Tips to Motivate You When You Want to Start Consulting
Do you want to start consulting? If so, congratulations, consulting is a great career. With so many possible career choices in this field, you are bound to find one that you’ll love.
A lot of people want to start consulting but are often confused as to how to start. From personal experience it is best to start planning any possible career moves while you still have a job and steady income.
While still working for someone else start by reading as many consulting books you can get your hands on. The more you understand what you are getting into the better off you will be.
One thing to think about early on in your decision making is what type of services you want to offer when you start consulting. Many people when they first start off, make the mistake of offering too many services.
The mistake of offering too many consulting services it that it is hard to look like an expert in all areas. It is much better, and will be much easier for you when you try to focus on offering only one or two specific services to a specific industry.
One of the best parts of being an independent consultant is that you get to set your own fees. You can determine how much you are going to charge and how you are going to charge. Are you going to charge an hourly fee or a per project fee?
In my experience it is always easiest to charge in the manner the client is most comfortable with, since they have the money to spend. Most clients prefer hourly fees, as this is what they are used to. If you are going to charge per project fees, it is very easy to underestimate how much time you are going to be putting into the project, and end up undercharging yourself.
Finding good consulting jobs when you are first starting out may seem like a needle in a haystack sometimes. This is somewhat true, because most consulting jobs are not advertised at all.
This is why you need a proactive marketing campaign to get your message out. Now it could be as simple as calling people you know in the industry or doing a mailing of brochures.
As you can see when you make the decision to start consulting, you have many options to consider which makes this a great career choice. Starting this career can seem almost impossible at times, but start planning your move now, and you will be well prepared for anything that happens in the future.