Learning about consulting

Are you in the early stages and want to start learning about consulting? You may wonder: what is the best approach? Reading about consulting is an excellent way to start. Of course, you could pursue courses relating to consulting and business. Mostly, independent consultants run their own businesses. You could be an independent consultant with someone else running the business aspects. Though, it is still good to understand business. You could work with mentors to show you the way forward, too.

The books I recommend, below are ones that I have read and found to be very useful. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Learning new ways to move toward self employment

“There’s a way to do it better – find it.”

Thomas Edison

One of the earliest inspirations was a website on changing course. The woman who owned the website had been a business executive with a really long commute to and from work. She had had enough and quit her job. She was inspired by Barbara J. Winter, who had written a book called “Making a Living Without A Job.” This introduced me to the idea that you could just go out on your own and live by your wits.

More important was the idea that you could establish multiple streams of income rather than having a single job. For example, consider if you have 10 streams of income that each provide about the same amount of income over a year. If you lose one of them, you would only lose 10% of your income. If you have a job and you lose it, you would mostly lose all of your income,

While you could do house sitting, grow and sell vegetables seasonally, and whatever, why not start consulting on the side? This could be another stream of income. Earning a living without a job by developing multiple streams of income was not so common in the past. Many influencers on social media and YouTube mention it nowadays.

Beginning to understand business

“The entrepreneur builds an enterprise; the technician builds a job.”

Michael Gerber

Another major influence on my thinking about becoming a consultant happened when I saw a book in a bookstore many years ago, “The E-myth revisited” by Michael Gerber. He had helped thousands of people to develop or improve their businesses.

In his book was the story of a young woman, who had a knack for making pies, which she had learned from her grandmother. Everyone had told her that she was so good at making pies that she should start a business to do it. The book is written in the form of a story, but I learned so much from it. So I became very interested in business, though I was working in research at the time. I went on to read many of his books.

The realization I could work anywhere, including home

My thinking changed further when I encountered a book by Tim Ferris, “The Four Hour Work Week.” Again, I was in one of my favorite haunts, a bookstore, when I had a chance to unwind. When I saw the title, it was very intriguing. What he wrote about was mind boggling and to me it was a revelation. The idea of leveraging the internet, automating your life, and working with virtual assistants to help you to get things done changed my thinking even more about business.

Beginning to understand the world of consulting

Still, as a person with some expertise, I was still thinking about moving into consulting. Then I looked for books to begin learning about consulting. Books on consulting abound, but of the many I read, “Consulting for Dummies” was enjoyable, and despite the name had good content. Though, the best book that I read was “Getting Started In Consulting” by Alan Weiss. His approach was impressive. I learned a lot from his books and from his presentations online.

I also expanded my learning about consulting by asking many questions of consultants that I knew or met. How did they get started, find clients, and figure out how much to charge?

Applying new knowledge of business and consulting in my job

In my “day job,” I looked at all processes that were accessible to me using what I had learned from Michael Gerber’s books and materials online. So, I began to examine everything from a business point of view. I was in research, not business, but it was helpful to look at the business of research. I also watched closely the consulting aspects of people’s work.

Often we turn to others for advice. We know that different people are good for advice on some topics but not others.

Moving into the business world

An opportunity arose to move from the world of academic research to doing research in industry and to develop new products. From all of the reading and application of what I had learned, it was a seamless change. Still, there was much to learn.

The major difference between research in industry versus academia was the focus on the viability of the product in the marketplace. In academia, an investigators with an interesting research finding, even a negative result, may follow up to better understand why. Also, a small but significant research finding may be worth pursuing. In industry, if the finding does not move a product forward or if it is clear that it would not be commercially viable, companies will generally drop the program.

Within industry, they did provide good training opportunities. It is important to gain the best training and skills so you can and keep learning and improving. Within industry, people shared their research more openly, within the confidentiality of the organization, than in the publish-or- perish environment of academia.

A surprise was that many businesses had poor systems and processes. Sometimes these were better in academia. Start up companies were building the plane while they were flying it. Large companies tended to make slow decisions as they passed through the internal bureaucracy.

The move to independent consulting

On the side, I had gone through the necessary steps to establish my own company. When all the pieces were in place, I began to do a small amount of consulting. Then, more than a decade ago, I moved out on my own. After a month, my only regret was that I had not made the move a few years before.

For more information on learning about consulting and getting started as a consultant see: the Get Started page, blog articles, and more about my own experience. See this article if you work in clinical operations.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.