There’s no doubt that starting a new independent consulting business can be hard on family life. Naturally, you will need to put a lot of time, effort, and dedication into growing your business, and clients can be demanding. After all, they’re paying for your services...
In the course of your career, many of your consulting clients will hire you to make recommendations to solve specific business problems. It’s probable that you’ll be less frequently engaged through to implementation. With that in mind, the success enjoyed by clients...
One of the most important (and most difficult) tasks to complete before launching your new independent consulting business, is to determine how you will charge clients for your services and of course, how much to charge. Calculating and setting your consulting...
Problem-solving will be at the heart of what you do in your new life as an independent consultant. Your customers will only hire you to solve their problems. Business leaders don’t typically hire consultants to fix things that they don’t consider are broken or need...
As an independent management consultant, you’ll need to get used to spending plenty of time in meetings. This may be something you’ve become used to as part of your current or previous job, but your role in meetings will probably be very different as an independent...
To some consultants, it’s a curse. To others, it’s an opportunity. For new consulting professionals though, scope creep in client projects is something to be aware of early on and to learn how to manage. If you aren’t able to manage scope creep effectively, it will...
If ever there was a line of work in which there’s no such thing as black and white, it’s consulting. There is no grand consultant’s code to follow. There is no standard framework within which to conduct your activities. Every project can be as clear cut or as vague as...
The more you become indoctrinated into the world of business and management consulting, the more you will find yourself incorporating jargon into your communication—it’s inevitable, but not necessarily beneficial. If you are able to remain one of the rare independent...
If you think that managing your time is challenging now, in your regular job, and you’re planning to set out on your own as a consultant, here’s a reality-check. Managing your time as an independent consultant is going to be much tougher, I promise you. Just...
In my previous post, I took you briefly through the whys and wherefores of using Microsoft PowerPoint and explained why it’s such a popular application with management consultants. PowerPoint is the medium you will use to deliver much of your communication when...