Launching Your Consulting Business in 2019

Excited to start your new business in the new year? If you are getting a slow start to 2019, maybe this is the time to start looking into starting your new consulting business! Here are 6 ways to start your consulting business and make sure you dominate 2019.

1. Target Your Niche
You need to figure out what industry you know best. Do you have a background in accounting, marketing, or engineering? Figure out if your potential customers need service in your background. Identify the potential customer’s needs and problems so you could use your skills to solve their problem.

2. Solve a Specific Problem
Use your background to solve a specific problem. The more specific the better. Your potential customer probably already told you what problem they are having in their operations or life, so know specifically what needs to be solved.

3. Know Your Value
The problem you solved could’ve saved your customer thousands of dollars, but instead of charging the % of savings for him, you are charging hourly. Charging hourly could mean that you are under charging for your service! Get out of that mindset. Who cares how long you spent on the problem? Let it be 3 hours or 5 hours, as long as the value you created for your customer is greater than the bill, there is a net gain for your customers. So, forget the hourly bill and consider your service as a package deal.

4. Network
Go meet people! Check out Eventbrite and Meetup for events where your potential could be gathering. Working from home is great, but go to a coworking space to socialize. Who knows? Maybe they are working out of a coworking space to stay lean.

5. Have a Customer Conversion System
As a new consultant, you need a customer conversion system that would make sense. Let it be organic website traffic, ads, networking where you first establish contact with your customer, you need to keep being engaged with them. Lifecycle email marketing seems to work as a method to keep customers engaged. A cool fact, even Mailchimp tags contacts nowadays! Make sure to develop a way to keep your customers engaged.

6. Come up with an agreement that works
Benjamin Franklin, the founding father of the United States swore to never do business without a contract. Make sure to make an agreement for your clients based on the service you provide. Make sure that you receive legal advice for your consulting work. After all, your consulting gig is still a business and legal is super important for business!

Meet other like-minded individuals at Treehouse Society either coworking or at an event!