Consultants are kind of weird, aren’t we?
We’re such an odd breed that sometimes I’ve got a hard time believing that’s how I’ve ended up identifying myself, because consulting seems like such a strange way to help people.
You sit there and talk to people for an hour or two, trying to identify someone else’s points of genius, and put it together into a cohesive plan for success – whether that’s a business model or an editorial calendar or just some practical confidence.
So I perfectly understand the question, “Do I need to work with a consultant to succeed?”
But while I understand the sentiment, hearing it always reminds me of what has to be my least favorite story from the entire saga of the Old West wagon trains.
The Donner Party
Once upon the days of the Wild West a party of settlers began the perilous journey over the Sierra Nevada mountains in search of a better life in the golden land of California. But they were:
- Under-supplied
- Ill-prepared
- Inexperienced
- Egotistical
And so they found themselves lost, and then snowed in during a brutal winter in a high mountain pass with nothing to do but wait for the spring thaw. While they were waiting, many of them froze to death.
In fact, all of them would have died of starvation if the survivors hadn’t resorted to cannibalizing their frozen comrades.
An Avoidable Tragedy
I loathe that story with an almighty passion. But not because of the actual horror story. The grizzly cannibalism was awful, nauseating, and morally troubling…but once they were trapped in the Sierra Nevada’s with no supplies…it was what it was.
What drives me crazy is that, like so many things in life that go horribly wrong – major business disasters, online marketing fails – their nightmare was entirely preventable.
The Donner Party had every chance to make the most uneventful wagon train journey in frontier history!
If They Hadn’t Thrown Away Their Best Chance
The Donner Party left for California with a whole wagon train. But tempers clashed, and The Donner Party – none of whom had ever set foot on the treacherous western frontier before – decided that they could make it on their own.
The rest of the party stuck together, and met the experienced mountain man they’d arranged to meet at the last fort.
That rough-and-ready man of the frontier age guided them over the Sierra Nevada’s on an almost boring journey. While the Donner Party was freezing and, ah other things, in the mountains, the Not-Donner Party members were building homesteads in their balmy new home.
Surviving Our Digital Frontier (as uneventfully as possible!)
Which leads me back to the value of consultants in business. Not that we’re terribly likely to face starvation in the high Sierra’s, but all of us entrepreneurs and business owners do face a risky online frontier in our shared digital age.
The internet has opened the door to a network society, replacing traditional success models with new and exciting gold mines of opportunity in business and lifestyle.
Those new opportunities bring with them their own unique set of perils and pitfalls.
Many business owners, entrepreneurs, professional service providers, and freelancers will try to navigate these pitfalls to success on their own.
You might succeed on your own, slow to arrive, and banged up by the time you finally do arrive in your promised land.
If you survive!
What drives me crazy is that, like the Donner Party, there’s no need for all that terrible struggle.
Don’t Ignore Your Marketing “Mountain Man”
That’s how I see us consultants, as modern day mountain men (and women)!
Yes, we’re a strange breed. We don’t really fit into any one category, and the services we offer are a highly unique mix of:
- coaching
- mentoring
- listening
- marketing best practices
- copywriting
- and personalized creative problem solving
Consultants – like the mountain men of old – stand a little on the outside of “normal” life, seeing things from unique perspectives. We develop odd manners, demanding schedules, over-the-top personalities, and more things that are just “weird.”
But are we necessary to your success in the digital age?
Ask The Donner Party!
Your marketing mountain man (or woman) can save you years of struggle, frustration, and risk on our shared digital frontier.
Interested?
If you want a more hands-on, personal approach to this topic, you can book a FREE 30-min trial consultation with me. Right now the only way I offer this access is via personal contact, so the button below will take you directly to a pre-set email.
Let’s get you started on surviving – and thriving – in our digital frontier!