Looking to start your own consulting / advisory business? This conversation with Amanda Schwartz Ramirez is for you.
Listen in as Amanda shares:
- How to know if starting your own firm is right for you - and practical steps to achieve that
- The role of personal branding in building a business
- The timeline for Amanda's first advisory contract
- Why you should ignore your website until you have a business
- & much more
Connect with Amanda through the links below.
Connect with Amanda
- Join Amanda's course on Maven: "On-Ramp to Full-Time Advising and Consulting for Busy Execs"
- Connect with Amanda on LinkedIn
- Purchase the book Amanda mentioned: "Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest"
Management Consulted Links
- Corporate training with Management Consulted - learn more
- Download a free Case Prep Plan
- Listen to S14E6 for more insights on launching your own firm
Transcription:
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
I'm really excited today to have with me Amanda Schwartz Ramirez, a transformational strategy and operations executive and board advisor with expertise in building and scaling high performing organizations. That's what she said. So let's listen to her with over 15 years of experience spanning early stage startups, hyper growth companies and fortune 500 enterprises such as PayPal, who you may have heard of?
Amanda specializes in strategic Operations, Business Development and emerging technology. Amanda is founder and CEO of garden labs, a boutique advisory firm for venture backed startups focused on strategy and operations. Amanda also teaches a successful course on Maven that supports other execs in taking the leap into advisory and consulting. Amanda, we're super excited to have you today on strategy simplified. Welcome to the pod.
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
We're going to just dive right in with the questions, because I want people to get to know you. Who the heck are you? What is it that you do? So just in by way of the background that I would love for you to share with us briefly, I'll just give everybody an overview. You transition from a corporate executive role to launching your own consulting and advisory business. What was the motivation and what's the first step that you took?
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
Yeah, I so, as you've said, clearly, I spent 15 years effectively as an internal consultant to companies that were scaling. So 10 of those years were at PayPal. And during that time, I think the muscle I was building was diagnosing a problem, aligning teams around a path forward, and then essentially building assembling teams and working myself out of a job. So I got comfortable with that motion, and I absolutely loved it like this was my happy space to collaborate deeply and to, you know, hone my communication skills and to really get in there. And so when I left and went into a high growth startup, you know, lo and behold, it was the same motion yet again.
You know, I was in a corporate strategy and operations role, and there were so many things to diagnose and solve and make somebody else's problem. And so I, you know, I felt like, okay, great. These skills are transferable across company stages, and I love doing them. I love company building, and I love collaborating and working with other folks. And so, yeah, I think the motivation for me really was a personal one. I during this time had three children, and they're still fairly young, you know, eight, five and two, and so it was a struggle for me to love what I do, but at the same time, feel like it was a completely unsustainable schedule, and this was really in the high scale, hyper growth context, and I was not ready to lean out. I was not ready to leave the industry that I was in.
I really love emerging tech, and I wanted to continue to hone my skills. And so when I started to really reflect on, okay, what do I love doing? You know, how can I keep doing it, stay on the learning curve, but also regain some of my freedom and some diversification, really consulting felt like the best bet for me. And so I just went in with both feet, and I could certainly walk you through the way that I did that with hopes that it helps others making that same leap.
That's amazing. I do think that a tactical view of what you did first, maybe also just a little bit of a timeline. I think a lot of people have an unrealistic sense of I wake up one day and I'm an entrepreneur tomorrow, and they don't actually know how the sausage is made in between those two steps. So if you were like, look, I got one client, I got two clients, then I left. I, you know, built the following three things. I built this, and it was a waste of time. I do feel like some of that would be actually really helpful context here. Yeah.
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
So it was absolutely trial and error the first year I took. A very risk mitigated approach, similar to what you just shared before I left. I, you know, secured an advisory role with the company that I was working with, which was kind of number one. Number two was
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
with the company that you were already employed with, or a different one, yeah,
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
the company already employed with, yeah, to kind of maintain some some relationship for transition purposes, but also for me to also not have a blank spot on my resume. You know, I'm still engaged here, but now I'm open for business. You know, there's a lot of navigating the market and ensuring that there's a little bit of scarcity for your time, but also that you are truly cultivating opportunities that are in front of you.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
And let's get real tactical, like, what percentage of your original take home pay was that advisory contract? You know, if somebody's like, Hey, I'm going to propose this, what's the, what's the, what's the haircut that you took or no haircut, right? What was it that was the number? Yeah.
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
So typical advisory agreements are equity based, and so for me, that was the the compensation for that period of time was high growth company. Do not want to miss out on the upside for where this company is going. I want to continue to earn invest on the equity side, and that was the goal. So I had, I had that as one foundation. Now I did need cash. So for that perspective, that was really where I looked at consulting. Because, you know, consulting, as you know, is cash based, and I wanted to do both. So I liked the upside that advisory brought. I liked the The engagement was different. It was less in depth. But, you know, you can bring on more clients. So I realized, you know, from that angle, let's do both advisory, but let's also secure a couple of consulting gigs that are in depth, like real work, real cash, and let's figure out how to get those on the table. Super happy. You
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
clarified that, because for many people, advisory is is often in just a different sphere than consulting. It's less tactical, but it's more based on expertise. And so the fact that you clarified in the realm that you're working at advisory is stakes based or equity based, versus consulting as cash based, I think that's going to be really helpful for the conversation going forward. Okay, cool. And then, then what was next? So you took, you took the risk. You left time wise, by the way, what was your haircut on time if you were full time? And then you moved to advisory. Was that a what was the difference? How much capacity Did you open up for your consulting work?
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
You know, it was 90% essentially, of my capacity. And I think, you know, the right context for this conversation also is that I was in an executive role at a tech startup. So a lot of the lens that I'm bringing in is, you know, tech industry and, you know, and I think that is, you know, there's a certain, there's a specific framework for advising and consulting in the tech industry, and I'm operating within that framework, and so I had about 90% of my time to say, Great. How do I essentially bring skills into the market that I can secure some actual engagements around I went to a company that had previously offered me a role to join them.
So that was the essentially going as warm as it could get where they'd had already essentially, you know, vetted me for skills and culture, but I decided to go in a different route. Luckily, I was able to reengage with that company, and that became my first consulting gig. And so it was, you know, almost like a perfect first gig, because they wanted everything that they had wanted from me as a full time employee, but I was able to then say, here's what I'm willing to do as a consultant. Here's what I think is actually valuable for you to take on from an outside person, someone that will not sit in your staff meeting, someone that will not have direct reports, and it probably won't be reporting up to your board.
So it was a subset of those responsibilities, and I had to guide them towards those because I was the first kind of senior level consultant that they had brought on. And so it was mutual learning, but it was high trust. And so I think that was something that I took into the next to say, great. Where else do I have trust and some credibility with folks, but maybe the engagements unclear.
Maybe they have no idea how to leverage me, but we're going to find our way towards it. And that's what my third gig looked like. It was completely open ended. They're like, You know what? We've worked with you before. We, like, just 10 hours a week of you, like, why don't you start, you know, banging your head against the wall on this set of problems, and then we'll figure out what it looks like later, and that took on more of a retainer type of situation versus project based. And so I was both experimenting with consulting structures as well as with kind of functional scope during that first year, and just trying to figure out where's the value for the customer you. And what is something that I want to keep doing in this space?
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
So it, you know, in many ways, entrepreneurship and consulting is like Job hacking, right where you're you're taking on three jobs where you used to have one, which is really kind of what it sounded like the first year was for you. But there are benefits to that, and there are also downsides, and it's not for everyone. So can you just walk us through, from what you have learned, what makes someone a great fit to start their own venture and pursue a move like you moved into and then conversely, what are some indicators that it might not be the right move for someone?
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Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
I leaned a lot on my personal network, and that was hard earned over, you know, 15 years of working in tech. So if you feel like you may be lacking. You know, a number of decision makers in your network that have seen you at your best know what you're capable of, and would happily refer you in to opportunities or hire you directly it may not be the right time. There's an absolute, you know, network advantage that I brought into this, that I acknowledge and that I still rely on today. So I think that's number one, you know, the other side of that.
Number two is, is, you know, actual track record or functional expertise, slash industry expertise. They're different, and not every job requires both. You know, in some some, you know, lanes, I'm only leaning on industry expertise. You know, we're talking to FinTech companies or teams that are building, for the first time with a banking partner in the crypto space. That's industry expertise and and that might take the shape advisory or consulting it, I don't know, functional side, you know, I've got a clear sense now for how I can guide a team, both on corporate strategy, business operations and all the functions that fall out of that. I will not take on things that are outside of my functional expertise. I refer those out every day. I'm clear on what that is.
And so those are the first two things. The third, you know, borders into that second category, which is I was able to tolerate the financial instability in year one. And because I had it, I had the stability from other angles, you know, savings, a supportive spouse, you know, access to health care, those things were in place for me. And so, you know, while there are other folks that are essentially being thrust into this due to layoffs, and have to just work through the instability and that, that path, you know, is, is their chosen path, but they do not have the choice. I'm working with folks like that today, and they're killing it. They're really they are finding opportunities, and they're creating that stability for themselves.
You certainly need to understand that that stability is built into the year one and sometimes the year two. And you know, if you're able to make a choice, and you can't make that choice, don't it's it's certainly not easy to mitigate across all those things that your family needs. And then I would say the third is, you know, willingness to you could call it networking, but a willingness to just build long term and new relationships with people you know, cultivating new relationships, making sure that you know there's, there's not a sales pitch at the end of, at the end of every conversation you know. And most of these things take lots of time, but you have to really enjoy connecting with new people and and just spotting opportunities as they're in front of you, which is essentially sales and BD. And if that gives you a full body rash and you're just like, I do not want to spend time on Zoom calls or take people out for coffee, then this will also feel like a very, very challenging path for you. I
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
I want to take number one really quickly, just to reiterate. I am having an illuminating moment, because I've heard and read statistics. I used to think that the best entrepreneurs were the ones that had the least to lose. They were the earliest in their careers. They were and what you find are many of our wild outliers, our cultural icons are that, right? All I had to lose was, like, a degree from Harvard and so I started Facebook, or all I had to write, you know, it's like, it's like, these radical stories, but, but then what, when I actually read the body of entrepreneurship insight is that people that are 10 plus years into their career are more successful.
And what a lot of the research has delineated is that they think it's because you have an expertise or an industry knowledge. And what you said, I think makes a lot more sense to me, is that you know 10 years worth of people, and those 10 years worth of people have gone to 10 years worth of new places, and those 10 years worth of new places have created a network for you that based on the fact that you delivered something well for 10 years of your life, then creates an amplifying effect you said yours was 15 years, which just is a probably exponent on top of that. But I think that is a really crystal clear evaluative tool that is incredibly helpful. So thank you for sharing that. I think that's powerful.
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
Of course, yeah, you nailed it. That is honestly number one on the list.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
So let's talk about just your favorite day, running your business so far, like, what's when you're just like, I love what I do. I'm so glad I made the move. What does what you know? What does that look like? What was an experience that you had that just you can point to and say, That's it. That's that that really did it for me. This is why I love what I do now. Yeah,
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
I'm lucky in that. I feel that, you know, four out of five days a week, honestly, I feel just grateful at the best days are days where I have time for deep thinking. In the morning, I'm doing most of my heavy lifting between eight and 10am and that's likely in depth analysis of something or building some strategy around something, and that space I need, because the rest of the day becomes, you know, ping ponging between calls my best days have likely around the lunchtime some, you know, CEO level advisory where, you know, we talk every other week, we've built really strong trust. They're bringing in something hard and impactful, and we're working through it together and and that happens, you know, frequently, but you know, sometimes it's just, it's challenging to build that relationship over time.
So when it clicks, it feels like magic. And then, you know, the afternoons I spend time every single day actually just reaching out to folks, networking and talking to either folks that are interested in working together, folks that want to collaborate, other advisors, investors, that act as channels for my business and trying to, you know, connect the dots, share insights, figure out, you know, what the heck's happening in this industry? Why does it matter? And then I close my day by mostly picking up my children from school. And so the variety is what I really thrive in, you know, the the kind of all of the different touch points with different people, all the different perspectives. It just gives me energy.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
Looks like similar structure, different minutia, which probably makes it both fluid and interesting for you. I love it. Well, you already mentioned your first advisory role was kind of the hinge, but then, like, and then you talked a little bit about that consulting practice, but can you actually walk us through the details? What was, how did you initiate the meeting? Right? Just really tactical.
Was it by email? Was it a text? Was it like, Hey, can I take you out to lunch? Did you try to close in the first meeting? Did you put a proposal together? Like, what you know, for anybody who's thinking, I think I could do this, but I'm not sure, just give them a little bit of a roadmap of because once you get one, you can get 50. I'm convinced, yes, right? You're and I tell, I tell everybody, like, I don't really care what the business plan says. I care whether you have one customer, because if you have one, you can get five. We have five, you can get 50. So, so, yeah, tell us what you think about that.
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
I totally agree. Not the first one, though, yeah, so on the first one, it was a LinkedIn message that said something like, Hey, sorry for not taking your offer previously. I'm available now because, you know, I was a little bit of pie on the face of like, Oh, I hope they're not bad at me. But I knew that we had, you know, closed that chapter with, with a lot of mutual respect, and, you know, and it was clear why I was taking the other role, and also I wanted to make it clear that I was leaving. And so that was the first breadcrumb I had learned that they had been hired somebody for that role, which I was happy to hear, because it had already been a long time. So, you know, we have somebody in that seat now.
Oh, no, I'm not looking for that seat. But do you need anything else? Is there another way that I can help you? I know you guys are, I've been following your work closely. I know that you're still learning your way through these things. You're probably experiencing a little bit of that without divulging too much of their strategy. And so, you know, this was the CEO and founder, and he said, Well, yeah, actually, we are looking at those things. And we could actually use another take on that. Can I introduce you to at that time, it was the COO that is, is over that said, yeah, love to meet the COO. Here's the beauty of network now. So that was the initial sponsorship into the. Opportunity, right? I was going to hire Amanda for this, but do Would you talk to her awkward situation, potentially, right? So like all the you know, potential, COO, meeting new COO, what are you going to do?
And it couldn't have gone better, because we found out that we knew a lot of the same people, and we had overlapped at different times at the same company, we had a shared set of values that became clear in the first meeting, and this was just a getting to know you meeting, and it was, it was immediate that we got along. And so after that, you know, we started exchanging some emails. He was very quick to say, here's, you know, three areas that we could actually use some support in and I then started pulling together. You know that part of my process today is I, I play back what I believe the scope is, but not in like a proposal form. I essentially do a scope for input document that says, here's what I believe.
You know, three things are that I've heard from you, they're mostly in problem statements, and here's what you believe the opportunity is. And those are kind of like goals, and we align on that. And that takes, you know, three or four revs. It gets socialized internally. On their side, these are always company level issues. None of them are easy, and we go through that process a few times together, and then on the other side of that, then I had to figure out my pricing, and that took iteration as well. So I you know, then it became more of a proposal mode. I started doing estimates, I started figuring out the pricing, and what does that look like. I came in high, which I think is better than coming in low and and then we figured out, you know, what was the stage appropriate price for the value they were going to receive through the work. And then we solidified things in a contract.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
Awesome. I love what you said, because I think you just really illuminated how entrepreneurial this process is, not just for you as an outsider, but actually for the firm. These are, these are not opportunities that they sat down and thought we would like to hire a consultant for, and we send out an RFP for it. And I would say, I don't have a statistic behind it, but I'm just going to poke at one. I would say it's 90% plus of the time consulting firms are not hired on spec. They're hired based on their every firm has 50 things that they could be doing that they're not doing.
Now, if you're successful in growing and somebody comes and says, I could take one of those things off of your plate, and like you said, you you then negotiate on value for return and and their bandwidth to help complete it. I think that's really helpful for people to know, because you're not just an external entrepreneur. You're actually helping them become entrepreneurs internally. And that's a really challenge. I mean, what you just described is actually a very hard process. It's not easy when you have multiple stakeholders, multiple value decisions, and absolutely no market framework to set this up in. It's, it's not like, you're like, well, well, somebody, somebody who does coding of this type of thing, commands this price. You can't look it up somewhere, right? So, so well done. You forgetting that first contract,
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
but you're right. Once you get once you figure that out, you know you you definitely optimize over time and you replicate, which is certainly what we did. So,
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
so, so just to dive deeper into that, you know, you mentioned a little bit about your personal relationship, but, but I think a lot of people ask the wrong questions too early. They say, What should my website look like and what is my brand? I think that it sounds like you've evolved through that, but what insights would you have for somebody who's asking some of those questions about positioning yourself, maybe it's just in the language that you used, or in the way that you proposed that value initially on what role personal branding and thought leadership play in building a successful practice. And then how can somebody begin to build this? Maybe they're a year away from thinking about leaving a role. What do they do now to start thinking about building that personal brand and the value for leadership?
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
Yeah, and I want to come back to website too after we talk about personal brand and leadership, because I think there's a big trap there that I see a lot of folks fall into the personal brand and thought leadership angle. I wouldn't claim to be great at this. My take is that it is helpful if you put your own ideas out there. And that sounds like a very generic thing to say, but you know, we're so conditioned to just scroll past the generic stuff that pops up on our feed, especially for written content. So if it's a regurgitation of something you've already heard, or just one pity line, it's probably not going to break through the noise.
So I've tried to figure out, especially in the last two years, what's coming up in coaching sessions and advisory sessions, especially with CEOs, where we're going really deep on something that's company impacting, what are. Some of the things that were there surfacing, or that I'm surfacing, and that's become absolutely the best fodder for me for then pulling out stuff and then writing about it, and it's sometimes very narrow.
I had a couple of sessions recently that were all about company values. And what I did was I dedicated time basically one day a week, an entire day, to just basically write everything that I believe should be true about company values and how they fall apart and how they don't get operationalized, and why they matter and what they actually look like in a day to day culture. And I I wrote four posts, I wrote a tool for actually auditing your company values. And out of that, I gleaned probably 12 social media posts, four newsletter posts, a long form blog post. So that became a lane for me, and it made sense, because I do a lot of coo advisory, and company values should be very clearly in that lane.
So I said, Okay, great. Check. Now where I fall apart is on consistency. You know, I've heard from many folks, you have to post every day. You gotta post three times a week. I don't do that. I find that you know, as long as you're saying something that you truly believe in, you're building a track record online of putting your ideas out there, it becomes more of a part of the vetting process for a new client who cares about you from somebody else, or sees something else that you've written, and then they go back and go, oh yeah, I agree with her on this, too. Or I think her thinking here is wrong, but I like the way that she said it. You know, it's, it's okay to not be in alignment with the folks that are that you're writing for, but you know, to just have nothing. I think that actually, you know, increases the vetting process for new clients, because they, you know, takes much longer for them through one on one conversations to get to the heart of what you stand for.
I'd rather it just live online. It doesn't change. You know, here's what I stand for, here's what I think about company values. You want to know about it, here's the five links that I've written about it, so it's efficient. And that's what I think good thought leadership is, is that, you know, of course, it broadens the net of people that know about you, but it also be, you know, it shortens the time frame for new clients to get to know what you stand for. And if they bring you in for something they kind of already know. They're like, you know, how she feels about this. And I like efficiency, so that's what I do.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
I love it. I think that's helpful. No, you said you want to dive, dive on website, or, like, maybe slap some people around. I love slapping people around. So, like, so what's the trap? What are people falling into?
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
So here's the trap that I see all the time. It's less website, but I'll pick on website. It's, you know, I've got to have all my ducks in a row and have everything set up before I go and do this. And, you know, so I meet, you know, executives that are very senior, that want to become advisors or consultants, and they spend three months just building a website, and then all of a sudden, they have a CRM and an ERP, and they have this advanced accounting system and the lead automation, all of these things that are just back office, things that, frankly, if you don't have a pipeline and actual clients going back to what you shared earlier, you don't have a business.
So I really, when I work with folks, to help them, you know, glide path their way into advisory or consulting. I tell them, Don't even worry about any of that, because until you have that first client, and by the way, there's a minimum viable back office that I talk about all the time that has nothing to do with everything. I just said, you don't have a business. So why spend all the time? I think some of it is comfort. Yeah, no, I'm working on my business. I'm doing this now and but most of it is a distraction. It doesn't actually get you anywhere unless you are actively cultivating a pipeline of leads. And that's the more uncomfortable thing, I think, for most people, is they're avoidant on that for one reason or another. So they go to this which feels better.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
I see it absolutely all the time. It's not just in consulting, it's in every business. Like we made this website, like, well are you requiring digital lead generation? No, you don't need a website.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
No, yeah. I mean, I've seen. Full Time, million dollar businesses operate with absolutely a phone number, that's it.
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
I love that exactly.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
That's all it takes. Okay, gorgeous. Well, then I have another question I want to I want to dive into you have a course on how execs can successfully transition to full time consulting, and we're going to this in the show notes. But can you just talk to us a little bit about the course, where it came from, and who you think it's right for sure? So
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
I I started hearing from executives probably about six months into my journey as a after running garden labs and then standing that up and getting going on that and they were all curious about the same thing. How did you do it? What were the steps you took? How did you get your first client? All the great questions you're asking.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
It was a LinkedIn post too. Not even a post message, a LinkedIn message.
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
Yeah, it was a LinkedIn message. Do you mind spending some time with me to just go through this? And of course, I would love more seasoned folks to come into the consulting market and advise companies, because they're bringing this incredible, incredibly rich experience and industry knowledge and network and all the things. I want more of it. I love collaborating. So I said, Yeah, let's talk. Let's do this together. And so then it became a little unruly, because I was having these conversations twice a week. Now, now, and then it was three times a week, and I was repeating myself. So I decided I was either going to write a blog post or I was going to do something more. And I am a very more person.
And so I decided to do an entire course. And so this course is, you know, it's built for seasoned execs that believe that the time is either now or the next. Let's call it 18 months, because some of these things just require preparation and rumination. So it doesn't have to be imminent that you're going to transition, but you believe it could be a good next chapter for you. And so in this course, there are three modules. It's meant to be very efficient. We couldn't do a 10 week thing. We're all too busy for that. The first one is all about defining your offering. So how do you look back on the 25 years that you've been operating as an executive and really glean from that the specific capabilities that you believe you'd like to market as a consultant or an advisor or a fractional leader, which is a slightly different twist on that that we could talk about. And so we do some feedback on that.
It's really stage dependent. I'll provide a lot of the insight around well, this is relevant as at a seed stage, this is more relevant at a bigger company. Find something in the middle. There's a lot of iteration, and this takes the longest to do. It took me probably nine months to get to a point where I could say to a company, I'm your drop in. Coo, I can do this, this, this and this, and that's it. So I want to get them started on that journey. The second is all about, you know, building a pipeline of opportunities. And this will be a more of a network based view I've never done, you know, you know, bought emails and things like that. Like, I don't even, I don't know how to do it. We're not going to teach it. I think there's lots of other courses all about building out your pipeline and spamming people to death.
This is all about, how do you think back to those folks in your network that I've seen you at your best and that are well connected? And how do you really engage them meaningfully beyond a coffee and and then how do you convert those opportunities into really happy clients, not just folks that go, yeah, yeah, yeah. We work together once. And so a little bit of that is pricing and packaging. A lot of that is just good old sales and marketing. And we're going to get into all of that. And then the third is the trap of the back office. So what do you really need in form of a back office? What do you not need? And then we get into edge cases, which are not edge cases at all, but they sound like it. So what happens when the company just wants to recruit you full time, which happens 60% of the time, and you know this, what? How do you actually subcontract with the right folks and with the right structure. How do you partner with other consultants in a way that's really mutually additive? And so we'll get into that in the third course, and and really on ramp executives into what could be a very fulfilling chapter for them.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
I love it. Okay. Want to poke on two of the things that you said. Number two, you were talking about that kind of, you know, that, like, like, you know, building the happy clients and using your network. I just want to harken back, I had this really powerful moment, and I think it's actually on the podcast, and if so, I'll ask my team to link out to this episode. But I was advising somebody who had built the website, and, like, couldn't find clients, right? And so, so I said, awesome. Like, tell me who inside your friends and family circle you have reached out to. And she was like, Oh no, no. I touched zero of them. And I just, I kind of took a step back, like, deep breath.
I said, wait, so what you're telling me is the people who know you best appreciate you most and are most likely to advocate for you you are not utilizing at all. And she just had this it was like the truth bomb dropped in. So, yeah, so I just, I just wanted to call that out, because I think what you said is so powerful that I think a lot of people are thinking about either for reasons where they're risk hedging or or, you know, relationally concerned, or they're they're actually just, like, honestly insecure themselves about what value they provide. They're trying to go way outside of their current network and and I just said, look like you gotta go get your first clients from the people that know you best.
Otherwise, you have two steps. Somebody has to get to know you and love you, and then they also have to want to hire you, and it's so hard. So I'm so glad you said that, but I just wanted to push on that. The second one that I that I just wanted to highlight is, is around who the course is right for. So you mentioned who it's right for. I think maybe a better way to ask this is, who is it wrong for? Like, who shouldn't sign up if you're like if you're like this, or like this, or in this industry, or have come from this background, don't sign up. It's not for you. Who is it not for?
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
I think that because my approach to business building is very much based on personal network and leaning into channels, there's no question about it, building rapport with, you know, venture capitalists and other teams that have one to many relationships with companies, a lot of that presumes that you have an initial network, that you can go to folks in the industry of your focus, and that you can come into those conversations with a high degree of credibility. And so I cannot stress enough that this is for someone that's built that, and it's probably taken you a decade, because you cannot build that over three years. I mean, maybe if you're a better marketer than me, which doesn't take much, but if you are, you know if you're coming in hot to those conversations, but the follow through is not there, or just the skill set is not exactly how you're positioning yourself.
You're not really setting yourself up for success, and the strategies that I'm going to share are not going to land. So I think it really does require an eye towards have I spent sufficient time, either in this function or in this industry, that I've built this track record, and I've truly fallen in love with this space, and therefore I'm setting myself up to come into these conversations with wind under my sails. I'm excited to be here. I'm feeling good. I know I can add value to the companies that I'm trying to access, and it's just a matter of fit and match and timing. And if that's you, which it is, it's many great folks that are just looking to regain their schedules and get a little bit of freedom and diversification. Then this course is going to work. It'll be perfect for you.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
Perfect. Thank you. Okay, last question, what are a couple of just key takeaways that you would want to give to somebody who's thinking about this, right? You said that in the beginning, a lot of people reached out and you were repeating yourself all the time. And I know that you've packaged some of that into the course. But what are the what are the key things that you're just like, Oh, don't do this. If do this, if right, think about this. What are a couple of your key pieces to it, of advice to the audience that you want to speak to today.
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
I like to think about what gives you energy, and that's very woo woo career coachy, but it's true, if you have something that you are best in class at, but just drains you every single day, and now you're basically wanting to do that same thing and but instead of for one company, you want to do it for seven. You're not going to love it. Your day's not going to feel that great. I'll tell you that right now. So try to when you're looking back at your your your kind of pops of experience, and the things that you believe you're you're great at narrow for the things that give you actual energy, that when you start them, you feel great, and when you end them, you feel even better.
I can assure you that there's a couple on that list that fit that, and that's where you should start. And how do you position those things to the market? Is a marketing and positioning question, but at least you're not starting from a point of, I hate doing this thing, and now I'm marketing and positioning it. So I think that's number one. Number two is I actually just want more executives, especially moms, to know and parents to know that it is possible to stay at the forefront of your industry and to be incredibly impactful at the board level, and also have complete control over your schedule. You do not need to just hand the keys of your life over to somebody else and say, yeah, have at it. You know, I wasn't willing to do that anymore, and that was like a very distinct choice that I made for myself. And the trade off wasn't my entire career. Career. I did make trade offs, there's no question about it, but I didn't just, you know, okay, I guess I'm just going to surrender to the fact that I'm going to slow roll myself for the rest of my career. Absolutely not. And so it is possible to strike that balance. It takes work, and of course, it takes just support from your network, but you can do it.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
Come on, Amanda, you and I both know that we're in the lightning lane, and we didn't even realize we were going into it. So here we are. Well, two last fun questions for you before we wrap the pod today. Number one, what is your current favorite piece of content, book, show, movie, podcast, and why
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
I love this question. So I'm big into music, specifically 90s hip hop. And I'm reading a book right now called Go ahead in the rain, a note to A Tribe Called Quest, which it is just so beautifully written. And it's talking about one of my favorite hip hop groups of all time. And so it is the perfect way to get out of, you know, reading business books lay that's the other thing that I do. So I literally, it recharges my battery before I go to bed every night, and it just kind of brings me back to my happy place.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
So that's it. Love it. Okay? We'll put a link to it in the show notes, in case anybody wants to check it out. Second, what is the best piece career of career advice you have ever received? We'll end with this.
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez
Oh my gosh, that one's easy. Um, my long time mentor, former business partner, Bill Scott, used to tell me that you need to go towards the opportunity that makes your heart race and give you gives you a pit in your stomach. So you need both. You can't just go for the thing that's exciting or just the thing that makes you scared. You should be both excited and scared at the same time.
MC: Jenny Rae Le Roux
Oh, come on. Well, it sounds like you're helping a lot of people do exactly that. We're so grateful to have you on today. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing all of your insights. Thank you. This was so much fun.