There are two ways to overdeliver. One leads to burnout. The other leads to repeat business.
Most consultants think overdelivering means bending over backwards. They think it means doing extra hours, allowing scope creep, saying yes to things they don’t even know how to do. It doesn’t. It means something far more strategic, and far less exhausting.
Note: This is step four of my five-step process for making money as a wellness consultant. If you haven’t listened to Step 1 (One Way Forward), Step 2 (One Thing, Done Brilliantly), or Step 3 (Become Your Client’s Obvious Choice), go back and start there. This episode is what you do once the client has already said yes.
Now, back to the episode.
Ten years into business, I had clients I was almost embarrassed to put on my profile. Not because the hotels were bad or the wellness concept was poor. The hotels were great and the concepts were excellent. I would go in and build a hotel a stunning wellness concept, they’d implement it, and I’d move on because my job was done.
Except it wasn’t done. Because what I hadn’t realised was that solving one problem for a client creates a new one. They now had this beautiful wellness facility and no idea how to run it. No one to manage it. No plan for what happens when the wellness director leaves. This was a new problem, created by solving the first one.
For years, I saw that as a failure. I thought, “I didn’t really help them.” It took me a decade to see it for what it actually was: a golden opportunity, sitting there the whole time, that I walked straight past.
Overdelivering isn’t about doing more. It’s about seeing further. It’s about anticipating the problem your solution creates before your client even knows it’s coming, and having the answer ready.
In today’s episode, we’ll cover the following 3 things:
1.- Why “bending over backwards” isn’t overdelivering — and what to do instead that doesn’t burn you out.
2.- The new problems every solution creates — and why spotting them early is what turns a one-time client into a client for years.
3.- How hotel service-recovery thinking applies directly to consulting — preempting glitches before they happen, instead of putting out fires later down the road.
By the end of this episode, you’ll understand the real difference between overdelivering and overextending.
You’ll know how to look past the problem you were hired to solve and spot the one it creates next, and why that’s where your repeat business actually lives.
You’ll also see why a high-ticket, low-volume consulting business depends far more on this step than on constantly finding new clients.