Moving from a senior HR career into running your own consultancy involves more than transferring your professional expertise into a new setting. You are also learning a different role: business owner.
Throughout September, we have looked at making the shift from HR professional to business owner, building confidence in your business decisions and developing the leadership your consultancy needs. Each is part of the same journey. You bring your HR experience with you, but your commercial judgement, confidence and leadership develop through actually building the business.
The right business owner support can make an important difference. Not because somebody else takes responsibility for the business, but because you have a framework, practical resources and experienced people around you while you learn.
Structure without losing autonomy
One of the attractions of running your own consultancy is having greater control over how you work and what you build. Joining a franchise does not remove that independence.
As a face2faceHR consultant, you are responsible for developing your business within your protected territory. You make the decisions, build client relationships and determine where to focus your time and energy.
The difference is that you are not starting with a blank sheet of paper. From the outset, you have:
- an established brand and proven franchise model;
- a protected territory;
- the face2faceHR PlayBook and practical business toolkit; and
- established systems, marketing resources and processes.
Rather than figuring out every practical aspect of setting up an HR consultancy, you can concentrate more of your energy on building relationships, finding clients and growing the business.
Business owner support that builds confidence
Good support should not create dependency. It should help you develop the confidence to make strong decisions for yourself.
Our Fledgling and Flying Start support helps consultants establish the foundations of their business, while six months of one-to-one business coaching with MindAbility provides dedicated space to focus on the challenges involved in becoming a business owner.
There is also ongoing support from Eleanor and the head office team as the business develops.
That does not mean handing decisions over to somebody else. Support can help you:
- challenge an assumption;
- consider a different commercial perspective;
- identify what is preventing you from taking action;
- learn from experience within the network; and
- decide what your next priority should be.
You still own the final decision. Making those decisions and seeing what happens next gradually strengthens your judgement.
Learning from people who have been there before
Running a business can feel very different from working within an established organisation, particularly if you are used to having colleagues and specialist teams around you.
That is one reason the wider face2faceHR network matters. Other consultants understand the combination of HR expertise and business ownership because they are experiencing it themselves.
Being part of that network gives you opportunities to:
- learn from consultants who have faced similar challenges;
- share ideas and practical experiences;
- gain perspective when something has not gone to plan; and
- hear different approaches to growing a consultancy.
Our twice-yearly conferences provide another opportunity to step away from the day-to-day, exchange experiences and think about what comes next.
You remain responsible for your business, but you are not building it in isolation.
Developing the habits of a business owner
Confidence in business rarely arrives all at once. It develops through repeated action.
You make the call. You attend the networking event. You follow up with the prospect. You review what is working. You change something that is not.
Over time, those actions become commercial habits. You become more accustomed to:
- making decisions without having every piece of information;
- keeping business development moving when results are not immediate;
- reviewing what works and changing what does not; and
- prioritising activities that genuinely move the business forward.
An established framework can help you develop that consistency. Marketing resources, systems and proven processes give you practical starting points rather than requiring you to create everything from scratch.
But the framework cannot do the work for you.
Successful consultancy owners still need to be visible, develop relationships, make commercial decisions and keep moving forward. That requires commitment, resilience and a willingness to take ownership.
Growing into the role
The aim of business owner support is not to remove uncertainty. Running a business will always involve decisions where there is no guaranteed answer.
Instead, the right support helps you become better equipped to deal with it.
As your experience grows, you may find you need less reassurance before making a decision. You become quicker at identifying what matters, more comfortable testing ideas and more confident changing direction when necessary.
You begin to trust your commercial judgement alongside your HR expertise.
That is an important part of growing into the business owner role. You are still learning and drawing on the people around you, but with increasing confidence in your own ability to lead the business.
Building something of your own, with support around you
The face2faceHR model is designed for experienced HR professionals who want to build a genuine business. It provides an established framework, practical resources, coaching, a network and ongoing support. But it also requires ambition, commitment and a willingness to take responsibility for growth.
You bring the HR expertise, drive and determination. We provide the structure and experienced people around you while you develop the commercial confidence and leadership that business ownership requires.
If you are ready to build something of your own and would like to explore what doing that with face2faceHR could look like, download our prospectus or get in touch.