From the category archives:

Making the Decision

Will one of these posts help change your consulting approach?

by Peter Osborne on November 7, 2010 · 0 comments

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So many good posts from the past week that a few good things fell by the wayside.  I’m glad I’m now offering different links over on Bulldog Simplicity that focus on, not surprisingly, ways to remove the complexity in your business and personal life.  Enjoy these; I hope one or more have an impact on your consulting business.  And, as always, please provide a link in the Comments to posts that you found helpful recently.

Is It Stupidity or Laziness?  Who should you be focusing your marketing efforts on — new customers or prospects? Bill Kennedy has a no-nonsense answer.

15 Insights from 15 Years.   A look back at 15 years in the advertising and PR business, but most of Indra Gardiner’s observations are dead-on for consultants and small business owners too.

Arm Your Sales Team With the Necessary Tools to Grow.  You can look at this post in one of two ways — if you’re moving past the entry-level consultant point you need to be thinking about this kind of stuff.  And if you’re not, the companies that Mark Suster is talking about may need your help implementing these processes.  Go find them.

The 11 Harsh Realities of Being an Entrepreneur.  Keeping in mind that the target audience for this site are people who are new to consulting and/or new small-business owners, this list from the OnStartups.com site provides a good grounding of the challenges you face.  There’s another interesting post on this site this week called 23 Tweetable  Startup Insights from Seth Godin, where the writer says he followed Seth’s blog for the past few months and captured a bunch of thoughts that work for startups and entrepreneurs.  Also worth a click.

No, That IS NOT a Competitive Advantage.  I’m cheating here a bit, because this post was published this past summer but someone tweeted it this week.  The writer, Jason Cohen, has a blog that is now one of my favorites because it focuses a lot of attention on differentiating yourself in competitive markets.  Read this post, but explore the A Smart Bear site a bit (starting with the rest of this series). 

Top 25 Small Business Tips.  A very quick read of 25 ways to run your business more effectively from a variety of successful consultants and online marketing experts via Marco Carbajo.  There will certainly be a few you think are obvious,  but it’s worth a couple of minutes to see if there are any you aren’t doing today.

Professional Services Firms and Social Media.  This post provides a summary of some recent research (and the recommendations) around how professional-services forms are using (or are not using) social media. 

The 39 Social Media Tools I’ll Use Today.  The headline alone does not scream simplicity, but this post by Jay Baer does provide a great overview of what people use to keep track of everything they’re doing with social media.  Worth a look.  You probably won’t use all 39, but you may find a few new ones to try.  Jay also did a nice interview this week with SmartBlog on how to build a better corporate blog that’s worth a look.

22 Tips to Differentiate Your Brand Presence.  There are a lot of consultants and small businesses jockeying for position against people with similar products, services, and approaches.  Is yours differentiated from the person down the street?  Pam Moore offers some suggestions.

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Tread carefully when consulting on the side

by Peter Osborne on August 3, 2010 · 0 comments

Michael D. Brown is co-founder of Consultant Launch Pad. He has worked in the chemicals industry for more than 30 years, 12 of that as a consultant.

Consulting on the side can be a juggling act

I have previously discussed ideas for entering the consulting profession, including tactics for minimizing the risk and cost and ways to give consulting a test drive without fully committing.  In a continuation of that theme, one must consider the possibility of consulting on the side while you still have a day job.  In many ways it is the perfect strategy for becoming a consultant because you are protected on the “revenue” side by the steady salary of employment and probably a nice set of benefits. 

On the other hand, any side job poses potential risks to your employment and your personal life and one has to consider carefully how you can legally, ethically and happily marry a job and consulting practice.  My advice is, BE CAREFUL ; unlike other side jobs, consulting on the side brings a special set of potential conflicts problems with your day job:

 Make sure your consulting practice does not interfere directly or indirectly with your employment.  Read your employee handbook carefully to assure that company policy allows side jobs and made very certain you are not in violation of employment contracts, secrecy agreements, etc.

  • Never interact with your consulting clients during normal business hours and never use company resources (e-mail, phone, files, computer, etc) for consulting.  These should be separated to prevent any appearance of impropriety – to your employer and your clients.
  • Depending on your position in the company, and your relationship with your supervisor, it may make sense to be open about your consulting practice.  Openness can relieve the burden of secrecy, but I do not necessarily feel this is essential and certainly do not feel your employer has to know how you spend your off-hours unless it is expressively stated in company policy. 
  • Carefully consider how you manage your personal brand and the multiple personalities you are presenting to your consulting clients.  The more you can keep your worlds separate (consult in different industries, geographies, etc.) the better off you will be.  Think two steps ahead – for example, if you lose your day job how will you explain past moonlighting while interviewing with new employers?

 So is there wiggle room for consulting on the side?  Of course there is depending on the type of consulting.  In ubiquitous consulting where the potential for conflict is minimal (e.g. information technology), there is plenty of opportunity to have a separate consulting practice with little if any entanglements with full employment.  On the other hand, business and management consultants may find a very narrow window to operate because of the potential for knowledge transfer and that will limit them so severely that they can’t have a meaningful consulting practice.

 So, while certainly possible, consulting as a second job should be considered carefully.  I do not believe it is possible to have a robust and thriving practice on the side.  Rather, I see moonlighting as way to test your abilities to consult and see if it is a good alternative to a day job.  Frankly, I think it makes most sense when you are serious about weaning yourself from a day job to a new lifestyle or retirement where you intend to make consulting your primary income.

Michael Brown is president of StrategyMark Inc., which provides consulting services to the specialty chemicals industry.

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Assess your skills, then address weaknesses

by Peter Osborne on July 13, 2010 · 0 comments

Peel back the layers and dig deep to identify weaknesses to focus on

Assessing your strengths and weaknesses is a critical first step in determining whether your personality and skills (i.e., your core competencies) are a good fit for the challenges of a portfolio career.

My strengths in a corporate environment came from my ability to see problems (particularly barriers to marketing success) and bring people together to solve them.  My communication skills helped a lot in that respect, but my success was tied in no small part to my ability to navigate the corporate infrastructure and get people moving toward a common goal.  The challenge is translating those skills to my current path.

But I’m not as comfortable at building strong one-on-one relationships, at going to a function and meeting people in a business atmosphere.  I hang back; I worry that I don’t come across well.  That’s why I signed up for Keith Ferrazzi’s Relationship Masters Academy, to learn some skills that will help me more effectively sell myself to prospective clients (and, I suppose, prospective employers). 

One thing I’ve learned is that maybe my skills weren’t as weak as I thought.  One RMA exercise asked us to describe a way we drove accountability at the team or individual level.  I submitted the Daily Huddle that I used to run at Bank of America (here’s a version that I published in my Bulldog Simplicity blog) and was somewhat surprised to “win” the weekly contest.  Well, Keith described the Huddle in his blog post today.  And suddenly, my weakness is a well-publicized strength.

The point is, you need to take a hard look in the mirror and decide where you come up short.  What skills do you lack that might have made a difference when it came down to you or someone else (either when the layoff decisions were being made or today, when you compete for a job or project)?  What skills do you need as a free agent (consultant or project person) that you really didn’t need (or that you got from another member of your team) in your last job?

Then go develop those skills.  If you can’t (or won’t), then a portfolio career might not be for you.

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Microconsulting: Putting your toe in the water

by Peter Osborne on July 9, 2010 · 1 comment

Michael D. Brown is co-founder of Consultant Launch Pad. He has worked in the chemicals industry for more than 30 years, 12 of that as a consultant.

There are ways to see if consulting is right for you without a full commitment

A friend recently asked me about consulting and I shared with him my experiences and advice.  As my enthusiasm built, I could tell he was becoming increasingly uncomfortable and a little skeptical.  As I probed a little I found he was excited about the rewards of consulting but deeply concerned about the risks.  Of particular concern was the perception that he would be starting up a business he knew little about.  Our conversation turned to whether there was a way to put a “toe in the water” of consulting before “jumping in over his head.”

The answer is yes, sort of.  Depending on your capabilities and value proposition, it might be possible to “micro-consult” conducting tiny projects and services for a very modest fee (sometimes a few minutes consulting for as little as $5).  The wonders of the internet have made it possible to match consultants and clients at very low costs thus enabling micro-businesses that would have been impossible in the past.  Several sites serve the micro-consulting market including fiverr.com, liveperson.com, and elance.com to name a few.  Each site has a different approach, but the premise is the same – very small quick-turnaround projects.  Anne Kadet of SmartMoney magazine covers the topic quite nicely.

A disclaimer and word of caution – I have tried these sites without much luck.  That is because I have an established practice and found the sites were a distraction and that my fees were just not competitive.  Furthermore, I do not believe it is possible to build a large consulting practice with this business model alone.  You would have to be extraordinarily productive to complete enough projects to have a relevant income.  Rather, I believe these sites allow budding consultants to put a “toe in the water” and see if consulting is for them on a small scale before “jumping in over your head.”  At a minimum it exposes the budding consultant on a very small scale to the realities of writing scopes of work, estimating time and fees and participating in a competitive market.

Michael Brown is president of StrategyMark Inc., which provides consulting services to the specialty chemicals industry.

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Thinking about consulting?

by Peter Osborne on June 22, 2010 · 0 comments

So you’ve been out of work for far longer than you — or anyone else in the family — ever expected.  You had — or more correctly, have — something special but nobody seems to be seeing it.  Nobody’s calling back, and that ”perfect job” you applied for attracted 200+ resumes within three hours.   And now your severance is gone.  Or will be soon.
 
So what’s next?  Assuming the issue is not your failure to develop a compelling personal brand or effectively help recruiters and hiring managers find you, for many people the answer to the What’s Next? question is exploring consulting or project (1099) work. 
 

 You won’t be alone in making this decision: The number of people who have been out of work for more than six months hit 6.7 million in April 2010, nearly 46% of the unemployed.  The New York Times says we’ve lost 8.4 million jobs in this recession and many of those jobs aren’t coming back.  As many as 23% of U.S. workers are operating as consultants, freelancers, free agents, contractors, or micropreneurs, according to the Wall Street Journal.  The percentage of unemployed workers starting companies rose to 8.6% in 2009, a four-year high, with the biggest increases among people 55 and over, according to the Challenger, Gray & Christmas outplacement firm.  The underemployment rate — which counts people who have given up looking for work and those who are working part time for lack of full-time positions — rose to 17.1% in April, from 16.9% in March.

The trend toward “portfolio careers” — where individuals cobble a career together from multiple consulting (or 1099) engagements is growing and demand for high-end temporary business talent is not focused on cost-cutting projects but on driving innovation.

But not so fast.  Even with a great value proposition or skill, it’s not that easy.  First you need to think through whether you have the temperment for the ups and downs of this strategy.  Then you need to think about company structures, the sales process, and a myriad of other things.

Recapturing what you used to make may not happen for years, if ever.   The percentage of new projects you win will be much lower than you might expect.  Many people warn that you can’t do a full-time job search and consult at the same time…at least not effectively. For many people, the process of selling yourself is more daunting than a root canal and may require skills that are somewhat alien to those you had when your company was giving you direction.

On the other hand…

The best way to find a full-time job may be through an “audition strategy,” where you demonstrate your value to a full-time employer prospect through a short-term project.  Many people think that’s the best way to separate themselves from the masses these days.  And this may be a way to pay the bills and prevent you from taking a job that will make you miserable.

This site is designed to help you make the decision and then, if you move forward, be successful.  In addition to unique content, we will also provide links to other sites with great advice and content.

So, what scares you about making the leap to consulting or project work?  What will help you make the decision or be more successful?  Simply put, what kind of content can we offer that will make this a site you’d bookmark?  Please send us your thoughts at  peter at consultantlaunchpad dot com. We look forward to hearing from you.

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Balancing consulting, job search can be challenging

by Peter Osborne on June 16, 2010 · 0 comments

“Be careful,” someone told me around this time last year.  “You’re going to find it really difficult to try to build a consulting business and continue doing an effective full-time job search. 

He was right.  And he hadn’t even mentioned the third leg of the stool: family responsibilities, which included travel sports, college applications and visits, and a host of other distractions (including spending more time with my wife now that I was at home most of the time) .

So I focused more on the consulting than the job search.  Sure, I responded to some job postings, did a lot of networking, spent time on Indeed.com and Netshare, and got a few interviews (it’s ugly out there for a former credit-card executive) but more of my time has been spent on prospecting for clients and doing the work. 

I’m constantly plagued with doubts as to whether I took the right path.  My value proposition as a consultant is somewhat different from what I’d be looking for in a full-time position.  There have been more down months than up months, revenue-wise.  Severence ended a long time ago.  But I truly believe that Consultant Launch Pad will provide a valuable service to people like me and that there will be reasonable opportunities to make money by providing valuable services to this community.

But if you’re in the same boat I was (and am) in — consulting may have become a necessity instead of an option — and you’re thinking about balancing a job search and consulting/contracting, you need to consider a few things:

  • Don’t waste “personal contact” and “networking opportunities on ordinary job-hunting.  It will confuse the people you’re talking to and your answer will probably confuse them when they ask “what do you need from me.’
  • A timely consulting proposal shows you off as a potential employee.  The whole business-development process normally gives you access to high-level contacts you might not otherwise meet, provides you with something meaningful to talk about, requires you to show your credentials, and forces you to operate in a “selling” mode.
  • Consulting gives you a greater opportunity to “audition” for the job with far lower risk to the prospective employer.  And remember, the job market is less about finding the perfect person than it is about not filling the job with the wrong person.
  • Not getting a consulting or contract seems, at least to me, to be far less personal or depressing than getting a “no” to a job application.
  • It may be easier getting a “yes” when you’re taking a portfolio approach (i.e., looking to get 4-5 ongoing projects that may take advantage of a range of skills and provide you with an acceptable combined income).  Companies are more willing these days to spend a few thousand dollars a month with no benefits and no overhead than they are to committing to a full-time person.

This is not an easy decision and should not be entered into out of desperation if you can avoid it.  Skills that worked well in a corporate environment may not work as well when it’s just you.  It’s different executing on someone else’s idea than it is finding someone who has a problem that you can help fix, often when other people in the company resent your presence or have other priorities.  But it can also be extremely gratifying when you get that “yes” on a project and do such a good job that the client hires you for more projects or tells others about you. 

Let me turn to more experienced consultants for a little third-party perspective.  Please use the Comments box to outline a typical day in your life of balancing actual projects with your sales efforts (and family responsibilities).  I believe readers thinking about making the leap will see just how difficult it is to find enough hours in a day…with a full-time search on top of things.

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Must Read: D.School Bootcamp Bootleg

by Peter Osborne on May 30, 2010 · 0 comments

http://dschool.typepad.com/files/bootcampbootleg2009.pdfDo I need an MBA to get a consulting job?

It’s a question I hear every now and then from people trying to make the decision about consulting.  I hope not — since I don’t — but you need to be able to explain what makes you different, what skills you offer and methodologies you use (or might use, depending on the situation).

That’s why a New York Times article in January about reinventing the MBA curriculum got my attention.  As one person put it, “At business school, there was a lot of focus on ‘You’ve got a great idea; here’s how to build a business out of it.’  The d.school said, ‘Here’s how you get to that great idea.’”

The “d.school” is a reference to the growth in “design thinking,” which has been described as a process for practical, creative resolution of problems or issues, the essential ability to combine empathy, creativity, and rationality to meet user needs and drive business success.  There’s an engineering focus to all this (the Stanford d.school is part of the Engineering School), but that’s missing the point of today’s posting.

So here is the point: The Stanford d.school has posted a terrific document on its site that outlines what drives the development of great ideas.  The D.School Bootcamp Bootleg starts with seven mindsets — including “Bias Toward Action” and ”Create Clarity From Complexity” (my favorite) and ”Show, Don’t Tell.”  It goes on to introduce modes like “empathize,” “define,” and “test.”  And then it outlines a variety of strategies (or methods) that are integral to design thinking.

Lest this sound overly academic — and some of the pieces will lead to glazing of the eyes — the Bootleg will help you better understand your customers or come up with that “one big thing” before you go too far down the road. 

Business books seem to be getting shorter lately…and packed with more usable information.  This one is 36 pages and well worth your time.  Read through it.  Think about how you’ve used the concepts without actually knowing you were employing design thinking.  Pick some things to try.  Keep them if they work and try something else if they don’t.  

Use this document — but think of it as a toolkit — and when the time comes perhaps you can overcome the lack of an MBA with a skill set that enables you to develop great, marketable ideas.  Or even better, maybe there’s something in here that will enable you to articulate a methodology you’re already using or may find useful in your consulting practice.

How about you?  How have you used some of these methodologies — interviewing for empathy, powers of 10, and so on?  What worked and what didn’t?

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Welcome to the Neighborhood!

by Peter Osborne on May 23, 2010 · 0 comments

Welcome to Consultant Launch Pad, where we want to help people decide if they’re cut out to consult or do contract work and then help them set up their businesses and find customers.  Our success depends on inviting visitors who have been doing this for awhile and are willing to offer their advice and counsel. 

Many people are predicting that portfolio careers are the future — working for many different clients, being with one employer for a much shorter period of time.  They believe many of the jobs that have been lost are not coming back.  Some people are here because their choices are limited — they can’t find the right jobs (executive level or otherwise) and they need project work just to pay their mortgages and feed their families and prove what they can do to a prospective employer.  And this neighborhood is getting bigger by the day.

We’re still in the early stages of construction; after all we want the people who live here to have a voice in what their home and community looks like.  We do want to point your attention to a few features that we think you’ll like:

  • You can ask questions (or provide answers to other people’s questions) in the Forum but it’s also a place to network, share suggestions, and collaborate.   We’ve started a few discussions, but want you to ask the questions.  Please register on the Forum page (we’d like everyone to provide user names when they participate).
  • Everybody likes Free Stuff, and we’ll be adding new things all the time to that section (you can find it on the Navigation Bar).  Free Stuff includes Downloads of checklists, charts, and other resources that will help you regardless of your experience and a page with Links to blogs and sites we’ve found useful during our travels.  Let us know about other terrific ones you’ve come across.  Please add your suggestions to the Comments or send them to us separately.
  • 30 Second Launch Pad enables experienced consultants to share what they’ve learned over the years.  If you’re interested in contributing, please let us know.  These will start as blog posts, but you can find them all together by clicking on the category listing or under — yes, you guessed it – Free Stuff…along with an Elevator Speech page.

In addition, the one thing we know is that we don’t know everything, so we’ve posted some Guest Blogger guidelines under the Contact Us tab.

There’s a lot more cool stuff coming very soon, all geared toward one of our three primary Missions.  Please come back often and see how construction is going.  And let us know what you think.

Welcome to the neighborhood!

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What’s your core competency?

by Peter Osborne on May 10, 2010 · 0 comments

There are times when standing out from the crowd is a bad thing. Marketing your consulting services isn't one of them.

What makes you different? 

It’s a question individuals and organizations often struggle to answer effectively.  Why should someone hire you over your competition?

C.K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel wrote an oft-downloaded article for the Harvard Business Review back in 1990 on defining your competitive advantage.  Core competency, elevator speech, value proposition, secret sauce — the concept is the same:  Whether you’re making the decision to consult or you’re already up and running, success depends on your ability to verbalize your core competency or competencies and to position yourself as offering someone nobody else can (or does). 

Building a great elevator speech will be a recurring theme on these pages.  From Pralahad and Hamel’s point of view, here’s what you should be thinking as you develop a list of core competencies:

  • Is it a significant source of competitive differentiation?  Does it provide a unique signature to how you describe yourself?  Does it make a significant contribution to the value a customer perceives in your product or service?
  • Does it transcend a single business or market niche (i.e., does this core competency give you an advantage with more than one target customer)?
  • Is it (or will it be) hard for competitors to imitate?  In general, they say, competencies that arise from the complex harmonization of multiple technologies will be difficult to imitate.  This combination of resources and embedded skills will be difficult for other firms to acquire or duplicate.

Prahalad and Hamel argue that few firms — much less individual consultants — are likely to be leaders in more than five or six core competencies.  If you’ve compiled a list of 20 to 30 capabilities, odds are you haven’t yet identified your true core competency.  Once you have, however, you are far more likely to be able to focus on value creation and meaningful new business development rather than a shotgun approach to marketing or opportunisitic expansion.

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