I recently had a call from an acquaintance I met awhile back asking for some guidance on how to start a consulting business on the side. She knew I spent several years as a consultant and we both had previous experience in the eLearning world so I was a logical person to reach out to.
Instead of going straight into the tips however, I started with a warning, which is what I feel I need to do here… Consulting isn’t for everyone for many reasons. Instead of having one boss, you’ll have many. And instead of just focusing on the primary skill set you are offering, you’re also going to have to handle marketing, accounting and sales, which will take up a good percentage of your time. Lastly, I quickly learned that there’s a cap on what you can earn as a consultant. It requires you to spend time working for a client and you are typically paid by the hour or job. There are only so many hours in the day and so many days in the year. If you already have a full time job, you will find that consulting quickly eats into any free time you once had. If you want to make more money you either increase your prices (which there is a limit on for any market) or work more hours (which has its own time constraints that I just listed).
Now that that’s all out of the way, here are the 3 tips I suggest to anyone wanting to start a consulting business on the side.
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