PICA Member Spotlights
Q&A with independent consultants who successfully “made the leap” and created the consulting career of their dreams
Q: Could you please introduce yourself and tell us the name of your business and your consulting specialty?
A: I am Bill Hefferman of Bill Hefferman Consulting. My specialty is in helping leaders and organizations adapt more readily to change, uncertainty, chaos, and adversity by becoming more resilient and building resilient, adaptable cultures and teams.
Q: That's a very distinct niche. How did you get into this line of work?
A: I had just been hired at a large Northwest high-tech company doing change management. Back in 2001, the business world, particularly in tech, was in the middle of the dot-com implosion. This very large company was also in the middle of the dot-com implosion. I was the organization development person for this new business group that was shutting down several businesses. My normal tools and tricks, principles and practices for change management weren’t really meeting the needs of the poor people who were getting redeployed and losing their jobs. I was talking about this with a fellow organization development internal consultant and she said, “Well, do you know about resilience?” I said, “Well, yeah, we all kind of know about resilience.” She said, “No, no, there's a practice and a discipline and there's a guy here in Portland, a resilience expert named Al Siebert; and she introduced me to him. I bought his book and read it. I reached out and he became somewhat of a mentor and really got me into this whole thing. I had long been a student of the human condition, I was a practicing Buddhist at that time of 20 plus years. I was in the Peace Corps in Nepal where I became deeply interested in the human condition and what it means to be human and how we adapt to change. When I started getting into resilience I realized it was almost like the missing link in change and transition management because it asks not what can we do for the people going through change and adversity, but what is it about humans that allows them to thrive and grow in the midst of change and adversity. And also how can we better enable and inspire people to bring their inherent capabilities of resilience and resourcefulness and adaptability to the game? So that became a focus of mine while I worked at this company for the next 11 years. From that work and my work beyond that time, I became known as ”the Resilience Guy.”
Q: So you left a big firm a big consulting firm. Why did you decide to become a solopreneur instead of joining another firm?
A: I left a firm at the ripe old age of 64 and a half, and I had already been talking with my retirement advisors about what I was going to do when I finished my next ‘paycheck job.’ The plan was always to become a solopreneur around the age of 65 and it was just accelerated a tiny bit through experiencing a layoff that hit about 4,000 of us in that large consulting firm. I took it as a sign from the universe to start my own thing. At that point, I had to choose between “Do I go try to get another job with another consulting firm or do I do my own thing?” I had already been talking about this for probably five or six years. And then there was just the very real possibility that as a 64 and a half year old person, that it was going to be challenging for me to join another large consulting firm. And then honestly, there was just the prospect of I've been doing this for 30 plus years and the idea of going back into an organizational structure with time sheets and needing to account for what I'm doing every hour of the day and justify my existence at the end of the week, I was kind of done with doing that.
Q: So how do you primarily spend your time now that you're a solopreneur?
A: It's interesting. I have my core objectives around authentic publication, meaningful connection with people, and then building a speaking business, and all the infrastructure stuff that goes with that. I have to remember that it’s not activity for activity's sake. It’s all ultimately in service of being able to do what I do and to have an impact on the people. My purpose is to increase the raw tonnage of resilience and adaptability in the world over the course of my lifetime. What I've seen and heard from people going through these difficult changes and uncertainty is that having some of these principles and practices of resilience and adaptability and these brain-based, science-based tools and techniques is almost like giving bottled oxygen to a suffocating person..
Q: So instead of retirement, you've chosen to set up your own business and do a little bit of giving back to the world, not just making a living. Is that right?
A: It is true. I know there's a question about how I deal with the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt). And, you know, there's no small amount of FUD in trying to do what I'm doing. During this first year of being in business more often than not I'm probably awake at three in the morning in a panic wondering how I’m going to do this. I've worked with a business coach for much of the last year, probably for nine months and I finally said, “I think I'm good, I know what I need to know and I just need to do it.” But the coach was very helpful. I remember one time he was telling me to just remember my purpose and remember the impact that I'm trying to have. That's really my mission. And so I have to remember the mission and my desired impact on the world and that really helps me in a tremendous way to deal with the FUD.
So, yes, I chose not to retire. Because of my expertise around resilience and adaptability, I do all sorts of research on what it means to be a human being, how do we age well, and how do we thrive through uncertainty. Everything I know about aging well and all my great role models for aging well, including my father-in-law, who taught as a substitute teacher until he was 90 years old, says that a rolling stone gathers no moss and to have that purpose is probably the best elixir of youth. I just really want to serve and it's sort of a selfish altruism because I know that by giving that I'm also giving to myself.
Q: What was one of the first things you did to get started or how did you get started?
A: It was serendipitous. As I was leaving that large consulting firm, I was chatting it up with an old colleague of mine from the prior consulting firm and asking what he was doing. He said, “I've retuned the purpose of my business towards supporting solopreneurs to launch their businesses.” This was my second go at solopreneurship. I got laid off back in 2012 and I tried to do my own thing for a while, but I really tried to do it all on my own without any help. Let's just say that when I was cold called off of my LinkedIn profile and offered a job I tried not to sound too excited, because I was running out of money. One of the big lessons from that was to get help. Don't try to do this on your own, which is also why I joined the PICA Solo Consulting Bootcamp.
Q: So when you launched your business, you were working with a business coach and then you also did the PICA Solo Consulting Bootcamp. Can you explain to people what some of the differences were between working with a coach and doing the bootcamp?
A: There's some overlap. But in general I'd say that the PICA Bootcamp provided the nuts and bolts and the owner's manual. It was like, “here are the building blocks that you need to put in place, the very practical, tangible things that you need to do. Now, on top of that, it was a lot of what the business coach was also providing, which was more on a philosophical level and that higher abstract level of what are you offering the world and what are your core competencies and how do you want to do that. But then translating that into the bricks and mortar of actually putting everything in place, like getting your business license and getting your LLC together, those are the parts where I felt that PICA really provided tremendous value.
Q: So even with the coach and the PICA Bootcamp what has surprised you most in this first year of business?
A: How challenging it is. I think a lot of people get into independent consulting with their expertise, and the fact that they’re really awesome at doing this thing. What we all tend to not be so awesome about, or know very much about at all, is business development, marketing, how do you build a pipeline, how do you get business, etc. Honestly, that has continued to be a challenge. I've learned a ton over the last year, but it's almost taken me this long to get to the point where I sort of have that head slapping moment where I go, ‘Oh, now I get it. Okay, these are the parts and pieces. These are the mechanics of it. These are the things that I need to do.’ I feel like I'm very clear on that now. And now it's largely about execution. If I had to do it over, or if I might advise people from the beginning, I would suggest to do it your eyes wide open, with regard to your financial needs, your burn rate, and where your cash is coming from. There are all sorts of skills and tools that I have that I didn’t necessarily want to do, but if I had to do it over again I probably would have realized that I needed to take a short term gig as a project manager or a change manager, even though that’s not what I wanted to do long-term. I think it would have helped me deal with some of the FUD that I experienced.
Q: Have you considered doing any subcontracting to help with cashflow?
A: I have been exploring that and will continue to do so. I have come to realize that there are many different possible sources of revenue ¾ consulting, teaching, designing, coaching. But there’s a big part of me that feels like I have an important offering and a clear vision of the impact that I can have on the world of organizations going through change and transformation. And I really want to go all in on that, to pursue that. Along the way, I have found that my sweet spot, where my message really resonates, is with leaders and their teams going through big change, challenge and uncertainty. They often start out not really getting the value of “resilience and adaptability,” but as we get into it and as they gain some beneficial principles and practices and start to apply them to themselves, I can see the light bulbs go on, as they gain some space from their anxiety and worry and start to lean into more positive, resourceful mindsets and practices.
Q: Is there a personal quote or a saying that you use when the FUD monster gets in your head and wants to eat away at your self-confidence or do you have a mantra that keeps you going?
A: It's more of a mini-resilience process that I run through in my head and it's one that I sort of patched together from several different frameworks or methodologies but it's kind of based on acceptance and commitment therapy. It's not about just being positive, like sort of trying to dampen down those FUD monsters and trying to spray them with positivity, because that doesn't work for a number of reasons, neurological and otherwise. It’s more about being able to be aware of that and be able to step back from those FUD monsters and say, ‘Okay, I see you, I get it. This is what's going on for me.’ And then to practice acceptance around that and to acknowledge it. Basically to de-fuse your identity from this monster. And then to turn your attention to, what am I committed to, what are my core values, what is the impact I'm trying to have in the world? And then move towards that, move towards creating what it is that you want to create. So one of the mantras that I use is to ask myself “What do I want to create today? What do I want to create right now?” It may not be a tangible thing. It may be that I want to create a sense of optimism and confidence going forward. Then the question is, “How do I do that?” That might be taking a walk or listening to an inspiring podcast or meditation. I just focus on what I want to create and that has helped me tremendously.
Q: How can people find out more about you and as a result of maybe even following you, learn more about resilience?
A: I have a new website that has some of my material there that they can access and then also on my LinkedIn. In the header on my website one of the tabs up top is the “LRQ assessment,” which stands for the “Leadership Resilience Quotient.” It’s a 28-item assessment that I built with a number of other experts in the field to measure performance of leadership behaviors that fosters resilience and adaptability in organizations. People can either bring their leader clients to that, if they're not leaders themselves, or people who are in a leadership position can also take that assessment. When you get to the assessment, you'll receive a report back and that in and of itself is very instructional. And once the assessment is completed people will then get an invitation to schedule some free time with me on my Calendly link and talk about their assessment results.
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