The 5 Steps To Launching Your Management Consulting Business
You’ve reached the point in your career where your expertise and talents have outgrown your present position. You’ve reached the point of taking The Next Big Step in your professional life. You realize you could be doing better professionally and making more money, but the thought of taking The Next Big Step is making you nervous. What path do I take? How do I start? Can I afford to do this? These are logical questions; however, the first big question you should ask is “Why am I doing this?” The answer might seem obvious to you, but articulating your reasoning is a big step in the process of starting your own consulting business. It will be the foundation for how you pursue your goals with your consulting business. Let’s look at the 5 steps to launching a successful consulting business.
Step One — Articulate why you want to start a management consulting business
When most of us think about starting a consulting business, we often start with the idea of wanting to make more money. Yet the first thing we worry about is whether we can afford to start a consulting business because … what if we don’t make enough money? It’s certainly an odd box we put ourselves into right from the start—where we assume failure. We begin by operating from a place of fear or insecurity about our ability to succeed.
So we’ll let you in on a secret … don’t start with thinking about making more money. When you start your consulting business, start by thinking about Career Control.
Career Control
Your core mission is to take control over the destiny of your career. When you build your plan around that and follow your plan, money will come with it.
So why is Career Control the most important reason why you start a consulting business? When you have a job, you spend your professional life following the plans of someone else. They pay for your time and knowledge to execute their vision. Over time, your boss is simply giving you perceived security in exchange for building his vision and wealth. One day, when your boss finds you to be less valuable in executing his vision (which he can change at any moment), he can pull the plug on that security. Financial security at a job working for someone else is an illusion and that single illusion denies us Career Control.
Career Control is more than financial security. It is also about defining your long-term professional goals and vision for your professional life. Do you want to disrupt your industry? Do you want to become the voice of your industry? Do you see yourself as the person most companies in your industry will seek out to change how they do things? Do you want to be known as a thought leader?
Career Control means you will define the kind of business you will have, the kind of clients you will work with, and the professional lifestyle you will maintain. Will you be a Swiss Army Knife or a laser-focused specialist? Can you help small companies grow or big companies become agile?
When you keep your business focused on your Career Control plan, your chances of success grow exponentially.
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