Starting a new career as a consultant?

Here are 6 things you should be thinking about.

Recently, I left my job. It was a big job with a big company and for the preceding four years, it pretty much defined me professionally. Who I was, what I did and largely what my public narrative should be.

But that’s all in the past now, replaced by a sense of ambiguity. Who am I now? What do I want to do? What is my point of view?

Like many others, I decided to spend the immediate aftermath doing some consultancy work, while deciding on my longer-term plans.

This was a familiar path for me because back in 2000, I faced a similar situation and took a similar consultancy-led approach whilst waiting for my next big gig to turn up.

But it didn’t work out quite like that. One consultancy job led to several others and before long, I realised a couple of things: Firstly, there was plenty of work around if I looked hard enough, and secondly, I rather liked being my own boss.

In fact, 10 years later, I was still running my own show, although by then it had grown into a small business complete with staff, premises, major clients and regular dealings with the tax office.

I learned a lot about myself during this chapter of my career which I find useful to reflect on again now as I contemplate my next steps.

So, based on my experiences, here are 6 tips for the budding consultant to think about:

1. Your brand

As soon as you update your LinkedIn profile, you face this issue. What name do you trade under? Many consultants use their own names – they figure they have built awareness and equity in their personal brand over the years.

This approach has its merits, but I chose a contrary approach and created a new brand. My reasoning was that one day, if all went well, it might be more than just me in my spare room and having a brand name would give off a perception of scale to potential clients and who knows, maybe future employees. And that’s how it turned out.

Tip 1: Think carefully about your trading name because it may become your long-term future. How will it sound when your first big client tells their Board they have appointed you? Will they think they are hiring a consultancy or someone working from a spare room?

2. Your product

During your career, you’ve probably acquired various skills that could form part of your consultancy offering. But be careful you don’t lose focus.

I soon realised that from my previous ‘research and strategy’ role, I should focus more on the ‘research’ part because potential clients were more likely to be able to access research budgets rather than more esoteric strategy budgets.

Tip 2: In striving to capture any potential projects, you risk being seen as offering a generic menu of services. Ultimately it is better to focus and be remembered initially for being outstanding at one thing rather than being forgotten for offering to do 20 different things.

3. Your network

Unless you walked away from your last role with a client in your pocket, you are likely to be starting from scratch here. I certainly was.

I decided to contact lots of people, but in a tailored way because my relationship with them all was different. And I didn’t just focus on those I thought might have a budget, but talked as much to potential competitors and potential collaborators as well.

Tip 3: Talk to lots of people. Take the long-term view and meet people who are not immediate revenue generators. The consultancy world is an ecosystem that relies on referrals and collaborations and the more relationships you can nurture, the better.

4. Your marketing

As a consultant, you must promote yourself to get onto potential clients' radars, so you need a proactive marketing programme.

Social media is a good platform for this, but you need to push beyond that to generate impact and attention in a way that is relevant to your area of speciality. What about writing articles? presenting a conference paper? commenting on blogs? creating a newsletter? developing a proactive project as a door-opener?

Tip 4: Marketing your consultancy should be a top priority, so make sure you allocate sufficient time to focus on generating a consistent, cohesive programme of activities. It can’t be something you do between projects or when you get a spare moment.

5. Your service

As a consultant, service delivery is crucial and that can be the difference between a one-off project and a long-term relationship.

From the start, I always tried to make each project as seamless as possible for my clients, understanding what they needed and seeking to over-deliver against that. I figured that the better their experience of working with me, the more likely they would be to commission me again in future. History proved that was the right call.

Tip 5: Think what you’d like if employing a consultant: personable? responsive? proactive? always deliver on time? exceed your expectations? make you look good? Remember you will leave your client with an impression that goes beyond the quality of your work. Make sure it’s a positive one.

6. Your pricing
On a practical level, you probably won’t work continuously, so you need to charge sufficient fees during times of feast to cover the famine that may follow.

But beyond that, your pricing provides a sub-conscious indicator of the quality of the work clients will expect. Personally, I got more work when charging a higher rate than when I started out with a more apologetic pricing approach.

Tip 6: Don’t undersell yourself. Have confidence in your ability and price yourself accordingly. You may miss out on a few jobs initially from people looking for cheap advice, but ultimately, if you want to build a premium reputation, it’s better to be regarded as ‘reassuringly expensive’.

These tips may not work for everyone, but they worked well enough for me last time around and I will certainly follow them again in the future.

And if you are considering starting out on your own consultancy career, I hope that this post will provide you with some specific areas to think about and focus on. Good luck!