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alrighty good morning everyone i'd like to welcome you all to today's webinar year one getting your first client as an independent educational consultant this session is currently being recorded and the archive will be posted to the uci division of continuing education on demand recordings page you can see the website link right here my name is keisha bayton and i am a program coordinator here at uci division of continuing education here's a brief outline of what we're going to cover in this webinar session first i'll start off with a quick overview of zoom features so you will know how to submit questions throughout the presentation next i will go over some information about our independent educational consultant certificate program which is a fully online program i'll cover all the requirements fees and details regarding upcoming courses for our upcoming winter quarter which begins as early as january 4th i will then turn it over to our guest presenter steph muller and at the end of her presentation we'll have a brief q a session finally i will leave you all with my contact information so that you can send us any additional questions that we did not get to address okay if you encounter any technical difficulties during the webinar today please send a chat message over and we will help you troubleshoot any issues if you have any question for myself or for staff regarding the content of this presentation please submit it in the chat panel also we will address all the questions at the end be sure to send your questions to all panelists here's a brief overview of the independent educational consultant certificate program our program is fully online and provides the knowledge and skills needed to fully understand the college admissions process and how to meet the needs of period clients develop and taught by industry experts and accomplish educational consultants you will also acquire the basic skills required to start open and expand a successful and ethical educational consulting businesses our program is designed for a number of audiences currently we have individuals who have transitioned into the college admissions consulting profession from other careers like high school counseling or administration individuals looking to develop their business model and marketing plan in order to launch their own private practice and we also have some people who are already practicing iecs but they are seeking professional development opportunities the certificate program is composed of five required courses and two electives so it adds up to a total of seven courses or 15 units to be eligible for a certificate students must complete all seven classes with the letter grade of c or better as well as a completed declaration of candidacy and requests for certificate since there is a small candidacy fee we usually advise students to take a few classes before they apply just to make sure they want to complete the entire program as i mentioned previously our certificate program consists of seven online courses here are the five required courses there's principles of independent educational consulting navigating the financial aid network college admissions consulting resources developing an independent educational consulting business and the independent educational consulting practicum we highly recommend that new students take the principles course first there is a prerequisite for the practical course and you must complete all the other required courses before you can enroll in the practicum course now we're moving on to the elective courses we offer a number of very interesting electives such as working with students with learning differences marketing and public relations for the educational consultant counseling techniques for iecs consulting transfer summer and gap year students american college consulting for international student international college consulting for the american student and fundamentals of graduate school admission so there's something for everyone in the elective courses now in the upcoming winter quarter we'll be offering all of these courses these are the required courses principles of independent educational consulting navigating a financial aid network college admissions consulting resources developing an independent educational consulting business and independent educational consulting practicum you can see here that each course is listed with its start date and end date as well as the online course fee of 725 dollars per course currently registration is open and students may enroll either online or by calling our student services office courses in this program fill up quite quickly so early registration is highly recommended now we are moving on to the schedule of winter 2021 for the elective courses for the elective we'll be offering four courses and these are working with students with learning differences marketing and public relations for the educational consultant american college consulting for international students and fundamentals of graduate school admissions again the start and end date of the courses are listed as well as the course fee and the course schedule enrollment information are also posted on our website each course in our program costs 725 dollars so you are looking at 5075 in course fees for the seven online classes note that you do not pay the entire total up front you simply pay for each course individually at time of enrollment there's also a 125 certificate candidacy fee for the program so in the end you are looking at around 5200 for the total please note that that amount does not include textbooks which some courses may require and the textbook information is posted on the enrollment page so you will know if course materials are required before you enroll in the class we also provide discount members for heca and ieca members of these associations are given 10 discount on courses within our independent educational consultant certificate program for membership questions or to receive a discount code if you're already a member please follow the directions on our website and you can see our website link right here in orange so this is a screenshot of our iec certificate program brochure if you do not have the brochure you can download it off of our website similar to our website the brochure contains general information about certificate program and each of the course description when you're viewing the course schedule you'll notice that not all classes are offered every single quarter so you need to please plan accordingly today's presenter is steph muller steph is the founder of the mahler institute and author of the complete candidate a comprehensive system for solving the college admissions puzzle for the past decade she has helped students in 8th through 12th grades develop and execute successful admission strategies staff holds aba in economics and international relations from the university of pennsylvania an mba from harvard business school and a graduate certificate in college counseling from the university of california san diego steph is a certified educational planner and a professional member of ica heka aicep and netcac i'm going to go ahead and hand it over to steph so she can further introduce herself and begin her introduction i'm not sure what just happened you can just scroll down stuff and go go all the way to yeah sorry guys you'll see my photo and see that i'm blonde there you go we're over there there we go okay if that's the biggest glitch then we're off to a good start hello everybody and let me get this going slideshow and it's like from current side there you go there we are okay here i am um thank you kezia i really appreciate the introduction and thank you all of you for dialing in i know we have um students on on today's webinar i believe we also have some practicing iecs and um for those of you who are actually practicing to be joining a webinar about this right after the november 1 deadline yesterday i know is no small feat so i do want to tell you it is my absolute privilege to spend this time with you and to share some of my experiences and the lessons and the mistakes that i've learned in launching my own independent consulting company okay so not to think that i am the sole expert on how to launch businesses i decided to go out to 100 of my professional experienced iec friends whoopsie this is not working there we go uh i promise you i'll get this guys i don't know it doesn't like that slide there we go okay so i went out to all of my friends in um heca and ieca and asked them when they were launching their business what was the biggest challenge that they faced and you can see here that roughly half said it was how to get their client base and if you look at ieca and look at the data that they have compiled their data suggests that it takes a new iec roughly three to five years to grow a business that has a deep enough client base to sustain itself on referrals and so today my hope is that i'm going to share some strategies and some actionable items that you can do in order to shorten that window and get your business to profitability more quickly but first let's talk about the mistakes and i have certainly made my fair share of them i asked my colleagues what were the strategies that did not work for you and here are their responses and i remember when i was first starting out i had a lot of people suggest that i give free talks at libraries or community centers and as a business person it just made no sense to me i mean why would you go to a place where people go to get free information and then expect them to pay you for the information that you give and it seems that a lot of my colleagues agree it seems it seems like a good idea at the time but when you really get down to the nuts and bolts of it it generally does not translate into revenue generating clients i however made different and much more costlier mistakes i tried the bottom two so i did both paid advertising and then i also did hire a public relations professional and while my peer person did get me onto some morning tv and radio shows again it really didn't translate into business because the audiences were really not my demographic so i stopped that i also tried advertising in my local community magazine um and i thought i was going to be really smart about this because i know that a lot of people just sort of gloss over the ads so i decided to basically write a sponsored advice column so every month my ad was different and it was a q a kind of like a dear abby all about college admissions with the proper journalism byline and photo at the top and i thought it was pretty smart until it was about eight months into this paid advertising experiment that one of my friends who lives in my community said she just noticed that i was writing a column so this is somebody who knows me and it took her eight months to notice my photo so i quickly ditched that before we get into the strategies about how to get your first clients it's important to go back to some of the marketing principles that you've already been learning in this course and the first thing and the most important thing is what is your unique value proposition what is the expertise that you offer and how is it that you differentiate yourself from your colleagues coincidentally i have my students do this as well so if you haven't already i encourage you to take some time to take inventory of your knowledge and your experience and i call it leaning into your genius and i think about this in two different ways you have a demographic genius here on the left and an activity genius on the right so in the first column i've listed some examples of some student demographics where you may have some niche experience or expertise so maybe you or your children or college athletes or artists and have first-hand knowledge of the nuances of the recruiting process or portfolio creation or the audition process for performing artists maybe you come from a special education background and have experience working with students who have learning differences or maybe you have expertise maybe a legal background and want to specialize in students who may have made some mistakes and need someone to help triage if any of you know hannah scotland who practices out of chicago this is her practice each one of these demographics is rich enough to sustain a thriving iec business so think about if there is a population where you really want to target your expertise and service or maybe instead of focusing on a specific demographic perhaps you want to specialize in certain activities throughout the process a lot of you i'm sure are familiar with my friend ethan sawyer ethan and i met at a knack at conference about 10 11 years ago when we were both considering um starting up businesses and we were sitting over dinner in new orleans which is where the conference was and um and for those of you who who don't know ethan has a an mfa from northwestern university and he was really perplexed because he said you know i really love the writing but i don't want to be putting together college lists or doing financial aid or any of that other stuff and so that's what he did and college essay guy was born and has grown obviously to be wildly successful and so he's doing what he loves he's developed a great area of expertise um and again he's you know helping tons of students employing a ton of essay coaches so i would encourage you to think about what are the skills that you have and what are the activities that you enjoy doing and so again if you haven't done this already take a few minutes to take your personal inventory what are your areas of genius and as you do that i would also encourage you to think about what are your areas of perceived weakness so take me for example although i am a certified educational planner i do not have a background in education i never worked in a school i never taught my background is squarely rooted in business and instead of hiding behind that perceived weakness i celebrate it as something that differentiates me from my colleagues i lead with the fact that i understand strategy and marketing and i leverage those business skills to help my clients develop and execute successful college admission strategies in fact when i meet with a new client for the first time it's the very first thing that i tell them that i want them to be clear i'm not a former you know school counselor or teacher my background is fairly rooted in business and they need to be comfortable with that if we're going to partner so once you've taken inventory of your areas of genius it's time to put it together in your own elevator pitch and again this is a classic marketing principle i'm sure you've already covered it in this class but for those of you who might not be in the class who are on this call i reposted the definition of an elevator pitch here your elevator pitch is a short two to three sentence explanation that tells somebody what you do and the unique genius that you offer um you know it's it's called an elevator pitch because it's about the time it takes to ride up in an elevator with somebody um but you cannot expect to start building a client base until you know what you can offer them and this elevator pitch is the way that you communicate that so here's my elevator pitch right i help students in 8th through 12th grades leverage proven business principles to develop and execute a successful college admissions strategy that differentiates them from every other smart talented student who is applying to their target colleges so in this one sentence you learn a whole lot about me you learn the age group that i serve so i'm strictly 8th through 12th grade i don't do graduate work you know how i saw how i serve them what my philosophy is and the results that i help my clients achieve which is to differentiate themselves from every other competitive applicant so now that we know who you are it's time to figure out who your customer is because as the saying goes you can't be all things to all people so part of taking your inventory and knowing your genius and defining your elevator pitch is to truly identify what is inside and outside your box of expertise so here's my box my box is in the center these are the activities where i have expertise and these are the activities in which i actively engage with my clients then i have two other columns for areas where i lack expertise and quite frankly i'm not really interested in developing expertise in these areas anytime soon and so once you define what's in and out of your box then you can start to make some decisions for those items that are outside your box you can decide one do you want to partner with others in this area and that's what i've done here on the left so in my client base i don't have enough students who qualify for financial aid to really develop an expertise in it and it certainly is an area where a little learning is a very dangerous thing so i outsource that service to another company all they do for me is financial aid they charge a flat fee i give them my clients and that is my partnership um and then there are areas on the right where quite frankly i don't want to touch it because as you think about partnerships there's obviously a lot of thinking and a lot of research that goes into it you need to determine who is it you trust to work with your clients how do you work with that partner and of course what the revenue split will be so there is some cost to managing those partnership relationships on the right these are the um demographics and the activities that i just quite frankly don't want to touch um not that there's anything wrong with performing artists for me two things one is i tend to speak business speak i tend to be very direct um creative students uh i think i'm probably a little too blunt for a lot of them so i just don't think it's a great match and i certainly i love going to the theater and and to concert halls but i know nothing about it and it very much is an area of expertise that is better just simply handing off to somebody else again students with learning differences i think need real specialized um support which i can't offer i don't work with graduate applicants um anybody who needs therapeutics or crisis management again honna scotland is sort of my go-to there and then i have a number of people who i refer to for test prep depending on what the needs of the students are there is a fantastic business thing and i wish i knew who said it but there's a great saying that i was always taught which is the day you say no to a customer is the day that you know you have a business strategy and i very much abide by that so once you define what is inside your box you can define who your customer is and a potential customer must meet these three criteria it's somebody who has a need that you can fill it's somebody who values the genius that you bring and for the most part um it is somebody who is willing to pay for your services now one thing that makes marketing and iec business a bit more complicated is the fact that our customers are not usually the same people as our clients customers are the people who pay for our service which is usually parents or grandparents while the clients are the people who consume the service the student so as you think about your marketing tactics particularly on social media think about which group you want to target and how um again this is particularly important as you think about different platforms like facebook or linkedin or snapchat or i can't even keep up with all the other ones tick tock and who else knows what's going on but parents and students do not reside on the same platforms so as you think about a social media strategy it's really important to be cognizant of who is your paying client and who is using the service and how do you get to each okay so once you define your your customer base simply go where they congregate in business we call it a target rich environment so here's just a few examples once you go through the work of figuring out your genius what's inside your box who your customer is it then becomes much easier to figure out where that customer is and how to target them so if you are going to focus in say on athletic recruiting you want to be hitting up coaches gyms um athletic camps combines booster clubs for parents ceso is a volunteer organization called um student athletes serving others and so they often have meetings i've i've done a lot of speaking at say so type events where they bring together both the student and the parent so those are great opportunities again we've got others for performing artists high achievers so if you're really targeting sort of that high achiever those ap booster clubs if your district has uh gifted and talented groups uh obviously parent-teacher organizations um that's where some of these parent groups will sit um and where you can target them if any of you is coming from a school you already have a connection to the school so you know getting in to speak through the counseling office might be an option for you i did not have that relationship and when i tried to approach my school district to volunteer my time and service in that capacity i was very politely declined but those of you who are coming from a school setting that would be a great opportunity for you okay so um now we go to we've done our work we've defined your unique value proposition um we know what's inside and outside of your box we know who your customer is we know now where you can find them and we've talked about some fail strategies so now it's time to talk about what does work how is it that you can get your first clients so again i went back to my handy dandy friends in heka and ieca and those of you i'm not on the board of either but for any of you who is a new studying to transition into um the sort of the iec world i would strongly encourage you to look at some of those organizations like heka and ieca um they're the consultants who um join them are very generous with information advice mentorship and so you know this can be a very lonely job so having a network across the country across the globe of people who are willing to give you advice and answer your questions and help you through some sticky situations um or to get data for a presentation um it's it's a it's a very generous groups both of them so i asked my friends and i this is specifically seasoned iec's who responded so i was asking for people um with a minimum of five years of experience so i asked them which of the following strategies were successful in building your client base and here's what they responded so at the top is something that i never thought about but i had a few people actually um say that they started a tupperware party approach which means that they basically went to a family or a friend and offered free consulting services if that person were to invite friends who have sort of you know appropriately age children to hear kind of an information session lunch and learn kind of a thing so i thought that was kind of interesting um overwhelmingly iec said that the most effective strategy is to network with other iecs and partners in adjacent fields like test prep and tutoring i promise you that right now there are a number of experienced iecs who like me during this time of year get a ton of phone calls from seniors who realize that this is college application season and they haven't started yet um so i know that when i get a call i hate to just say no without any alternative so i would love to refer to somebody who does have capacity to take on a senior or even just review an application or help tweak an essay here or there um also you noticed all of those areas that were outside of my box if any of you have experienced expertise in areas like performing artists or therapeutics or learning differences you know reach out to me after because i'm always looking for referrals or the uh slide move is a little bit slow on this or it just stopped oh there we go there's a delay in the okay there we go okay so a few other things um that i would definitely encourage you to do first and foremost go to your network um tell your friends tell your former colleagues you know update your linkedin profile for those of you who are on social media you know make an announcement uh get to know other iecs i remember i've had a number of colleagues who you know basically just said hey can i take you out for lunch or can i can we have a cup of coffee and can you tell me about your business and from that we've got great referral networks i mean they refer to me i refer to them um so i would again it's a pretty generous community i guess maybe depending on your market some are a little bit more competitive than others um but um i would definitely you know throw out the net and see who will have a cup of coffee with you and you'd be amazed at how much business you'll end up getting from that um obviously other social media parent groups get in there if you can offer some advice um that's a big one particularly as you're thinking about social media and that is establish expertise in your area of genius and there are a number of ways that you can do this so on linkedin and i first let me just tell you i am no social media expert that was actually i was kind of slow to the social media game in this whole thing we can talk about that in a little bit but for those of you who are a little bit more savvy um linkedin has something called linkedin expert where i think that if you um sit and answer a certain number of queries and you get a certain number of helpful votes you actually become an expert writing a blog is pretty self-explanatory there is a service called haro help a reporter out you can just sign up for it online and basically what happens is you can set how frequently you get emails i think i get them daily but basically you'll get an email with a whole bunch of different topics and there's a section four specifically for education where people who are writing like freelance writers reporters are just looking for experts to provide quotes and information for whatever it is they're writing about it can be about you know top 20 gadgets this holiday season or it can be you know how many of your students are taking a gap year because of covid and so if you have the time you can see the the questions that they're looking at and send them whatever your thoughts are and you can get quoted fairly easily i've been quoted all over the place um and it's only because of this help reporter out so if you're trying to establish some expertise that's helpful also kind of a nice caveat or a ripple effect of that is if people are cert find your name and start searching you because they want to check you out before they hire you you'll start coming up in articles and media which again just gives you a lot more credibility um obviously we've got social media parent groups so um being able to give advice on those on those i would be aware of how much selling you're doing versus how much advising um i tend to think that kind of a softer cell just to say you know you know i am an independent educational consultant and here's what i would do in this situation um i think gets you a lot farther than trying to outwardly sell your services um and then again we also talked about those you know list serves for ieca heca nacac uh so sharing your expertise with your iec and school counselor colleagues again will enhance your credibility and you'll if you really have to find your niche um you will start to be the go-to person in your community so speaking engagement so this is actually how i really got my first good set of clients so as i leaned into my genius and celebrated my weakness or perceived weakness which is business i knew early on that my target demographic would probably be students who are either high achieving students or children of high achieving parents um i knew this because i knew it would be people who um you know appreciated the schools that i went to and really valued my very direct business approach so i needed people who kind of thought the way that i did um a little bit more analytical logical if you're on myers briggs more j than p um and for me what that really meant was mostly families who are you know in business um stem fields and also those who are used to paying for knowledge and expertise and so when people who are in my network who coincidentally were also largely made up of this demographic of kind of business engineering medicine that kind of stuff when they learned about my job a lot of them invited me to speak to their high net worth private wealth clients and starting in that group speaking their language and offering something that you know for a private wealth client the one thing you can't do legally is purchase education um at exclusive schools for your child so they are used to paying for that expertise and that was what worked for me but think about your community and what demographic of speaking engagement would work for you so if you're active in your church or youth groups that would be a great opportunity um again we've got the online facebook parent groups um talk to cpas realtors wealth advisors if you think that's your demographic you know they're always looking to provide value to their clients and kind of a wrap around situation and so as parents are thinking about paying for college or grandparents often are thinking about paying for college this is a nice service that you could also offer to them before you do that however the details matter it is you know everybody knows the saying there's no second chance to make a first impression so take the time to make a good first impression before you get in front of your potential clients you know pay attention to the details spend some money to invest in a strong logo and marketing materials that really reflect your value proposition knowing that i was really going to be targeting again higher achieving more affluent demographics if you were to see my print materials which nobody has seen in light of covid but i spent some money up front to do you know really heavy high quality paper silver foiled embossing like a real luxury type of marketing packet yours might be very very different if you're looking at athletics or performing artists or maybe you just want to start with first gen or you know students make sure that your marketing um is a further extension of your brand this is my website here that's my dog oliver um make sure you also have a easy to navigate very clear website where people can go and again it just gives you legitimacy a facebook page in my humble opinion it's just not enough um i know that when i see stuff on facebook and i try to go this happens with restaurants all the time and i can't they don't actually have a website um it just loses credibility something i see a lot with my colleagues that i would strongly advise against is make sure you have a proper email address um not a gmail or a hotmail i mean spend um spend the the it's not very expensive if you go on to something like a godaddy or a wix but get an email domain that is the name of your company aside from the legal reasons of doing that it just presents a much more polished professional image and something very simple that i'm surprised more people don't do is make sure you have an email signature that has a link to your website on every email that you send i can't tell you how many clients i've gotten because i was collaborating with somebody either on an or non-profit board on which i sit or a pto project and as we were on the phone i would send them an email and as you were chatting um the other end of the phone said oh my god this is what you do for a living and it's because they got the email and they just clicked on my website just to learn more about me so um so those are sort of some very easy first things to do but make sure you have your house in order before you let somebody in it so make sure you you have a good marketing packet before you start getting those first clients now that you have your first clients it's time to grow that into a referral base and the best way you do this is to just do really good work and to show value immediately again what we do as iecs i think is really challenging because so much of what we do is behind the scenes work um not face-to-face work we do a ton of you know campus visits we do um list builds and research and essay edits and essay edits and essay edits um so our clients don't often see a lot of the work that we do mark sclara who is the executive director of ieca calls it make sure you have a way to fold the corners of the toilet paper and what he's referring to is when you go to a hotel the reason that housekeeping folds the corners of the toilet paper is to show you that they were there so figure out how to show those first clients that you were there and show tangible impact immediately so what i do with my clients is i offer um or i do with my annual clients what i call a strategy session and for me what that means is for students who are 15 and above because 15 is kind of the pivot point for the accuracy of the results i give them before they even do their first meeting with me one-on-one they do an assessment um i happen to use guided paths on guided paths find my spark it's essentially rooted in myers-briggs uh methodology and so they'll take the assessment um it takes about 15-20 minutes i will meet with them one-on-one and we'll do a strategy session and we'll go through the results and it also helps me understand how to approach that student how to chat with them um because communication is a big part of the assessment uh but at the end of that assessment first of all before they come into that first meeting they have a report that i have designed so they they're getting something tangible even before we meet and it is not only tangible but is tangible and custom to that student then we go through the session and then following that session i then do a follow-up report which at this point is largely standardized so it doesn't take me very much effort to do and so within a few days of their very very first meeting with me they end up with a report that is eight to ten pages again custom to that student with recommendations for how we're going to spend our time across the next few months so in that very first meeting that client is getting a wealth of knowledge a wealth of analysis a plan forward that is custom to that student that's folding the corners of the toilet paper and for me it doesn't take me very much because i've templated pretty much you know every type that myers-briggs has so figure out what that is for you how is it that you can straight out of the gate show your clients immediately value in a tangible way okay so here is my contact info um feel free to reach out to me you can see i'm not very good at social media because i didn't even post it on here um but what i'd like to do i wanted to make sure that we had ample time to go through q and as we've got about 15 minutes keisha shall i just go through the chat did you want to manage this how do you want to do this yes thank you steph so i will manage the chat i will read the questions and depending on who is addressed to we'll figure it out we'll uh address it together okay all righty okay so let's see um oh i am so sorry okay okay so i'm just glad of course okay so um we have the first question is the purpose of this webinar a cell for uci's program there are a lot of us who signed up and we have already been through either ucla or uci is it worth it for us to stay on the purpose of this webinar is to give some um content like for example like a topic today is first year getting your um clients for the first year so it's to just educate the general public about how to get your first clients in the iec field at the same time we are promoting our program at uci um i don't know if that answers the question um steph do you want to add to that yeah i think it's you know i i i think yeah you answer it's and if you ever go on to any heck you know webinar any sponsoring we'll always have sort of a preamble of this is who we are and this is what we do and so i appreciate for those of you who already have your certificates that you stayed on and i hope that it was worthwhile for you to stay on thank you steph okay moving on to the next question are there additional fees for international students there are no additional fees because we are division of continuing education everything costs the same whether you are local domestic or international students okay next question do the course credits ever expire if you take years to finish will your earlier courses still count so you do have five years to finish all the courses all the seven courses so they do expire after five years the next question can you still get a discount code if you have registered for classes yes if you are a member of ieca and heka you can go ahead and contact those two organizations get your discount code first and contact our student services to apply the discount next question can you post the course information registration details i missed the beginning of the slides i will actually send the information about that on my follow-up email tomorrow when i send the recording of this webinar so don't worry about missing the beginning of the slides next questions do you ask to speak or present to these groups by speaking engagement what does that mean as compared to presenting at community centers or libraries i believe this is for you guys for me okay yes so you know this happens a lot of different ways i'll be honest i so i'm going to set set aside uh community centers and libraries separately from various speaking engagements and in my mind i separate that out because um i really truly believe that people go to libraries for free information and i i just i've i've found it very rarely translates into revenue dollars if you want to go and speak at a community center or a library because you just want to give back to the community by all means go and do that if you're doing it as a revenue strategy i don't think it's successful instead i would look to speaking engagements where either you're looking at groups of people who are used to paying for knowledge and expertise and very much value what you offer and that's what i did when i started out speaking to um you know clients of friends of mine who um had you know businesses at morgan stanley or merrill lynch or that kind of thing private equity firms i also think that if you are it part of it depends on how competitive a school district you're in the the school district where i am is quite competitive um parents are very um cognizant of what their students are doing and they put a lot of time and effort into ensuring that their students are successful so in my community as i'm sure many of yours there are lots of test prep companies there are lots of tutoring businesses and it's because parents really do invest financially as well as in time for their children and so in those communities and in every school community i've quite frankly just had different school groups and they're they're usually in my case because again um the actual schools didn't necessarily want me coming in there but it's parents who found me and asked me to present to their national charity league group or their ap booster club or i just did one for um the gifted and talented group um of which i also happen to be a member because my my son is in the gt program so i would look start looking at what are the groups of which you are apart or where are the groups within your school system and you can again get on those social media platforms most of them have you know facebook groups where if you want to start pinging in some expertise some advice some interesting information they'll likely seek you out they're always looking for volunteers to provide content so if you have that again if you figure out your genius you know what's in your box you know what you can present um they're likely to to really um appreciate that and then honestly it just it's all word of mouth does that i think that answers this question that that definitely answers the questions yeah so steph we only have about 10 more minutes until we're done with the webinar but meanwhile we still have plenty of questions to address so i was thinking um if we can address this via email to save time or if you want to go through maybe a couple more before i'd like to go through yeah we're in college deadlines so as much as we can address and if anybody wants to reach out to me afterward again by all means feel free exactly yes yeah so okay oh sorry so do you want to answer a couple more questions or you want to go ahead here i can i can scroll through this you can see too right yeah okay might go ahead so there's a lot about the speaking engagements versus free thoughts yes um can you share more about how somebody specializes in something like learning differences or crisis management what makes the application process unique in regards to these categories great question um and i would say usually somebody's areas of expertise come from their own personal experiences so somebody who specializes in learning differences probably comes from that background social work special needs teacher in schools in terms of crisis management a lot of iecs who are former lawyers will get into that work i know hana scotland who i um referenced earlier who practices out of chicago you know she went through that herself and had some missteps and ended up at harvard and so um she is sort of the expert of helping other people navigate that problem i mean if i ever have a student who gets into serious trouble she's on speed dial for me um so it really just again it goes back to taking stock of your own inventory you know there's a bunch of people who specialize in athletic recruiting usually it's because they themselves were college athletes and so they understand that process but it really is about figuring out what's in your box what's outside of your box and figuring out what your niche and then is maybe if you want to answer one more question and then we will wrap up okay hold on let's see a good one i do not somebody asked if i teach the uci marketing class i don't but i'd love to it's lots of fun oh somebody has a great tip here and i use this as well um so this is um from jennifer carberry she said a domain through google is less than 15 a month and can also include google voice for your business phone too great tip i do that as well um we have time for a couple more okay um there's a lot of questions about sample contracts and templates i'll be honest i actually just went out to the network with this very question it's tough to get um so this would be something i would implore uc irvine to share in your class because i think there's a lot of curiosity around contracts legal um so this honestly i would point you to at least a a lawyer to look at some basic stuff there are some software packages online that are contract generators which are a really good start um but i i wouldn't be comfortable sharing sort of legal information either just because again at first do no harm steph do you ask clients for quotes reviews for you to add to your website you know i'll be honest i'm really bad at this and it's partially because i'm just at heart i'm a really bad sales person i don't like asking people for stuff um a lot of people do what happens for me i also i also suppress my client list so i never publish who are my clients i would never tell somebody um if i'm working with their friend or not if they want to tell them that's fine but for me privacy is really really important um what i do in my business which has been very helpful is um when you start getting a lot of clients you will realize that trying to schedule with teenagers is maddening and you'll spend most of your time trying to schedule versus actually doing work and so i made the choice to use an online scheduling system the one that i use is called gen book but through gen book people can submit reviews and then that then has been acquired by google so then it gets searched so gen book is sort of my automatic schedule and it will send out a request for reviews um and my clients have been very generous in doing that but i say you go ahead and do it i'm just terrible at it um could you go over guided path a little bit more you know what i'm gonna pause on that one we can always send out there are a few different software programs that different iecs use guided path is one college planner pro is another there are a few others i don't work for any of them but it's worth taking a look at if you're gonna get into this business um how do you encourage oh good how do you encourage current clients to a few new clients honestly you don't have to if you do good work they want to share um i've never asked for a referral some people do give like gifts and things i don't um but i um you're not gonna have to ask uh yes you can absolutely have access to my slide presentation and what i see the essay writing is in steph's box which is an area i like to develop laura if you want to develop essay writing come talk to me because i'm always looking for essay coaches it is i the question is how much do i get involved in writing very i'm very very very involved with my students writing because it is the one part of their application that is entirely within their control so this is what i say to clients before they hire me i find on average that it takes a student and it can doesn't matter how strong or weak that student is roughly an outline and four to five essay drafts per essay which means that for some students depending on what their college list is by the end of the process it's not uncommon for them to have sent me upwards of 150 essay drafts so i push my students really really hard on the essay other iecs don't but i think it's the only opportunity they have to speak directly to admissions in their voice to say what they want to say about themselves so but if anybody considers themselves a great essay writing coach please let me know because i'm always looking to add and with that we're about three minutes out so i do want to say thank you so much for this opportunity to speak with you i hope that you found it at least somewhat helpful and maybe one or two nuggets that you can take away and implement in your own businesses and i wish you all great success in growing wildly big successful businesses that will help a ton of students yeah thank you so much seth i would like to clarify something earlier i answer a question about registration a discount code for registration so i answered that you are still able to but however the correct answer is you can use the discount for future enrollment so for example if you already registered for winter 2021 quarter you cannot um go back and get the discount code for that quarter but you can get the discount code for spring 2021 quarter so i hope that clarifies it um i hope you enjoyed this webinar and gain some insight into getting your first clients in your first year as an iec here you can see all the program contacts if you have any myself or for steph please send us an email and we will try to get back to you as soon as possible and also i will for those who are not able to stay for the entirety of the webinar i will send an email with the recording of the webinar so yeah have a great day everyone thank you again steph and see you all at the next webinar thank you bye thank you