How To Gracefully Leave Your Corporate Job to Start A Consulting Business with Dan Pontefract
hey everyone it's michael zaperski here today and i'm uh very excited uh to have dan pon frack joining us dan welcome michael well indeed a pleasure it is thank you for the invite and for being here with me yeah great uh great to have you uh and you are a leadership strategist yeah you're an author a keynote speaker you're an advisor you're also uh founder and ceo of the pontiffrack group you've written four best-selling books uh you've spoken uh at ted events uh you've been featured in publications like forbes uh harvard business review and you were previously the chief envision and chief learning officer at telus which is one of canada's largest telecommunications companies where you helped increase the company's employee engagement to record levels let's start off dan for everyone who might be wondering what is a chief envision officer people may have heard about chief learning officers but tell us a little bit more about kind of what your role was at telus sure well uh the wonderful intro by the way and you forgot horrible at home improvements so that all might sound good but uh if you talk to denise my infinitely better half not so good at the home improvements that's where she comes in i don't know that same category i i do try my best at times but um i'll most often try and get somebody else to help because if i do it it's yeah it doesn't always work out so well denise one year uh quick sidebar story bought me a a birthday gift and i opened it up and i said oh thank goodness i've always wanted a fishing tackle box and she looked at me she said you're an idiot it's for tools it's a toolbox so that's about the extent of me uh so specific to the telus gigs i spent a wonderful 10 years full time within the organization having two roles the chief learning officer role which most people know that's you're helping an organization with its leadership it's culture it's engagement obviously it's learning and all bits and parcels that come in between that particular portfolio but we thought we'd do at the five-year mark of my tenure was that we would go and help other organizations with culture change with leadership with engagement with flexible work styles and so we put together a kind of a troubadour outfit and i acted as its chief envisioner to help other organizations future set you know the way in which they were operating so again that was another wonderful five-year road which then more or less led me to become who i am today which is being more of an external guy helping other organizations uh right across the world are you still working with with within telus or has that shift completely happened again another remarkably wonderful story i would argue with what telus is and i guess i suppose how uh we work together still so i left full-time january 1st 2019 from that aforementioned role and although uh the unit that i was running kind of um continued but not with me at the helm uh telus has employed me ever since now uh in two capacities one to continue running what is called the telus mba program uh which is a i put together when i was still chief learning officer it was a chance for telus team members to embark on a two-year mba through the university of victoria's school of business and it's just for telus dedicated to balancing purpose with profit uh just a wonderful chance for me to still work directly with team members on that and then secondly yeah i i still uh will be uh trucked out and work with telus clients uh when they need assistance or what have you with culture with flexible work particularly in a pandemic amongst other kind of uh to be determined uh instances when i get uh rolled out in front of some of their clients and so for everyone who's who's listening who might be in a similar situation where uh they're in a corporate role and uh in leadership uh they've you know they've enjoyed it maybe to to a great degree or maybe not so much but like why if if you've been working with such a great company what what spurred you to go off and do your own thing what was kind of going on that made you decide yeah i'm gonna start my own business great to be able to still work with with telus the past employer right is kind of becomes the maybe the first client it sounds like but yeah for you dan what was the the decision or what what kind of spurred you to uh to make that move you know uh michael that's a wonderful question and and thank you and that actually takes us back to christmas of 2017 uh coming back from a family trip from maui and so essentially that last day you know you're looking at the last sunsets because the you know it's always the night flight coming back from maui to vancouver and i re-read one of my own books um because you know you got a few hours to kill on a plane and i don't really ever sleep on planes so i reread the purpose effect which was my second book sounds like a book plug but it's not that book actually forces you to consider three types of purpose um what's your personal purpose uh what you believe what you stand for what gets you up what's your mojo right what what are your dislikes but then there are two other types of purpose there's uh organizational purpose does that place in which you work stand for something greater uh than itself than profits than ebitda et cetera and tell us how that space i mean i was locked in on their purpose for sure and then role purpose i.e do you feel valued are you able to contribute value and you feel that your mojo that's your personal purpose is in alignment with uh with with your role purpose and i was realizing that i had just crossed the 10-year mark at telus and i had my father uh 73-year-old living in england on my you know kind of my shoulder as the devil might be in some of those cartoons whispering into my ear michael don't you think it's time to put on your big boy pants don't you think it's time and so as i'm rereading the book i'm thinking myself well i can't not die at some point in my life as we all do and and and live a life of regret or be in a bed if you will waiting to pass away of regret thinking i've never given it a shot and so i was really um in disarray a bit personally with my own personal purpose but although i love telus and i love my role it was actually now out of sync yeah how long have you said you were thinking about that like the idea of entrepreneurship starting your own business how many years prior did that kind of see get planted in your mind i suppose it started when i started writing books and started doing external keynotes um which was in 2012. right so it was fortunate to continue obviously to be a telus wrote a book called flat army wrote a book then the purpose effect then wrote a book called open to think about a better way of thinking and these books were all under quote the telus dime written at night of course etc but i kept thinking okay well i've started my own business because i'm writing so you're getting paid royalties from books not a lot but enough to say oh you're in business but but really it was when i started that talus transformation office role uh that function of of working with external clients more so than ever really realized to me that oh i can be in that consultative mindset i can be in the consulting business if you will not only can i deliver keynotes and workshops but people actually want to tap into sort of my brain if you will if that sounds too egotistical just stop me michael for some of the wares and experience that i have to help them and so as much as i loved doing what i was doing for telus i thought to myself maybe there's a win-win here maybe there's a way in which that i could help tell us but isaac could help me personally and then sort of launch myself into the pontefrac group as as we we launched on january 1st 2019.
and why did you even start writing books right there's a lot of people in the corporate world who they're getting a nice salary they've got their benefits you know they're comfortable uh the last thing on their mind is to create more work for themselves uh you know by writing you know even articles or or speaking i mean and there are of course many people who have taken that same path that you have but i'm interested in your perspective i mean what was the the drive or or the kind of the uh the excitement or the desire for you to start creating your own intellectual property and and content even when you were in a quote unquote kind of you know stable uh corporate job yeah another fabulous question you know what you're doing with these so uh three answers the first of which uh is pretty simple it keeps me married out of denise's hair is a good thing so there's that uh but more seriously on points two and three uh number two i i have stuff to say i mean my brain is kind of moving all the time and so i was fortunate to be asked to write for forbes i've done a couple pieces in hbr i've been speaking a lot and it just sort of made sense to me that i begin the journey of getting some of my thoughts out there not just in articles but in thicker uh tombs yeah and if you don't don't mind actually just to stop for a second why did you start speaking like where where did that come from again a lot of people are in the corporate role they just be comfortable doing what they're doing they're focused on their team and and the business but you you went external right was that did that come from uh from the ceo of the company saying hey dan we need you to go out and to build our brand and to be more visible at conferences or was that a decision that you you you kind of arrived at yourself where where was that drive for you to actually get out great so i came from being a senior director at sap uh with its education services function so doing all kinds of funky things when i joined telus in the year 2008 when i joined telus looking back at the sap experience i was dabbling in some public speaking but not a force to be reckoned with if you will and so i consciously made a decision when i joined telus in december of 08 to become way more public in both speaking and writing why and it took you know it took three to four years to continue you know uh pushing myself making myself be known if you will both for the writing and for the speaking and that lent itself to a book publisher wiley seeing me in an audience or from an audience i should say on stage and saying maybe you should write a book then so it was very conscious now to get to point three which actually relates to this question with speaking i didn't think about this at the time in terms of how dory clark puts it in entrepreneurial you and dory being a really good paladin but it's to diversify yourself when you find ways of both diversifying uh yourself out there publicly speaking writing some other things you might be able to do um you you set yourself up for the success i believe and the potentiality of you maybe doing something different than what your role is like basically my playbook which was in 2008 i'm going to be public because you just don't know i'm going to write books that's part of diversifying the speaking's diversifying the role i created next at telus with tto the telus transformation office was another diversification strategy which then allowed me to then to your point have an anchor client when i left but to have all these different tentacles if you will or even antennae out there in the world to potentially be asked to do some business with and i mean not knock on wood uh so far so good would you say that the steps you've taken to diversify even though it was a lot more work for you and some people might go might say well that's a lot of work you know why you spent a lot of time has that actually created a lot more stability for you now as you kind of look back at what you've established oh i mean yeah if you put the hard work in up front of the diversification plan and if you're doing it by still having a paycheck not ignoring your kids or your wife or your health then you know i believe at least my example without sounding you know uncanadian and thus pretentious it actually can work so i i mean i i didn't think of what type of success i'd have back in 2008 but to be able to be asked to do for ted's to be asked to write at hbr in forbes to be asked to write a book which turned into four uh i mean it's it's oh yeah i look back and say i'm pretty proud of what i've done but again if i look at revenues just by example because i know a lot of folks listening in will say oh what's what's the revenue base well without knowing the actual figure i'm making more in 2019 than i did in 2018 with a full-time paycheck at telus and even in a pandemic year in 2020 i'm making more than i did in 2019. so something is working and again knock on wood that i continue not to be overly arrogant but to take care of your clients and it's not about money it's about serving and if i can serve then the money comes yeah so what i mean you say i mean and not to put words in your mouth but developing your intellectual property content has been really the forefront of of driving this business uh with that would you say that's accurate i think that's completely accurate yeah okay so for those who are listening watching going yeah dan like i get it i know i need to put myself out there more i know i have value that i can contribute that i can i can serve and i can make a difference but but they actually haven't leaned in they haven't you know started to write articles or post videos or you know create white papers or do webinars or written a book so they've been thinking about content creation for quite some time they know the value of it uh and they can see that all around them like the proof is there but they're they haven't actually started what would you say to someone in that position right now that might not be putting in the work uh any advice for them any best practices any thoughts as to uh yeah yeah go ahead yeah i mean twofold hey get off your ass like let's nothing comes through without hard work but secondly stop comparing yourself to seth godin and simon sinek and susan kane and some of the giants that have indeed done this already and they're making gazillions of dollars your metric is not the celebrities you will find your niche once you put the power and the time and the effort into it so step one get off your ass and step two is stop comparing what would you say as you kind of look back on the last you know couple years or so of running your own business what's been most difficult for you well uh frankly i'm a i mean a graciously optimistic open people person and although that's a bunch of words all discombobulated together there i do miss leading people and i miss teams now i'm part of a bunch of consulting projects and so you actually are part of a team but it's different i mean i i'm turned 50 next year and so for the better part of 25 years i was leading teams organizations i had a team i would do performance reviews i would coach i would i would i love it so i honestly do miss the the natural innate i suppose leadership tendency that i have which is to lead which is the lead people and to do it with affection compassion and love so i miss that although the books and the writing and the speaking i'll speak and write and kind of purport to that uh that's the biggest thing that i do miss michael you mentioned that your revenue is up in 2020 even giving the pandemic the uncertainty you know all the challenges that that we're all facing and um you're not alone we know we've seen that in our business we've seen that in many of our clients businesses that we work with as well uh but a lot of people are concerned about or at least it's top of mind for them you know how how can they deliver value to their clients when they can't meet them in person or at least that's a lot more challenging to do you mentioned right you're giving keynotes virtually you're working with clients virtually what have you found are there any kind of best practices done or anything you know kind of tactics tips that you would offer to people so they could still provide great value and you know the that feeling that they might be able to to have when they're working with a client in person but now now virtually yeah i think there's a few things that i've been able to grapple with i mean it's not as though in 2008 i had pandemic on my dance card or bingo card for 2020 nor did i have it on january 1st 2019 when i went solo but let's say you know when the world fell off a cliff in mid-march of 2020 you know there was a bit of a reset that we all had to do and even for me and i had right away i had 10 face-to-face gigs cancel uh in the month of march that were booked until you know basically the end of june and i say cancelled i mean done we're not we're not going forward we don't want virtual because no one wanted to do virtual back in mid-march right now as kind of things progressed one of the first things i did was i ran something called speak aid so i thought about my youth i thought about uh live aid that occurred in philadelphia in london i said well why don't we do that for speakers who are quote out of work right now even though i have consulting gigs and other things going on i was kind of thinking empathically about these speakers so we ran a five day eight speakers a day one hour speaking slot uh to raise money for a red frost and red crescent society and we raised like 35 grand but as a chance for me to give back for free uh if you will to a bunch of folks that could join in and listen in on these great speakers from around the world and we had like 3 000 people show up on a daily basis to these things so my point being is if you can strategize at least to the point in which you're able to what could you offer pro bono and then you know provide potentially a new network or an additional network some goodness that is um helping them for a specific need that you have as you know in terms of your expertise i think that does go a long way i mean the second example was i i provide i created two um portals uh one was a flexible work portal for leaders like remote leadership and then another was oh you're you're a remote employee all of a sudden what do you do and these two free portals which had basically about 15 videos each and job aids you know i got downloaded like thousands of times and again some of that turned into oh i bought your book thanks for the flexible work oh could we hire you for a workshop because i saw your your portal hey could you do a keynote for us or hey we're thinking about a culture assessment based on your you know your portal i saw about flex work or remote leadership we think you might know what you're doing so a little bit of the loss leader stuff i think is really important anytime but in a pandemic i was very specific to kind of think about what what might i offer you know the clients i'll give you one last example so i just published a book called lead care win how to become a leader who matters came out at the end of jan or september sorry and i knew that what i wanted to do was also release a complete online learning program for leadership development based on these nine lessons found in the book so between you know april and august of this year i was inquiring with folks to see if they want to be part of a beta so that they can help test you know the program as i was developing it so building up a base and building up folks a we're providing feedback but then maybe stir up some interest when the program goes live which incidentally is this friday on november the 13th so again pro bono thinking of ways in which to provide loss leader expertise i think is a smart uh action for any consultant to take so now you mentioned those two kind of leadership programs that you put together or one for leaders one for the employee uh who's dealing with remote work right so i think that's i mean really great concept a lot of people have thought about how to productize their their own knowledge and package it which is essentially what you've done there you mentioned that you got several thousand downloads tell us a little bit more about how did you do that what do you do from a marketing perspective or to actually get the word out around these programs because listen there's a lot of books a lot of courses out there that no one ever sees because they have been marketed or communicated effectively so just to kind of take us through the best practices and what you've learned that actually worked really well for those yeah another great question so again i believe one of the adages that supports me and fuels me through a lifestyle uh both working for an organization and being on my own as a company of one as paul jarvis describes it uh is my network is my net worth and so i i truly believe in tending to curating nurturing watering adding fuel and oxygen to your network at all times like it's not a it's not a project for an hour on fridays it's a constant how am i checking with the network who else might i be connected to how might i introduce somebody am i sending artwork which i do from local artists here on vancouver island where i live to people i might have just met or who hired me to say hey like it's just a complete uh necessity but i find it a joy to tend to that network otherwise it's not your network so yeah question on that before you go for it how do you do that like just from a technological management perspective are you using a crm are you using a spreadsheet do you have an assistant just take us through how you actually stay on top of that whole process because for someone like yourself who's you know met a lot of people given lots of talks uh i'm guessing you're not talking about just 10 people right there's probably maybe hundreds of people or at least a core group how do you manage that yeah well i mean um first of all i would hope that i have a relatively smart brain to remember things that's not always the case so uh two things one is i use evernote and tend to make notes about people that i've met or things to remember them by whether it's their kids whether it's their job whether it's something that they've said before so evernote is my place my compendium of kind of anecdotes uh but until recently probably about two years ago now just before i left telus i started in with linkedin navigator and what a way in which to also provide some notes some context see who's connected to whom uh and to again tend to it from a perspective of not who's in my network although that helps but who's connected to whom and how much you provide and offer up you know additional freebies so again back to diversifying your portfolio of things that you do at least in my case you know as much as lead care when the book came out about five or six weeks ago you know off of my publisher i i bought another 2 000 copies of the book and i've now sent out a thousand of those copies uh across the world based on again um connections that are direct or often probably i would say 40 percent of those thousand books are people that have never met me before but in the letter when i send it out to the contact i make reference to someone within the network or some some you know organizational tidbit that i've picked up on or maybe they've written something or whatever that i've kind of taken note of and i say i really want to recognize this or that or this person or this organization or what you wrote and i just wanted to give you kind of a copy of lead carowind as a way in which to say thanks to what you're doing in society so again there's a freebie cost me whatever 10 bucks to ship the book uh let's say and hopefully again that's just an act of network building and again i play the long game you never know when that comes back in the boomerang and and so walk us through how you're doing that part of it i mean you're tumbled here uh 2000 copies i'm guessing that you're sending more than one copy potentially to each person or is it sometimes okay uh so first how did you get their addresses is that you go to uh do you buy a list you you do your sleuthing i've never bought any list i don't believe that i believe in doing the hard work and so once i get it then obviously i'm tracking out an excel spreadsheet that's it like you know just a way in which to basically then send out mail forms through word i mean this is not rocket science stuff right you go from there and you're doing that yourself you have an assistant help you with that company one paul driver let's go interview paul that's all i am i'm just a company of one yeah and so shipping as well are you doing that yourself or that's just going to the mailing house well there's the one thing that comes into play so i just so happen to have uh the denise are raising goats as we call them they are also known as children so they are 17 15 and 13 and so sometimes they get roped into the stuffing of envelopes with books and shipping them out so yes i may have some family support it's not like uh they're my conciliate areas that were in the mob but they are definitely family love it yeah um i mean one thing you just mentioned right now that that really resonates is you know you're talking about ten dollars a book two thousand copies twenty thousand dollars or so you're investing into your business and i think a lot of consultants uh are by nature quite conservative right they look at they focus more on how can they save money with their marketing or what they're doing instead of how can they maybe spend more to create more impact where does that thought process come for you i mean is that are you just naturally kind of inclined to go yeah i know that if i put out twenty thousand dollars that it's gonna likely generate significantly more or is that something that you've learned over time and you've actually seen work for you firsthand again i go back to and again it's a little bit of this at times we did honest michael and it's the what feels good what makes sense to tend to that network and how might that actually result in a keynote a workshop a consulting engagement or whatever executive coaching and again the theory seems to be playing out so i've had a relatively long runway as well so again planning for this took time first book in 2013 second book 2016 continued to talk continued to talk continued to talk continue to write third book 2018 then make a decision leave it's 2019. uh go through 2019 write another book do a bunch more talks do a much more consulting gigs and then new new fourth book comes out in 2020 pandemic hits but again now i'm diversifying with the online learning program giving that out and making sure that it gets in the hands of executives chros clo ceos etc around the world so it sounds manipulative but it's actually uh distinctly specific to how i believe the network is jogged so that they remember oh yeah that dan the leadership guy or oh it's the damn i saw speak or oh so they wrote that book or oh it's a dan from the forbes article oh it's damn from the hbr oh it's down from that coaching exercise oh dan gave me the piece of wood that art from that oh that it's like it has to be circular for you to ultimately require uh your head to invest in meaning to answer your question if you are not investing then you're not actually going to be tending to that network is my opinion yeah no i mean i think you're looking at lifetime value of a client and uh it's not always just the revenue but but you know you're investing into those relationships uh and typically when you do that good good things tend to happen uh i think you said it there by the way to interject investing in those relationships so and again relationships come at different stages and ages so you know i i'll give you an example i this past week you know i got an inquiry from a chief human resources officer in toronto and she in this case you know emailed me and said dan i saw you speak five years ago in 2015.
and i was really taken aback by that because you're talking about purpose and again this is two books in not four so 2015. and she said like we're having some difficulties in this pandemic and we're not we think it's a good time to kind of exhibit the um the the inclination to go and define what where our purpose might be could you come help and could you start with a talk and then maybe see where it goes from there and that's exactly what's been booked a talk to discuss what purpose is and then what more likely will be is in a consulting engagement to then discuss and define and help them as an organization figure out their purpose so there's a five-year runway from this lovely woman who reached out to me this past week yeah definitely uh so 2020 has been a year of a lot of new things or four first times right for for all of us but if you just kind of look back over the years so far down what's what's one thing that has been new for you that you've done that you're very excited about and that looking back uh you know maybe you feel like wow i can't believe that i haven't done this before and you're excited to continue using that or benefiting uh from it going forward well first of all i've always been a proponent given what we did at telus was shift uh about 70 of the organization to be remote worker so from home mobile you know a hotel or whatever and it was just fantastic to drive that to help drive that at least what i've seen since the pandemic uh the onset of the pandemic is although the deering headlights were certainly marched through kind of may june then all of a sudden organizations and executives started to wake up a little bit and say well a this pandemic thing certainly doesn't seem to be going away any time fast and b maybe we can do some of these things virtually and the things at least i am referring to are keynotes and workshops like that's kind of a lot where i love being on and excel at is working with people now you think well dan don't you miss um you know audiences and live face-to-face people of course i do i mean i mean i'm an extrovert i mean i mean first person i hug is probably going to get a weird kiss as well for me right it's just forget i don't care about the hr violation anymore um but what i've recognized in my own self was that you have to innovate and make sure that in the keynote and the workshops whether they're 30 minutes or three hours to be completely immersed in how to make it interactive and different so for me it was kind of like okay if you did a keynote you'd be on stage now if you're on stage in in what is now my souped-up kind of home office studio how could i do that differently well i played around with it took me about a month and i did a couple trials with some clients for free and then figured out that i needed three cameras a wall mounted screen uh using pull everywhere to embed into the powerpoint slides so people could participate in online polling and surveying right there and so i basically created a situation in which every kind of five ten minutes there's something that's different or engaging in a in this room that makes it feel completely like you're in the room itself and that's kind of the key there for me are you using any tech i mean specific technology i've heard of like prezi or are there any tools that you're using to help with that polling or the interaction uh that you think people should to take a look at my my my s oops sorry i think i put myself on mute uh my savior is poll everywhere pull ev.com or pull everywhere if anyone wants to go check that out i'm not uh i'm not an ambassador i don't get paid by them what i find is that their interactive polling surveying quizzes word clouding you can you can embed right into keynote or to powerpoint it doesn't work with google slides but nonetheless when you then what i do is um i share um through another like i have two three laptops on the go as well so that i can have these kind of three cameras set up one camera points to a wall mounted screen the mac that i have on that one air plays through apple tv the slides to the screen i stand behind this or beside the screen i should say embed the pulley v slides into that power point and then the audience engages and then i can talk to how the audience is engaging through the surveying through you know what what horse race is winning and kind of the multiple choice or the word clouding or the pictures and who's liking where they're at etc it actually works fantastically but again it's a i've seen people uh many quote thought leaders and authors just go to their homes flip up their mac use the native camera that's built in it's just basically a zoom webinar that's not going to engage the audience so you've got to differentiate you've got to kind of think about your clients as well honestly yeah well clearly you've you've thought a lot about that with uh with that tech setup so something we'll need to look into as well and i appreciate that uh dan thanks so much for for coming on here today i want to make sure that people can learn more about you and your work and your books uh where's the best place for them to go probably easiest is the micro site that gets you to everything for the the new book and it's just uh leadcarowind.com and uh you'll be able to learn about the book but also me and everything else that i'm able to do sounds good we're gonna have that linked up in the show notes we'll also put a link to your main website uh so if you can just go and check out your services and and more about your background it's a nice looking site as well so dan thanks so much for for coming on here today hey michael thank you i mean a for what you're doing to help prop up and support consultants around this planet uh good for you and again this is great discourse you clearly you know what you're doing but great conversations to poke a little deeper in some of the things that that i'm doing so i appreciate that thanks my pleasure
2020-12-26 08:05
