Getting Started

I’m no expert, but here’s a paraphrased conversation I had recently

Getting started as a consultant is never a “Quick Fix”, nor is it something you can achieve in a short timescale. If you’re starting from scratch, then you have to do some work first. I recently sent some notes to a fellow member of a Indie Hacker group I’m in - and I have to acknowledge that I’m no Indie Hacker, nor am I a full-time consultant - but I have been there, smelt the overpriced coffee, and I have suggestions. Here’s a summary of what I wrote.

(And my apologies for the LinkedIn formatting - it’s generally unavoidable in cases like this).

If you want to be a consultant, first you have to find a thing to specialise in. You may have this already, but most of the time you won’t. You’ll be struck down by the agents of Imposter Syndrome all the time, and will spend at least half your time convincing yourself you’re actually good at the thing you spend most of your time doing.

A consultant is someone who is considered to be an expert in their field. Note that I say considered, because that is a highly subjective opinion. If you’re good at something, you don’t have to be better than every other person alive; you just have to be 5 or 10% better than the people who give you money.

Provided they can see value in what you offer that is cheaper than doing it themselves, then you’re an expert. Even when you don’t feel like it (see Imposter Syndrome above).

The tricky part is getting to the “I’m an expert” conversation in the first place. I’ve been in my line of work for over thirty years, and I still feel like an Imposter at least half of the time. I found a way to identify what I’m good at through sheer bloody minded anger and frustration.

That really doesn’t seem like the path to eternal light and sunshine on those glorious sunlit hills of consultancy, but it’s a really good sign. If you are repeatably and reliably frustrated by the mediocre efforts of so-called experts around you - and you find yourself reviewing their documents, processes, content, or whatever else and instantly wanting to make it better - then that’s your path to consultancy, my friend.

Once you have reliably found that little avenue of frustration, then the next step is to improve. Take those documents, processes, whatever, and improve them. Make them easier to read, clearer to interpret, take away redundant or unnecessary sections - then step by step, piece by piece, go to the original owner of that information and suggest improvements.

You can choose to do this by confronting them, loudly exclaiming that they are a moron, and providing them the obvious improvements all in one go - I’ve done that, and it works, albeit by making you a completely unmanageable pariah in the process - or you can ask for some time to help you introduce suggested changes, and ask why those steps were in the original in the first place.

You might find that there is a great untapped wall of stupidity that this data was designed to assist, hence the original stuff you thought it necessary to correct. What’s obvious to you may not be obvious to others.

You will also find some hidden gotchas or examples of legacy data / process that have found their way in, and needed to be excised. Your vision, skill, knowledge - whatever it is - has now proven itself expert in finding that and flushing it out.

Now, young one - prepare yourself: the owner of that data will likely listen very closely to your suggestions, nod sagely, thank you deeply, then take your suggestions and either fail to implement them at all, or deploy all of them in a blinding flash of inspiration which means they get all the glory and you get ignored. It’s going to happen. A lot.

Keep going. Find these examples all around you. They will exist. The things that you gravitate toward and are just dying to fix are the path to enlightenment. You will find them, fix them, have your knowledge updated, and the more you repeat, the more you learn. Your path to experthood awaits.

Inevitably, there will come a time when you see these failings everywhere. The ability for you to spot them and suggest fixes will become honed, tuned, and available for suggestion to anybody who comes looking. Now is the second stage of your learning - give that knowledge away.

“WHAT?” I hear you cry “This is my hard earned knowledge! I worked through this by the sweat from my brow! Why should I give this away?”

Here’s lesson three:

If you try to sell your knowledge to everyone, you will most likely sell it to no-one.

If you give your knowledge away, probably half of your audience will gleefully implement it and pay you nothing, and the other half will see you as an expert and pay you to do it for them. Never underestimate the perceived value of an expert - even one who has only slightly more knowledge than the average person. The people who are willing to pay just want the job done, the people who take your knowledge and do it themselves were never going to pay you in the first place.

Last but not least - you likely have a day job. Leaping into the unknown is not a path to success right at the beginning.

Instead, find people who will happily work to your timescale, at evenings and weekends, and pay you anyway. Do that over and over again for many years, until you have a stable collection of side clients.

Then, don’t quit the day job and expect everything to be just rosy. Look at the numbers and work out if going part time at the day job is good enough. This is your path to potential stability of a regular salary, while being boosted by the legitimate income from side clients. Plus - you get dedicated time to promote yourself as the fixer of things for money.

Let’s be honest, I’m recycling age-old experience here, found on many a reddit or twitter post, and baked into the knowledge of countless thought leaders and gurus.

But as I just said, this is knowledge I just give away, because every day there is a new person who wants to learn, and who hasn’t come across that knowledge that I think is obvious.

And if I keep giving that knowledge away, at some point in the future a total stranger may recognise me and give me a chance to help them for money.

These gambles will always pay off if you leave them for long enough.

So, in closing:

• find the thing that frustrates you the most.
• fix it, over and over again, earning bruises and experience as you go.
• do this for as long as you need before fixing these problems becomes easy
• then give all that knowledge away…
• while also creating an opportunity for people to pay you do it for them.
• Don’t leap, take measured steps…
• and before long, experthood awaits.

I have trodden this path several times. I’d had to take steps backward occasionally (thanks, worldwide pandemic), but the path is well known, and always present.

Find it, follow it, and it will reward you endlessly.