ļ»æLaura Rudolph Full Interview Transcript
Getting Started in Consulting
AJ (00:00:03): Welcome to this episode of the Thriving Through Podcast. Today, my guest is Laura Rudolph. Laura, welcome to the podcast.
Laura (00:00:12): Thanks so much for having me!
AJ (00:00:16): So I like to start out with the same question for all of my guests. And that is two questions, actually. The first question is, how long have you been a self-employed consultant?
Laura (00:00:28): I started consulting in 2019. I was still working full-time in higher education, and honestly, it was not my idea. So, a friend of mine, who was an accountant at a vendor I'd worked with for years, called me out of the blue and said, you know, we have a client who needs help with some things that we don't provide. Have you ever thought about consulting? Because they could really use you. And I hadn't, and that's how it started.
AJ (00:00:59): Okay, and you did it part-time for a couple years.
Laura (00:01:04): I did. Yeah, so from about 2019 to 2023, I was just part-time. You know, like a lot of people, I had student loans, and so a side income sounded pretty appealing. So what I had to do is, because I was working full-time, I went to my supervisor just to make sure there was no conflict. Luckily, higher education is very regional in terms of competition, so they not only approved, but they saw it as an opportunity for me to learn from other institutions, too, which then could help my full-time role. So they gave me the green light to go ahead, and so, you know, that first project was meant to be a side bonus, but it definitely turned into something bigger than I had imagined. I continued doing it part-time throughout the pandemic, and then in fall of 2023, I made the leap to go full-time.
And, you know, there's no one-size-fits-all blueprint for building a consultancy, especially in higher education, and so I just had to figure that out through a lot of trial and error. Before going full-time, I'd spent well over a decade in enrollment and marketing for large publics and regional publics and small liberal arts colleges, and so that experience gave me a really deep understanding of resource constraints and team capacity, and how that affects marketing communications, and then that ultimately helped me shape the business that I have today.
Overcoming Scope Creep Challenges
AJ (00:02:37): What, looking back over that time, tell me a story or two about a challenge or an obstacle you've encountered, and how you overcame it.
Laura (00:02:49): I think what's probably typical across the field of higher education, especially for working in a small school, which I was at the time, is that you're not just wearing one hat, you're wearing like 5 or 6 hats at a given time. You have little budget, you have little resources, sometimes you have little staff, and so you're constantly accepting, taking on more. Because it's a team environment, enrollment is a team player in an enrollment office, and so that was kind of my mentality.
But when you go into consulting, you know, scope of work is really important to manage your time, and not only your time, but then also your income. And so, that was my biggest challenge early on, was that I'm just naturally, because of the environment that I was in in higher education, used to taking on more. And in that first year, working with the first 2 or 3 clients, I really had to start deciding, okay, this would be, yes, a great addition to what I'm doing, but I'm not getting paid for that, and I need to make sure that I'm being more aware that there are boundaries of what I need to do with a given contract.
Here's what I need to do for my scope of work, and I need to be very aware of what those boundaries are. And early on, I just wasn't. So, that was a big challenge for me, because I'm always thinking bigger, wider, you know, how can we have better impact and bigger impact? And sometimes I would just let that get away from me. So that was probably my biggest challenge early on.
AJ (00:04:44): So the awareness is good. How do you have the issue is having that difficult conversation. So how do you handle those? What do you say?
Laura (00:05:06): You know, I've been very lucky in that since that point in time, there was one project in particular I can think of where I think I let the scope get a little out of hand. But then in addition to that, I probably also just didn't budget my time very well. And I think when you're starting as a consultant, it's so hard when you've been doing this full-time for 15, 16, 17 years, where you're being paid salary and hours mean nothing in higher education, especially in admissions enrollment offices, where you're working, you're almost always on call. It's evening, it's weekend work, it's travel. And so, tracking your hours is not something that happens.
And so, I found that not only was I experiencing scope creep, but I was also not budgeting my time appropriately. It might take me longer to do something than I had anticipated, because I had never actually tracked it before. And so I think for me, that was hard for me at first to start having those conversations. Also because I've come from an environment in education of being a team player, and so you want to do what you want, you know, you want to get done what needs to get done, regardless of the time that you put into it. And that's just not possible as a consultant.
So one of the things I've started to do, number one is, I really started working on my project management skills. Number two, I started reaching out to other consultants. There was a couple of other people that I happened to know, and so I used them as kind of my mentors to help me think through pricing strategies, and hourly rates, and how to go about having those conversations, hard conversations. I found that I started really up-fronting those conversations in the beginning of a contract than later on, because it's way more difficult later on to do that.
So I've learned a couple of skills here and there to better manage my time, my scope creep, and then to better understand the time that it's going to take me to do something. You know, I think in other industries, hourly tracking is really normal, and it's just in higher education, it's not. And so that was one of the biggest adjustments I had.
Building a Mission-Driven Practice
AJ (00:07:41): What would you do differently if you were starting your consulting business today, knowing what you now know?
Laura (00:07:48): Oh, goodness. Probably a lot of things. I would probably do a lot of things differently. One of the things that I did about 12 months in, so about a year into the business, you know, I had been going for many years. Even though I hadn't been full-time, I had been pretty much had a steady work from 2019 through 2024. But at no time did I really stop and think about where do I want the direction of my business to go? What is really my mission and my purpose? Who is really the people that I want to work with? And then how am I, what directions do I want to go in? Do I want to go into workshopping? And is that the area that I want to explore? Or is it really that I want to be in the weeds and doing the strategy? You know, what are those things that I feel like, now that I've been in it for some time, where's my business heading?
And I never did that in the beginning. Because you say yes to everything in the beginning, right? And so, I never said no, right? I just took on everything that was presented to me at the time.
So I actually took about 3 months off. I happened to have a lot of projects concluding, and so I took, I believe it was a December, January, February, so it aligned with the Christmas holiday and the new year, and so I thought, this is a good time for me to do a reset. I need to, now that I'm going into this full-time, I need to focus on my own marketing. You know, I market for other people, and now I need to learn to market for myself. I need to structure, figure out how I'm going to structure my pricing a little bit better. I found that there was, it ended up that, really, there's two main areas in which higher ed likes to structure, and it's usually project-based, or it's just consulting hourly-based. But then, occasionally, there was a third one, which was fractional, and fractional consulting was not something I had considered before, so I actually added that to my services. And then you know, really just figuring out, okay, what kind of business am I going to do moving forward? And so, I feel very strongly what my mission is now, and I wish I had created that from the beginning. I think it would have given me a little bit better direction to know what to say yes to and what to say no to rather than doing it so far into my time as a consultant. But at least I do have it now. But that would have been great to know early on.
AJ (00:10:34): Okay, what is your mission?
Laura (00:10:37): Yeah, so, some people would say that my business strategy is a poor one. I disagree, but I am not going to be, and I don't intend to be a hero. That's how I talk about it to some other people. My model is to serve the institution in whatever way they need, train their team to execute it on their own, and then step out.
And I realized that long-term dependency is a very common model in other industries. You know, we want to renew clients every year. That's not my mission. My mission is to build them up, make them capable, and then give them the ability to be independent.
And, like I said, some people may say that's a bad business model, but I think in the world of higher education, it builds a lot of trust in what you do. You know, and when you're a mission-driven consultancy like this, working with mission-driven clients, I think that there's a real synergy in what you believe, and we're on the same team, and I can embed myself a little more deeply than a large agency can, and instead of thinking long-term about dependency on me, I can think more about transformation right now, and empowering the client to be able to take on what I provide them and do it successfully moving forward.
And I realize that that, you know, is an odd mission, perhaps, for some people in other industries, but for higher education, I think it's really important. And the reason why this is important to me is because I've been in their shoes. I worked, I think I mentioned, I worked for 10 years at a liberal arts college. And I wore so many hats over so many years, and we had a lot of transition, we had budget shortfalls, we had all kinds of challenges, and when you don't have the staff, or you don't have the budget, it can seem very challenging to be successful.
I was about 4 or 5 blocks down the street from a very large SEC institution, and they were almost 20 times our size, with I'm sure, more than 20 times our budget. And it just seemed like they had the ability to reach everyone, and we just didn't. They had the ability to work with these amazing agencies and branding agencies, to create wonderful admissions campaigns, and to create content that we just didn't have the capacity to do ourselves. And it makes you feel a little helpless.
So when I was thinking about what is my mission going to be, it's, I want to be the person who can come in, can lift those people up, can do some of the work that maybe they can't afford from other agencies, but can at least get them started on the right track. And then I can train them on how to take it from there. So then they feel a little bit more confident in their abilities, they feel a little bit more confident in being able to compete with their neighbor down the street, and not feel like they have to spend, you know, 6 figures easily for a really big campaign.
But I'm gonna be significantly more affordable. And yeah, it may take a little bit longer, because I'm a consultancy of one. But I guarantee you that I'm going to be able to do it as an embedded member of their team. I'm gonna be able to understand them a little bit better. And I'm gonna be able to be in the weeds with them, and be more personalized, and provide that more personalized service. And so I was thinking back to the historical me, and what would I have wished I had had access to at that time? And so, that's my mission moving forward.
I've pitched that to any client that comes along that I would love for you to use me again, but that's not why I'm working with you now. I'm working with you now to help you build something and be successful at it for the long term. And the good news is, I actually just last week signed a contract with a client for the third time, so they do come back.
AJ (00:15:23): Nice! Okay, all right. So your business model is proving that it's not a one and done, because of that. Absolutely.
Marketing Challenges and Solutions
AJ (00:15:34): You mentioned that marketing yourself is harder than marketing for your institution. Why is that, and how are you overcoming it?
Laura (00:15:47): I could be wrong. I think that, but I think that there's a lot of us who come out of team environments in higher education. And you have a bit of imposter syndrome when suddenly you're working on your own. And I know that that's something I've struggled with for a long time.
You're so in the work every day, and you have these blinders on. That you don't get a lot of time to look up and connect with other people, and go to conferences, and have professional development. And a lot of the institutions that I worked for didn't necessarily have the budget to send me to all of the professional development conferences and things I wanted to attend.
I feel like those relationships really matter when you're a consultant, particularly in education. I think in every industry, though, I think this is not just for us. And so, when you don't have those connections, and you're starting a consultancy, all you have is the work that you've done at your past institution or your past institutions.
And a lot of the content that you're developing and the marketing that you're developing is not being seen publicly. It's being seen by very segmented, tiny audiences. It's specific types of prospective students and families, or admissions, or guidance counselors, or very granular populations of people.
And so, all of a sudden, if you're, when you're on your own, like I was, I was having to market myself without being able to really provide samples of work because that's also difficult in education to do. And so, I felt like, all of a sudden, I'm needing to promote myself. I have very little that I can share, because a lot of what you're building is proprietary to the institution, and it makes them competitive with other institutions, so it's not work you can share.
And so you have to find these little pathways to be able to show your worth and your value without necessarily showing your work. And I think, for me, that's been, it's taken some time to learn how to do that.
And when you're working also by yourself, you don't have that other person to say, hey, that was great what you just did, or you're doing a great job. And yes, you have your clients who can say that, but it's also great to have, like I mentioned earlier, some mentors, or some people that you can talk to and have contact with, to really help push you to talk more about yourself and to market your work even from a 10,000-foot approach, which is really what I've had to do when marketing my outcomes.
And, you know, I don't think that it necessarily comes easy for anyone to talk about themselves a lot when you're coming from a higher education environment, because so much of it is about the whole and the team, and the institution, and so it's just a different perspective than what I've ever had to do in marketing previously.
AJ (00:19:12): Right? You'd have to say, look at me, here's what I can do, and in the past, you've been marketing the institution.
Laura (00:19:19): Yeah. And my name is never going to be on any work I do, right? So I may have worked in an institution for 10 years, but you're not going to find any content or any marketing pieces that have my name on it. Now, it doesn't mean that I haven't written thousands of emails, right? Or I haven't produced a ton of content that might be seen in different places, but it's not going to have my name on it, so it's not directly attached to me. And so that's also, I think, really difficult.
Building Case Studies Without Sharing Confidential Work
AJ (00:19:51): Well, and even because your clients are in a competitive environment, what you put out for them now, makes getting case studies more challenging.
Laura (00:20:05): Oh, yeah.
AJ (00:20:05): Tell me a little bit about how you, how do you get a case study when you can't really, you certainly can't disclose confidential information.
Laura (00:20:16): Yeah, I feel like in higher education, my best work is often my best-kept secret. Many small colleges, they don't want the public to know that they're struggling. No one does. Whether it's enrollment, or budgets, or staffing, whatever it might be.
And my contracts often limit what I can share. So, even if I create an entire communication strategy, dozens of emails, text campaigns, templates, I can't post those online. It's a lot like consultants probably in other industries who can't reveal client names or project details. You know, you have to market without showing your actual deliverables.
And at the beginning, I found that very difficult. My workaround has been to circle back a year or two later to see if I can share some pieces online, because maybe after a couple years, they've moved on, they have a new campaign. In the meantime, though, there's a couple things that I've started doing.
One is talking about results from a 10,000-foot approach. I think I mentioned this earlier. So, for example, one institution I worked with, we did a complete customer journey. So, from when they enter as a prospect, all the way through when they're an enrolled student, sometimes even earlier, when they're a freshman, sophomore, juniors, and they're coming in.
And we implemented this over the course of about 12 to 18 months, and that institution saw enrollment go up at literally every stage of their student journey after we implemented. So, the case study that I then told was without revealing the proprietary work that I did for them. It's just a story without showing every detail. So I start with what their challenges were, the solutions and the services that they utilized me for, and then the ultimate outcome, which was the increased enrollment at every stage. They had increased applications, increased deposits, increased enrollments. And so, that's the story that I now have to tell, rather than actually showing my deliverables.
Finding Prospects Through Referrals
AJ (00:22:28): You also have another challenge. That, and you touched on it a moment ago. Higher ed institutions don't advertise their enrollment struggles. So how do you find prospects who need help but aren't raising their hand publicly. You can't find them on LinkedIn. They're not going to go on LinkedIn and say, I'm struggling here.
Laura (00:22:52): Right, right, they're not going to. Yeah, you're not going to be finding higher education clients on a job board saying that they've had a poor enrollment year. That's not going to happen. So, I've found that where you do find them is through conversations. So, as I mentioned before, since 2019, I've really been run entirely on referrals. At first, it was very organic. Finish a project, maybe get a recommendation, but then when I went full-time, I had to be significantly more intentional. And I wanted this to start becoming a repeatable process.
And so, the people I've found that hire me tend to be in 3 groups. One are new users to CRMs. So there's a pretty prominent CRM in the higher education world called Technolution Slate, and it's a CRM most colleges use to manage communication with prospective students. So if they are implementing that CRM, they're in those beginning stages, that's when I tend to see some people who are reaching out when they're doing implementation.
Number two are schools. They just realize that their messaging is not landing, or it's inconsistent, and so they want to strengthen it, and so they're wanting me to come in with fresh eyes, and maybe update or develop from scratch a brand new communication flow to prospects, or any population of their students.
And then third are institutions that are flat or down in enrollment. Sometimes they're missing talking to entire audiences. I've found that a lot of colleges are not talking to parents of prospective students or school counselors, and they're like, this is a missing piece to our puzzle that we think can make a difference.
So those are typically the people that I find. Like you said, the challenge, though, is if the school's enrollment numbers are struggling, they're not going to be going on LinkedIn and saying, hey, my numbers are struggling. And so, you have to know the right people, even to know that that need exists.
So I've made referrals part of my process now. It's not just a thing I do on the side, or happen to ask for a happy accident. At the end of every contract, I send a wrap-up survey asking for feedback, and then at least one introduction to someone they think might benefit from my work. That way, referrals aren't luck. They're more of a system.
And, like I said, when you've done good work, people are glad to connect you, I think, with other people. And so that's the way that I've found to use a referral system through higher education, rather than, you know, I could go to a national database and find a college whose enrollment is down, but I don't think there's going to be many vice presidents or presidents of enrollment that are going to be very happy to receive a cold call saying, hey, I saw your enrollment was down last year, do you need help? That happens in other industries, but it just can't happen, and it doesn't happen in higher education. And so, those are some of the things I've found that work better for me.
AJ (00:26:04): I love that. Building in referrals to the contract, so they know right up front. I love that idea. You also, you also talked about you having them complete a survey. You also, from our previous conversation, you asked them to provide a testimonial.
Laura (00:26:21): Oh, yes.
AJ (00:26:23): That is as well, yeah. So, I have an entire section in my contract about marketing. It is, again, challenge that I had early on, I did not have this section in there, and then later I realized, oh, I can't put their logo on my website. I can't talk about a case study because I didn't get their permission.
And so, I've built it into the contract that I ask for them. They must complete the survey at the end of the contract. They allow me to use their logo in any marketing or communications, website, digital, any type of strategy that I want to use it in as a former client. And that I might interview them for a case study, something a little bit larger, and then also that they have to provide me their numbers.
So because I do work so much with enrollment, I want to know, did what I do have any impact in the long run? And so now, I've built that into the contract to where a year out, a year later, I'm usually working on an entire year, because an admissions cycle is a full year. I can come back and say, okay, we're gonna as part of the contract, I'd love for you to provide me some general numbers. I don't need to be breaking FERPA rules, I just want some general data that will then help me talk about the impact that I had for you, in your institution. And so those are things that I've continually built, I've continually broadened that scope of marketing in my contract to do that.
Collaborating with Other Consultants
AJ (00:28:06): You work with other companies, other consultants, on large RFPs. How do you start building those partnerships and vetting your potential collaborators?
Laura (00:28:20): Yes, collaboration in consulting, I found, is not competition, it is really capacity.
