What do you do if you want to become a successful self-employed management consultant?

When starting as a freelancing consultant, I was eager to catch any project, no matter what. At the same time, I feared missing the moment-of-truth and offered the entire range in marketing, from product ideation, over development to sales and after-sales. Soon, I realized, that was not confidence building, neither for clients nor for me. Then, I defined in a number of sessions the areas of my heritage (experience) and of my desire (where my passion is). Here, my experience in marketing and strategy helped a lot, as well as my ability to self-reflect. From this picture I moved on to my goal and what-I-want-to-work-on in my professional life. After 2 months, I was engaged with my first project at a very desirable customer.

Building or defining a niche in management consulting involves identifying a specific area where you can leverage your unique skills, experiences, and interests to serve a well-defined segment of the market more effectively than competitors. Here are some steps to help you establish your niche: -Assess Your Strengths and Passions: -Analyze Competitors -Identify Industry Needs -Evaluate Market Viability -Define Your Value Proposition -Test Your Niche -Build Your Brand Around Your Niche -Content market your niche -Network Strategically -Continuously Learn and Adapt By following above steps and focusing on delivering exceptional value within your niche, you can establish yourself as a go-to expert in your field.

Successful and sought-after Management Consults deliver exceptional value and extra-ordinary results and are reknown for their expertise and experience with the industry and subjects, as well as they method to approach the subject, analyze, draw insights and set up strategy, and execute solutions. The Management Consultant must carve out his USP with the industry/ product/ processes of expertise; and showing exceptional cutting edge by the method and approach to deliver excellent breakthroughs and innovative solutions.

Building and nurturing a network within your niche area of management consulting will involve joining relevant associations (industry bodies , chambers etc) , online groups, and attending events where you can meet potential clients and industry influencers. Networking and showcasing your skills either as speaker or while interacting with others are a sure shot way to grab attention .

Get your numbers right! First of all, you need to know what your income limit is. What's the minimum you need for living? That must include a contingency, e.g. 40%, for bridging no-income-periods. Secondly, get a tax consultant and book keeper supporting you, in case you aren't familiar with these topics. Last but not least, know your worth! What is your offering worth and what is the client's value they get from your work? For getting a good feeling about it - and if you haven't got much experience in the consulting business - you may do some research beforehand. Conversations with other freelancers/consultants may help. However, consider that they are potential competitors.

For being relevant to your clients/target group you either need to offer what's demanded and/or distinguish yourself from competitors. When I started into the freelancing business, I quickly realized to be better prepared and very well skilled in what I wanted to offer to the market. There are a lot of sharks out there. Thus, I got used to make trainings and courses on an annual basis in order to develop myself continuosly. Sure, the courses need to build up on each other and make kind of a sense to clients. Ask yourself what you'd like your future customers to see in your personal shop window and why it'll be more attractive than your neighbours'?

Plan your work week from a general point of view, and consider yourself as an enterprise, that needs to do market positioning, acquisition, deliver, but also develop. Everybody needs to find his/her best balance - it's a very personal and individual matter. For me, it fits best having an 4/5 days billable and 1/5 days for my own topics, such as networking, and development. Weekends are clearly for recreation, family & friends, sports, and whatever you are interested in. For sure, there are times, when all this does not apply since the project gets tensely and To-Do's pile up as high as Mount Everest. Yet, that needs to be temporarily.