So you want to be a consultant?

I wish I could upvote this a hundred times. It's been a couple of years since I've consulted, but almost every piece of advice in this article is good.<p>I take some issue with his finance section, but it looks like he's a set up as a Sole Proprietorship (it's a bad idea if you're consulting by the way; set up an LLC or a Corporation, and spend a few bucks on a CPA). It's risky to run all your personal accounts in line with your business accounts; I think most people here understand why (in case you don't, this is where "piercing the corporate veil" occurs).<p>Otherwise, there are tons of great pointers in here, including more than a few that I wished I had thought about when I was consulting.<p>If you're thinking about consulting I would seriously print this out and read it multiple times; I know it would have saved me some heartache when I was getting things figured out.

If someone reads only one part of that page, it should be:<p><i>Why work 8 hours/day for someone else when you can work 16 hours/day for yourself?</i><p>If you think it's a dumb question because the answer is obvious, you've got the right mindset. If you think it's a serious question, stick to your day job.

Great article. It's good to note that "The warm fuzzy feeling" is not unique to consulting. It is important in any area of business. This includes dealing with customers, investors, and even co-workers, employees, or supervisors.

I printed this article out a couple of years ago when I started consulting and it has been an inspiration to me. It's always worthy of a re-read!

Great article. I have been consulting and though I stand by all of these, it had been real hard to manage some of those. I can't say it in words how much this article helps.

excellent article, especially in the current economic situation where everyone could use a consulting gig to supplement their income

There's no date on this article and I remember bookmarking it long ago. When was it written?

What this document basically means is - You Don't Want To Be A Consulant.

The author is completely wrong about "client v. customer". Your "customers" should be "clients", because it instills confidence. The difference is the country doctor versus the highly payed surgeon. A country doctor pokes around and asks "where does it hurt". The highly payed surgeon goes in to the situation and says, OK, this is your problem, I have performed this procedure 100 times, this is what we need to do. So if your client's pain is not having a good website, you go in there and say, OK, this is what we need to do, wether that be the look and feel, optimizing it for search, adding video, whatever. Don't say "what do you want me to do", say, "this is my recommendation based on my knowledge of the problem you are having and my experience in that problem's solution".<p>The principle underlying this, is you want your revenue curve to be linear as you add more customers, but you want your cost curve to be logarithmic, that is, you want to do LESS work for the next customer than you did for your last customer, and still get the same payment. What I mean by less work, is basically provide the same solution for the same problem, but since you have done it before, it is easier the next time. Have a basic approach for the problems your clients have, so, for example, if they need their website optimized for search, have a basic strategy for doing this, and apply that for each new customer with this same problem.<p>Kissing the customer's behind and re-inventing the wheel for each new customer doesn't do anybody any good. It reduces the consultant's profit by requiring more time, and it reduces the efficiency with which the customer gets their solution, because the consultant is being a short-order cook with them and re-inventing solutions for every new problem, which takes a lot longer.<p>So if you want to slave away re-doing the same thing over and over again for each new customer, by all means, treat the client as a "customer", but if you want to provide timely solutions for the client, and not have to re-invent the wheel all of the time, then take the "surgeon" based approach and not the "country doctor" based approach.<p>The client pays you to know the solution to their problem. So don't ask them what solution would they like, rather, tell them the recommended solution that you know works. Kind of like you don't want your doctor asking you which treatment for your brain tumor you most prefer. Rather, you want your doctor telling you which treatment for your brain tumor is going to the most effective, based on how that treatment has worked for others. Sure be nice and respectful to the client, but inspire confidence in having a good grasp on what will work for them and what will not.

good article, it's been bookmarked for future reference.