PICA Member Spotlights

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

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Q: I want to start with a question about your headline on LinkedIn: ‘Growing conscious, compassionate, courageous leaders and teams for a whole and healthy world’. Tell us how that headline reflects what you do.

A: I'm very passionate about people having a lot of self-awareness and emotional intelligence as we navigate the world, because I think that nothing of great value has ever been done by one person, it's always required people collaborating together. And for people to collaborate together well, they need to be conscious. In other words, they need to be aware of themselves. They need to know how to self-manage or self-regulate. They need to also be aware of others and how to connect to others in a productive way. I've learned along the way that to be able to do all of those things, it really is important to develop certain qualities. One of those is courage, another of them is compassion, and then there are others like clarity or commitment.

Q: And this is what led you to a career as a coach and consultant? 

A: Yes. What I have done my whole career is help leaders and teams be better together. I fell into the field of organization development when I started working for Procter & Gamble in Japan. They needed somebody and offered me a position in HR or in marketing. I chose HR because I love people and love working with people. My minor is in psychology, so I fell into the field, and learned that I really had an aptitude and a strong passion for helping people do their best work.

Q:  Why did you decide to become an independent consultant?

A: After working in industry for a number of years, I decided that I wanted to develop my network here in Portland. I had moved to Portland from the San Francisco Bay Area. At the time my job with a large company involved a lot of travel. I would leave on Mondays and come home on Thursdays. At one point my husband and I looked at one another and said, "Who are you?," so I decided okay, I'm going to stay put and build a network here in Portland. To do so I decided to join a consulting firm called Point B that was different from traditional consulting firms which required travel. Point B believed in working and living in the place as our clients.

I found that working for a consulting firm was a wonderful way to get to know people in the local area. After that, I realized I really loved leadership development the most, and very few local consulting firms specialize in that. Instead, they specialize in things like change management, project management, problem solving, and/or providing advice and expertise to organizations. I’ve learned that what really love the most in my work is coaching others, evoking the potential in them and helping them learn and put that learning into action. I decided there's no place where I can do that for somebody as an employee, so I'll do the scariest thing and I'll go out on my own. 

Q: You set up your own business specifically as a leadership development coach? And how many years ago was that?

A: Yes, I did. I was moonlighting even as I was consulting, but I would say I officially went out on my own four years ago.

Q: You said it was one of the scariest things. What was your biggest fear? What made it so scary?

A:  I had always been part of a community before; a community where there was a reliable source of income, where there were benefits and a community of peers. A place where I could belong and rely on others for colleagueship and collaboration. First of all, I had never been out on my own, so that was scary for me. I had never done entrepreneurial work, but I had observed my husband doing that and the challenges of doing it.

There were a lot of lessons he learned that I was thankfully able to apply right away, like don't rent office space right away, don't hire people right away, things like that. It was also financially scary because who knew how long it would take for me to get clients. And so it was a question of learning new competencies, trusting that the money would come in, and also being able to trust that I could build my own community. All of those were things I had to really think over before going out on my own, but what helped me make the choice was my passion for what I do. So passion trumps fear all the time. I try to incorporate that when I'm coaching people now.

Q: What was one of the first things that you did to strike out on your own?

A: One was I made a declaration that I was going to go out on my own. I had actually been frittering my energy in three different directions. I had taken a year off to try to figure out what I wanted to do. And towards the end of that year off, I realized leadership development is really my bag. I noticed that I was applying for internal positions in the area, and I was either overqualified or the type of work was not completely up my alley. I was also applying to internal consulting firms and talking with them about building an executive coaching practice or doing leadership development for them. And people were, "No, we really want change managers, or we really want project managers," or things like that. They told me, “This is a side thing you're doing, it's not our core thing.”

I had been doing projects “on the side” on my own, even while employed at consulting firms. I woke up one morning and realized I was scattering my energy everywhere, that I needed to pick a lane and do what was most fulfilling. It was very, very scary, but I was tired of scattering my energy. It was like the universe was telling me because there's no positions in companies, that I needed to do this on my own. So it was a choice. I remember being at the dinner table with my husband and making that declaration, and once I made that declaration I had three clients within that week.

There's a lot of power in having a clear intention. Somehow it also builds accountability when we say it out loud. It's almost a vow or a commitment that we're making. And so we're letting the universe know that we're ready.

Q:  A lot of people think that they can just drop into independent consulting or coaching and make it work, but it sounds like you had some ramp up.

A: As I mentioned earlier, my husband had his own business so I was fortunate enough to be able to utilize that. It's an S-corp, so we had legal status already. We already had a CPA and a bookkeeper and things like that. And we decided to retain that as the company, but have me be underneath it as a DBA [“doing business as”]. I had been doing my own thing, but part of the ramp up was me going under that umbrella. And I had already been doing some “moonlighting” under that umbrella before I decided to focus full time on being a business owner.

Q: You said you've learned a few things from your husband's striking out on his own first, but what was one of the biggest challenges you still had to overcome?

A: Trusting that I could actually be and thrive as a business owner. I started working with a business coach because I knew I needed some kind of guidance, support, encouragement, and also accountability. I attended one of her programs and she said, "Oh, it sounds like your goal is to really start believing that you're a business owner and acting like a business owner." So I would say that was my first step. To do that I had to trust that I was able to do it. So it was a combination of identifying with it and then trusting that I had the chops to do it.

Q: What advice would you give yourself four or five years ago when you said you were dithering and you had to pick a lane?

A: There's a quote that helped me a lot at that time and it was, ‘Leap and the net will appear’. I believe that once we make that choice, we focus our energy towards making it happen. I would also give the advice to take it one step at a time, things will unfold. The other piece of advice I would give myself is to reach out and ask for help because what really got my business going was reaching out to my network and saying, "Hey, I'm doing this. Would you know any people that would be good for me to talk to get advice about how to do this well?" And they would point me towards people that could also help me. So I would call it a big, big listening campaign.

The other thing I would have told myself is that there are people out there that want me to succeed. I had to really shift my mentality around what it is to do business development, because at first I thought it was like being a snake oil salesperson and walking around opening up my trench coat and saying, "Hey, look at all these really cool things I have to offer you." One of the first things I did was reframe what that was. A concept that really liberated me was, ‘Listening is actually a gift and developing relationships comes from listening’. So if all I do is meet people and listen, I'm actually providing them with a service. That really shifted things for me.

Especially in coaching and consulting, and especially in Portland, because we're not a very large city it tends to be very relationship driven. I had to drum up the courage to reach out to people that I had known maybe 15 or 20 years ago and say, "Hey, I'm doing this. Would you like to talk? Is there anybody else that I should talk to?" I spent a good six to seven months talking to a whole variety of people and I noticed that the work would usually start coming in about six months after I spoke with them. It wasn't from them directly, it was usually from someone they knew that they told about me or something like that. It wasn't always a direct correlation, it was more like work started flowing in simply because I was talking to people.

Q: A lot of people who are just starting out are really scared to do that, to reach out to people that they haven't talked to in several years. Even veterans who've been independent for five or 10 years are hesitant to reach back into their history. What was the worst thing that happened to you by reaching out to people you hadn't talked to in a long time?

A: The worst experience was a person saying, "Yes, I'll introduce you to somebody inside the company that I know." and then it never truly panned out. So it wasn’t that big of a deal. Part of it is not taking the lack of a fruitful connection (I wouldn't even call it rejection) as a personal thing. That's one thing I really learned: it has nothing to do with me, it has everything to do with the world that that person is in and what they're living and experiencing at the time. So I learned to not take it personally and to say, "Okay, well, that didn't work. Who else should I reach out to?"  

Q: Another thing that comes through very clearly by talking with you is that you approach your work and your life with authenticity. I think that's a very important thing for people to remember, to be successful on your own you don't have to be somebody who you're not, you can just be yourself. Thank you for sharing your inspiration to just be yourself and to go for it. What's next for you and your business?

A: To continue expanding my client base. Right now I'm particularly focused on helping groups or systems thrive. I’m letting my client base know that that's something I'm very passionate about. Especially as we're coming out of the pandemic, being intentional about creating right relationships becomes more and more important because we've been isolated from one another for so long. All of a sudden you have introverts that are like, "Oh my gosh, I don't want to go into the office. I can't handle that thought." And you've got the extroverts who are like, "Oh, yay. Let's gather around the water cooler. I can't wait." So just helping people ease into, or be intentional about how they want to connect with one another and what they want to create together, that's really where I'm focusing my business now. I’m making that service line more visible.

 

Q: How can people find out more about you and, or your business?

A: I have a LinkedIn profile. I also have a website (moniquebreault.com). I always welcome people to just reach out if they are interested. Whether that’s people who are on a similar journey or who want to chat about what it is to be an entrepreneur or a consultant, I welcome all opportunities to do that.

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