The Business of Consulting

"Practical, compassionate, and a good alternative to an MBA"—Peter Block

The Business of Consultinghas been written for several kinds of people: the individual who is considering a consulting profession and perhaps wonders how to get started; the new consultant who may have mastered consulting and now realizes that there is also a business to run; and the experienced consultant continuing a lifelong learning journey who is looking for a few practical tips.

Consulting is a rewarding career. You are no doubt a very fine consultant. But being good at consulting isn't good enough to keep you profitable. You also need to manage your business. The content of this book focuses on the business side of consulting: how to develop a business plan, how to market your business, how to charge for your services, how to build a client relationship, how to grow the business, how to ensure your continued professional growth, and of course how to make money in the profession.

To assist you, all of the forms presented in the book have been put on a disk. All you need to do is pop the disk in your computer, personalize the forms with your name, and print forms to use for things such as cash flow projections, marketing plans, tracking your time, or identifying your aptitude to start a business. The goal for writing this book was to provide you with as many practical tools and sound ideas as possible. Most were learned through trial and error. Perhaps this book will prevent you from making some of the same errors.

Contents

• What Are You Getting Yourself Into?
• Talents and Tolerance
• Dollars and Sense
• Starting . . .
• . . . And Staying in Business
• The Cost of Doing Business
• Building a Client Relationship
• Growing Pains
• The Ethics of the Business
• Exude Professionalism
• So . . . Do You Still Want to Be a Consultant?

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