If you are a passionate but risk-taking entrepreneur you need an income from day one and for that consulting is the best source of revenue. The reason for that is that you get well paid in a short time while you can find out what you do best, learn to be effective and to estimate your time. Among other things.
I have made many mistakes and learned a lot from my seven years of consulting. Lessons I now can benefit from as an entrepreneur in my new startup.
In short: you’ll learn how to keep a job (or get shit done).
I’m going to tell you what an entrepreneur can learn from a consultant. My lessons learned from being a consultant for seven years that you may find useful as an entrepreneur.
10 lessons learned from being a consultant
Lesson #1: Estimate your work
To become a profitable and smart consultant, you must be great at estimating your time. Especially if you are a freelancer. I have estimated all I’ve done the last seven years, which has made me very good at putting the right time on the right things and know roughly how long it takes.
Lesson #2: Solve problems
As a consultant you will learn to solve problems. You are often alone about the problem and have to solve it. It may be to register for tax, accounting, finding the solution to a function you’ve never developed, make a call, convert a file… In short, you don’t know the solution but you have to solve it somehow. For the simple reason that you have to.
Lesson #3: Streamline your time
You will get good at streamlining your work. Especially if you run your own business. Every half hour on a workday count. You can’t afford to be inefficient.
Lesson #4: Money management
I encourage everyone to become familiar with how the economy accounting works. In my first year I bookkept everything myself (with the the support of an economist) to teach myself what it costs to run a business. If you work in a small consulting company, it is common that you will report the time your work and often get an insight into how the budget forecast looks like for now.
Lesson #5: Focus
You will learn to focus. You are compared based on performance and delivery. If you don’t deliver, you will quickly disapear. A secret, split your week into different blocks, it will change the way you work forever.
Lesson #6: C-level experience
As a consultant you will be in contact with people in high positions and learn how to handle it. They are those who are your buyers and they are the ones you’re negotiating with, the ones that pay your bill. You must learn how to sell yourself as a person and your skills. It is a very valuable experience. An excellent way to get good at selling to C-level executives.
Lesson #7: See opportunities in everything
Tell everyone what you’re best at, what you do, you never know what contacts the people you meet may have. During my two years as a self-employed, I only had contact details on my site. I got all my assignments through personal recommendations. If you always do a great job, people will recommend you.
Lesson #8: Liability
You will learn early to take responsibility for your actions. Which will benefit you the rest of your life. Bonus for freelancers: it’s very satisfying (for me) to know that everything you own, you earned yourself, on your terms, your own responsibility.
Lesson #9: Learn to take criticism
You will learn not to take criticism personally but rather see criticism as something constructive for your business. You are often in a vulnerable position as a consultant and will get used to the high demands.
Lesson #10: Deal with deadlines
You will learn to deal with deadlines. As a consultant your job is to deliver on time. You learn to ask questions and make sure you know exactly what and when the results is expected of you. You will learn the hard way to ensure that the deadline is realistic and ensure that you understand the true scope of the assignment.
Conclusion
Consulting taught me all the things above plus a lot more. I would say that it is the fastest and hardest way to learn how to do things and how not to do things.
If you stand at a crossroad and are considering trying consulting, I highly recommend it, you will learn a lot.