PICA Member Spotlights

Q&A with independent consultants who successfully “made the leap” and created the consulting career of their dreams

 

Q: Please introduce yourself and tell us about your business.

A: My name is Kathy Krul-Manor and my business is KKM Leadership LLC. We specialize in helping companies prepare for the new world of work. If we take that down another layer, we are focused on building critical leadership capabilities to enable success and partnering with leaders to create human-centered organizational cultures.

Q: How long have you been independent? 

A: I registered my LLC in July, 2020. I started with only executive coaching and then branched out to include Human Capital Advisory services. 

Q: There are a lot of PICA members who are interested in doing both coaching and consulting. Tell the PICA community a little bit about how you do both.

A: My portfolio is pretty balanced at the moment with 60% of the work focused on leadership coaching and 40% on consulting projects.

I love the power of coaching, the process is so incredibly transformational and I passionately believe that everyone should have a coach! Coaching engagements can shift in many different ways and tend to expand into broader human capital consulting projects. For anyone keen on doing both it's important to recognize the difference between the two areas - coaching is helping an individual or a team through asking good questions and guiding the client(s) to come to their own solutions. Coaching can be industry or functionally agnostic, I can coach a senior executive regardless of the industry they are in. On the other hand, Consulting requires subject matter expertise and experience, clients will ask 'what should I do to fix X or achieve Y?' and my job is to present a recommendation or a solution then work to implement that change. I use both skill sets at all times, you just need to be smart about when one kicks in versus the other!

In terms of managing my coaching clients, I do not want to be scheduled back-to-back in coaching sessions each day. I am very committed to my clients and I want to be familiar with everything that's going on in that engagement. If I take on too many clients at one time, I can't devote the time and energy to those clients so I limit my active coaching clients to ~5 at a time. When one engagement ends, I am available to take on another new client.

The work I love is when a coaching engagement turns into team coaching and/or team building facilitation. That's really, really great work because I am familiar with the leader and tend to have insights to the team because of the 1:1 coaching sessions. It's impactful for the team and I enjoy the process as well as seeing the final outcomes. And the content is never the same so I am always challenged to design and deliver new concepts - that's always fun!

Q: How did you make the initial leap or what kind of pushed you into becoming self-employed? 

A: I had many questions about being independent and I’m thankful for you and for PICA. But I had conversations with myself and I had conversations with family, friends, and my husband. He's truly my greatest cheerleader and he always encouraged me to go independent. I'd been with Deloitte for over 14 years and I knew that I wanted to become an independent consultant, I just didn't know when, how, and what that was going to look like. Eventually I just said, “You know what, I'm certified as an executive coach. I'm ready to do this. I'm ready to take on clients.” So that's what I did. And it kept me quite busy, but I also took on an internal role with another company after I left Deloitte.

That really sparked something in me. It was a pivotal moment where I realized I wanted to help more companies and more people. That's when the lightbulb went on and acknowledged that building my own business was what I truly wanted to do. I dipped my toes into the water a little bit before I went full on, I was quite risk-averse at the time, but thankfully I had the support of my husband and a lot of friends and colleagues.

Q: You made the leap to solopreneurship right as the world was locking down with Covid. Did that have anything to do with your decision? 

A: That's a good question. I know every time I talk to people about the timing I tell them, “Who's crazy enough to start their own business in the middle of Covid?”, but it was the perfect timing for me because there were just a lot of changes happening everywhere, including with me personally. I was ready for a new challenge, but I really didn't realize how ready I was, which is why I started to tiptoe a little bit. I really should have jumped in with both feet and gone for it at that time but I didn't feel 'ready' and I let fear get in my way.  

The thing that really resonated with me when Covid hit was I had been working virtually and remotely for about 12 years at that point in time. Ironically, nothing in terms of ways of working changed for me at the time but I did quickly realize how difficult it was for other people. I was able to bring my years of experience and provide comfort to people who had never experienced working virtually before. For the clients I worked with when Covid first hit, I was able to help those organizations transition into a remote-first culture during the heart of the pandemic. Something that just came naturally to me, building relationships virtually, engaging, collaborating, being productive, setting yourself up in your own home office and putting policies together, I was really helping these organizations pave the way to being remote first. 

Where they are now depends on their culture and all the rest, but at the time it was just organic. Even now I'm still having conversations with executive leaders. I was doing a roundtable with a group of CEOs and half of them were saying, “Well we need to be in the office to make connections.” The other half were saying, “Well, we're remote first and we get together as needed. There's still a lot of this mentality out there that you need to be in person in order to run an effective business. It's been an interesting learning curve for me over the last few years and I continue to engage with companies who need to elevate the skills and capabilities of their People Leaders in terms of effectively leading remote and hybrid teams. 

Q: I want to go back to something you said about conquering the fear to take the leap. You said,” I should have just jumped in with both feet and just gone for it.” What advice would you give to somebody who's on the fence, who feels like they're ready but just can't seem to bring themselves to do it?

A: You're never going to feel 100% ready, you're always going to be fearful of something. I was ready and excited, but I doubted myself. There's a bit of imposter syndrome that comes into play as well. I would say, if you're still unsure, speak to other independent consultants, conduct all your due diligence. I can almost guarantee you that the majority of people that start their own business really weren't ready either. They just did it. The fear can just continue to hold you back.

I really wanted to go out on my own for many years, and I didn't. One of the big things I hear is, “Well, you know, I need medical benefits.” Okay, well, you can get your own medical benefits. Yeah, it costs money, but you're also going to likely be making more money than you were when you were in-house with a company. There are just different ways around it. Talk to people that have been there and done that because it will really help to ease some of those concerns. It did for me, so I highly, highly recommend that you reach out to other independents and people that have done work in your area.

For me, in the HR space, speaking with people that have gone out on their own in that area is really helpful because you'll understand what the ebbs and the flows are. You'll understand whether you can handle that ambiguity, of what kind of work is out there, how to carve out your niche, which is something everyone needs to really think through, but it's an evolution.

If you're feeling fearful, that's normal, but have conversations, ask a lot of questions, and be honest in terms of gauging your level of confidence when it comes to risk. It really just depends on the individual.

Q: Once you decided that you weren’t going back to being a full-time employee what were one or two things you did?

A: Networking was one of the first things I did. I just let people know this is what I'm doing. At that point in time, I was primarily doing leadership coaching, and I received a lot of very positive feedback because the people I'd been working with kept saying, “You know, you should really do this full-time.” I appreciated the validation, but I still had that fear of whether I would be successful. I did a lot of research on how to set myself up properly and efficiently. I made sure that I had some of my technology and platforms in place and I started to post on LinkedIn. And I asked my husband to take on the COO / CFO role for KKM Leadership, that was a good move!

Q: You still post a lot on LinkedIn. How is that helping your business or branding? 

A: It's helping in two ways. It's helping me to create content, which is incredibly helpful for speaking engagements and other presentations or pitches. It's also creating visibility, so I'm top of mind. People see my posts and even if they may not have any active work that they need help with right now, it's creating a lot of awareness and helping me to gain valuable connections.

My posts are getting way more impressions now. I said to my husband last night, “One of my posts received about 6,300 impressions.” He said, “Is that good?” I told him,  “Well, considering they used to maybe get three or four hundred, I'd say that's pretty good.” I'm sure there are people that get a million, but this is good for me and that's showing progress. I’m establishing more credibility as an expert and that’s helpful. For me personally, it's helping me to carve out my niche even further. Then I start thinking what are the issues I'm really passionate about? Where can I truly add value? What do people really need to start thinking about in terms of the New World of Work? What are those key topics and how do we get those in front of decision makers within organizations? I’m just trying to be a thought leader as much as possible.

Q: Do you use any particular tools when you post on LinkedIn? How do you track the number of impressions or do you just use LinkedIn's features?

A: I use Canva for anything that's visual. It's not perfect, but you can make things look 'prettier' and it provides a really good starting point. I usually change every single color, font and imagery, but at least it gives you a starting point for a really nice visual.

I also create a lot of content in either Google Slides, PowerPoint, or Keynote. Or I'll repost an article. I find that the articles that get the most interest have a lot of text and an attractive picture of some kind. I am learning quite a bit about LinkedIn posts and I am fascinated by how certain posts garner more views than others, it's a steep learning curve for me!

When I have the time, I track impressions through LinkedIn. I check out whether the impressions have gone up or down and I look to see what content has the most activity. I don't get a lot of comments necessarily unless it's something about me personally. People want to see you and I'm not particularly good at that, but I'm still working on becoming more comfortable. My next step is videos so I need to come up with a plan for that series. I'm also going to be doing some webinars, we just ran one on 'Creating a Culture of Coaching' based on a LinkedIn poll - people voted on the topic so I will continue to do things to keep people engaged and present on topics that folks are interested in.

Q:  I'm envious. You have KKM Leadership but underneath that there's the executive coaching work and then there's the consulting work. How do you manage to carve out all this time to do the LinkedIn thought leadership? How many hours does that take?

A: When things are less busy, I have more time so I'll just do more posts and try to capitalize on that. I do try to carve out about 20% of my time for business-related things, whatever that is. I prioritize LinkedIn posting as an absolute requirement. I feel like that's really, really important to me professionally and from a marketing perspective for the business. In theory, that is how I want to carve out the time but it really does depend on what’s going on that week.

 If I’m back-to-back I try to just jot down some thoughts. Then later that evening, I'll carve out time to create the content and do the visual. I try to do at least two posts a week, and whatever time that ends up being, that's what it is. If I have more time, I'll spend more time. I just commit to doing at least two posts a week, which still isn't enough. I should probably try to do something every day, but it's difficult.

Q:  When you're doing as much as you're already doing running your business, to post each week is awesome. To me, it seems like you are posting every day. Whatever you're doing, it's working. I encourage people to actually follow you on LinkedIn so that they can see how clever you are with your content in your posts and your Canva designs.

A: Thank you. That's such a compliment coming from you. I enjoy it and if anyone needs help I'm happy to help them navigate through Canva or anything else. I like to reshare posts or articles, but I don't know if everyone reads articles when they post them. I don't know, maybe they do. Or maybe they read the headline. I always read the entire article or document to ensure the content reflects my philosophy or a topic I am comfortable exploring further. Then I'll do a little blurb. and send it out with some hashtags. I still haven't figured out hashtags, but maybe that's my age!

Q: What has been your biggest challenge as a solopreneur?

A: I think it's the niche. I come from a very broad background in human capital services, the operational side of HR, as well as leadership development. The thing is, I know a lot about certain things, but I know a little bit about everything when it comes to the HR world. I know what I'm good at, and I won't say yes to something that isn’t in my wheelhouse. I think just coming to terms with that and knowing where I can really have an impact and add value to an organization has been the biggest challenge for me. I had to learn how to articulate that and be fully confident in where I can/should play and where I shouldn't. I love referring other independent consultants to potential clients when I am not the subject matter expert, that way everyone wins!

Q:  What’s the best way for people to find out more about KKM Leadership or you personally?

A: I have my LinkedIn profile and also my business LinkedIn page, which I'm still working on, but it's out there. Or our website: KKMLeadership.com. And of course, anyone can schedule time in my online calendar for a one-to-one consultation or chat.


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