Making the jump from Internal Ops to Consulting

I would imagine that my experience is fairly standard for many consultants making this move. After years working as an IC growing start-ups and making a ton of mistakes one thing became clear. I had burned out in a big ball of glory and started looking for ways not to repeat the same mistake. From there, I had several options:

1. Join another start-up... (AKA prepare for burn out #12)
2. Join a big company.
3. Go into consulting full time.

I knew I wanted to avoid burn out; I also knew that the predictability of working for a larger organization would leave me bored and frustrated. As it turns out that is a key trait of someone who would be successful at consulting full time. That brought me to option #3 and to make the jump into consulting full time.

I had so many questions about what it meant to be a consultant without a place to answer them. I was lucky, and after asking my network I was able to answer most of them. That said, I wanted to create a resource for people who were in my position and had questions without a place to get honest answers.

I'll also say that my answers are in regards to my own experience working for a small firm, SaaS Consulting Group, and will not be representative of either starting your own firm OR joining one of the BIG 4.

What about work life balance? Will I be working all the time?

I was always the kind of worker that went the extra mile... part of the reason why I burnt out. My experience has been that there are certainly PUSH weeks and weekends, but those are fairly well balanced out with the time to re-fill the cup. Especially if you advocate for what you need, the firm will respect that - especially in this job market - you are not a work horse and have limits. I work about 45 hours a week averaged throughout the year. That is an combination of both 30 hour weeks and 60-70 hour weeks (usually coming every month or two). Those heavy weeks ARE PART OF THE JOB.

As for weekends, we typically have 1 or 2 weekends a quarter that are studded with a go-live or some type of weekend required work. On my team, I advocate that if there is a weekend where we are going all out, then that is balanced the following week with a rest. The flexibility (of working on the weekends) is part of what the client pays for, so that will typically be a part of the job.

How are projects formatted?

This is going to change company to company, but I get this question quite often. A fairly typical project for my consulting firm follows this usual pattern after the deal has been signed and we start the project. The timelines for each depend on the project, but typically they last between 4 and 18 months.

Requirements Gathering involves meeting with the stakeholders in the business, understanding the current challenges and deciding on a path forward.

Once we finish the validation of those requirements, we will work to solution them and move into the Build and Test phase. Here we go through sprints of development and then do User Acceptance Testing with the business to ensure that what we're building is in fact what we agreed to.

Finally, Go Live and Support happens which is typically a heavy lift. We move from whatever sandbox environment we are in and push to production. There is then a support period for bugs, enhancements, and new requirements.

What is the pay like?

We will talk about the structures in a moment, but the compensation for consulting can be much higher given your level of expertise and the type of position. This will vary on your current position and the role you are hoping to fill. On balance you can expect to have higher potential, but it may not be as consistent and you'll have more ownership over your career.

When I made the move, my last internal position was the Director of Revenue Operations for a FAST growing financial tech company. I joined the firm as a Senior Consultant (able to run my own projects and lead a small team) I received full comp about 20% higher than what I was making. Others have seen much more and I know for some it's a lateral move.

There are primarily three ways one may be compensated as a consultant, and it's important that you find the right one for you.

• Salaried - Works just like a normal job... the Firm takes the risk of being able to supply you work, and you bill hours to the client, but don't see a benefit of billing more or less.
• Billable Hours - You may receive a base salary (for legal reasons), but you are directly compensated based on the hours that you are able to bill to the client. This creates the most direct incentives for the business and you, where there is little risk to the firm. You see the upside of a lot of billable hours, but if there isn't any project work you'll have an inconsistent paycheck.
• Salaried + Billable Hours - You have the benefit of being salaried, but are incentivized to work and bill more hours.

Being presented with the option, I chose to be salaried as I wasn't comfortable (even though it would have worked out to be) with working on a form of commission. I also knew that it would incentivize me to bill more hours and work more to a point of burn-out, which I knew wasn't the direction I wanted to go.

Will I have to travel?

This one is the most up in the air... As I write this in July of 2021, I haven't traveled for work in well over a year. In the before times I was traveling about one week a month. Some months will have a more intense travel schedule. Your milage may vary.

We've had a lot of success working remotely coming out of the pandemic. Since our clients aren't all back in the office yet, doing the typical on-site work is not yet feasible. Eventually we will go on-site for larger projects at the beginning and end, but I don't believe it will reach the same level as before. But, that is anyone's guess.

Takeaway should be travel may be expected. If you don't want to travel, make sure you either build that for yourself in your own practice or make that clear to a firm you're exploring an opportunity with.

What are the most important skill sets for a consultant to have?

You need the expertise to help business learn from mistakes that you've already made. I developed that through years in the trenches working with Product, Marketing, Sales, Finance, etc... But you may have developed it somewhere else. These are things that can be learned while being a consultant, but will be necessary day 1 if you're looking for an experienced consulting role.

The traits that make a good Consultant to me are:

• The ability to understand difficult and complex problems, then communicate them back to the business. You are a translator, which means you must UNDERSTAND first.
• The ability to build consensus within a team. Often your job will be to help communicate the desires and values the organization is advocating for.
• The ability to transform acceptance criteria (strategic outcomes) into solution designs (ways to accomplish the acceptance criteria).
• The ability to say what needs to be said. You are being paid by the company to NOT have a dog in the fight, so it's your responsibility to be honest with what you see.

If you have these traits, and have developed a valuable expertise, then you'll be fantastic.

Will I still have co-workers?

Of course you will! While you are going from business to business, and they do change every 4-6 months on average, you will maintain your relationships with other consultants. You absolutely will still have co-workers!

What is your favorite part of consulting?

As someone who worked in house for nearly a decade, I had still only seen a small subset of the problems that business try to solve or may be presented with. Consulting has given me the experience of working in many industries, solving all types of complicated business challenges. I've met some amazing people, both internally and externally at our client's companies. My experience has been above and beyond what I would have hoped for.

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If you are interested in learning more about Consulting at a small firm, please feel free to reach out directly to me. At this point in my life, it's been an amazing shift, but was one that required stepping past a lot of fear. I'm happy to be a resource if you have questions of your own.

SaaS Consulting Group is a Salesforce and Netsuite partner for systems and operations transformations. We are based in Austin, TX and are always looking for talented and driven people to join our team. If you have a background in Salesforce, Netsuite, or have a business background and are looking to learn either of these softwares it may be a good fit!