I want to welcome you to this week's episode of the Craft of Consulting Podcast. On this podcast, I'm going to hit upon a topic that strikes fear in the heart of so many consultants and for good reason because it is the awful, terrible, just dreaded feast-or-famine cycle that is so easy to fall into, not just when you first start consulting, but anywhere throughout your consulting journey. And I'm going to talk about 10 ways that you can avoid getting stuck in that awful cycle.

But here's what I'm assuming. I'm assuming that you've gotten good at getting clients. Now, if that assumption is wrong, then that's OK. That's OK. Because that is the number one thing that you would have to do to be able to stay out of at least the famine side of the equation, is get really good at getting business. And if you haven't mastered that yet, then one thing you can do is you can take my online course: Get More Consulting Business Faster. And it's exactly as it sounds.

And so what I do is I open up my playbook, the exact playbook that I use to get consulting clients to this day. Like I've used it this week. And what I do is I take you step-by-step all the way through getting the folks that you could potentially get business from aware of who you are, and aware of you in a way that attracts them to you and increases their desire to work with you, all the way through closing more deals and closing them more reliably. And then getting repeat and referred business, which is an excellent way to fill your pipeline.

So this course is all about how you get that business so that you can keep business flowing. And then the rest of what is in this podcast is once you've gotten good at that, this is how you manage feast or famine as you go along. And if you want to hear more about that, you can go to the get-help section of my website, craftofconsulting.com, and it will take you somewhere we'll explain all about what the course is and all of the goodies you get with it, including an opportunity to get some coaching from me.

So with that, let's get started on the rest. Let me first start off by defining what that means in case you're fortunate enough to have not been there, you don't know what it's called or—and this is even worse—you've been there but you didn't know it had a name. You just knew that it was awful. So what it basically means is that instead of having a nice, steady flow of work and payment, what you have instead is you have periods where you're super, super busy and have so much work, way more than you know what to do with them. And that's the feast part of the cycle.

And then you have other periods of time where there's nothing, crickets. You have barely anything or nothing going on and you have no cash coming in to support your business in your life. And that's the famine cycle.

What drives me crazy is when I hear people talking about consulting, they act as if this is perfectly normal, and it's just this thing that we should accept. And it's just one of the downsides of consulting. So enjoy the perks because this is just going to be part of your life. And I 100% do not agree with that. I have not experienced that. And I've seen other people avoid even getting stuck in it simply because they do certain things to avoid it.

So I just want to say right off the bat, it is not inevitable. You do not have to just grin and bear it and think, “Oh, well, it's just part of what the gig is. So what are you going to do?” It isn't. There are things you can definitely do.

I'm going to hit 10 of the most important things you need to do to avoid getting stuck in that.

So the first one is don't wait until it happens. And don't wonder if it's going to happen. Recognize that it is very common, and it can be very common. If you do not manage the flow of clients, you're going to hit the feast-or-famine cycle simply because there were not steps that you took to make sure that you weren't going to end up with it.

Now sometimes unexpected things happen, and you'll end up in it, even despite your best attempts. But the first way to avoid it is to recognize that it is possible to be in it. It is likely that you're going to be in it unless you do something to avoid it. And as I said at the beginning, it can happen when you first start off. So folks that are in their first six months, first two years, it's very common that you can have these wild fluctuations in terms of how much work you have and how much money you have coming in.

But it can really happen at any time, particularly if you are not paying attention. And I say this from experience. Because I was a few years into consulting, several years into consulting. I've done well. The famine cycle I had at the beginning was something that I had gotten past. I had some feast problems that I had to figure out how to solve. But what happened is I ended up with a huge project.

So this was an anchor client of mine. An anchor client means this is someone that I tend to work with over long periods of time with several different things. And it's an anchor in my consulting business because it tends to be revenue that I can count on for work that I'm really good at doing and serving my clients. But this client who had done things for over a long period of time suddenly had this huge project and this huge project that was going to last quite a bit of time. And it was me. I grabbed some other people who were going to help me with it. And it was a ton of work. And it was interesting work. And I just dove into it. I dove into it so much that I was not paying attention to the clock, which was ticking down.

And here's the funny part about it. I wasn't paying attention to that clock, even though I set it. So I developed the work plan for this project. I knew exactly when it was coming to an end. And I knew, after it was coming to the end, there would not be much more that I was going to immediately do with this client. I knew that. And I knew that the entire time and still what I did is just, naively, I just put my head down and I started doing the work. I wasn't paying attention to the clock. And then, boom, suddenly, it's over exactly as was expected. And I suddenly had no work because I hadn't done anything to prevent that immediate famine that I experienced.

And that happened several years into consulting. That's just not something you do at the beginning, and you chalk it up to a rookie move and then it's fine. It's something you have to pay attention to all the time. So first thing is don't wait and don't wonder if it's going to happen. That's the most important thing to wrap your head around so that you can do these other steps.

So the next step is, just because you know it's possible, don't fall into a perceived scarcity trap. So if you have a low in business or you look several months ahead of time and you don't see that you have any work, it can be really easy to become paralyzed because you fall into this emotional place of perceived scarcity. And perceived scarcity is essentially when you have a perception, often an unverified perception, that there is just not going to be work for you.

So if you look ahead in your pipeline or you don't see anything coming right now, you assume that, oh my gosh, that means there isn't going to be any work for me. What happens is you can get really stuck. And if you get into that mindset, it's really easy not to be able to make clear decisions and take appropriate action because you're too focused on what feels really intense lacking and the fear of not having business in the future.

That's the one that tends to come up. Other things can certainly pop up, that can be mindset traps, but that's the one that I've seen quite a bit. So it's really important the whole time that you will cultivate as healthy and helpful a mindset as possible. So when you have to take action, it's not that place where you're going to take action isn't filled with fear, and isn't filled with things that are actually going to paralyze you.

The reality is that the actions matter more than anything else. And so you might have to pause and say, all right, I'm freaking out about this. What am I going to do? And the most important thing to do is to verify your assumptions. So if you feel like, look, there's not going to be any work in my market, that's a really important question to ask in your market. Verify if what you're feeling is just based on your feelings or verify if you really are picking up on something and you might need to switch up some approach that you might need to seek some different actions.

So the most important thing is to verify what is actually true, not just what you're currently feeling if you start to panic because you think feast or famine might be coming and then to take action based on verifying what is actually true in your market. Super important. Again, this is a key mindset thing that can get you tripped up. And it can definitely get you tripped up if you're worried or headed into a feast-or-famine cycle.

So the third one, this is actually one of my favorite ones, is don't wonder how your pipeline of work is doing. I have seen many, many consultants do this. And I think I was definitely guilty of this when I first started. Where I was just focused on, oh my gosh, let me go try and get business. So I wasn't in a really deliberate fashion paying attention to what was actually happening in my pipeline of work. So what I didn't have at the time was a good customer relationship management system or a CRM system.

So that's a system you use where you're tracking what's going on in your pipeline. You're tracking how many leads you have coming in. You're tracking what you're doing to warm up those leads and potentially turn them into prospects. You're tracking what it is you're doing with your prospects to try and get business. You're tracking how many meetings you're having and the outcomes of those. You're tracking any follow-up steps. You're tracking how many contracts you actually... Proposals you send and contracts that you actually get signed. And you're tracking when the work starts. And a slew of other things.

There can be really, good ones that actually automate some of this work. But no matter what, you need a way to track it so that you aren't basing everything on hope or panic. Some combination of the two of those is what I see. So you need to have a way, any minute of any day, to be able to look at CRM and say, all right, what do I have cooking? And to be able to look at it and see where you might have gaps that you need to do something to be able to fill.

And keeping it in your head, which is, I think, what I did, is not terribly helpful because you're going to miss things. And I've seen this happen where someone really, really, really, really needed business, lined something up, had a fantastic meeting, was supposed to get them a proposal. And because they were having a whole bunch of other meetings, and there were a bunch of other proposals that they were writing, they lost track of this one. And because they lost track of it, the client was like, all right, guess they weren't interested. Because it wasn't their job to follow up. So they just moved on and somebody else got that contract.

And I will say somebody else got that contract that wasn't as good as this person. And it's a darn shame because the client could have been served better. So at any given point, you need to know how you're doing. And the best way to do that is to have a CRM system that lets you track it in a very clear and deliberate fashion.

So the other thing, and this is, again, all of these are really important, but I really also love this one, is you have to recognize that business development is a core part of your business. So you are an expert in some fashion which makes you a fantastic consultant, but you also have to be a savvy CEO of either your business or practice. And what that means is that part of your job then is to go out and get business. And that business development needs to be a routine part of what you do.

And I would say so routine that it's something you're focusing on at least on a weekly basis. So not quarterly, not twice a year, but on an ongoing weekly basis to make sure that you know that you're doing the things you need to do so that your pipeline of work is going to be steadily flowing, which is ultimately what you want.

And I get it that for a lot of us this isn't the fun part, right? You'd much rather like, ah, do what you must do, get the business, and then focus on the work at hand. But the problem is if you do that, you're going to have to do what I did. Which is going to create a future crisis. You are going to create a situation where you're going to be on that famine side of the equation.

And so what I would say the best way to do this is to really discipline yourself by blocking out dedicated time every week in your calendar. And that that dedicated time is going to be what you use to take a look at your pipeline, make decisions, and take action. And that should be happening on a weekly basis.

And the reason I'm saying block out dedicated time is, if it's just on your to-do list, so you got to do it, you maybe even have a list of who you're going to reach out to, and you have a list of the things that you need to do to warm up some of your leads, it's really easy to ignore it because there are way more fun things to do. And it often gets left to the wayside. And the problem is, again, if it gets left to the wayside, then you are setting up a potential crisis for yourself in terms of work and income.

So I say dedicate a time every single week. I would say at least reaching out to one lead or prospective client every single week makes sense. It doesn't mean that you're going to end up doing all that work and suddenly find yourself in the famine side or the feast side of the equation, but what it means is that you're actively doing something at all point because you know that business development is a natural, normal, core part of what you have to do to be in the business of consulting.

So related to that is that really what you want to emphasize is prevention and management. You don't want to emphasize chance and hope. And again, I say that lightly because I've done that where if, again, you're not tracking because you don't have a good CRM system, you're not setting aside dedicated time to do it, then you could just be like, you know what? Something's going to come up. Or if I need this, I can just call so-and-so and it'll be fine. And that's not really planning for that steady flow of work and income that you need.

So one is, if you have that good CRM system, use it to plan ahead. And that's where you want to do things, like you want to consider what is absolutely known, what is expected, what unexpected things could happen, and what are probabilities in terms of business that I may get and times that I might get paid, et cetera. And so when I project, I project different scenarios. Because if you just project one scenario, the chances of that being a hundred percent true are kind of slim to none. It could happen. I don't think it's going to happen reliably.

So you want to have a few different scenarios you're working with. And what I tend to do is I will look at low probability. So these are projects or clients that maybe I'm still possibly going to do things to try and get them, but it's probably not a high probability that I'm either going to get them or I'm going to get them in the time period that I'm looking at. I then do medium probability and I do high probability. And if I look at those different scenarios where I think about, OK, if I only get my high probability, what does my picture in terms of my pipeline look like? And then what if I get high probability, but I also get the medium probability? What does my pipeline look like? And then what if I do get the low probability? What does my pipeline look like?

And I want to look at that to help me make choices about the best use of my business development time, but also to prevent either ending up with way too much work or ending up with no work. And I will use those scenarios in some of my planning because at the end of the day, I want to be able to say, regardless of what occurs, I've done what I needed to do to get myself in the best place possible, and I know I'm going, I'm going to be OK regardless of what actually happens in reality with those assumptions that I made.

So that's one thing. And the thing to know about this is that the reality is, no matter how fabulous you are, you are not likely going to get all of the work that you expect to get it, or when you expect to get it. That's why playing with probabilities, I think, is so helpful. You also have to recognize when you do this that the lead times are going to vary. And that's very important to preventing and managing your pipeline.

So for example, the time it takes to warm up leads, it's going to greatly vary depending on your market, depending on who the leads are, depending on how you actually acquired those leads. It could vary tremendously. Getting meetings on the books can vary by what's going on, are kids going back to school? Are people really freaked out? Are they not sure what to do because everything's shifting in the market? Or there's big things that they're working on.

It could take several months for you to get a meeting with someone. And you must anticipate some of that, best you can, with the best available assumptions you can, in order to make assumptions about how you're going to manage your pipeline. Getting contracts, starting work, like how long it's going to take someone to get back to you on a proposal.

So a well-managed pipeline actually looks months ahead and starks action early. So based on a number of different scenarios, you look well ahead, and you ask yourself, what are the actions I need to take today so that it will bear fruit, including if it bears fruit six months from now, seven months from now? Those are the types of things that you have to pay attention to if you want to stay out of that horrible cycle.

And then have contingency plans, right? So ongoing and contingency plans where you know you can cover your expenses, that you know that you have a way of getting leads in your pipeline, you've got a good outreach strategy that you can activate, and you have contingency plans for when you're actually going to trigger those depending on what's happening with your pipeline at any given time. So prevention and management. Prevention and management. Never wonder. And then once you know, you prevent what you can and you manage what you can. So that was kind of a big one. That had a lot in it.

So here's the other thing that is so important to remember with all of this. And it was so important that I actually pulled it out and made it number six, which is not the same as getting paid. So you may end up in a situation where you have a feast of clients, you have a feast of projects, but you have a famine in cash flow. That's part of what you have to pay attention to and you have to manage the best way that you possibly can with the best assumptions that you can make.

So because that's true, then you might do certain things to avoid at least getting into a famine part of the cycle when it comes to cash flow. So that is where I would encourage you to prioritize payment models that give you upfront payments. So if you're doing a retainer that is kind of like a subscription service, so you essentially get paid at the beginning of the month for a set scope, for set things that you're going to do that following month or that month that you actually get paid for that retainer. That gives you upfront cash. So even if anything is happening in the project that might otherwise create delays in getting paid, you don't have to worry about it because you have upfront dollars.

Value-based payment is another way to do that, where you get paid based on the value of the outcomes to the client. That often includes an upfront payment, some flat fees or deliverable-based contracts, also can include some upfront payment or payment that gets triggered when certain things occur. Those can be really helpful ways to ensure, just because you hold a hell of a whole lot of projects, ensure that you're still going to have cashflow coming in when you need it to come in. So that's a way to avoid the famine part that relates to how much money you have in the bank.

So number seven is cultivate your network, and do it when you don't need work. Right? So this is, if you do it when you don't need work, then there isn't even a tiny whiff of desperation. Now that doesn't mean if you are desperate that you don't do anything. If you're desperate, yeah, you should definitely reach out. But it's better to do it when you're not really hustling to try and get work because people can really tell the difference when you're talking to them. And you'll panic less and you'll show up in a very, very different way.

And so what I mean by that is cultivate leads, cultivate prospects, reach out and talk to people in your network, find ways that you can actually add value, be helpful. And other things that you need to do to reach out that create a good foundation for when you actually do need the work. And again, this ties into, you might have a really long lead time.

So you might just have a good, helpful conversation with someone where you're talking about things that are happening in your market, or you're having some kind of exchange. Maybe you sent them an article because you think this is something they should pay attention to. Or you sent them a funding opportunity because you think it might be an opportunity for them. That creates a really good foundation. And it may take you six months to potentially get a contract with them because they don't need your help right now. And so that's why it helps you make sure that regardless of what the lead times are, you are always connecting with folks in your market. And then if you need to tap into that for a very specific business, a foundation has already been laid for that.

Number eight, and I know this one is a really hard one, but have to say it, if you got to ask for help. So if you need work, and again, here I'm talking about the famine piece, I'm going to talk about the feast pieced in a moment, but if you really need work because you've looked at your pipeline and you see that in three months, in six months, in eight months, you don't really have anything going on right now, or something happens in some work you expected to have disappears or gets delayed, ask people for help. Definitely go back to former clients, clients that you served well and were very happy with what you did for them, existing clients who may need some additional support.

I would say do that thoughtfully, so it doesn't just look like, oh, I'm just trying to get more money out of you. But do it very thoughtfully to see if there are ways that you might be able to help them. Or ask former and existing clients for referrals to others, making it really easy for them to give you those referrals. You can talk to former colleagues, other people in your market, other consultants who might do complimentary things to what you do.

I've certainly had a group where there's at least a few other folks that I've worked with before. We like each other. We like working together. And if anybody is looking for work, we know that we can reach out to the other person and say, hey, just so you know, I have some availability, or I'm going to have some availability six months from now.

So ask for that help. And then make it super easy for them to help you, right? Like don't ask them to craft emails for you. Don't ask them to figure out how to describe you. Don't ask them to attach PDFs to an email. Write everything for them. Do all the work so it's super low burden and all they have to do is think about who they want to send it to. And boom, send it.

And who gets it on the other side, it's also easy for them. They don't have to open any attachments. If you want to show them something, you click on a link. They don't have to work to figure out what it is that you actually do. You've laid it out in a really clear fashion for them. So make it super easy when you're asking for help. If you do that, the people who want to help you are going to be more likely to be able to help you.

And here's the thing, is even if you didn't do the last step like, as I said, cultivating your network when you don't need work, even if that's the case and now you need it, and you need to help, it's OK, still ask you. Don't have to be embarrassed about the fact that you misjudged your pipeline, or you weren't paying attention to it, or whatever happened. Just be honest and upfront. Don't pretend like, “Oh my gosh, I've been dying to talk to you for ages. I want to know how the kids are, I want to know how your dad is.” All of that, unless it's really truly sincere, don't add it. Just be upfront. If they had a good feeling about you the last time they engaged with you, they're going to want to help you. Just be straight up with them and tell them that you need help. And then, like I said, make it easy for them to help you.

Make it as low a burden as possible. So here's where I want to talk a little bit about feasting. Because the cure for famine is not constant feasting, right? Often, what I've seen is anybody who experiences the hunger of needing work, often once they get it will swing to the other side and now they want to get as much work as they can possibly get because they're afraid they're going to be in a situation where they don't have any work again.

The problem with that is, is that it's unsustainable. It's unsustainable for your life. It's unsustainable for your business. And, in reality, it diminishes your ability to constantly ensure and deliver excellence, excellent outcomes and excellent experience. If you are pulled way too many directions, you are not going to be able to maintain the level of excellence that creates a good reputation in your market. And in your reputation in your market is what stands at the front door of your bank account. Sort of the clearest way that I can say it.

You need to have a bankable reputation that attracts people and makes people more willing to say yes. If you start to get a reputation for not delivering excellence, one, it's going to harm your existing relationships with clients. And remember you do want to get repeat business and referrals from them because that makes your life easier in terms of getting engagements, and allows you to serve them more and more deeply, but it also could hurt that reputation and that can eliminate opportunities to get repeat and referred new business, and it can stop them from wanting to hire you again.

So those are some of the things that will keep your pipeline full and flowing. So you don't want to do anything that actually gets in the way of those. And so if you find yourself heading towards gorging on a feast, just recognize that it can actually hinder your ability to have the business you want and get the business that you want and say no to work. And here's a little thing I would add about saying no. And this has been my experience. Saying no can create a really big demand for you.

So I've had that experience where I've said no because I knew that I could not do the work at the level that I thought that the client needed and deserved. So I said, no. I told them that was the reason. And wow, it made me so much more attractive. Now they still accepted no, and they respected the fact of this is why I said no. But it really makes them respect you. It increases their desire to work with you because you're not like all the other consultants that are just trying to get business and grab as much money as they can.

For some clients, it can be more like an aphrodisiac where they're like, “Well, now I have to get you, and I want you to say no to everybody else.” I've also had that happen. So saying no is important for you to maintain the level of excellence that's going to create a magnetic business that will be easier to have a full pipeline with, but it also actually can increase demand. So that's a really good thing.

So let's do number 10. So number 10. It's not sexy. It's not exciting. I'm just going to tell you that upfront, but it's really critically important because you don't want to face every single year or every couple of years as if you haven't learned anything from the past because then you're just going to keep repeating some of the same mistakes. So you want to track, and again, this is what an excellent CRM system can do for you, you want to review, you want to learn, and then you want to adjust. And this is so that, over time, you can adjust your assumptions, your decisions, and your actions so that every time you get more precise and closer to what reality is going to be, and that's going to be managing your pipeline so much easier.

And it might be that when you look at it you see that it's either your assumptions or your behavior that's the problem. So you might see, you know what? I was thinking that my average lead time is a month, but when I look at what I've been tracking, it's three months. So that means that that fundamental assumption upon which I am making all of these decisions and taking actions is flawed, and so flawed that it's going to send you either in a feast or famine directions.

So you want to be able to look at it and say, OK, was I right when I assume these things? And was I right when I started reaching out, for example, to people? Should I have done that a month earlier? Should I have done that a month later? And you start to learn more about what works and what doesn't so you can adjust what you do.

You can also find out, is there something about some of the clients that you're working with that makes your pipeline more unpredictable than you want it to be? Right? There could be some clients or types of work that are always getting delayed, they're changing their mind about what the scope is, or they’re changing their mind about what the timeline is. They keep adding work that you couldn't possibly accommodate. And you can't possibly do all the other work you have. Maybe it takes them forever to pay you, which creates cash flow problems for you.

Whatever it is, it's important to pay attention to that so that you can ask yourself, on a regular basis, “Am I working with the clients that I should be working with? Am I doing the type of work I should be doing that is going to enable me to have the income and life that I want?” Right? Because feast or famine gets in the way of you having the income and the life that you want.

And so taking a look at it and saying, “Gosh my pipeline didn't turn out the way I expect it to over the last three months, over the last six months. Why is that? Oh, it's because they're supposed to pay me in 30 days. They actually paid me in 90 days or they actually pay me in 6 months. And now I need to decide, is that work I really want to do?” In which case, I have to adjust my assumptions about my pipeline and make different decisions to accommodate it.

So for example, if you do work with the state or if you do work with academia, yeah, they're going to pay you late. I just solved the mystery for you right now. They're going to take forever to pay you. If that's work you really want to do, you build that into your assumptions and you build that into your CRM so that you can keep doing it. Or if it's just somebody who it just takes forever or there are so many different delays, you need to decide whether or not you want to either continue working with them or say no. Or if you want to change the nature of how you work with them so that you aren't assuming all the risks to your pipeline and to your income.

So for example, and I've definitely had this happen to me, there have been some clients who just because of the nature of how they're set up or whatever, there tend to be a lot of delays. And so I would assume that I was going to do work over the next two months and it got delayed two months. So what that meant is I didn't have as much work as I thought I was going to have. And now, the two months we were talking about, I had planned for other engagements, so now I got too much work to do.

So if I was going to keep working with them, I couldn't actually necessarily solve both of those problems, but I decided which one was important to me. Which is, OK, I'm at least going to take the risk away in terms of my cash flow. So I decided I'm only going to do the work with them, I'm only going to do this work because delays often happen regardless of the client, if it's a retainer. So if it's a retainer, they actually assume the risk if there's any delays. I still get paid. I still get paid upfront for what I do. I've actually seen this happen, they will encourage them to stay on track because you're paying me anyway. But at least I'm not at risk that I'm not going to have income coming in simply because of something that's completely out of my control.

And you can also look for those opportunities where you need to improve your systems, or you need to set some boundaries. So if you have clients who take a really long time to pay, not only do you adjust your assumptions, but you also make sure that you build in systems into your financial management systems so that you know that you're not just scratching your head and looking back saying, oh, I thought it was going to be paid 60 days ago. In which case, you have a famine in your cash flow, but that you set up reminders. And you can often automate these for any past due invoices that they're going to get reminders to pay those. Or you need to set boundaries and say, look, I can't keep going forward unless I get paid.

So that's one thing, is just you got to track what you're doing. You got to look at it. Learn from what you see. And then make adjustments so that, again, what you're really trying to get to is that steady flow of business and you're trying to prevent any huge peaks and valleys. And it's going to help you do it because every time you do it, every time you review and every time you make adjustments, you're likely going to get more precision. So a few months down the road, or a few years down the road, you're going to have a much clearer sense of how work is going to flow in and out of your business, simply because you've been there, done that. And not just been there, done that, but you also paid attention to it and made adjustments based on it.

So those are my 10 things. I'm going to recap those quickly. So don't wait until it happens or wonder if it's going to. Don't fall into a perceived scarcity trap or other mindset traps that are going to make it hard for you to make decisions you want. Don't wonder what the heck's going on with your pipeline. Have a really good CRM system that lets know on an ongoing basis how it's doing.

You must recognize that business development is a core part of your business. You have to prevent and manage on a constant basis. You got to know that getting work and getting paid are different, and you have to pay attention to both of those. You get to cultivate leads and prospects and folks in your network.

When you do not need work, you have to ask for help. You got to promise me that you're going to ask for help because there will be people that'll help you. And you have to not fall victim to running after a big feast as a cure for famine because you want to get it just right to make sure you can ensure excellence. And then track, review, learn, and adjust. That is number 10.

So if you do these things, you are going to be able to avoid most instances of feast or famine. Or if something truly unexpected happens, like COVID, and you find yourself in a situation you didn't expect to be in, you've got everything you need at your fingertips to be able to quickly adjust, and plan, and make sure that you are going to be OK no matter what.

So this has been lovely. I love sharing this with you because, again, it's not inevitable. Just because we're consultants doesn't mean that we have to fall prey to this. So thank you so much. And I'll see you on the next episode.

Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the Craft of Consulting Podcast. I want to ask you to do actually three things. If you enjoyed this episode or if you've enjoyed any of my other ones, hit subscribe. I got a lot of other great guests that are coming up and a lot of other great content and I don't want you to miss anything. But the other two things that I'm going to ask you to do is, one is, if you have any comments, so if you have any suggestions or any kind of feedback that will help make this podcast more helpful to more listeners, please include those.

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So as always, you can go and get more wonderful information and tools at craftofconsulting.com. Thanks so much. I will talk to you on the next episode. Bye-bye.