So you have a lot of experience in your industry and you are looking to build a business around sharing your knowledge and expertise. Congratulations! It’s an exciting step towards entrepreneurship and independence when you see a need to provide consulting services, sharing your unique perspective with others in your field. But starting a consulting business can also be a daunting experience, creating something from scratch and building a client base from the ground up.
Here are 8 Easy Steps to help you Start Your Consulting Business and thrive for years to come!
Step 1: Identity the Problem You Solve
This is the single most important step, but based on your experience, you probably already know what this problem is! If you’ve worked in construction, maybe you saw an opportunity with your company to increase profitability by adjusting their materials process. Or maybe you worked in corporate for years and saw resources being wasted on projects that rarely resulted in benefit for the company and you can speak to reducing waste and improving profitability!
Whatever the problem you can solve, make sure this is something that you can solve for other businesses that most of them have a hard time dealing with on their own. The harder the problem you solve, the greater the opportunity for your consulting business!
Step 2: Communicate How You Solve that Problem
Once you identify what problem you are solving, the next and second most important step is to figure out how you will communicate that problem solving methodology to your audience.
A lot of consultants think they have a solution that makes sense to everyone in their industry, but make sure other people see the value in what you do too. Your value proposition should be as simple as humanly possible. The easier it is for people to understand what problem you solve and how you solve that problem, the more businesses will be attracted to work with you.
Sometimes it is not the best consultant that gets the most business, but the one that communicates their value best and makes their solution a complete no-brainer. Reviewing an online consulting business plan can help you create your own strategic plan for success.
Step 3: Form Your Corporation or LLC with MyCorporation
Once you have identified the problem you solve for your target audience and how you will communicate that method to them, it’s time to form your corporation or LLC with MyCorporation!
There are plenty of online services you can use for starting a consulting LLC, but we make sure to provide you with personalized customer service, walking you through every step of the process. Our team will personally reach out to you to streamline the process and make it as headache-free as possible. While other competitors may keep you in endless email back and forth for any minor inconvenience, our only focus is getting your business up and running as fast as possible so you can focus on getting to work!
Step 4: Package Your Services
After setting up an LLC for consulting with MyCorporation and you have your business up and running, it is time to package your services so people know what they get from working with you!
Many consultants either package their services into monthly retainer or hourly models depending on what makes the most sense for their clients. If you are pricing out your services as a monthly retainer, you will want to break that out into different retainer packages your prospects can choose from showing what they will receive for signing up for each of those individual packages.
You will also want to research whether it makes the most sense to make your packages available as part of long-term agreements vs. month-to-month ongoing retainer. If you are working with bigger clients and longer term projects, long-term contracts are helpful to build out the scope of those projects and keep everyone accountable to the project goals. If you want to provide more flexibility to your clients and there is not a huge upside for them to sign longer-term agreements, it may help you close more deals to work on a shorter-term contract or work on a month-to-month agreement.
If your expertise is centered around coaching or coming in for only a couple days to identify opportunities and solve problems for a business, you may want to consider an hourly pricing model.
Step 5: Create Your Marketing Materials
Now that you have your pricing structure figured out, it is time to build out your website and social media accounts so people can look you up and find out more information about your business! You also want to have flyers and presentations ready in case people are thinking about working with you but want to review more information
Step 6: Display Your Reputation and Reviews
Reputation in business is everything! You will want to have your Google My Business account set up so happy clients can leave you reviews and give more people reasons to work with you. Display reviews from your past clients on your website and publish them as social posts so people see plenty of examples of 5-star experiences your clients have had in the past.
Step 7: Hire Employees to Help You Scale
Once you have a profitable business, it’s time to hire employees so you can build systems and scale your consulting business! The right employee is worth more than 5-10 average employees, so make sure that you bring on people that see the vision for the business and are motivated to help you grow! Those new employees may come from people that worked in consulting before, or they might be easily trainable and hungry to learn.
You may also want to consider providing incentives to your employees through profit-sharing or other programs that will help them benefit from the company’s expansion.
Step 8: Identify New Opportunities
Steps 7 and 8 may be interchangeable here since building a consulting business is an ongoing and ever-changing process. As you start building your consulting business, you may see additional opportunities you missed or overlooked before. Or you may find a better way to communicate the problem you solve to a different audience than the one you originally planned on reaching and working with.
Keep your eyes open to other industries or sections of the market that either express interest in what you do or people that bring up other types of clients that could use your expertise. When you come across these opportunities for new applications of your consulting services, start small with test clients and then scale to other related businesses in their industry so you can apply your proven methods more directly to their specific needs or business model.
Conclusion
We’re excited for you as you explore this brand new world of starting your consulting business! Please reach out to our team for other questions you have about forming your LLC or Corporation or any other ongoing business needs you have to keep your business in good standing.