Working for yourself as a consultant, is a very lucrative and rewarding experience. As someone who has been both a marketing consultant and a management consultant making six figures, I can tell you that this type of business model can lead to a lot of different opportunities for you professionally.
In this article, I am going to share step-by-step how to start a consulting business that allows you to work from anywhere, but specifically online.
I’ll also cover how to set your business up and how to find clients. In addition to that, you’ll learn how to define your niche and package your services.
The thing is, there are a lot of different types of consulting you can offer. Clients can be businesses, non-profits and even regular consumers.
You can consult on topics related to business, marketing, tech, careers, personal development, relationships, health and wellness and many other non-business topics.
I also made a video about how to become a consultant if you are just getting started. You can watch it below.
My Journey As a Consultant
Before I explain the steps involved, I want to briefly share my own journey as a consultant so that you can see an example of the different ways you can consult in your own business.
Throughout my career, I’ve done two types of consulting:
Marketing consulting through my own content marketing agency.
Management consulting in the technology industry as an Agile coach and project management trainer.
And currently, I do a lot of general business consulting for small to midsized companies where I help them with sales and marketing systems, project management, process improvement and marketing automation.
Consulting is about solving problems for your clients. Overtime you’ll get to learn what people really need help with and then you can craft your own custom service package and solution.
What I’ve done is taken my education, training, certifications and real world business experience and created a customized solution for my clients.
In this article, my aim is to help you do the same!
Choosing a Niche As a Consultant
The first thing you need to do is to decide exactly what you want to consult on and to whom.
Like I shared earlier, as a consultant you are hired to solve a problem. So the first thing you should do is identify what problem you want to solve.
This requires that you look at your experience and expertise and try to match that to the current problems that people and organizations may be facing.
You can start by doing some market research online. Go into online forums, like Reddit, Facebook groups, the comment sections of Youtube videos and other social media platforms in your specific niche.
Try to see what questions people are asking. Look for common themes. Make a list of these commons questions.
You can even interview people in your target niche, conduct a poll or survey in a group or online community and try to get feedback.
This information will help you get clarity about how to package your service and how to articulate the value of your offer to a potential client.
You can also make a list of all of your skills and experiences to come up with an idea for a niche you’d like to serve.
Questions to ask while creating your list:
Do you have specific qualifications for an industry (education, experience, awards, training or certifications)?
Is there a hobby or passion that is related to a niche you want to serve?
Are there’s specific businesses or careers that fascinate you that you could see yourself helping clients in that area?
Do you feel like you relate to a certain type of person like fitness coaches, moms with careers, non-profits, lawyers or accountants, Millennials, Gen X..?
Is there a cause that you feel passionate about?
Different Ways to Offer Your Consulting
There are many different ways to offer your consulting and get paid. You can offer:
Monthly consulting retainers - this is where you charge a flat fee for a specific amount of months. I recommend being clear with your clients about the number of months included in the package which a clear goals that you will accomplish by the end of your consulting engagement.
Hourly Consulting - I don’t recommend doing hourly unless someone wants to get quick advice from you. In that case you can offer a one hour strategy session and charge an hourly rate.
Day Rates or VIP Intensive - This is where you spend one day to do consulting with a client and you charge one flat fee. For example you can consult your client on how to optimize their website for SEO and do this within 4 hours within one day. Or you can help with creating a business strategy for a client for 8 hours within one day.
Download my FREE client onboarding checklist so that you can work with multiple clients at once >>
How to Deliver Consulting
There are two main ways to help your clients. You can either just do advisory services where you give them advice or strategy on a specific topic.
The other way is to offer a done-for-you component like creating a website or writing a marketing plan for a client.
Then there’s a hybrid model where you can do 80% advisory and 20% done-for-you services. Or the other way around.
It’s totally up to you. But as a consultant your main goal is to advise and provide direction on a topic to your clients.
Consulting is different from typical freelancing where someone is doing done-for-you services like building a website, bookkeeping services or drafting a legal contract.
Make sure that you are clear with your clients on how what to expect at the beginning of your consulting engagement so that there’s no confusion.
I recorded a Youtube video where I go into further details on how to find clients and the tools you can use to run your consulting business.
