To Be The Go-To Consultant in Your District— Spend 50% of Your Time Away From Your Clients
Stay away to get ahead
Top consultants understand one thing. Money and clients do not discriminate.
Capital flows to the best money managers who can return cash above the initial investment amount. Deals flow to consultants who can outcompete their competition and take their clients to the next level.
That is the good news. Now for the bad news.
Clients do not discriminate the 9–6 consultants from the 6–9 consultant hustlers. They pay good money for great results.
Therefore, you must regard yourself as a full-time professional to build a successful consulting practice on the side.
You Need Clients to Grow Your Revenue. You Need Time for Knowledge Immersion to Attract New Clients to Grow Your Revenue Book.
This is the balance you need to strive for.
Service sector analogies are important in this segment. Let me use financial planners as an anchor comparison with the consulting service providers.
- First, I know many financial planners who can sell non-stop. There is a separate team that creates the products. Therefore, they can focus on client service full-time.
- Second, financial planners inherit a structured service catalog. They engage in wealth planning across stages in life, longevity risk management, and active fiduciaries in investment portfolio management.
The 1-man consultant on the side operates differently.
We are our product engineers. We create our own products based on the market niche we serve.
Our service catalog is dynamic. Our service-offer changes in response to a change in the marketplace. We inherit nothing, and we are almost always creating something.
This is the reason we need time away from our clients. We need to engage in active learning to grow our 1-man consulting practice on the side.
“Keep to active learning. You must learn, research and be so passionate about new ways and methods of doing things to be and remain relevant.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders’ Frontpage: Leadership Insights from 21 Martin Luther King Jr. Thoughts
Spending Time Away From Our Clients = Building Our Consulting Practice for the Future
No one owes our consulting practice a future. We do.
Therefore, we must work on the business. And that refers to keeping ourselves relevant for the next 2, 3, 5 years.
Consultants are knowledge arbitragers. We synthesize what we see and postulate trends in the foreseeable future. Then we pitch, impart, and implement best practices to our clients.
Engaging in learning immersion allows us to stay at the top of our game.
Knowledge Immersion Type # 1 — Be Where People Are
I invest 40% of my time and 50% of my profit margins in the following.
- Professional events
- Exhibitions
- Talks
- Seminars
- Professional development courses in higher learning institutes
The reason is simple. I want to be where people are. I want to know what their ears are consuming, what interests them, and their response to current industry trends.
“Automation is a cool idea. But does it accelerate decision-making and facilitate in-depth collaboration?”
“We are still talking about systems implementation in 2022? Give me a break.”
“Companies on the cutting edge of technology adoption spend 8% of their revenue on I.T.? Do we need to boost our spending?”
I walk around, exchange name cards, and listen to what people say. These events allow me to put my fingers on the ground and figure out what people want or don’t want.
Professional acumen shoots up exponentially.
Knowledge Immersion Type # 2 — Be Where Academicians and Practitioners Are
Surprised? What has consulting got to do with academics?
As it turns out, aplenty. Remember. Consulting business replies on frontrunning cutting-edge industry knowledge and practitionership.
So, where and how can we get such knowledge before it gets disseminated into our industry? The straightforward answer is universities.
Universities have professors constantly thinking about the next logical steps for industries to advance. Direct access to their papers (without additional costs) is a knowledge advantage. We will always have something new to say on top of our practitioner-only peers.
That is not all. I spent 2 evenings per week offering professional development courses in project management, digital transformation, and technology adoption. I do this for 6 months a year. It allows me to engage people in the exact area of consulting work I focus on.
This exposure is analogous to a real-time customer survey.
- I understand, firsthand, the fear of technological adoption from the people I teach.
- I understand what is holding them back.
- I can take their feedback, go home and work on presentation points to address them during speaking engagements, pitches, and presentations.
- I can assess where their organizations are in terms of digital maturity and pivot my consulting services accordingly.
- That means I can discard irrelevant services and create new ones faster than my peers.
Active involvement in this space pays handsome dividends. Just understand one thing. Articles, journals, news, and content posts are written by people who have given much thought to the niche in your consulting services.
If you want to get ahead of your up-to-date peers, you need to be where the action is. You must know what is happening at the frontline before it becomes public information.
That, in my opinion, is the best way to stand out. Of course, universities do pay you for your time and engagement too.
It is a win-win.
Knowledge Immersion Type # 3 — Of Reading and Writing
The top consultants I know are voracious readers. They read books, periodicals, magazines, online content, and newsletters.
They also teach me one thing. We cannot just consume and learn. We must pass on our thoughts to the public so they can engage our services.
I believe in writing. Writing allows me to straighten the thought processes in my head. I would write how I present my communication as a speaker. The points are continuously refined and synthesized down to the essentials.
Of course, I add real-life case studies as stories in my presentation. It builds resonance.
In Conclusion
Consultants, full-time or on the side, are engaged in the same business. We are knowledge arbitragers.
Therefore, we must walk that fine line between active client engagement and knowledge immersion. Taking time away from our existing clients allows us to synthesize what we know, think, and engage with thinkers on the next steps.
We are building our consulting practice for the future.
When we focus on the future, we will continue to attract customers and grow our revenue book pipeline.
Other Stories To Help You Grow Your Consultant Side-Hustle:
On starting your Consulting Practice.
On building credentials.
On the toolbox you need.
On finding your ideal clients.
As a content contributor, I write my observations from daily life and my business exposure. Because our life experience is the bedrock of our unique perspectives.
