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Episode 160

April 13th, 2022

160: How to Build a Facilitation Business with Mireille Beumer

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    Intro

    Facilitation is a lot of things: we’d all agree on and understand it as a verb. Many of us would identify it as a profession. But how many of us understand it as a business?

    Mireille Beumer wasn’t always in the business of facilitation. Yes, she was a freelancer offering facilitation services, but it took a little while longer for her to step into entrepreneurship and create her facilitation business.

    It might seem like pedantic semantics, but it’s a crucial difference.

    Learn what it means to create a facilitation business, rather than being a solo facilitator in this episode… and learn how Mireille did it herself!

    Find out about

    • Mireille’s journey of turning facilitation from a verb to a profession to a business
    • The building blocks for creating a facilitation business
    • Why asking for help brings success, but uncritically accepting advice doesn’t
    • How a freelance facilitator operates differently to a facilitation business
    • Why it is a folly to try and sell your ‘human’ services to businesses
    • What Mireille recommends if you aren’t sure where to start with entrepreneurship

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    Questions and Answers

    01:46What has happened since you were last on the show, late in 2019, and how have you navigated the pandemic? 05:05How did you come to build your facilitation business? What comes next? 06:56 Would you consider LinkedIn as the main source of your work? 11:36Who are the clients you attract? And how did this shift in the pandemic? 17:05How did you first get started as a facilitation business owner? It can seem so huge and impossible to begin, from the outside. 21:44Did you purposefully create your personal brand and niche, or did it emerge naturally over time? 26:41Staying consistent and coherent with your branding. 28:20The need for education, innovation, and evolution rather than revolution. 01:09What’s your process for deciding pricing? 04:03Why is it that you don’t share your preparation time? 09:38The need to compensate ourselves for training and education. 11:56What is one thing you wish you had known before starting? 13:42Coping with uncertainty. 18:03What’s the difference between being a freelance facilitator and having a facilitation business? 22:59What can you share about the back office of your business? With whom do your work? 25:50Where is your business heading – more co-facilitators? Automated sessions? Or are you happy with how it is right now? 27:21What makes a young business fail? 28:58What are your thoughts on ‘competitors’? 34:46Avoiding falling into the same traps our clients might call us in to help them out of. 35:32What is the one thing you would like the audience to take away from this episode?

    Links

    Episode 30 – featuring Mireille!

    Mireille’s website

    Connect to Mireille

    On LinkedIn

    On Instagram