Agreed with Allison! You’re not alone in this Sarah, sometimes things take a little longer than we would like. Definitely had a little bit of a detour myself as I worked through some mental health challenges too. Wishing you all the best as you restart and refresh!

Hey Kim,

I felt too overwhelmed to navigate it by myself, so I am working with a broker. I found a few by asking for recommendations of agents who do health insurance in town and also went through here https://localhelp.healthcare.gov

One of the agents in town was really helpful, listening to my needs and trying to find a plan that could provide mental health benefits, even if it’s just a telephone call with a therapist once a month. We’re all definitely smart enough to review and make these decisions on our own. But sometimes (esp when there’s not a cost with it for the consumer) it is nice to have someone hold your hand through the process.

K.

Thanks for sharing Chris, I’d love to hear how your experience is after you get the deliverables. I have a local person that I’m thinking of to help me take my website to the next step, so hearing about others’ experiences is helpful.

Thanks for asking this question Kim! I’ve been wondering the same thing (for months now) about tracking billable hours since I want to upgrade from my excel spreadsheets. This helps me out quite a bit and I’ll put Freshbooks on my list of things to check out.

Thanks Chris! Your website looks like you’ve got some great content and a rich history of experiences to bring to your clients 🙂

Hi all!

The best thing about being late to the party is that I can read all the introductions in one sitting. I so appreciate sharing this course experience with everyone and also being able to peek behind the curtain of other consultants’ experiences.

My name is KaYing and I’m currently a student, a part-time employee at the local community foundation, and consultant as a side hustle–a gig which has existed for five years purely on word-of-mouth opportunities that knocked at my door. Since my biggest consulting client is closing shop at the end of the year, it’s giving me the incentive to either commit to a full-time job (meh) or finally put in real effort into my consulting business (scary, but much more interesting!).

My background is in evaluation, international development, and philanthropy. I can do evaluation, however, I LOVE helping others develop evaluative thinking and practice skills. My dissertation topic is around building evaluative thinking and practice in the foundation boardroom. I currently teach program evaluation to mid-career graduate students–and would like to do more of that type of capacity building work in my consulting practice. I’m a little nervous if the market is there (and will pay sufficiently) in my region. But I’ve got a runway of time and the low-cost lifestyle of a graduate student to test it in 2023!

Here is the module one version of my in-progress website https://www.idds.io I’m sure it’ll look great by the time I’m done with the course! I have a deadline of March 23 to have it ready as a “minimal viable product” for a networking session. That’s one of my mantras to avoid getting stuck in high expectations and accept that life is always available for further iteration.

See you all in the next office hours!