So...its not enough to be good at something to make it in business, you have to be good at the thing that you're not good at to be able to continue doing the thing that you're actually good at.
Being an hourly consultant at the moment I will attest to the fact that it is much harder then it sounds at first. My only saving grace for being self-employed for the past 10 years is that my client like me and they tell their friends about me.
Having lost one large client at a most inopportune time, I can attest to the perils, but when you get the formula down you can make a decent living and still have time to live.
But the real fun is in creating something larger then yourself and it is almost impossible to do that completley on your own.
People jumping into consulting also don't realize the costs of:
-Self employment taxes
-Business expenses
-Vacation (3 weeks a year)
-Holidays (1 week per year)
-Sick Time (1 week per year)
-Errands (a few times a week)
-Bench time (all of the time between projects)
You run the numbers and $60/hr starts to feel pretty freakin' ugly.
(note: I was a consultant and built a 20 person consulting biz... And then sold it. I'll never be an hourly consultant again, if I can swing it).
How to survive: Take the idea that to be successful you have to "Make something people want." and apply it to consulting. (e.g. provide a service people want) If you want to optimize your per-hour take (since you are bound by your time if you work solo that is the only thing you can significantly maximize) keep on top of your skills and move with the market.
It sounds odd, but even when we were billing $150 per hour for Web work (through our agency with 100+ people on projects) the margins weren't that great.
I'm not making a big sales pitch for working with a consulting firm (I sold mine and will never go back). But I wanted to point out that the golden vision of consulting is tarnished at best.
Very rare. Client management often is a full time job in itself and can be very frustrating.
Before consulting I recommend finding at least one large client that can guarantee 20-30 hrs of work for at least 8 months. Then use the remaining time to work on other projects, develop relationships and especially target potential large clients.
Otherwise you may end up like me, with lots of good ideas and lots of credit card debt. Still, one learns by trying.
It's new business. I was thinking about all the cool star wars action figure names and the spelling just kind of grew from there. I should have added the phoenetic version I suppose.
