5+ years of consulting, here's what I learned
Unless you are forced into consulting by circumstances out of your control, do not quit your job because you hope you will do well.
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Five years ago, I left a great job to embark on a consulting journey. I was incredibly fortunate that while I had a full-time job, I also received a healthy amount of inbound interest in consulting with companies on the side. (A future newsletter will deep dive into how to drive inbound leads, or message me for a preview.)
I was also very fortunate in that I had a great manager and teammates, and I had the luxury of making this leap on my own rather than being forced into it because of a layoff or some other adverse event. While I considered making this leap for a long time, I didn’t quit my job to become a consultant until I felt like I had enough inbound leads to sustain me without having to rush back into a full-time role just to be able to pay my bills.
Build and have a pipeline
This is the number one piece of advice I give to everyone who asks me about becoming a consultant, so I want to reiterate it so it's absolutely clear: Do not quit your job because you hope you will do well unless you are forced into consulting by circumstances out of your control. It would help if you had potential leads lined up and reasonable confidence that you would be successful.
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Unless your employee handbook and local laws prohibit you, start moonlighting as a consultant to see if you can supplement your income. A job will give you tremendous security as you test what replacing that income might look like.
Your day job provides access to knowledge, a brand, and hopefully enough income to support you. Don’t walk away from that too prematurely. Once you go out on your own, you will see how much access your job gives you today when you suddenly become an anonymous individual in a sea of a billion experts.
I have seen too many people go out on their own as consultants only to end up frustrated and despondent when they need to take the first available job. When you become a consultant, controlling your career destiny is about being prepared. Invest in a consulting career, and it will pay off better than any other career you have ever had.
Outside of that most critical best practice, here are ten more tips:
Bizdev: Always develop business. The people I see who are most successful as consultants are those who are good at driving the pipeline. Don’t mistake a significant lead walking in the door as a pipeline; that might be luck. Success comes from continuing to drive lead after lead, so you always have clients when there is an inevitable churn.
Churn: Clients will consistently churn, and you can’t take it personally. It goes with the territory of being a consultant. Just like you want clients instead of employers because of the flexibility, they want consultants instead of employees because you are flexible. Prepare for the churn. Sometimes, churn happens because a new person or your point of contact leaves; that’s to be expected.
Value: Like churn, keeping clients is far easier than getting new ones. You can negotiate the terms of a contract to ensure the proper boundaries are in place, but always overdeliver if you want to keep the client. Offer value even outside your area of expertise.
Branding: Build a personal brand. If you are a consultant, you are the company, so invest in yourself so people want to work with you. Post on social media, build a website, go on podcasts, and write (or even write a book). You could even hire an agency to help position you in this area.
Trust your gut: No clients are better than bad clients. Trust your gut to know who a lousy client might be. If you can’t satisfy yourself that this will be a good client for you, avoid it, and you will thank yourself later. Every
Price: Price is a factor in your service's value, so there is no perfect price. Find your ideal price by testing with potential clients. If they are too quick to say yes, you are underpriced, while if you get ghosted after sending a proposal, you are too expensive. You will likely have lots of leads, and you can use all of them to test out the ideal price.
Be Picky: Reject business where you don’t think you are the best fit. You might earn revenue in the short term, but in the long term, you will get a disappointed client who could hurt your reputation.
Niche down. If you are a jack of all trades, you will be compared to other jacks of all trades, and price might become the differentiator. If you are niched down into a specific area of expertise, comparing yourself to others becomes far more complicated, especially if you are the expert in that niche.
Network: Network as much as you can. Unless you have a great outbound salesperson, most of your leads will come from your network, so reach out to your old contacts and start building new ones immediately to drive business. Take every conversation.
Build a business: Your consulting practice is a business, not a hobby, so invest in it. Spend money to fly to see a client, buy the best equipment, and invest in great pictures of your work. These investments can be the best you ever make as they will return thousands of percent, compared to a typical stock market investment that could never have that much upside.
Bonus tip: Reach out to other consultants and learn from them. Most consultants I know are happy to help others succeed. I am so grateful to the people who freely shared their experiences in sales, accounting, management, and even healthcare options, and I try to pay them back by paying it forward.
For some, consulting and working for yourself will be a dream come true, while it will be a nightmare for others. There is no right or wrong answer to this. Some people are born to be salespeople, while others want to keep their heads down and do good work.
The only way to figure out which type of person you are is to get there and start consulting. Let me know if I can help!
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So true re: pipeline. Great write up