It’s a dream many qualified or skilled professionals have, that of running a successful consulting business which effectively speaks to their entrepreneurial spirit and allows them to work for themselves, but it takes a lot to actually make it happen. With the right mentality and the right approach though, you can definitely make it happen, doing more than just surviving with your consulting business, but thriving as well.

Basic skills requirements

If you want to be successful with your consulting business you will require some skills which aren’t easily attained. Of course the degree of difficulty with which you acquire those skills could very well just be a matter of how much money you have in order to enrol in some course or field of study, but either way, if the service you have to offer is driven by a skill that’s as common as the air we breathe, then you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Your prospective clients can otherwise learn how to do whatever it is you’re offering as a service themselves…

Looking towards specialising

While a solid set of basic skills are required in order to have any hope of running a thriving consulting business, at some point setting yourself apart will require some level of specialisation. Let’s take Eide Bailly (https://www.eidebailly.com/services/outsourced-and-managed-services) as an example to understand this point better. What makes them a preferred choice as outsourcing business to their clients? As part of providing consulting services, they often extend their services into different areas, such as technology, accounting, data, human resources, cybersecurity, and more, to help meet the current needs and future goals of the company. As was touched on under the section of basic skills requirements, at some point you’ll need to be able to set yourself apart from the many consultancies which could very well pop up within a matter of days to compete with you, some of which even enjoy the advantage of their location being in an environment that’s more conducive to the operation of a remote consultancy business.

Experience counts as a specialisation, but what I’m expressly referring to is the specialisation which sees you up-skilling yourself and perhaps some of your staff with rare skills that cannot really be found anywhere too easily.

A car service workshop which has a mechanic trained by BMW is a good example to go with since we all know vehicles such as those of the BMW make aren’t really manufactured according to the simplest of standards. You need special knowledge just to change the oil in a BMW vehicle, for example.

Always seek opportunities

Opportunities never come to you as a consultant. You have to be the one to go out there and look for them and this is something you should never stop doing. Resolve to proposition at least three new prospective clients every single day.

Professions which go hand-in-hand with consulting

There are some professions which are just a match made in heaven paired with consulting. In fact, it would be hard to imagine the likes of Christopher Simon Attorney at Law operating in any other way than on a consultancy basis, even though granted all legal professionals pretty much have to go through somewhat of a corporate structure before they can get to a stage where they operate their own firms. Medicine is another one of these professions, although medical doctors who specialise in certain areas of medicine report better prospects as part of a bigger medical services setup.

Share.

About Author

Hi Im Eddie. Ive been working in finance for most of my life so I thought I would start to show some or my learnings. Hope you find it useful. I have dogs too and cats. When Im not feed them Im running.