We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Candie Simmons. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Candie below.

Candie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you take vacations? How do you keep things going – any advice for entrepreneurs who feel like they can’t step away from their business for a short vacation?

We are human and we all need a reset. I follow the motto, work hard, play harder.

To be successful in life and as an entrepreneur, you have to take time for yourself to make sure you are fueled with the right energy to keep going. Everyone experiences burnout and just as when you work for someone else, as an entrepreneur, the work will be there tomorrow. It is just more important as an entrepreneur to set expectations and implement time management. Focusing on these skills will enable you to take vacations that are worry free giving you the time to reset and come back ready to keep moving forward.

Candie, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Candie L. Simmons is a marketing veteran with over 20+ years of demonstrated experience. Having prepared and delivered countless presentations and speeches, she is a highly sought out public speaker who not only focuses on content, but also delivery and engaging her audiences.
As a Gallup Certified StrengthsFinder® Coach, she’s coached numerous managers and their teams on how to work together more effectively by focusing on each individual team members’ strengths in order to achieve overall goals.

A native of Ocean Springs, Mississippi, received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in marketing and Master of Business Administration from the University of Mississippi.

I am the owner of a full-service boutique consulting firm that can help with your organization’s effectiveness through professional development training. Our services include executive coaching, team building, strategic planning sessions, personal brand development and presentation skills. We can also provide other services upon request.
Our consulting firm works with managers one-on-one to identify their strengths through a StrengthsFinder Assessment and to understand how best to utilize those strengths while managing and working with their team members. In addition, we provide StrengthsFinder training for teams who want to learn how to work better with one another and focus on “what is right with people rather than what is wrong with people”. We have a wide range of Team Building exercises we can explore to help bridge communication and work-flow gaps.
In addition, we can help facilitate your strategic planning sessions to ensure they are thought provoking and cover the entire scope of your organization’s goals. We show you how to take the larger scope of things and make them clearer and more concise for developing into an overall plan from which you and your team can work. Our services include providing an outline of your plan and helping you fill in the gaps.
Many people are not aware or have never thought about having a Personal Brand. Everyone has one and this particular service helps you to define your brand to make sure you are living and breathing this brand. We help you to make sure you are expressing what you want others to see.
Through our presentation skills, we offer extensive training on not only how to create an impressive presentation, but most importantly how to deliver an effective and engaging presentation. We teach you about the important components of what makes a presentation great and you will receive in the moment feedback through practice sessions of making and creating actual presentations.
So, what is CLSimmons Consulting, LLC, a firm that provides professional development for your employees personal and professional growth.

Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?

Networking has been the most effective strategy for building clientele. I have reached out to people I know or met while in Corporate America and working on various non-profit boards. The relationships I built made it easy to pick up the phone or send an email to request a meeting. My goal has been to tell anyone and everyone about the work I am doing. Everyone I meet with is not a potential client, but everyone I meet with is an extension of sharing my services and making referrals.

Have you ever had to pivot?

During the pandemic, I was operating my business part-time and working full-time for someone else. However, my part-time opportunities helped fund things I wanted to do and I called it my “mad money”. To keep my business going, I had to adapt to the virtual world by conducting training via virtual platforms and changing up some of my training to incorporate updated business etiquette related to presenting and meeting in a virtual environment. Pivoting during the pandemic has made it easier to adapt when clients want to provide training for employees all over and outside of the country.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://clsimmonsconsulting.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/candie-simmons-8895a4b2?utm_source=share&utm_campaign=share_via&utm_content=profile&utm_medium=ios_app

Image Credits

Credit: Candie L Simmons