FEATURED ARTICLE

How Well is Your Facilitation Business Working for you? ^©

By Barbara MacKay, CTF, CPF, MS, www.northstarfacilitators.com

Introduction

How well is your facilitation business working for you? Whether you are just starting in your business or have been in business a really long time, it is good to reflect frequently on how things are going. This article will ask some provocative questions and give you starter answers and example stories to help dramatically improve your business or practice. Feel free to share your ideas or ask for more articles related to this subject. The experiential aim of the article is more important than the rational aim in my humble opinion.  It is to inspire you to make needed changes in your life and facilitation practice to feel more balanced and joyous.  The rational aim is to explore specific ways to do this.

I’ve had a full time facilitation business since 1995 (18 years), and started it from scratch again when I immigrated to the USA from Canada in 2002.  I’ve made many changes over the years, and am currently completely revamping it again. I’ll tell you why later in this article. 

In a nutshell, here is the focus question of this article:

What do you do when you are underwhelmed or overwhelmed by your business?

 Let's start with the first one.

A.    Underwhelmed by your business?

What do we mean by this? If any of these questions below are true for you, you are what I am calling ‘underwhelmed’ by your business – i.e., you don't have enough business or you don't find your business inspiring.  I’ll systematically review each question and offer you some tips and stories. If none of these apply, move onto next section B – overwhelmed by your business:  
 

1. I don’t earn as much as I’d like as an independent facilitator.
2. I am not facilitating diverse types of events (clients) and so am a bit bored.
3. My competency in facilitation is underutilized or under-acknowledged.

A.1 I don’t earn as much as I’d like as an independent facilitator

 I remember at the start of my business in 1995, setting an income goal of $50,000 assuming it was a decent amount to earn a living and pay my expenses.  I met that exact goal within $1,000-2,000 for three years in a row. I mentally had “capped” myself to earning that as my maximum amount. I realized if I wanted to earn more money, I needed to set a higher income goal. Sounds easy right? Yet we do not do it. The block was that I was a little afraid of doing this. I assumed I would have to work harder (and I was already working very hard). At first I thought --best to reduce my expenses. But I did not want to reduce my professional development budget and there was not much room to reduce other expenses. So I (anxiously) decided to raise my rates by 25%. That year my income doubled and none of my current clients stopped choosing me as their provider. Surprise! The second thing that helped me earn more was to hire more administrative assistance. The year I did that, my net income increased again by 50%. This happened because I had more time and energy to devote to getting and keeping clients and doing less of things I hated to do.

Another contributor to being underwhelmed by your current income is that you may not have enough well-paying clients. In this case, decide what percentage of pro bono or low-paying clients you'd like to have. Expect that the rest of your clients can access grants to pay you, or set aside the budget in this or the next fiscal year to meet your cost estimate. Your confidence in their ability to do this and in your own value will make this happen. I have seen this consistently reproduced by myself and several other colleagues.

A2. I am not facilitating diverse types of events and so am a bit bored.

You may find yourself always doing the same type of facilitation “gig”. This may be because you are good at it and people see and ask you for that. Have you let all of your clients know the range of facilitation processes you can offer them? Perhaps you need new training in a certain process, model or approach. Once you take it, this might give you the confidence to go out and market something different. You may also not be well known enough. Can you increase your visibility via social media, live networking, or offering regular high-quality facilitation training and free live and virtual seminars related to facilitation? One of my ToP® colleagues, Heidi Kolbe used to offer facilitator cafés (seminars) once a month in her Sacramento, CA office space. She gave me permission to do the same. . I ran these monthly facilitator cafés on different topics in my home office for more than five years. Although I never made a profit on the cafés, it greatly increased my credibility and visibility in the community. It also forced me to learn new tools and processes on an ongoing basis, and gave me the perfect foundation to start selling e-learning modules on my website as a new form of business. Curious? See www.northstarfacilitators.com/products. 

A3. My competency in facilitation is underutilized or under-acknowledged.

If you are an in-house facilitator and would like it to be more recognized, what do you do? Here are three ideas to enhance your credibility and therefore the uptake of your services as a facilitator.

1) You could offer a two-hour training in facilitation skills to your entire organization. In that seminar, you could mention the types of problems or issues that facilitation can solve. This would make you appear to be the expert in facilitation. We did that with an internal cadre of facilitators we had been training for the last year. They advertised us as the experts to give the seminar. Over 75 people attended two different sessions and each time the in-house facilitator cadre did a small part of the seminar. They also talked about their ability to facilitate meetings anywhere in the company. They got good exposure and everyone learned how to be a good meeting participant. The in-house facilitator team gets more in-house work.  But the bonus was the seminar participants now knew basic etiquette for meetings and would pose fewer challenges for the in-house facilitators in the future.

2) You could ask your senior managers to advocate on your behalf to offer in- house meeting facilitation. You draft the letter and ask your manager(s) to sign it and distribute it for you.

3) You could become certified as a facilitator. See http://www.ica-usa.org/?page=topfacilitator2  for details on how to go about getting certified by in ToP® methods. You can talk up the certification process by writing about your experiences of preparing for and celebrating certification in the company newsletter.

B.   Overwhelmed by your business?

 Which of these are true for you? If none, bravo – read the rest of this newsletter. 

I have too many clients and too many requests.

1. I can’t seem to get the support I want.  
2. I don’t have as much enthusiasm as I used to for facilitating.
   

B1. I have too many clients and too many requests.

So you've done a good job of marketing and you done a good job of impressing your clients and now you have too much work. You can barely keep up with the demand. You have 10 to 15 different jobs per month. You also have piles of files on the floor of your office and when you come home at night, you find yourself eating in front of the computer and preparing for the next job. Does it sound like I know what I'm talking about? Yes I've been there and I don't recommend it. The first thing that happens is your health starts to deteriorate, or you start making mistakes with your clients and your credibility goes downhill. If this scenario describes your current life, I recommend you stop it right now. What can you do?

1) Take a sabbatical. Plan it six months in advance. Let all your current clients know you will not be available for your 1 to 3 month sabbatical. Yes, I have done it. This it is not unrealistic. Your clients will come back. And you will feel much refreshed.

2) Set up templates that you can easily access for new and repeat clients. For example, I have dozens of small group instructions and energizers that can be customized for each group. You can also set up folders for similar types of process work. I have very specific folders for each component of strategic planning and multiple copies of typical worksheets that we use in most strategic planning sessions. I can grab these folders and walk out the door and am ready to facilitate a new strategic planning client within a matter of hours.

3) See point B2 below.

B2. I can’t seem to get the support I want. 

Hire more administrative help. This person can do all of your pre-and post-event work. They can keep your e-mail running smoothly, set up your appointments, prepare all your props and handouts in advance, and type any notes into a report. You could even bring your assistant on site with you so that he or she knows exactly how to support you in future events.

Hire or find a co-facilitator for every job. This person does not need to be paid a lot. They could even just be your assistant with no particular facilitation training. Get them to do all the heavy moving of furniture, set up your sticky wall, greet people, the flip charting, create a beautiful document after the fact, or if skilled enough, facilitate breakout groups. There are many ways to use even an inexperienced facilitator so that at the end of the day you do not feel so exhausted. Tip: Never facilitate alone.

 B3. I don’t have as much enthusiasm as I used to for facilitating

Over the years, I have been a facilitation trainer, facilitator coach, facilitator for larger and larger events, or more complex and international events, and been an assessor for certification both for ICA USA and for the IAF. All of these have been an immense help in keeping me fresh and inspired about facilitation. I have even taught facilitation in a law school. That was certainly a challenge (and the students were a joy). But recently due to years of chronic pain from an auto accident, I have been searching for ways to stay in business, not work so hard, give back to the profession, and remain joyful and motivated. Is that even possible you ask?

Each of us will come up with a different way to handle changing our businesses as we grow with them. In my case, most recently, I decided to create a new course on something I have always been passionate about – that is facilitation design. I enlisted two amazing colleagues to enrich what I was thinking and to co-deliver with me – both ToP trained. (No more of my usual DIABY (Do It All By Yourself) pattern- see point above.)  We agreed to incorporate some unusual elements to it such as presence and creativity practices which have been part of my ongoing life journey for decades. I also decided to “green” my practice in two ways. We are building in ecology and love of planet into the facilitation design course content and avoiding travel costs by offering it virtually. I am creating other virtual course series as well. I wanted to spend less time driving to my clients and more time impacting highly motivated younger and diverse colleagues. So I am now changing my business to be essentially a 80% virtual business. It is in the scary stage because I am making way less income right now.  And, I am absolutely loving it. I never tire thinking about creative ways to pass on my love and knowledge of facilitation. I am definitely moving away from facilitating myself and moving toward more facilitation training and coaching.  That feels right for now.

How about you? Which one are you – underwhelmed or overwhelmed?  Can you course correct? What are you doing to re-infuse and balance your facilitation practices?  Let us know. We’d love to keep the conversation going so we never lose our edge.

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