Insight
Musselman: Leaders often avoid real problems due to pretense and denial
“There's a lot of leaders and business owners who they, you know, I'll just use it. They lie and they pretend, you know, and they're trying to avoid the thing that's right in the way because they don't want to name it.”
Insight
Musselman: Never deliver business proposals via email; always present them live
“You don't really ever want to give any kind of proposal, you know, like in an email. You always want to do a proposal over the phone if you can't do it in person.”
Insight
Musselman: Consultants find hidden client problems by withholding direct answers
“I don't want to give them any answer. I want them to listen to the story and then kind of process and, you know, and I will never, you know, say that's not right. I just say, okay, say, tell me more about that. You know, what about that story triggered that fo…”
Insight
Musselman: Silence after a great question is the best consulting tool
“You know, a great question asked at the right time, followed by silence is the most effective tool I've found in my arsenal by far.”
Insight
Musselman: Consultants often fail by trying to impress instead of listening
“Oftentimes consultants feel a need as they show up into a circumstance to be smart. Right. And so sometimes consultants will show up with a design to impress. And I, you know, I show up with a design to ask really good questions and then remain silent and let …”
Insight
Musselman: Masterful open-ended questioning makes prospects sell themselves
“And all I had to do is follow the answers to every single question. And pretty soon, if you're really skilled at it, they sell themselves and you don't even have to do anything. Other than meet them where they are.”
Insight
Musselman: Consultants must commit to process while remaining outcome-independent
“Being a hundred percent committed, like unbelievably committed to what I do and the way I do it and totally unattached to the outcome. So that creates freedom, you know, and it creates authenticity and I can speak directly to people and often are very direct. …”
Disclosure
Musselman: Five clients drive roughly 95% of his referral business
“I, you know, I probably have five clients of mine if I thought about it. Who are responsible for about 95% of my business, you know, from the referral side.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Musselman took over his family's $30M manufacturing business at age 30
“I was 30 years old when I took over my family's business... Across the leadership team that had been assembled to kind of run this business, which is at that time a thirty million dollar business, roughly 300 people”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Musselman's family business went bankrupt in 2008, prompting his consulting career
“When my family's business ultimately, you know, unfortunately in 2008, nine went through bankruptcy, I jumped into consulting because I knew enough of what I could offer in value to other companies that were like mine.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Musselman: Lender called $6.5M balance on an $11M credit line
“At that time we had an eleven million dollar revolving line of credit. We had about 6.5 million outstanding. And when they called it, we couldn't meet it because of the timing of the year.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Musselman's former family business sold under PE ownership for around $60M
“So it just sold in January under the new ownership, I think for like sixty million dollars.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Gallo barred sales trainees from customers until mastering open-ended questions
“I began my career for a company called Ernest and Julia O'Gallo and, you know, back in the, Late eighties when I came out of university and they did not let us in that era of training get in front of a customer until we had mastered the skill of effective ques…”
Disclosure
Musselman apologized to early consulting clients for trying to impress them
“When I first got into this world of consulting and coaching, I'll just say in advising, I've apologized to every single client I had in that first couple of years. Because I was operating a, out of a wounded ego, somebody who'd just come out of bankruptcy as t…”
