Right now, everyone on Earth has a current situation or state. They exist today within a certain environment and with a certain set of circumstances, attributes, limitations, and opportunities. And no matter what that state of being looks like, part of being human is not being fully satisfied with the present situation. Every human being on Earth desires to improve in some way What this ultimately means is that every human on Earth has a current state of existence AND a desired state of existence, with a gap in between the two states.
This gap is the motivation behind all human behavior. People invest hours upon hours of their lives laboring to earn money so they can then purchase things they believe will get them closer to their desired state. As a consultant, your job is simply to help people bridge the gap.
The value you bring to the table is the ability to help someone move from their current state to their desired state. At this point, you can either keep investing your free time and capital in guessing, experimenting, and hoping something works OR you can bring in someone with a proven system for scaling small businesses Everybody wants to reach their desired state.
If you can help them bridge the gap, whether it looks like scaling a business, losing weight, or overcoming porn addiction, you can build a highly profitable consulting business. Your goal is find a specific, significant challenge that people are ALREADY facing and then become an expert at helping them overcome that challenge.
And as long as there are people wanting to solve that problem, there will be a lucrative demand for your services. Often, the value you provide will come from personal experience. In some cases, outside views are the most accurate. As long as you can help real people overcome a challenge, you can get paid as a consultant regardless of how you develop your method. Because they have devoted their entire career to specializing in the ONE thing we most want help with.
The life coach may be fantastic. They might be really good at what they do. But there is zero chance they are better at helping people lose weight than someone whose career is focused on that specific area of expertise.
You will never become really good at helping everyone, but you can become amazing at helping one specific type of person. When you are at the top of your niche, generalist consultants are no longer your competition. Prospects will literally beg you to work with them at any price, and you get to pick and choose who you work with.
Instead of needing to deliver a time-consuming service, you will be paid simply to offer your advice, and you will get paid significantly more than competing service providers, because YOU are the go-to expert in your specific area.
The first thing to think about is the industries you know about or are interested in. What are you most familiar with thanks to your career and past experiences in general? Are there any niches or areas that you have always been really fascinated with and explored on an amateur basis?
Grab a pen and paper, and write down five industries, niches, or groups you know right now. Examples: plumbers, newlywed couples, young women experiencing binge eating issues, accountants, etc. What do real people in these niches want and need? What are the main challenges they are struggling with?
What are the questions they are always asking? You will likely need to get outside of your own head in order to figure this out. The third thing to think about is your own set of skills and talents. What skills do you have? What are you talented at and could master fairly quickly?
What are some things you have wanted to try and feel like you could pick up easily? Now I can see the niche. But I need the skills to actually help the plumbers get clients.
There are so many available options, and starting a consulting business with no experience is not out of the question. You can teach yourself how to solve the problem by learning online lead generation. Or you could find someone else who is an expert at online lead generation and learn from them.
You could even outsource the solution to an online marketing agency and charge a markup. The overlap of these three things is your niche. This is where you are most potent and most powerful. A lot a people believe the most important things in business are the skills you have. We live in a generation where people are going to university for like 20 years and getting all of these different letters to put behind their name. They have no real-world skills, and no way to take their own destiny by the horns.
And as a final note, how you communicate the value you bring is very important. The whole point of choosing a niche and solving those problems is that you have a specific value proposition to offer, so be sure to communicate your new value proposition in specific. A lot of new business owners have no game plan for making this happen. Quite frankly, this is a really horrible, emotionally draining place to be.
If you want to run a successful consulting business, you must use a proven, rinse and repeat process for attracting and converting clients. Here at Consulting. Every piece of this process involves a different skill set that has to be mastered or outsourced to someone who knows what they are doing. Out of that people, people sign up for my training, and after watching my value video, 16 schedule a call with me and fill out my survey. No guessing required. I know exactly how my business is functioning and I can get clients on demand.
See how powerful that is? How about double that? We had one student at Consulting. Right now, Facebook is the number one place to get clients for your consulting business. Facebook allows you to select the location, ages, and genders you want to target. In the process of doing that, I had a lot of success and started building processes around how to do that. And as a result, I sold my company and started a consulting business to help others do the same thing.
Or you can look at the following areas when starting a consulting business:. Communicating directly to the leads who need your area of expertise will deliver the best results. And if you feel that you need to round out your experience and skillset with special training, take advantage of opportunities to improve your skillset.
You may be a good consultant, but depending on the consulting business model you select, you may need special training to give clients and potential clients certain types of expert advice.
While you might be an expert in your specific field, a successful consulting business may require you to develop particular skills. For example, you might be called upon to speak publicly, train others, identify problems and pain points in teams or processes, analyze and present data, and offer written or verbal.
We just emailed the resources to you. Email Address. If you want a lean and flexible consulting business, this is a good model for you. When you open a consulting firm, you are responsible for running the firm and working on client projects. This will give you additional responsibilities and allow you to hire other consultants and support staff to create and grow a more significant consulting business.
In this variation, instead of providing direct consulting services as a solo consultant or through a consulting firm, you create products based on your knowledge. For example, you can create a process and learning program that you sell to others for a fixed fee or a monthly price. This model allows you to reduce your day-to-day work and create a saleable asset that works while you sleep. Today, many successful consulting firms follow a hybrid consulting model.
This is a mixture of two or more of the above consulting models. You pick and choose what you want to do and build a consulting business that focuses on those things. Step 2 Define your consulting services. If you want your business to succeed, you need to show new clients and potential clients the specific consulting service you will offer — and deliver. That begins with you defining your services and deliverables and your consulting business model when starting a consulting business.
But, you must nail down the specifics of your consulting offer before you work with any clients. This last point benefits both you and your clients. Your clients can make comfortable, informed decisions.
And you can avoid clients taking advantage of you. Tim Berry, entrepreneur and business planning evangelist, advises :. And, importantly, this will also clearly define the value proposition for your consulting business.
You should also understand why clients hire consultants. Here are some of the reasons that businesses hire consultants:. As a consultant, your services and deliverables are the core of your business. Step 3 Write a business plan. People make many mistakes when they start a new business and rush into things before considering the essential aspects of their business.
Studies show that entrepreneurs who take the time to write a business plan when starting a business are 2. The work that goes into creating a business plan also helps new entrepreneurs build skills that will be invaluable later. Several compelling business plan frameworks can help you write a one page business plan. For insights and free downloadable business plan templates, read this definitive guide to writing a business plan. Step 4 Hire an experienced business attorney.
Most consultants dread having to talk with and hire a business lawyer when starting a consulting business. Others agonize over how to find a reasonably priced, competent business lawyer.
Overzealous and often inexperienced, they focus on the wrong issues and forget that their client needs the deal to move forward. Often, the least expensive lawyers are also less experienced — especially in the areas where you may need help.
Paying a cheaper hourly rate might feel good initially, but in the end, you may end up paying far more than if you hired an experienced more expensive lawyer in the first place. Make sure your lawyer is familiar with the peculiarities of consulting businesses and has experience representing other consultants.
Also — be clear about your budget and expectations. Your lawyer should understand that your budget is limited and that they should not waste that budget on irrelevant details.
Because many deals and transactions are time-sensitive, be sure that your lawyer will be there for you when you need them. Typically, the best time to start a relationship with a lawyer is before you start your consulting business. Too many people make the mistake of forming a company and reaching an agreement among co-founders without consulting a lawyer. In some cases, some co-founders leave retaining their interest , and the rest are left to try to make the business work. A good lawyer will help you find the proper business structure for the business — and split ownership interests — in ways that will protect everyone and give you flexibility in the future.
Step 5 Decide your legal business structure. Before starting your consulting business, you need to decide on the type of entity you need to register. Your legal business structure affects everything, from how you file your taxes to your personal liability and whether you need to comply with any special additional requirements at the local, state, or national levels.
There are many different types of legal business structures for various business entities. For new business owners, choosing the best business entity for your business can feel overwhelming. For example, while a sole proprietorship might be quick and inexpensive in the short term, it might expose you to more risk, create an unfavorable tax treatment, and create problems for you in the long term.
A limited liability company LLC might make more sense for most consulting businesses. Spend some time reading about each possible entity your business might fit into. Consider which business structure is most helpful for your business and how each business structure can help you accomplish your professional and personal goals.
Be sure to look at which entity will work best for your current needs while still considering any future business goals. Remember that most states require you to register your consulting firm with the secretary of state or county clerk in the county in which you operate your business if the trade name under which you run your business differs from the legal business name of your business. Fortunately, this is not a complex problem to overcome.
Step 6 Set up business accounting and bookkeeping. Business accounting is how your business records, organizes, interprets, and presents its financial information. Accountants analyze the financial condition of a business to help the business owner make better decisions. Bookkeeping is the recording, organization, storage, and retrieval of financial information related to your business.
Accounting and bookkeeping do overlap. The main difference between the two is that bookkeeping is how you record and categorize financial information, whereas accounting puts the information to use through analysis, strategy, and tax planning. A great bookkeeper is not the same as an accountant.
Many business owners hire a bookkeeper with some simple goals in mind: keep me organized, get my bills paid, and prepare for the work that will be handed to the accountant. Typically, bookkeepers are less expensive than CPAs certified public accountants and can be trusted to record and organize your day-to-day business transactions, keep your business bank account balanced, produce simple reports, and assist with keeping your financial records in order.
Many consulting businesses will use an outside bookkeeper, paid hourly, who is in the office regularly to handle all entries, pay all the bills, and manage invoicing and receivables. Having help with this aspect of managing a small company can be indispensable, and the time it can free for a busy owner, invaluable.
They can efficiently work remotely or visit your office one day every few weeks. Any business from the smallest of hot dog stands to the largest of public companies creates data. Sales data, inventory data, employee data, customer data.
The list is endless. And like any kind of data, if data is not organized and accessible, it is entirely useless. With accounting data, this is doubly true, and the speed at which a small business can fall behind can be breathtaking. Even a few weeks of unrecorded sales transactions or a month of un-mailed invoices can quickly swamp a small business, destroy cash flow, and put it out of business faster than you can spell IRS.
A good bookkeeper can help you set up a filing system, keep bills organized and paid on time, ensure that customer invoices go out promptly, and put plans in place that will force you to do these things in a disciplined and organized way. A good bookkeeper can also help you set up and track an invoice financing loan if you need to accelerate payments by clients but clients insist on paying 30 or more days after they get your invoice.
Do not underestimate the importance of a periodic review of your bookkeeping, accounting, and tax strategies. At your peril, you neglect to take a hard look at the systems you have in place and the people managing those systems.
Are you doing your accounting most productively and cost-effectively? Does your CPA have the right level of industry knowledge to advise?
Does your tax-preparer have the skills and expertise to keep you and your investors on the right side of the law? And finally the big one , can you find ways to reduce your expenses while maintaining high-quality controls? Take the time to reconsider your overall accounting strategy and find ways to strengthen and improve it. Step 7 Assess your finances. When you start a new consulting business, assessing your finances is crucial.
These numbers include tracking your sales and profits - but an innovative business will need to account for much more than sales alone. You have many business financing options. The good news is that most successful consultants can run their businesses without considerable costs in the beginning until they build a book of clients and can spend a bit more on equipment and supplies.
We talked about this above. Your accounting and bookkeeping system will include income, expenses, capital expenditures, profit, loss, EBITDA, etc. Step 8 Develop your brand identity. Branding provides a reassuring level of professionalism that very small operations may struggle to establish.
Think you can get a perfect score? Take the free quiz now! Ideally, your brand should embody the best and most essential attributes of your company.
Weak brand identity will undermine that credibility. Mandi Ellefson , a successful consultant helping small businesses to improve their business growth and revenues, explains:.
We believe that good design is good business. But most business owners are not designers. You absolutely have to elevate your brand. If you want to charge higher fees, if you want to attract a certain level of clients, you have to project a certain image.
Good design is good business, not just for your clients but also for you. The Forbes Coaches Council explains it this way :. Being a credible mentor for clients is key to achieving success in the industry. Your reputation relies on whether your clients trust in you and the services that you offer them.
People think less of consultants that use Gmail or Yahoo email addresses. We asked Mandi Ellefson, who often works with consultants and agencies, to illustrate with an example:. I work with B2B service businesses and lots of agencies with revenues in the multiple six and seven-figure range.
One of their biggest challenges is attracting better quality clients. They typically have a pretty good number of clients, but they want to attract better quality clients.
Say you have expertise that applies to multiple industries—how do you pick an area to specialize in? When you're just starting out, you might want to consider focusing in a space that has consistent demand. On the other hand, you could identify an emerging field of business, and hone your reputation as an expert in that industry. Here are some suggestions for consulting niches to consider specializing in:.
Yes, being an independent accountant is a type of consultant. As an accountant, you'll help businesses manage their books and financial needs. It helps to be a CPA if considering striking off as an accounting consultant, but anyone with a bookkeeping background is eligible to enter this field of consulting. As a brand consultant, you can work with businesses to identify and refine their brand voice and image. As a brand consultant, you'll work to learn about a business's customers, then craft a brand that will help the business resonate with its target market.
To become a brand consultant, it helps to have a background in marketing. Another area of need for many businesses is web design. As a web design consultant, you'll work with businesses to create a website that is on-brand and functions to their specifications. A background in computer engineering is helpful here. Like Hopkins, you can become an HR consultant—assisting businesses with their staffing and employee management responsibilities, and advising them on best practices for keeping their workforce happy and engaged.
This job could include everything from writing job descriptions to helping with onboarding. As more and more businesses commit to going green to protect the environment, consulting on how to lower carbon emissions can be a lucrative field without a lot of competition. As a green living consultant, you can help businesses accomplish a variety of tasks that lower their carbon footprint, such as developing more green-friendly office environments or manufacturing processes.
Organization consultants advise individuals and businesses on how they can reduce organizational red tape, clutter, and distractions in order to operate more efficiently.
This is an area of increased focus, as technology has created new distractions and blurred the lines between work and home life. Whether your consulting business is going to be big or small, brick-and-mortar-based or online-only, expensive or economical, you need to have the experience, resources, and confidence to help other business owners get back on track.
Everything else is about managing workflow and expectations. How to start a consulting business in 9 steps. Step 1: Assess your strengths and skill set.
Step 2: Figure out what your market needs. Step 3: Ride the organic marketing train. Step 4: Invest in the tools of the trade. Step 5: Staff wisely. Step 6: Practice your elevator pitch. Step 7: Write client proposals.
Step 8: Set your pricing. Step 9: Stay organized and deliver results. Consulting niches to consider. Web design. Human resources. Green living. The bottom line. On a similar note
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