What Is A Consultant?

You likely have in demand skills, expertise, and experience that you can leverage to launch an independent consulting business.

Let’s first define what a consultant is.

What is a consultant?

According to Consultancy.au, a consultant is a person who provides professional or expert advice in a particular field of science, education, or business to either an organization or individual.

My definition of a consultant is an expert who is paid to provide informed opinions, recommendations and solutions to individuals and businesses based on their expertise.

I add the word ‘solutions’ to my definition because I strongly believe that consultants should aim to address both the cause and the symptom of a company’s pain point, and I encourage people in the Ready Set Go Consult Accelerator to take that approach.

How can I use my professional experience to become a consultant?

If you’re an educator, you can launch a consulting business that offers curriculum development, corporate instructional design, or deliver professional development training to new educators.

Work in IT? You can become an IT consultant for medical professionals or if your specialty is cybersecurity, you can be a cybersecurity consultant for the many small businesses that are government contractors that have to comply with new cybersecurity requirements.

Salon owner with years of experience running a salon? Add one more stream of income to provide business consulting services for aspiring and new salon owners.

Finally, if you’re a medical professional who ran your own practice, you can launch a consulting business that advises on how to staff a practice or how to register to become an in-network provider.

Your specific skills, experience, and expertise can be the key to earning an additional 5-, 6- or 7-figures as a consultant.

How do I become a consultant?

We cover this in detail and help you using a proven method in the Ready Set Go Consult Accelerator but here are few general guidelines.

To become a consultant, you first need to determine if you have the experience, expertise, and education to be able to advise companies or individuals. You then need to determine if there is a market for the services (solutions) you can provide.

After identifying the market, you must find out who is your customer—your perfect customer.

For example, for my government grant consulting business, my perfect customer is the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of a large nonprofit or the CFO of a medical technology or greentech firm that receives high six-figures or millions in government grants.

I know they are my perfect customer because they are keenly aware that they must comply with the requirements of the grants in order to avoid losing grant funds and get a clean audit report. I also know they are my perfect customer because after assessing who the decision makers have been for the clients I have had so far, most have been the CFO, Executive Director, or Executive Vice President of an organization, business or university.

How’s it different from a management consultant?

You may have heard of the Big 4 consulting firms. They are Deloitte Touche Tomatsu, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Ernst & Young, and KPMG. These and many other firms provide management consulting, auditing, accounting, and other services to companies around the world.

Management consultants at these and other firms provide advice, reports, and other guidance to the senior leaders (management) of different types of companies to help them solve organizational challenges and improve business performance and operations.

What’s an independent consultant?

As an independent consultant, you also improve operations, solve problems, and develop strategies, except you do this in the industry where you have expertise.

For example, my firm helps organizations manage and comply with 6-, 7- and even 8-figure government grants. We advise executives, propose ways to modify their organizational structure to effectively manage these large grants, prepare reports, and even train their staff.

Now that you’re clear on what an independent consultant is, you may be ready to launch your own consulting business. Great!

However, after you launch, you will need to attract paying clients, propose your services (solutions), operationalize the business, be able to deliver the services, increase your visibility, and you may even choose to position yourself as a subject matter expert.

I cover these steps and much more in the Accelerator so look for the next time we announce that we’re opening the doors.

Did this blog help you? Feel free to send me a note at [email protected] to share your thoughts with me.

Ready to launch your independent consulting business but need the know-how? Download The Ultimate Consultant's Starter Kit here.