How You Can Start Consulting Today
A step-by-step guide to selling your services today while you look for permanent employment tomorrow
I will not lie to you.
The hardest part about starting an independent consulting practice is selling your services. Telling your network about what you can offer, to whom, and why they should buy your services. And then telling the next contact. And the next, looking for that next sale.
Yet most of us are unemployed now.
We are furloughed or laid off, with no hope of returning to our old jobs. Many of us are desperate for income. Consulting is the easiest professional transition to make, that makes us something like our previous income. Not considering it is foolish.
It is time for us to move past our fears and start consulting today.
Bonus: the process for defining your consulting niche is similar to finding your candidate/market fit. You can be a consultant if the company doesn’t have the budget or desire to hire full time staff. You’ll then be first in line when they are able to hire.
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How to Start Independent Consulting Now
Paid Career Pivot Subscribers enjoyed recent Ask Me Anything sessions on the consulting process to think through:
Our motivations for starting an independent consulting business
The time and money investments it requires to be a success
How we can find profitable niches where we are not competing with everyone else for the same clients.
We heard from the following three people and their different views and experiences:
Gawain Kripke, an independent consultant in Washington, DC.
Colin Delmore, who leads a multi-member consultancy in Europe.
Kelsi Kriitmaa, a career coach specializing in the social impact sector.
These notes are a distillation of their insights. AMA sessions are not recorded to provide a safe space for everyone to contribute their thoughts and ideas.
What is Independent Consulting
You may be familiar with independent consulting as a contract vehicle, like a Personal Services Contractor or Institutional Support Contractor. Consulting is actually a business model - it is how you work, not what you do.
Consultants are hired for many reasons, but mainly to solve problems for clients with expertise they do not have and cannot afford or want to buy through an employee.
Here are four reasons to hire consultants:
Additional internal capacity - USAID did this often to get around staffing caps
Subject matter expertise - To get insights on a specific, temporary problem
Decision objectivity - An impartial, third-party view on next steps
Budgeting constraints - When a team cannot afford to hire a full time staff
Think about these four reasons when you are considering being a consultant. Do you want to play one of these roles? Are you happy being the outsider in most engagements?
5 Reasons Against Independent Consulting
There are a few legitimate fears that people have when considering an independent consultant career. These include:
“I don’t want to sell all the time” - You are selling all the time already in the job search. Opening yourself up to consulting can open up a new revenue stream without distracting yourself from the full-time employment job search.
“Once a consultant, always a consultant” - Actually, consulting can be a low-risk way for you and the employer to test out if you’re a good fit for the job. You may be surprised by the number of clients who want to hire you as an employee when you do good.
“Everyone else is doing it — how do I stand out?” - Everyone is trying to be a consultant in international development. This is a real problem. We need to diversify our efforts beyond development now - for consulting and employment!
“I have no idea what to charge” - Always charge what the market can bear, which is often much more than we think. Do not go by low USAID rates or your costs. Realize that your rates can convey quality and charge accordingly (i.e. more!).
“I’m not ‘expert’ enough” - Said no junior consultant at Deloitte ever. You have more experience and expertise than them. Own it and show it!
Define Your Consulting Niche
The first step in the consulting process is to define your niche. To figure out the skills you have, that match to employer problems, which organizations will pay you to solve. Focus on the value you bring to the organization, not just your experience.
For example: “I will help you reach more people and convert them to customers,” not, “I have 20 years experience working in behavior change communication”.
Like in the Job Search Council process (you’re doing that, right?), you want to find your candidate/market fit where your network will intuitively understand your ability to solve a problem and want to hire you forthwith.
Create Your Unique Value Proposition
You need to create a unique value proposition - why someone should pay you for a defined service with a clear result. Be sure to solve real pain points with a service that you can confidently deliver.
You can use this formula:
“I help [target audience] solve [key problem] by providing [specific solution]. Unlike [alternative], my approach is unique because [differentiator].”
For example:
I help small businesses reach their customers better, faster using Generative AI. Unlike big consulting firms, I provide personalized solutions tailored to your specific business needs in Chapel Hill, NC.
Of course, you will need to market-test this unique value proposition to ensure you can get clients to pay you to solve this problem.
Sell to Your Network
You must think of your network as potential clients for your services. Multiple consultants in our sessions agreed that they found most of their work through their network of people who know them and trust their insights.
They connected with former colleagues, donors, contacts, and peers describing what they are offering and asking if they know someone who needs that service. This is also the hardest part of consulting.
You always need to be selling. Looking for your next project. It is also the part of consulting that all of our participants disliked the most.
Oh, and your network is larger than just those you worked with in the past. Larger than international development. Look out and beyond your immediate circle for those “weak ties’ - they will be your next client.
Work Alone or with a Team
There are certain benefits to being a truly independent contractor. You can set your own hours, work as you need, and find a balance that was missing when you were an employee.
At the same time, working alone is lonely. You may find that you miss the camaraderie of working with others. Also, you will have a natural income cap when you are working alone. There are only so many hours in a day and so much you can do alone.
You can join up with other consultants to form a bespoke consultancy, or join a consulting firm to be part of a team. In both situations, you still need to sell your services yourself, yet you now can take on larger projects as part of a team. You can also offload some of the accounting and administration to others on the team.
Best is to partner with someone who has complimentary, not competitive skills.
For example, I partnered with Linda Raftree on many programs because she and I are so different. Where I am a mercenary technologist, she is more focused on the social and ethical impacts of technology. We worked well together because we are so different.
Price Your Consulting Services
Most people think of an hourly or daily rate contract when they think of consulting. Where you are paid for the time you spend working on the activity. However, that’s just one option.
Paid subscribers to Career Pivot can read about the four different types of independent consulting contracts and how to price them.