Consulting is a simple business, yet building a consulting practice can prove challenging. A particular mindset will help you plow through difficult days on your way to an extraordinary, thriving consulting firm.
Want to bump along a slow road to growth in your consulting practice? No problem. Without too much effort you can traverse the business hills and valleys, and experience very modest growth or idle at a comfortable plateau.
And, if you happen to stumble into a frothy market, you’ll experience a period of growth.
But really pushing your consulting practice to the next level is often difficult. It demands you consume all manner of burnt cookies, such as:
- Re-learning basic skills you thought you’d mastered (e,g., listening, communicating).
- Engaging in uncomfortable activities virtually every day that stretch you (e.g., outreach).
- Investing time, money and energy into marketing.
- Investing time, money and energy into infrastructure.
- Letting go of more and more and more (e.g., old clients, pride, control, beliefs, fears, historical approaches)
- Taking direction so that your investments of time, effort and resource are effective rather than wasted.
Gosh, that seems like hard work. So, why bother?
Of course, you don’t have to bother. You don’t have to grow your consulting firm.
Consulting leaders who choose to chow down on that unappealing fare every day have adopted a certain realization:
When you grow your consulting firm you increase your income, reduce your stress and de-risk your practice by investing in a business that also allows you to help more people, enjoy tremendous pride of accomplishment, and enhance the quality of many lives (including your own.)
Of course, a more lucrative consulting firm also supports tastier leisure pursuits in the short term and can position you to enjoy an extraordinary lifestyle whenever you decide to dial back your consulting activities.
Don’t push yourself toward building your consulting firm.
Instead, envision what a larger, better-constructed consulting practice truly represents, and that vision will pull you toward it.
You’ll want to invest in growth.
You’ll want to tackle the hard work every day.
Agree? Disagree?
Text and images are © 2024 David A. Fields, all rights reserved.
