Less Marketing, More Consulting — How To Win Projects Within Your Network with Stuart Friedman

Today I’m excited to be joined by Stuart Friedman from Global Context. This Silicon Valley-based previous electrical engineer with a passion for theater studied at Carnegie Mellon, then started his career in product marketing and sales before becoming a VP General Manager. He had climbed his way to the top of the corporate ladder when a piece of luggage knocked a profound truth into him — literally. After months of stuttering and having speech and cognitive therapy, Stuart realized that the ability to communicate and the ability to process information and his talent for both was not to be taken for granted. Global Context was born, and 12 years later he has been working in all aspects of cultural communications — from the challenges within one organization to the cultural differences that are always apparent, and often the killer, of any acquisition or merger. On this episode, Stuart shares the number one consulting success truth — your network is your biggest marketing tool. We explore how you can make your network work for you so that you don’t have to spend your time chasing after your next client. By using Stuart’s advice, your next client will come to you. He shares lessons he has learned, mistakes he commonly sees consultants make, and some of the ways that he has scaled his business for growth without hiring unnecessarily. If you’ve been looking for ways to spend less time marketing and more time consulting, you won’t want to miss this episode of The Consulting Success Podcast with Stuart Friedman. Building A Business on Cross-Cultural CommunicationsA background of engineering, marketing sales, and theater may not seem like one that would logically add up to forming a cross-cultural communications consultancy, but that was the perfect recipe for Stuart. It all came together during a conversation with a previous competitor. Stuart was approached to do some consulting work, and the former competitor specifically wanted to know how Stuart had managed to take away all of their business in Asia. It was obvious that Stuart knew something that his competitor didn’t, and at that point, he realized that the work he had been doing in studying different cultures and business practices could benefit more than just him. This former competitor became his first client, and the rest is history. Stuart has consulted many high-profile companies, but he prefers to maintain a mix of large and small clients in his business. Bigger clients mean more time and higher client acquisition costs, and as someone who has worked with big-name companies including Apple, Sony, Oracle, Microsoft, and Nissan, Stuart has discovered something else. He has found that the bigger the company and the more accomplished people he works with, there also tends to be a greater amount of blind spots that can limit the executive's willingness to learn and change. Higher up people are often convinced that they’re in their role because they already understand how everything works, and Stuart calls working with larger companies with people such as that a laborious effort. Changing an executive’s mind can be a difficult task to take on, but Stuart knows exactly how it can be done. Winning Business Within Your NetworkBy taking on projects with smaller companies, Stuart has been given the opportunity for greater success with larger companies. Much of the work that he has procured in his business has come from smaller companies that have since moved onto larger companies, and those people have remembered his work and reached out to him again and again. Referrals in his network haven’t entirely eliminated the need for marketing, but by maintaining and expanding his network, he has been able to shift his focus from chasing clients to getting consulting work done....