pain point into an actual question that I can answer for, for this one is going to be, what is the thing that is truly making you feel like, man, I do that again, I know I have to, whatever that is, find a way to make it either easier for you to do it or outsource it in some way there's plenty of outsourcing companies out there, such as and the ones that I've mentioned before and I've even used before on both ends is up work. So that's one where you could be a consultant to a freelancer and people can hire you. And I have been hired through this system before and then I've also hired people through this system. So I'll give you guys a big, big example of a pain point. I had, I was doing one of my websites, I try to do it myself and it was very early on and I had an issue because wordpress what I was using had some kind of internal issue and I just could not figure it out and for us consultant rate our time is our money. So therefore our currency is a lot of time even when we go into our bidding. So here I am spending moment after moment after a moment into ours trying to figure this one thing out. And then I was like, okay, I'm done, I am done. So I truly wrote down exactly what I thought was the issue where I was getting to hang up, posted it on up work and just asked someone who I believe I put um I think I may have put it for $30 or $40 to help me with this one web issue. My dog Romeo trying to say hello to the podcast, he's one of those old man's right now who's barking at everything, but yeah, so anyway, what I ended up doing. Well, not only did I pose this, someone took the job, he was actually on a different side of the world for me and he was able to do it in like a day because when he took the job it was like night time for him, so he went back to sleep, picked up in the morning, 2.5 hours I think it was and he was done, I was working on it like 25 hours maybe before I was fed up. So in that way if you're thinking of your hourly rate times 25 I think it was a lot a lot cheaper for me to go ahead and you know pay the young man who did the work and we perfect amount of time and it was reasonable rate even tipped them a little extra for for getting it done that quick. So there you go. So for one of the questions I had in the group that talked about what is a pain point, That's an example of a pain point. And then also it's given you a solution for that pain point. The other one in the group was talking about price point, it wasn't sure what pain point was, but I came up with price point which is also being point for most consultants not knowing how to price thing. So here's a general rule of thumb on pricing first start with what do you want to make, just you know blank, what do I want I want I want to make out of this job, what is it worth it to me? So start with that number first. Then if at all possible you could do a market rate study that helps because in some areas you could charge more or you must charge less to be competitive. So yes, you've got to look at that too. I'm not saying to pick those prices and just saying it's a market, just a survey. Then the next thing you want to do for pricing after you you do those two things and then start homogenizing a little your expectations to actual market value and get all close to what's an acceptable range for you. Then the next thing you got to think about is all right. What is also going to be the expenses, calculate that really good. Make sure you got those expenses nailed down and then after you figure out your profit. Is that still closer to the number you want? If not then the best thing to do in your your actual pricing structure don't go buy ours, but you want to figure out how many hours it's going to take. You give yourself a suitable hourly rate and that is, you know something that you know that is if someone else you needed to hire, they would charge about this much and then marry those things together that you just did. So you figure out how much you want to make you figure out what the market rate is and then also you want to figure out at that time what your actual hourly time would be and now look at those prices together, Whatever you're thinking, go up, Maybe 20% of whatever that number is that you just came up with and then from there you're gonna nail this actual proposal and explain why you're worth that number, but never, unless you're doing a service contractor, you're going to try to break it down into hours. I hardly ever ever do that. But if it's a contract where it's a retention thing, meaning I'm going to give them a certain amount of hours worth of time in the month that I'm gonna be working on their project, then I'll mention that, but the rate is going to be done as a project rate versus the actual hourly rate. So if you're a consultant, get out of the hourly rate mindset, that's not going to help you in any way you want to think a project rate. So that's my answer to the two answers in my group. That was the question of what is your pain point right now is a consultant. So first I had to explain what was the pain point and then secondly, one was mistaken for price point versus pain points. So we went over some pricing strategies, so let's give you something extra that was not asked, but something that has been in my mind and one is drivers drivers for clients to actually take action. So drivers can be several things. But one of the things I think right now that is a big driver is regulatory compliance. Oh, she's starting to ramp up ep a starting to ramp up If you're looking at the news and listening to what's happening in the US, I should sing, um, if you're listening to the news related to Congress and some of the infrastructure bills like the hard infrastructure, the money that was just being appropriated or about to, I should say at the time of this recording, that means if building happens more regulation or oversight of actually more potential for hazards and Nico downed up, you know, that list, that rabbit hole of thought. Now, what that means is truly with your drivers. This is a great time to partner with some of those agencies that are stakeholders in this regulatory climate, that they may be facing a certain standard that's about to be updated or they're facing some sort of regulation that is coming down. Then if it fits your capabilities, partner with some sort of association that has a large member group number, membership number, then once you do that, you're going to work with that group provides service for their members. And then you could also get the backing of, you know, that group's name saying, hey, this guy is a consultant were even using it. So that will also help you get the most out of the drivers of regulatory drivers that people have to comply with, meaning if they don't look, you get cited or fined or even in some cases it's going to increase the hazard to the point where they could be a fatality or injury or illness that's going to affect your worker's comp and all that stuff. So good on the list. So at that point, if you can address the driver and find a way for you to be um if you could be in the conversation, if someone says consulting to someone else and someone would say, I know the right person for you, you want to be that guy. If everyone starts referring you, you know, hey, I know what kids, all that, you know, a guy then that's going to help you to. So that's the extra thought to this. So hopefully with those three things that we were just kind of going over, I feel like we should be able to capture some of this stuff in the future as far as you know, ask them questions and getting some answers right? It's just a dog. Again. Normally I cut this and get it up, but I don't want to Alright, a great rest of your week,
[00:17:30] spk_1: go get him. Mhm. This episode has been powered by safety FM. The views and opinions expressed on this podcast or broadcast are those of the host of its guest and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the company. Examples of analysis discussed within the past hour are only examples. They should not be utilized in the real world as the only solution available as they are based on very limited and david, open source information, assumptions made within this analysis are not reflective of the position of the company. No part of this podcast or broadcast, maybe re pressurized, stored within a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means mechanical, electronic recording or otherwise, without prior written permission of the creator of the podcast or broadcast. Children brightness. Mm. Mhm and mm Yes.
Want to book Sheldon for as a consultant, keynote speaker, or trainer? Book him today: https://bookme.name/sheldonprimus