What is consulting? We hear this all over the place in the business world but what is consulting really?
So often we hear the words consulting, coaching and business planning out there in the world, but what is consulting really and how do you become a consultant?
It’s so important to really understand what people are paying for when you want to become a consultant. There’s a couple of things that I start with when I think about consulting:
- What’s the big problem that you’re helping to solve. If you don’t have a skill set that’s going to help people solve a problem then you shouldn’t be a consultant.
You first grow a specialty, then you grow an audience, then you grow an income.
Most new consultants do this wrong by starting with the product that they’re in love with i.e one-on-one coaching, consulting or they want to go into mastermind groups. They just want to start with the product or the e Course. When you do that you don’t tap into what people actually want.
Grow Your Specialty
You want to start with growing your specialty, there are a couple things that you want to consider first:
- What do you enjoy doing?
- What does your background inform? Maybe you were in the military, worked in big business, you’ve been a trauma nurse or maybe you’ve been a therapist. Any of these things inform areas that are well outside of your field. Imagine you’ve helped with crisis management as a private practice counselor, you’d be great at teaching banks how to handle crisis, how to help volatile people and management, also how to help HR with larger businesses.
You can help people change their lives while also informing them on a specific skill set. When you start to drill into your speciality you should look at what brings you joy, what your skill set is and lastly what it is you want to develop.
Grow Your Audience
If you can have people on an email list that are listening to you on podcast interviews or somehow connect to your website it’s going to be a lot easier for you to start consulting than if you just start with a blank slate. There’s lots of ways to grow your audience:
- Through social media or email opt-ins
- Interviews with leading experts
All of these things can work but you want to think about what it is that you enjoy, where are you at your best. Are you good at talking to people, on camera, interviewing or writing a four thousand word blog post. Look at what you enjoy doing first because that passion is going to come through in your consulting and people will follow you when you’re true to yourself.
Grow An Income
As a consultant you’re going to want to get on the phone, Skype or Zoom with some of your ideal clients.
- Talk with them about their big problems and ask them what do they wish was out there. Is that one-on-one consulting, is it deep dives into their business or is it an inspirational members community?
- Match this back to the kind of consulting that you want to do.
When you’re consulting you’re answering a question, if the question is ‘I don’t know what to do in this situation’, then your answer is exploring, giving advice. You are also helping people get a stronger return on investment for their money and their time than if they hadn’t worked with you.
At the core of everything we do as consultants it’s helping other people to solve problems. Their life and their business is better off because we are involved with them. If that doesn’t happen then we’ve failed, so we as consultants need to raise the bar for ourselves to be able to grow a specialty, grow an audience and grow an income.
For more resources on consulting and growing your practice click here, we would love to help you continue to grow your consulting and your private practice.
Joseph R. Sanok, MA, LLP, LPC, NCC
Joe Sanok is an ambitious results expert. He is a private practice business consultant and counselor that helps small businesses and counselors in private practice to increase revenue and have more fun! He helps owners with website design, vision, growth, and using their time to create income through being a private practice consultant. Joe was frustrated with his lack of business and marketing skills when he left graduate school. He loved helping people through counseling, but felt that often people couldn’t find him. Over the past few years he has grown his skills, income, and ability to lead others, while still maintaining an active private practice in Traverse City, MI. To link to Joe’s Google+ .
