Start a Consulting Business

The most important thing to keep in mind to get into the consulting business is that you will need to be an expert in at least one industry. You could potentially read the marketing section and become a consultant for marketing if you have the confidence and knowledge you need to impress a potential customer. If there is something that you are already an expert with years of experience, then you can just dive into consulting in that industry.

Once you decide what industry you want to consult for, you will need to of course set up your LLC and business bank account to keep track of all your income and expenses in one place for tax purposes. You can check out our how to start a business section to learn more about setting up an LLC and bank account.

Now it is time to get some customers to consult for. We will of course go over tips on how to acquire customers from no connections, but it is important to usually have a reputation in the industry you are in. Marketing is one of the easiest industries to consult in with no or little experience if you are looking to get into something new. The reason for this is that you can show the knowledge you have gained from our sections to an older business owner, and you will look like a marketing genius. If you are known in your industry you can start calling business owners or managers in your network and talk to them about an opportunity to learn from the knowledge that you have and relate it to the potential growth they will see from the information you give them.

When you are ready to reach out to business owners you will of course need some business cards to keep on you and a professional site that provides some insight into the knowledge you have. Your site should act as proof that you are reputable and have the knowledge that you claim to have, the knowledge that will ultimately help them make more money. You can check out the sites of other consultants in your field and check out our section on how to make a professional site to learn how to make one from scratch. Your site should give a list of accomplishments that prove you to be an expert, testimonials of other businesses you have helped, and a list of the knowledge and services that you offer. It should also be focused on the field that you are an expert in of course rather than just about consulting in general. Show graphics that relate to your field and list services that are specific to it as well. You should also have clear call to action buttons that will allow them to fill out a form so you can reach back out and contact information so they can call or email you right away if they want.

With any consulting business a great place to start making connections on is LinkedIn. There are a ton of business owners and managers on linked in that have their titles and companied listed on their profiles. Start by creating a profile that paints you as an expert in your field and lists your title as a ___ consultant. You can start by making connections with people you already know to grow social proof and then start requesting new connections with people connected to your network. From here you can think of it as a web that you grow and grow meeting new decision makers for businesses along the way. You can also pay $100 per month for a premium account which will allow you to message people on linked in. Then you can send a link to your site, give a piece of valuable info to grab their attention and offer a free lunch if they are in your area or a free online consultation to show what you can do for their brand.

With the example of a marketing consulting business, you can also simply call on businesses by seeing who the registered business owner on public record for businesses around your area is and even around the world, and then skip tracing their number with skip tracing service like beenverified.com. Try to start around your area so that you can meet them in person and if you can’t find working numbers you can always go to businesses in person, ask for the supervisor on duty and leave your information while offering a free consultation for the business owner if they won’t give you their contact info when you ask. You can even search business owner and your city on Facebook and literally see tons of business owners in your area that have listed it as their occupation!

You can then message them, preferably with a link to your site (which we will talk about next) and an offer to give free tips on improving the marketing for their company. You can also create an introductory video that you can send them that introduces yourself as a local marketing expert that has helped a lot of companies in their industry grow their business online. You can give them one tip that will impress them and give real results and offer to really show them how to adapt to today’s digital marketing world in a free consultation. You can even film these real quick on your phone and personalize them with an offer to meet for lunch on a specific day. You can even go into restaurants and other businesses that may have owners at the business and make this offer in person. The goal of consulting is to get in front of as many business owners and managers even as possible, so that you can give them some value that will leave them wanting more.

The main thing you will want to plan out thoroughly for your consulting business is what information you will want to give out for free in your introductory meetings, and what value you want to keep for paid consultations. For example, if we look at some of the information in the marketing section. We may give them some free tips on SEO and let them know about ranking for local searches, paying people to visit and stay on their site for 90 seconds for multiple times with different IPs on a VPN with VPNs to help trigger Google’s algorithm. You can tell them about the TikTok algorithm and how short form content can help their brand. You can tell them about how AI can help them make ads and write SEO. These are valuable pieces of information that you will have to decide what to keep for paid consulting and what you will use to gain their business. I recommend telling them tips like these during a lunch introduction and saving the specific AI platforms we talk about in our AI marketing section, Save the best way to maximize your exposure on short form content like we talk about in our different marketing platform sections, and how they can outsource tasks for cheap by haggling with Fiverr.

You should have a consulting plan that outlines what you will go over in different consultations. Your first paid consultation should go over the analyzation of their business and how you can help. You will point out the things they are doing wrong, the things they are doing right, and the things they are not doing at all that they should be doing. You don’t have to go into the super valuable tips yet but just outline the improvements that should be made. The next paid consultation should go over in depth tips that will provide real, quick results in one aspect of their business. For marketing consulting this may be for TikTok or Facebook. Once you do analyze their business, you should plan out the different consultations you can give them and provide them consulting on the topics they ask of you of course. You can even do more research on topics that you are weaker at before a consultation to keep yourself sharp and provide more value. Think of consulting that you can OFFER them in an educational approach rather than always waiting for you to help, this can get you a lot more value and allow you to plan consulting approaches smoothly.

On top of creating some consultation topics and walking them through to keep their interest and spread value over time, you should also take a retainer that you will take away from as they use your consulting services. You will charge them from this retainer for phone calls, helpful emails, trainings, and any other service they have you do for them. You will be charging by the hour for this, and it is a good idea to call some consultants in your field to see what retainers they require and what their hourly rates are. This will give you a good idea of what you should charge for your business. Just make sure that you are fair with your retainer because you will want to maintain long-term customers and get referrals to other customers. You should be making sure that the information you are giving your customers is more than worth the money you are charging and that their company’s profits reflect that.

Once you do have happy customers from your consulting, you will want to ask for referrals of other businesses they may know. You may think people will not help their competition, but this is not always true. If you offer some free consulting, a credit to their retainer a free training, or even cash for giving you new business, you would be amazed how far it will take you. Build good relationships with your clients and ask for business often if you are offering them something in return then they will usually be more than happy to help you out and most business owners tend to know other business owners as well.

If you follow these steps, you will be able to grow a successful consulting company pretty quickly that will allow you to make a great living if you stay consistent with it. Also be sure that you are subscribing to newsletters, email lists, magazines, YouTube channels, Facebook pages and anything else that is related to your field so that you can stay up to date with any new changes happening in your industry. If you continue to learn and stay on top of the game, you will be respected as a top consultant in your field and you will have the confidence and knowledge to charge top dollar for your services.