If you envision the consultant’s life as getting up late, conducting business over the phone or at a computer while still in your jammies, power-lunching with clients, avoiding bad bosses and office politics and earning handsome paychecks, don’t rush to give up your corporate job.
Consulting, also referred to as contracting, has made great strides from the not-too-distant past when it often was looked down on as what you did when you couldn’t get a real job. Or it was looked at as another kind of part-time job.
Some pursued consulting when they were between jobs. Some did so as a way to keep busy (or make ends meet) after retiring. And a lucky few went that route because they could parlay highly sought after expertise into rich rewards according to their own timetables.
But today, for many people consulting is a first rather than last job choice because of the great market value of high-tech skills. the volatility of Internet businesses, the increased concern among young people to get rich quick and the greater insecurity of corporate jobs.
“It’s one of the most sought after areas,” said Karen Cates, a professor at the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Business at Northwestern University. “Students are looking for experience they can’t get at traditional companies and better exposure to more challenging opportunities.”
While many students start off at big companies with consulting practices, others go to smaller consulting businesses or out on their own for an even quicker jump-start.
Yet, consulting is not nirvana for all. Working in consulting and building a viable practice requires its own set of job skills, which many don’t realize until they’ve tested the waters. Some find them too rough.
What can go wrong? Plenty.
Anna K. Miller, a Chicago technical writer and instructional designer, found working alone isolating. She also disliked the financial vagaries of irregular assignments, the absence of paid vacations and company benefits, the stress of not just working but having to find the work and the overall need to work harder and longer. Moreover, she wasn’t able to escape politics. “You never do; it’s just different,” she said.
Yet, there’s plenty that appeals, which is the reason that Miller went back to consulting after working in the coporate arena. In her latest go-around, however, she has done things a bit differently.
When she left her consulting business the first time to go with a client, it was because she missed the interaction that came from working in an office. “I started looking forward to grocery shopping to see people, which I knew was bad,” she said. The next time she went out on her own, she found ways to connect. Today she has regular contact with clients by periodically working at their sites. She also goes after more long-term contracts.
The bottom line to success as a consultant has to be measured according to individual financial and emotional needs, and the best way to make an educated decision is to weigh pros and cons after talking to consultants who’ve made the change.
Reading books that address the topic also helps. Douglas Florzak’s Successful Independent Consulting: Turn Your Career Experience Into A Consulting Business (Logical Directions Inc., $17.95) includes practical advice, questions to ask, several bibliographies and organizations to tap.
Perhaps most important, realize the line between corporate employment and consulting is blurring, said Peter Whalley, assistant professor of sociology at Loyola University of Chicago.
Jennifer Johnson, who has worked in high-tech marketing for different employers on a full-time basis, switched to consulting after one parent-shattering experience. She and her husband both traveled for business and when she had to hand off their very young children to him at an airport so she could make a flight to her next assignment, she knew it was time for a change.
“When you’re climbing the ladder of success, you have to make sure your ladder is against the right wall,” she said. “I had a dream job as a marketing executive but my life was too crazy. I wrote a letter of resignation on the plane, called my husband and (decided to start a) consulting practice,” she said.
In 2 1/2 years, the business has grown to bill $1.5 million a year and include a network of 15 associates in three time zones.
%c
ARE YOU CONSULTANT MATERIAL?
%c
Here are some of the most frequently cited essentials consultants should possess:
1. Have a vision. Be sure there’s demand in a field you know and are passionate about, but which also reflects trends of the broader marketplace and future. Ask yourself: What is the competition? What can you afford to do? How will you do things differently? suggests Diane Middlebrooks, who began her Chicago consulting practice, The Business Coach, three years ago.
2. Be a risk-taker. Going out on your own involves a gamble since you won’t know where your next paycheck is coming from. Be sure you’re prepared for periodic downturns.
Middlebrooks, who previously taught in public schools and held corporate management positions, had an epiphany three years ago at age 49. “I decided it was now or never,” she said. Her firm helps clients helps clients set goals, change careers, interview, prepare resumes.
3. Be flexible for your clients, but demand flexibility for yourself. Consulting means serving as an adviser to a company or client, and the nature of most relationships require you to be available when you’re in the mood, even if it’s on a weekend or national holiday.
Middlebrooks has found that consulting has also required her to adapt to different clients’ corporate cultures, sometimes simultaneously. But she has found it also has provided a positive flip-side–a more flexible workday. Working from home, she is able to exercise daily each morning and take her two Chesapeake Bay retrievers for a walk mid-day. “This has given my life a new dimension,” she said.
Laura Michaud also went the consulting route after her family business, Beltone Electronics Corp., was sold. With a financial cushion, she started a motivational speaking career, The Michaud Group, which also allowed her to spend more time with her young children. She works from her Chicago-area home.
4. Build in some financial security. With the ups and downs of consulting, you need some sort of financial security, whether from an inheritance, a spouse’s paycheck or long-term contracts that ease your anxiety level.
5. Be highly motivated. Being on your own allows you to set your own hours and schedule, but to get work done you need a big dose of passion and discipline.
6. Be resilient in spite of setbacks. Big companies and law and accounting firms don’t land every assignment; you won’t either. But are you prepared to weather the nos and possibly not making money until your third year?
Furthermore, you have to constantly reframe and reorganize to keep up, reinvent services and sometimes explain something 15 times in 15 ways to get a client to listen and even then they may still follow your advice only 25 percent of the time, said Edward E. Gordon, president of Imperial Consulting Corp. in Oak Lawn and author of Skill Wars: Winning the Battle for Productivity and Profit (Butterworth-Heinemann, $21.95).
7. Savor independence. As Anna K. Miller, a Chicago technical writer and instructional designer, found, working alone or even with a few other consultants can prove isolating, and if you’re going to be able to survive you need to like being on your own.
8. Linking up. Even though you work independently, connections are critical to securing work and knowing the nitty-gritty such as what rates to charge.
The best ways to gain such knowledge are by networking with peers via professional organizations, giving speeches, having lunch dates, affiliating with others in similar or complementary fields through joint projects or shared offices, hiring staff on a part- or full-time basis, sending out mailings or newsletters and establishing a Web site
9. Establish the right work environment. Whether it’s a spare bedroom or office away from your home, you need a space to conduct work. Over time you’ll find a routine that works best. Miller needed a door that could close in her at-home office. She also decided she would not answer her business line after hours.
10. Create a business plan. Even though it’s easy to run a consulting practice sometimes from the seat of your pants, the more successful practitioners draft strategies that spell out goals and how to get from point A to B.
Top on the list should be if and how you’ll expand your business. “Too many want to become agencies or larger consulting firms and hire permanent or contract staff without sufficient work,” said Douglas Florzak, author and owner of technical communication consulting business, Logical Directions, based in Brookfield, Ill.
