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Six Greatest Ideas for

Becoming a Consultant

Introduction

Becoming a consultant is a lifestyle objective in the main, although if you get it right,
the money can be good as well. Good but limited, because there are only so manydays
that you can sell. You will not become famous or build the biggest company in the
business unless you take on one of the most difficult management tasks of them all -
managing other consultants. Many people become consultants in their middle thirties
and another load do it later when they take early retirement from large organisations.
Be prepared for a rather lonely working life. Around Christmas time your clients will
all at some time say, 'Right I have got to go now; we have one of our Christmas parties
on today.' And you just go off, brief case in hand back to the office or spare room if
that is where you have set up the galactic headquarters of your consultancy.

Be prepared also for a fair amount of stress. If you are in training, for example,
you may well run the same type of course or even exactly the same course for many
years. You will find this becomes stressful because by the time you have run it say 30
times you will be so familiar with the material that you will find it hard to believe
that anyone does not know this stuff already. You also have the stress of selling
enough days to make a living, not just the first year when all is exciting and fresh,
but also every single year. No one else is accountable for getting you business.

Finally there is a stress in always being the person in charge. You go to the
planning meeting and it's 'OK Ken how do we start?' You go to the seminar and it
is up to you to lead the move from the coffee room to the classroom and your job to
start the whole thing off. Then there are your sales calls that are also up to you. But
the benefits are also excellent. You report to nobody. (In fact I suspect after quite a
short time you become unemployable.) And you organise your own life. It does not