When you’ve been on staff at an organization—especially in the lead role— transitioning to consulting can be a bit disorienting. Consultant to credit unions Mark Triechel talks about the lessons learned in his switch from regulating an industry to advising them:

How to quickly morph from “retirement” into a Soloist expertise business serving your former constituents.

Dealing with non-competes and ethics clauses honorably while building your new business.

Becoming a “Soloist with a twist”—why you don’t have to work alone.

How “changing teams” allows you to continue serving an existing niche in new (and profitable) ways.

Turning what could have become a pure compliance practice into a strategic advisory business.

LINKS

Mark Treichel Website | LinkedIn

Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

BIO

In 33 years at the federal agency known as the National Credit Union Administration, Mark led the agency as Executive Director after starting at the entry level. His varied positions at every level give him a unique perspective on all things NCUA.

He “changed teams” and is now in his fourth year of consulting with NCUA credit unions so they save time and money. He has two credit union educational podcasts: With Flying Colors and Credit Union Regulatory Guidance.

His clients consider his team as secret weapons in the regulatory battles they face every year.

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TRANSCRIPT

00:00 - 00:16

Mark Treichel: It's really important that your ideal client knows that you exist. And figuring out who the ideal client is 1 big piece. If they're not aware that I'm here, they're not going to know that they can hire me.

00:22 - 01:01

Rochelle Moulton: Hello, hello. Welcome to the Soloist Life podcast where we're all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I'm Rochelle Moulton and today I'm here with Mark Treichel. In 33 years at the federal agency known as the National Credit Union Administration, Mark led the agency as executive director after starting at the entry level. His varied positions at every level give him a unique perspective on all things NCUA. He changed teams and is now in his fourth year of consulting with NCUA credit unions so they save time and money. He has 2 credit union educational podcasts with

01:01 - 01:12

Rochelle Moulton: flying colors and credit union regulatory guidance. Mark's clients consider his team as secret weapons in the regulatory battles they face every year. Mark, welcome.

01:13 - 01:15

Mark Treichel: Thanks Rochelle. I'm excited to be here today.

01:15 - 01:33

Rochelle Moulton: Well, I have to say, Mark, when we first met, you were just getting your business off the ground and living in an RV, at least some of the time. I mean, I remember your Zoom backdrop quite well. So maybe you could tell us the story about how you came to start your consulting business?

01:34 - 02:12

Mark Treichel: Yeah, absolutely Rochelle. So yeah, when I retired, my wife and I had previously, just a few months before that, bought a Class B RV. And for the non-RVers, a class B is the van, right? So it's a van that's souped up to live in. It's a small footprint, but our goal was, I was planning to retire, use the RV to drive around, go to concerts and maybe dabble in consulting. So I made the announcement I was retiring in January, that I would be retiring in June, and that was right before COVID and the pandemic took off.

02:12 - 02:45

Mark Treichel: So you know my replacement was announced, I knew I was going to be leaving. And when we got to June, of course, the pandemic was still going on. And so we had the RV. We also have a lake place, which was the only sticks and bricks, as RVers call it. A sticks and bricks home was in the Adirondack Mountains. And so with COVID, we really couldn't RV that much. And so I started listening to podcasts, doing yard work. I was fortunate that I was kind of off in the mountains. So life seemed a little bit normal.

02:45 - 03:21

Mark Treichel: And I knew I was gonna have 1 or 2 clients because I had a couple people contact me before I retired. And what happened was I was listening to your podcast, another podcast, learning about doing a consulting business. And I relied on some advice from my dad who never consulted. And he worked for AT&T back when there was only 1 phone company. He worked at AT&T and he was part of when all the phone companies got distributed to Northwestern Bell, et cetera, Southern Bell. And he had opportunities to consult, but he never pursued them. And he

03:21 - 03:51

Mark Treichel: told me once later in life that he regretted that. And he said, if I want to do it, I need to do it relatively close to when I retire, because he said, people stopped calling. They called the first few months, they called the first year, and in the second year, people stopped calling. And so his name recognition and his expertise, he said no so many times, they thought, hey, he doesn't wanna do it. So essentially, I took 2 months off in the mountains, listened to podcasts, and learned a lot about how to stand up my business.

03:52 - 04:26

Mark Treichel: And I really kind of pivoted and said, I think I'm going to throw myself into this because there's nothing else to do really because of the pandemic. And essentially now I'm working full time. I don't consider myself retired. I've built the business into more than I ever anticipated. And then the interesting thing is we get to November, the Adirondack Mountains in November are not really a place you want to be. So we got in the RV, we headed to Florida and we lived in the RV for 6 straight months down in Florida going from state park

04:26 - 04:59

Mark Treichel: to state park. And that's essentially where and when I started the business. I dabbled in it a little bit before that, but we got on the road. I was doing training classes, listening to podcasts, hiring coaches, and then picking up an occasional client those first 6 months. So it was kind of born really, the beginning of the business was born there in the RV, which was an interesting way to start. It was a good conversation piece. Like you said, the background was kind of good for those conversations, but that's essentially how it started. And I really

04:59 - 05:07

Mark Treichel: think ironically, if not for the pandemic, I might not have thrown so much energy into it and I might not be having as much fun as I'm having today.

05:07 - 05:09

Rochelle Moulton: It's that divine timing.

05:09 - 05:10

Mark Treichel: Right, right.

05:10 - 05:19

Rochelle Moulton: Plus, I understand you're still happily married. So those 6 months in the van creating a business. Yes, Yes. Not everybody can survive that. That's awesome.

05:19 - 05:24

Mark Treichel: It's funny because we've had friends that say, wait, you know, if I did that with my spouse, we'd have to have 2 vans.

05:27 - 05:43

Rochelle Moulton: Exactly. Exactly. So I'm just curious. So what kinds of pressures did you feel starting your business? Because you had a long and pretty public career, right? Did you have, like, was there a non-compete? I don't know if the government does such a

05:43 - 06:20

Mark Treichel: thing. Yeah, great question. So there is a non-compete in ethics clauses that come into play. I could not be involved in anything that I had a direct hand in for 12 months, and then there was another rule for 24 months. The interesting thing was, while I was executive director, my team of executives actually took most of the direct actions. I was, as the executive director, you're kind of the conduit between a politically appointed board of directors and staff. And so I would be guiding my staff, communicating what the board wanted done, but the actual actions were

06:20 - 06:51

Mark Treichel: taken by somebody else. So ironically, while I was involved in everything, I didn't actually make decisions on a lot of things. And it's that decision piece that precludes you from certain things. So I could immediately take on clients because none of the actual credit unions that are around in the country, and there's like 5, 000 of them, none of them actually directly reported to me or did I take a specific action on. So it uniquely kind of positioned me to be able to hit the ground running. Now pressure wise, ironically, so when I was at NCUA

06:52 - 07:19

Mark Treichel: as an executive, the pressures I had there was working for a politically appointed board and which would change every couple of years there'd be a new person. So the politics of that created pressure and then managing the staff below me created pressures. But then leaving and retiring and actually maybe for the first time being able to speak from my own voice only was actually very freeing.

07:19 - 07:19

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah.

07:20 - 07:50

Mark Treichel: Because if you think about a political board with 3 board members, each 1 of them has their agenda. And then you have my direct reports. Each 1 of them have their responsibilities. And when I would go out to speech, my brain to speak, my brain would go through this process of, okay, these 3 board members each would want me to say it this way. My staff is expecting me to say it this way. So my brain would come up with, here's the way to say this publicly to serve all those audiences. Now that I don't have

07:50 - 08:27

Mark Treichel: to do that, I'm basically giving my opinion to my client. It's like the parting of the Red Sea for me because my opinion is my opinion, And I can help them by giving them what my truth is. And so essentially weren't pressures. And I guess the other piece is with where I'm at in my life, when I retired, I was 57 with a nice government pension. I didn't have financial pressures. So I was really kind of taking clay and forming it, and it was really a playground of what can I do, what systems can I learn,

08:27 - 08:33

Mark Treichel: what clients can I pick up, you know, how do I get my ideal clients? So it was really kind of like I was just having fun.

08:34 - 08:59

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, well, and the other thing that's interesting is, you know, most of the people listening probably don't have a politically appointed board, but what a great sort of Petri dish to figure out how to deal with all different kinds of personalities and get things done. And so I feel like that freedom, that newfound freedom that you had afterwards, but you also had this knowledge of what it's like to deal with people with different agendas.

09:00 - 09:11

Mark Treichel: Boy, you're right. Yeah. And trying to come up with a way to serve all the parties turned out to be a very marketable skill when I left and in the niche that I chose to work with.

09:11 - 09:15

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. So how long did it take you to hit your first hundred thousand?

09:16 - 09:20

Mark Treichel: I would say less than 6 months.

09:20 - 09:21

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, that's fast.

09:22 - 09:57

Mark Treichel: It was quick. And the niche is very small. There are 4, 800 credit unions. And the reality is with the team that I put together and the services that I am now able to offer and that I actually was able to offer right out of the gate, there's really probably only 20% of them that I tend to cater to. So we're talking a small group of say a thousand potential clients, but they also have decent budgets. And if they're dealing with issues, particularly with my expertise and knowing the agency that regulates them, there's not a lot

09:57 - 10:04

Mark Treichel: of options other than me and my team right now. So I've, while it's a very small market, there's not a lot of competition.

10:05 - 10:25

Rochelle Moulton: Well, and a thousand targets is quite a lot when you're 1 guy. And we'll talk about, you know, your team in a minute. But the point I want to make here is you can make a very nice business and living, targeting a relatively small group of people if you've got the right story to tell and the right expertise.

10:25 - 10:27

Mark Treichel: Yeah, I would agree with that, absolutely.

10:27 - 10:42

Rochelle Moulton: So how did you look at your soloist earnings? Were they like sort of the cherry on the Sunday? Or did you feel like from a revenue standpoint like you had something to prove? I mean you said that you know you weren't worried about money, you had your pension, but I'm just curious how you thought about it.

10:42 - 11:15

Mark Treichel: That's a great question. I never thought about it as something to prove, but that's probably a little bit of what's going on because, again, 33 years as a government employee made a very good salary. It's an agency that pays well. However, working for the government is different than working in private practice. So it was really kind of an opportunity to say, okay, what can I do in the private sector? So I don't know if it's something to prove or let's just see what I can do. And the other thing is, I know you recently had an

11:15 - 11:29

Mark Treichel: episode with a financial planner, and I have a financial planner that I utilized on occasion. And 1 of the things he said to me, I love quotes, but he said this quote, it's better to give with a warm hand than a cold hand.

11:30 - 11:31

Rochelle Moulton: I'm thinking about that.

11:31 - 12:00

Mark Treichel: Meaning give early. And so I've got 2 daughters, I've got 2 granddaughters, a third granddaughter on the way and it's nice to be able to have extra money to go visit them, to have them come visit me, to assist them and see them have some of their pressures relieved, you know, early in life as opposed to, you know, hopefully 30 years down the road, you know, whatever's left in the state. This provides the opportunity to do a little bit more of that.

12:00 - 12:07

Rochelle Moulton: Do it now. And the audience doesn't know that you're recording from Cleveland, where you're visiting 1 of your daughters.

12:08 - 12:19

Mark Treichel: Exactly. Yes. And I think I might join the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame here because I'm going to be here for quite a bit this summer. So there's a good opportunity there to kind of tap into what Cleveland has.

12:20 - 12:54

Rochelle Moulton: That's awesome. So I want to kind of throw in something that I remember from our discussions, I don't know, 2 years, 3 years back. And I remember when you started targeting your universe of credit union people and You know you talked about how it's essentially a thousand people but can you just sort of give like a sort of a bird's-eye view of how you looked at this because I remember at the time feeling like you were being very thoughtful and smart about how you did this.

12:54 - 13:29

Mark Treichel: So 1 advantage that I have is that there's public data and information available for credit unions. So the 4, 800 credit unions have to file quarterly financial reports. The names of their CEOs are available. The names of their executives are available. And I knew some of those folks. So I really dove hard into LinkedIn. And see, I retired on June 30th and I did a post. I've got a picture of myself with the American flag that was taken when I was at NCAA on the 4th of July. I did this post about that I retired and

13:29 - 14:05

Mark Treichel: how much I missed credit unions, but that I would be doing a little bit of consulting. It was probably, actually ironically in my 5 years on LinkedIn, aggressively, it was probably my most liked post. So I really hit LinkedIn very hard relative to reaching out and making people aware of the fact that I was doing what I was doing, but trying to do it in a thoughtful way. 1 of my coaches early on suggested that, when I mentioned that I was connected with, at that time, maybe 800 CEOs on LinkedIn, he gave me some ideas on

14:05 - 14:39

Mark Treichel: how to capitalize that and get some emails. So I started down the email path and then listening to your podcasts, the concept about starting a podcast. So I learned early on that it was really going to be critically important for people to know that I existed. The part about who my ideal client was, which can be a challenge sometimes for I think for some people who are pivoting, That was easy for me because I had the list of the 4, 800 credit unions and then really the targeted list of the thousand credit unions of who those

14:39 - 14:45

Mark Treichel: clients were. So the important thing really became how do I make them know I'm doing what I'm doing?

14:45 - 14:50

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah. And so there's a lot of one-to-one kind of communications in that process.

14:51 - 15:25

Mark Treichel: Lots of one-to-one communications, you know, with email. Here's 4 or 5 different emails that I have as kind of a key to start off with that. But then when I'm posting on LinkedIn, that leads to a lot of conversations on LinkedIn. Really, that's where I have most of my conversations, that they either come from that direction or from somebody listening to the...