Assignment Title DOING PART-TIME INDEPENDENT CONSULTING ...iuce.net/article1.pdf · 8.9 Promote Your Services 36 9. Dealing With Clients 41 10. Establishing a Formal Consulting Contract

Winnie Mujah- Management & ConsultingInternational University of Central Europe

ProgrammeManagement & Consulting

Assignment Title

DOING PART-TIME INDEPENDENT CONSULTINGWHILE WORKING AT A FULL-TIME JOB

FacilitatorProfessor Dr Marzuki Ujud

CandidateWinnie Mujah

INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL EUROPE


Table of ContentsContents Page

Abstract iiObjective of the Paper ivOrganisation of the Paper v1. Introduction: The Evolving Meaning of Consulting 12. Why Do Independent Consulting? 43. Are You Consultant Material? 74. Issues to Consider if You Want to Do Part-Time Consulting 125. Beware of Fallacious Thinking About Independent Consulting 146. Identifying Your Consulting Service 187. Researching Your Target Market 238. Starting Your Part-Time Consulting Business 24

8.1 Choose a Name and Legal Entity for Your Business 248.1 Choose Your Business Location 248.3 Create a Website 258.4 Create a Professional Brochure, Stationeries and Business Cards 258.5 Develop Your Network 268.6 Identify Costs and Financing Sources 268.7 Determine Your Consulting Fees 298.8 Develop a Business Plan if You Intend to Apply for a Loan 348.9 Promote Your Services 36

9. Dealing With Clients 4110. Establishing a Formal Consulting Contract With Clients 4811. Managing the Demands of Doing Part-Time Consulting While Working a Full-

Time Job 5311.1 Your Family Life 5311.2 Your Full-Time Employment 5611.3 Your Consulting Clients 5911.4 Yourself 61

12. Ethics of Part-Time Consulting 6413. Conclusion 68Bibliography 69


ABSTRACTKey Words:

part-time consulting, independent consulting, consultant characteristics, consulting service,consulting start-up, consulting contract, consulting ethics

This paper describes the basic elements of independent consulting, focusing on how to start thebusiness on a part-time basis while working a full-time job. The field of consulting has evolved inits scope from purely advice-giving to proffering any type of service at a price others are willing topay for. Independent consulting is becoming increasingly popular as an alternative or secondcareer because of trends such as the increase in outsourcing personnel or work by organisations,the need for additional income, the desire for controlling one’s destiny, for personal satisfaction,as well as the desire to continue a productive work life beyond the normal retirement age. Inaddition, starting an independent consulting business usually require less financial capitalcompared to other types of business.

This paper proposes that you could start your own independent consulting business by doing it ona part-time basis first while working at a full-time job. Doing it this way does put tremendousdemand on your time and energy because of the juggling act that needs to be done to balance thefull-time job and the part-time consulting. However, maintaining a full-time job offers a securityblanket until such time that you are ready to go into consulting full time.

Doing independent consulting is not for everyone because the nature of the business requires thatyou have suitable characteristics such as being driven, energetic, ambitious, risk taking, as well aspossessing a thick skin unfazed by rejections. In addition, you must have the human capital to dothe consulting service, and be able to find market for that service.

Before starting the business, you must do proper planning for the business as well as researchingthe target market. To start the business, the major things you should do include choosing a nameand registering your business; choosing a location for your office; creating a website; creatingprofessional brochures, stationeries, and business cards; developing your network; identifyingcosts and financing sources; determining your consulting fee; developing a business plan; andpromoting or marketing your consulting service.

You will also have to deal with clients professionally to develop and maintain a good relationshipas well as to preserve your reputation. At the same time, you also have to select clients thathonour the consulting relationship. This debunks the commonly-held belief that you grab anyconsulting job offered by any client that comes by. Since you have a full-time job as your mainsource of income, you should not be operating your part-time consulting business on a desperatemode. As you go deeper into the consulting business, you will learn that clients who do not stick to


their end of ethical standards as a partner in the consulting relationship are not worth the effort tochoose or keep.

On your part, because of your juggling act regarding your full-time job and your part-timeconsulting, you have certain ethical concerns and standards that you must address and adhereto. These ethical standards include being fair and honest with both your employer and consultingclients, building trust, never giving less than your best in your consulting projects, do not knowinglyback up a client’s faulty plan, ascribing to the ‘Do unto others as you would like done unto you’maxim, soliciting clients that do not jeopardise your employer or create a conflict of interest,informing the relevant clients if you are being asked by competing clients to do jobs for them, andnot accepting consulting jobs from clients who ask you to be unethical.

In order to be successful at managing the demands of both your full-time job and part-timeindependent consulting, you must manage four crucial elements: your family life, your full-timeemployment, your consulting clients, and yourself. Any one of these elements, if not handled well,could turn into major stressor that may ultimately derail either your full-time job, your part-timeconsulting business, or both.

As in any other businesses, there is risk involved in building your own independent consulting. Butthe financial rewards, personal satisfaction and professional accomplishment would betremendous indeed for those who could make it a success.


OBJECTIVE OF THE PAPER

The objective of this paper is to provide a basic awareness and understandingabout starting an independent consulting business while working a full-time job.The paper describes the major steps or elements involved in setting up thebusiness and ways of managing the demands of doing independent consultingand the full-time job. After reading this paper, the reader should be able toevaluate whether or not he could and should do independent consulting on apart-time basis.


ORGANISATION OF THE PAPER

This paper contains thirteen parts. Part 1 introduces the meaning of consultingfrom both the linguistic aspect and the practical usage. Part 2 describes some ofthe reasons why people choose to do independent consulting. Part 3 describesthe characteristics of those who could become good independent consultants.Part 4 discusses the issues that you have to consider if you do decide to go intoindependent consulting. Part 5 cautions you about fallacious thinking that mayfail you in doing independent consulting. Part 6 talks about the choices that youhave to make in identifying the type of consulting service to offer. Part 7describes some of the ways to research your target market. Part 8 covers themajor elements that you have do when you start your part-time independentconsulting business. Part 9 describes some of the ways you could deal withclients professionally. Part 10 discusses the major contractual elements orparameters that you should establish with your clients in order to do a consultingproject. Part 11 discusses some of the ways in which you could manage thedemands of juggling your full-time job and doing independent consulting on apart-time basis. Part 12 describes some issues of ethical concern that you mayface when you are doing the juggling act. Finally, Part 13 concludes thediscussion on the topic of part-time independent consulting.

In this paper, unless otherwise specified, references to the masculine include the feminine, andvice versa.

Winnie Mujah - Management & ConsultingInternational University of Central Europe

“But it is said: Do not meddle in the affairs of Wizards, for they are subtleand quick to anger. The choice is yours: to go or wait.”“And it is also said,” answered Frodo: “Go not to the Elves for counsel,for they will say both no and yes.”“Is it indeed?” laughed Gildor. “Elves seldom give unguarded advice, foradvice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and allcourses may run ill.”

- J R R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, Harper Collins Publishers,London, Film Tie-in Edition, 2002, pp 82-83

1. Introduction: The Evolving Meaning of ConsultingFor we are neither hobbits, nor elves, nor wizards; blissfully ignorant of the wisereasoning of the magical and the mythical, thus humans engage quite freely inmatters of advice and counsel. Indeed, careers have been launched andprofessions are carved from the seeking and giving of advice and counsel. Andthough indeed courses of action may run ill, it is the risk to be borne by theadvice taker. For those whose advice or counsel are greatly valued and sought,there are fortunes to be made and renown to be claimed should their advice-giving be turned into a successful and profitable venture.

Fiction aside, in our modern times, those who proffer advice for profit are usuallycalled consultant. Traditionally, the product of the trade used to be plain advice.Clients go to consultants and consult them on their opinion, advice andrecommendation for solutions regarding certain problems. To be worthy as aconsultant then, one is perceived as an expert at a particular craft or field, andthus one’s knowledge for solving problems relating to that craft or field is highlyvalued. Clients are willing to pay such a consultant for his expert advice. He isconsulted, and is worthy of being called a consultant, because of his expertise.

Lately, the label of consulting has expanded to include almost any manner ofwork done by a party for a client. A person may call himself a consultant if hedoes a certain job outsourced to him by a client, which may not involve giving

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advice at all. Giving advice, opinion or recommendation is relegated to just beingone of a consultant’s myriad of possible tasks. As change occurs in the scope ofclient demands, so does change occurs in the scope of a consultant’s work.

Nowadays, it seems anyone who offers a certain service for profit can callhimself a consultant. The term ‘consult’ is no longer limited to its linguisticconnotation. Whereas in the earlier meaning of ‘consulting,’ real expertise gainedfrom accumulated hands-on work experience is considered the qualifyingimperative, in the later expanded meaning, such expertise may be viewed as a‘nice-to-have’ or an ‘added advantage.’

Thus we see fresh graduates being recruited by consulting firms as consultantsthough they usually lack hands-on work experience in the field they areconsulting. Such people may gain consulting experience, but they may not havethe field or craft expertise to be called ‘consultant’ within the traditional linguisticmeaning of consulting. Within this traditional meaning, such people could notreally be ‘consulted’ for their advice because they do not have the necessaryfield experience. As consultants, without field expertise, they could only offertheoretical or conceptual recommendations.

But the expansion of the term ‘consultant’ nowadays opens up opportunities forthose who otherwise would not qualify to do consulting under the older, morelinguistically-inclined meaning. If one has a certain expertise, knowledge, skill, orreadiness to do something for others at a price clients are willing to pay for, oneindeed could consider a career in consulting. Such expertise, knowledge, skill, orreadiness to work becomes the person’s human capital if it is valued by clientsand they are willing to pay for it. Indeed, usually the term ‘consultant’ usuallycommands a higher monetary remuneration compared to the common wagesearned by salaried workers because of the expertise they are perceived to have.

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2. Why Do Independent Consulting?Independent consulting refers to when a person is working as a consultant for hisown company or on his own, and is not employed as a consultant by anotherconsulting company or by another employer. Henceforth, in this text, ‘consulting’refers to ‘independent consulting’ unless specified otherwise.

Consulting is increasingly becoming popular as a career option. Most peoplestart their career doing specialised work in certain fields, such as engineering,research, teaching, general management or others. While many may continue towork in such fields till retirement, others may later opt to switch to an alternativeor second career of consulting. Still others may go into consulting post-retirement.

Consulting is seen as an attractive career because people usually choose toconsult in their original fields of work. Therefore, doing consulting in the samefield is viewed as an extension of their earlier work and application of existingknowledge and skill. Consulting makes use of what a person already knows, thushis basic human capital investment is viewed as already being made.

In her book Consulting on the Side (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1996), Mary F.Cook listed several reasons why more people are doing consulting. According toCook, some of the reasons are as follows:

Organisations increasingly outsource personnel as well as technical andprofessional functions. Work is outsourced to external consultants insteadof being done by in-house personnel on the company payroll for manyreasons, such as to reduce head counts, to focus on core business, etc.Some companies even lay off workers, then arrange to contract back their

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services as external consultants. The outsourcing trend has opened upopportunities for people to undertake consulting work.

Due to fear of retrenchment and lay-offs, many people start their ownconsulting practices initially on a part-time, small scale basis. If theeconomy or their full-time employment scenario do not go well, at leastthey have a contingency plan or a fallback means of earning a living. Inaddition, doing consulting is seen as a way of having control over theirwork, career, and life plans.

Doing consulting, especially when it is done on a part-time basis whileworking a full-time job is seen as a means to earn additional or sideincome. Due to the rise in costs of living as well as the rise inconsumerism, people are finding it harder to live on their nine-to-fivesalaries. Additional income is needed to meet certain living standards orneeds. And part-time consulting provides additional income.

In the olden days, the organisation man lives to work for his company. Heendures the ebbs and flows of organisational life and politics, believingthat the firm takes care of him and his family. In later times, people havegrown less loyal and less trusting of their employers. Workers are findingthat organisational politics and the daily problems of corporate life aretiresome and burdensome. Thus, to create a better life for themselves,they want to take charge of their destinies and pursue their personaldreams, not merely that of the organisation’s dreams. Working forthemselves through undertaking their own consulting practice is a way topursue their dreams.

People who are approaching the retirement age may consider consultingas a bridge to retirement. Or, they may view consulting as a means to notstop working and continue having a productive and creative life. And theyfind that their years of working in organisations have equipped them withthe necessary field experience to change role from a ‘worker bee’ in

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corporations to a problem solver and trouble shooter in the consultingfunction.

People may want to do consulting for many reasons, but consulting is not foreveryone. As with any other career choices, one has to have the interest to doconsulting to choose it as a career. But beyond interest, one also has to have theconsulting product that others want, the know-how and the means to set it all up.

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3. Are You Consultant Material? While the potential monetary reward you could earn as a consultant may beenticing, and the flexibility and control you have over your own work life maysounds utopian, you have to ask yourself: Do you have what it takes to be aconsultant?

To help you answer that, below are some of the questions that you may want toask yourself.

Is there a market for your service? Who are your target clients? Who areyour competitors, those already offering similar service? What is the goingrate of consulting fee, and is it worth it for you? Sometimes you may havea service you could offer but the potential returns may be too low for youto consider as being worth the effort.

Do you have the necessary training, experience, and knowledge in thefield you want to consult in, or do you need to pursue certain professionalqualification, practitioner’s license, or educational degree to be acceptedas a consulting expert in that field? Though a Master or Doctoral degreemay not be a requirement to do consulting, having such qualifications mayincrease your credibility in the eyes of clients.

Can you market your service? Being able to consult is one thing; beingable to get the clients is another. If you are not good at marketing yourservice, can you pay someone else to do the marketing for you? Can youget someone credible, trustworthy and affordable to present you topotential clients? This is a very important issue because reputation is vitalin a consulting business. Misrepresentation or over-promising maydamage you irreparably.

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Can you withstand the uncertainty of getting work, or of getting paymenton time? If you have long-standing clients, this may not be an issue. But ifyou have to compete for consulting jobs, you may have to worry a bitabout getting work. After getting the work, you then may have to worryabout getting paid, and getting it on time. Bear in mind that not all clientsare honourable and pay your invoices on time. Payment problems canlead to cash flow problems, and this can affect both the running of yourbusiness and the maintenance of your personal and family life.

How good are you at communicating and solving problems? You mayhave the necessary technical knowledge, skills and experience in therelevant consulting field, but to get to work with clients who are humans,you must be able to communicate well, understand their problems andconstraints, and work with them for solutions. If you don’t have goodcommunication or problem solving skills, you may want to get sometraining in these areas first before you start your consulting business.

Are you comfortable working alone? Or, maybe the question should be:Are you capable of working alone without a full cadre of assistants andhelpers? As an independent consultant, the nature of work require thatyou be just that: independent. This is especially true at the beginningwhere you are just starting out. Your business may not be able to sustainother employees yet. This means you have to do everything yourself:making appointments, paper work, bookkeeping, invoicing, collecting, etc.You may be able to outsource or pay others to do work such as typing or

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bookkeeping for you, but in general you do everything because basicallyyou are a company of one, unless you start employing others. And thatwould be another issue for you to consider later: Do you want to employothers? Perhaps, as long as you do consulting on a part-time basis, youmay prefer to work alone and not worry about payroll and otheremployment matters. You may, however, have to give this matter someserious thought once your business grows.

Do you like to network? Are you good at it? In consulting, you may comeacross opportunities which do not fall within your niche or area ofexpertise. You may need to work with other consultants or pass up theopportunity. This is the use of networking. Not only that, if you have agood network of contacts, people may pass good consulting jobs on toyou.

Do you possess the characteristics of a consultant? According to Dr DavidKarlson in his book, Consulting For Success (Crisp Publications, Inc.,1991, p17), personal characteristics of a successful consultant include:

Driven: The singlemindedness to be successful at what you do.

Ambitious: The desire to be successful and to get ahead.

Energetic: The inner resources to stay at it until you get it done.

Self-confident: The attitude that you can do it!

Persevering: The ability to stick to it until you accomplish your goals.

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Risk taking: The willingness to attempt new challenges withoutguaranteed outcomes.

Self-starting: Making things happen on your own without the help ofothers.

Committed: Having a vision and goals that you stick to.

Tough hide: Ability to take rejection and come back for more until you getwhat you want.

Competitive: Eager to compete for business and able to enjoy the chase.

Imaginative: Able to dream up innovative solutions to unique andperplexing problems.

Assertive: Willing to step forth and be counted as well as to beacknowledged.

Communicative: Able to speak publicly and write effectively.

Resilient: Able to recover from failure or disappointment.

Positive: Able to take criticism of ideas, develop alternatives, andmove on without being defensive.

Detail-oriented: No detail is too small to ignore.

There are many other questions you may need to ask, especially those relevantto your own personal situations. For example, is the time right for you? Wouldyour family acquiesce to you pursuing this kind of career? What does yourfinances look like? What does the prospects of your current employment lookslike? For example, if you are already occupying a high place on the corporateladder and there is an excellent chance that you could go higher, the opportunitymay be too sweet to throw away for starting up in an uncertain business such asindependent consulting. Or, does the vision of being an independent consultantfire up your spirit and burn you with enthusiasm? If your answers to the abovequestions give positive indication that you can do consulting, then you mayconsider it a go-ahead for you.

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4. Issues To Consider If You Want to Do Part-Time ConsultingBut consider this: You do not have to jump into full-time consulting if you are notready. Why not start something while you are still working full-time for anemployer? Consider it as a means for easing your way into eventually doing full-time consulting. Later, when you are ready, you could choose to quit your full-time job. However, doing part-time consulting while holding down a full-time jobmeans you have to face up to certain issues such as:

Are you motivated to work additional hours beyond your regular employmentwork hours? Do you have the energy? Do you have the time? Time will beone of your most critical concern, especially if your full-time job is inflexible orrequires you to work long hours. (However, having to work long hours in afull-time job may be the thing that spur you to set up your own consultingbusiness, if so you could control your own time in the future!) Energy andendurance will not be a challenge for you if you could function on less sleepor less rest time.

Have you consider the ethics of part-time consulting while working a full-timejob? How would your employer responds if and when he learns about yourpart-time work?

Doing consulting on a part-time basis is a good idea if you do not want to losethe security of earning a regular income. But doing part-time consulting while youwork at a full-time job for someone else is not easy. It requires you to do ajuggling act between your regular job and your consulting work. And to besuccessful at establishing a consulting practice while shouldering theresponsibility of a full-time job, you must really want to do it. You must reallywant your own independent consulting practice. And to answer this, only you canassess your own innermost desire.

Let’s say you decide to proceed doing part-time consulting. Eventually, you maydecide to go full-time if you have built a comfortable client base, or if you couldno longer sustain your juggling act. Alternatively, you may be comfortable

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continuing on a part-time basis and look at your part-time consulting work aseither a means for an extra income, or a side business you do for personalsatisfaction and achievement.

Of course, operating on a part-time basis means there is a limit to the growth ofyour business that you can handle. But you do have a regular job as yourprimary responsibility as well as source of income. In fact, the income you earnfrom your regular job could be a source of start-up fund for your consultingbusiness. This means less financial worry as you start your very ownindependent consulting practice.

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5. Beware of Fallacious Thinking About Independent ConsultingAccording to Dr David Karlson (1991), one reason why many people who decideto set up their own business choose independent consulting is because it doesnot take much financial capital compared to many other types of businesses.Basically, a person could start as an independent consultant using a lap-top, ahand phone, and an Internet access. Information and communication technology(ICT) has advanced so much that a physical setting is no longer a requirement.In fact, mobility and communicability are the advantages when dealing withclients of the Internet age. However, one should not be lulled into thinking that starting an independentconsulting business, or any business, is easy. According to Mary F. Cook (1996),it takes between 12 to 18 months from start-up time until you earn enough tosupport the business and provide a source of income. If you do full-timeconsulting business, this is the time money concerns may be uppermost in yourmind. But if you do part-time consulting, money may worry you less, but timemay be a challenge for you. Either way, you must do your planning carefully. Youmust not have unrealistic expectations, and be aware of fallacious thinking thatmay trip you up and make you fail, such as:

“I don’t need to do much research or planning; I’ll work out the planalong the way.” As the saying goes, failing to plan is planning to fail.Even with a well-thought out plan, people doing business may still fail. Sowithout one, you are increasing your chances of failing. Pure luck maysmile on you, but you should not count on it. The first thing your researchshould answer is: “Will anyone pay for my service?” Your plan shouldfocus on making your service marketable.

“This will work because it is a great idea.” All businesses start with anidea. But whether it is truly great is not for you, the seller, to decide; it isthe buyer that will decide on the actual greatness of your idea. Where doyou think the maxim, ‘Customer is always right’ comes from? Before

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proceeding, do your research on the market. Will anyone pay for yourexpertise? How much would they pay? Is the price acceptable to you?

“I don’t need much capital; I can start with minimal financing.” Eventhough start-up capital for a consulting business may be low comparativeto other types of business, you still need a certain amount of capital tostart, and to keep your business going. Thus, you still need to plan, keeptrack of, and control your budget and spending.

“It would be easy to do consulting because I have years ofexperience.” Having years of experience does not automatically translateinto an expertise upon which you could build a successful consultingpractice. Having the relevant and up-to-date experience is what counts,and not just any experience. Experience in your chosen field of consultingis a must for you to be credible and considered as an expert; a plus foryou if you were well-known in the field or within your target market.Beyond experience, you need a network of associates as well as theability to market your consulting service.

“The economy is good; it’s a great time to start my consultingbusiness.” The suitability of economic climate depends on the nature ofyour consulting service. It is true that companies tend to start manyinitiatives during good economic times when they can afford to do so, andthey may require consultants’ help to implement such initiatives. At thesame time, more people may start their consulting practice during goodeconomic times, so there is actually more competition for you.Conversely, during economic downturn, companies may outsourcefunctions or look for ways to cut costs. Thus, if your nature of consultingservice offers cost saving to clients, you may do better starting yourindependent consulting practice during an economic downturn, whencompanies tend to be on the lookout for cost-saving measures.

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“I can quit my full-time job anytime to do consulting.” Not true.Remember, your full-time job is your security blanket. You don’t throwyour security blanket away unnecessarily. If you decide to do full-timeconsulting, ensure that you put your part-time business in order first: yourfinancing is in place, your network of associates is cultivated, and youhave a client base that can reasonably sustain your business. Quittingyour full-time job before you are ready to let go of your security blanketmay be risky. You must assess whether the timing is right and theworthiness of the risk.

Plan B Mentality: “If I don’t make it as an independent consultant, Ican always find a job elsewhere.” This is easier said than done. Unlessyou have good contacts in high places, finding a job after a failedbusiness venture may not be easy. Potential employers may not want tohire you thinking that to you, they may be just a temporary buoy to float onuntil you could start another venture. And the older you get, you may onlybe eligible to compete for jobs at senior managerial level, a competition ofwhich you may be at a disadvantage compared to those who are alreadyin regular managerial employment. Thus, give careful thought to whetherindependent consulting business is for you, or whether you would bebetter off focusing your energy, passion and time on succeeding as a full-time employee for another party.

By having realistic expectations, you do not blind yourself with rose-tintedglasses and have a skewed view of the world of independent consulting.Hopefully you start with your eyes wide open and with wise judgment as to therewards and perils of independent consulting.

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6. Identifying Your Consulting ServiceAccording to Herman Holtz, in his book How to Succeed as an Independent

Consultant (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Third Edition, 1993, p28):

“Almost any activity that is widely practised and requires evenmodestly specialised knowledge and experience can become aconsulting specialty.”

The choice of consulting service to offer usually depends on one’s knowledge,expertise, formal qualification and comfort zone. Thus, most people choose toconsult in an area they are expert at and qualified in, as well as feel confidentand comfortable about providing the service. The question is in deciding howspecialised or how generalised you want your consulting service to be. Thedegree to which you specialise determines the size of your target market as wellas who your competitors are. But you have to be a specialist in something to beviewed, in most client’s eyes, as a credible consultant. A ‘Jack-of-all-trades’consultant faces the danger of being viewed as a ‘Master-of-None.’ That is, ifyou claimed to be an expert in a wide variety of fields, you may be considered asexaggerating and may not know much at all. Thus, a certain degree ofspecialisation is desirable.

In choosing your area of consulting, you may find the following decision choicesuseful:

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1. Decide on the field in which you want to consult in. Consulting is basedon one’s expertise, thus as mentioned earlier, people usually choose theirfield of work experience as the field of their consulting. For example, aHuman Resource Executive is most likely to pick the field of HumanResource Management as his consulting field.

2. After deciding on the field, you may want to narrow your choice into

certain specialised areas within that field. For example, the HumanResource consultant may choose the area of Training & Development ashis specialisation. He may not want to be involved with, say, employmentlaws within the Human Resource Management field, because he may notbe an expert in this particular specialisation.

3. You may also want to narrow your service further into type of consultingwithin the specialised field. In general, there are two types of consulting:

strategic consulting, and operational or process consulting. Strategicconsulting involves issues that are of strategic nature such as creation orconceptualisation of policies, procedures, and systems. Operationalconsulting involves implementation matters. However, these could beviewed as existing on a continuous spectrum, and the demarcation maybe blurred, because consultants may be called upon by the client toadvise on the creation of a system, then to proceed into implementing thesystem in the client’s firm. For example, creating a formal system formanaging and measuring organisational performance is strategicconsulting. But usually, the consultant is also called in to conduct theawareness training of the systems to the client’s general population, aswell as processing the performance numbers for the first year ofimplementation. The formulation of the system is strategic consulting, butprocessing the number involved doing the actual work using the system,and is considered operational consulting. However, you do not have to berigid in this differentiation. It is not absolutely imperative for you todifferentiate your services as strategic or operational consulting; the most

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important thing is, you must be capable of rendering advice or service inthe specialised field of your choice.

4. In order to market your consulting service, you have to identify your targetclients. You can identify your clients based on several dimensions:

Sector (private/profit versus public/non-profit firms)

Size of firm

Industry or type of business

Location

Government departments or government-related agencies are publicsector clients. The government may have programmes or issues that itwants to implement or push through for the nation which could offer goodconsulting opportunity. For example, the Malaysian government’s desireto create a computer literate society has opened up consultingopportunities in the ICT field.

Non-profit firms or organisations may also be good client potential;however, you have to set your fees in accordance with the rates they arecapable of, or willing to pay you.

Size of firms may or may not matter. Larger firms may not need yourservice if they could do the same thing in-house. Thus, you may want totarget smaller firms who may require such service but are not able toemploy in-house personnel to do it. They may outsource the service toyou. Sometimes however, larger firms are financially capable ofoutsourcing certain services, while smaller ones do not have the means todo so. In such cases, larger firms would make better clients.

Sometimes, your consulting expertise is applicable across industries, thusyou may not need to segment your clients into industrial classification. Butsometimes, a consultant’s expertise is very specialised that his expertise

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is applicable only in certain types of industry. This usually occur in highlytechnical consulting.

Location may not matter, especially if you are mobile, and particularly ifyou could do remote communication using the Internet technology. But asa part-time consultant, your time is limited and you may only be capable ofconsulting clients that are located not very far from your residence orplace of work. This is particularly true if you need to periodically visit orsee your clients physically.

How you segment your target market depends on which dimensions youdeem are relevant. The table below summarises the choices you mayneed to make in identifying your consulting service niche.

Consulting Choices Example1. Field General Management2. Specialisation Organisational Performance3. Type ofConsulting

Strategic System, Policies and ProcessOperational Conducting seminar, compiling & processing

performance data 4. TargetClients

Sector Private sectorSize Large companiesIndustry All typesLocation South East Asian region

List of Potential Clients 1. ABC Company2. XYZ Company3. QRS Company

Table 1: Identifying Your Consulting Service

However, you should recognise that your choices work as a limiting factor to yourconsulting business. While you must have an area of expertise as a flagship ofyour business, you should be thinking as a global operator. As much as ispossible, there should not be a limit to your target market. Eventually, you maywant to be a full-time independent consultant and you may want to expand yourbusiness coverage worldwide.

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7. Researching Your Target MarketYour full-time job may be an excellent way for you to come into contact withpotential clients. In fact, you may stumble into your first independent consultingjob through your network of contacts within the field or industry of your work.Nevertheless, if you want to do independent consulting on a continual basis, youwould still have to cultivate a clientele for a sustainable long term business.

Some of the ways you could research your potential clients are:

Check out the Internet (e.g., www.cari.com.my) and the Yellow Pages tosee available business listing for the type of consulting that you do. Arethere other consultants doing the same thing? If so, you could try callingthem to ask about the market. Some of them may be willing to talk to you.

Call a few companies that you have identified as your target market to seeif they would use your service. You may study these companies throughtheir websites.

Check business journals and newspapers to identify companies that mayuse your services.

Ask your network of contacts for ideas on prospective clients. Try callingthese prospective clients based on referrals from your contacts. You couldalso try cold calling, though you may find this an uncomfortable thing to doif your marketing skills is not so good.

Join associations relevant to your field of consulting and attend theirmeetings. You could develop valuable networks within the right circles andobtain information which could help you to assess the viability ofconsulting in the field you are considering.

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8. Starting Your Part-Time Consulting BusinessLet’s say you have decided to start a part-time consulting business. Below arethe main items that you have to research, plan and set up:

8.1 Choose a Name and Legal Entity for Your BusinessIt is advisable that you choose a name that reflect what you do. This is toenable easier identification by potential clients of who you are and whatyou offer. Alternatively, you may choose to use your own name if you area recognised expert in the field you are consulting. After choosing thename, you should register it as a business. Initially, you may register it asa sole proprietor, but later you may change your sole proprietorship statusto a private limited status (Sendirian Berhad) when your consultingbusiness expands.

8.2 Choose Your Business LocationYou may choose to set up a physical office or you may want to work fromhome. Today’s communication technology enable you to work from almostany location. To save cost, you may want to set up a small office at home.This practice is so common that a term, SOHO, which stands for small

office/home office, is used for this. Nevertheless, the suitability of thisoption depends on whether your home life is conducive to doing so.Alternatively, if you have the funds, you may choose to rent a small officein a business centre where your secretarial and office management needsare taken care of by the business centre personnel. The location of youroffice should be convenient to your commuting to and from your full-timejob, since time will be a critical factor in your double life.

8.3 Create a WebsiteA website is a common and extremely useful marketing tool to informothers of who you are. In this day and age, electronic marketing is nolonger a luxury, but a must-have in order to be seen as technologically

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savvy. To create your website, you could pay a web master or a webdesigner approximately RM200.00. You can obtain a website domain fromeither a local or an overseas domain provider. Two local Malaysiandomain providers are www.mynic.net.my and www.webserver.com.my.One overseas domain provider is www.ipower.com. The cost of websitedomain is approximately RM100.00 per year. When you register yourwebsite, you will be given from 5MB to 30MB of space, plus one free e-mail address. You can do electronic marketing if you have an e-mailaddress. You could send your digital brochure to prospective clients and ifyou managed to send to the right persons within the target organisations,your brochure may have the opportunity to be read, instead of beingtossed unread into the bin as usually happens to physical brochures.

8.4 Create a professional brochure, stationeries and business cardYou can pay a designer to create your logo, and send out to stationerycompanies for printing. Alternatively, you could design your own logo ifyou know how to use graphic software. The cost of business cards is quitecheap, between RM15.00 to RM28.00 per 100 cards. You can also pay tohave a brochure professionally developed, but technology has made itquite easy to create a professional brochure, so long as you know whatinformation you want to convey in it. With your own colour printer, you cancreate your own brochure, stationeries and business card. Do not forget toinclude your mobile phone number and e-mail address in your businesscard.

8.5 Develop Your NetworkAt any available opportunity, you should make the effort to widen anddevelop your network of contacts. These include your colleagues withinthe same organisation where you work full-time, businesspeople you deal

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with in the course of your work, family members with business expertise,your friends, friends of friends, etc. Networking means establishing,building and maintaining relationships. If you want to achieve a certainmeasure of success in business, you have to network. Have breakfast orlunch with other people. Ask their ideas. Keep in touch with people. Be ofassistance to others when you can. Your network can be sources for twothings:

For getting clients, and

For advisors or consulting partners, if needed.

8.6 Identify Costs and Financing SourcesIt is useful for you to know that, in general, there are two types of cost:

Fixed costs: Costs that will occur whether or not you have anyconsulting job to do. Some firms call this type of cost as overheadcosts. Others call it indirect costs. Still others may classify it asgeneral and administrative costs. Examples are office rentals,electricity, office equipment maintenance, etc.

Variable costs: These are costs that you incur as you do yourconsulting job. Some call it direct costs, since they are directlyrelated to the consulting project that you do. An example would bethe cost of preparing reports for clients, travelling to see clients,etc. Usually, variable costs are chargeable to your consultingprojects.

In operating your business, you would want to control your fixed oroverhead costs as much as possible. You can’t afford to have highoverhead costs if you do not win enough consulting job to support suchcosts. You also want to control your variable spending, but since these

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are usually reimbursable by the clients, you could recoup them quiteeasily.

In order to know how much start-up funds you require, you have to identifythe items you need, or need to do, and estimate their costs. The tablebelow shows some of the items which may appear on your list. Some ofthe items may have an initial start-up cost only; after that you may nolonger have to pay anything. Some of the items may continue to cost youin terms of monthly expenses, such as office rentals (if you rent an office),telephone rentals, etc.

The time frame covered by your estimation is up to you. It could be forone year or more.

Estimating Costs for One-Year PeriodItems Initial Cost Monthly ExpensesCompany Name & RegistrationLicenses & PermitsWebsiteBrochureStationeries & EnvelopesBusiness CardsOffice SpaceOffice FurnitureCopying MachineFax MachineComputer, Laptop, Projector, etcSoftwaresTravellingOpening Bank AccountOffice SuppliesFixed Line TelephoneMobile TelephoneInternet ServiceAnswering ServiceInsurancesWater & ElectricityLegal AdviceAccounting & BookkeepingTax AdviceSecretarial Services

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Creating Business PlanCreating Marketing Plan

Total Initial Cost (a) RM …..Total Monthly Expenses (b) RM …..

Total Estimated Cost for One Year (a) + (b) RM …..

Table 2: Identifying and Estimating Your Costs

After identifying your costs, you have to decide what are your sources offund. The table below shows your possible sources.

Funds Needed for … (Number of Years) RM ….Sources Amount (RM) Percentage (%)

Personal SavingsFamilyFriendsBusiness Partner (if any)Financial Institution/BankOther Sources

Total

Table 3: Identifying Your Sources of Funds

If you want to get funding from the bank, you will have to draw up abusiness plan. In your business plan, you have to do a projection of yourexpected earnings and expenses. In order to estimate your earnings, youhave to decide on your consulting fee structure.

8.7 Determine Your Consulting FeeIn determining how much you could charge for your services, there areseveral factors that you have to consider. These include:

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Your Reputation and Image: In consulting, your reputation andimage influence your worth or value as perceived by the clients. Ifyou have built a reputation of being an excellent deliverer of aconsulting service, you may be able to set a premium price for yourconsulting work. However, if you have not built up a reputation,such as when you are just starting out, you may not be able to hikeup your price through a reputation leverage.

Prevailing Rate of Fees: You have to check out the prices thatsimilar consultants are charging for their services. You do not wantto overprice yourself which may lead to your losing out onbusiness; neither do you want to underprice yourself such that youare working for almost nothing. In consulting, being cheap is notnecessarily an advantage. When you are cheap, clients may viewyou as being desperate for business, and your ‘desperation’ maybe perceived as being prompted by incompetence. As such, clientsmay avoid you anyway. Or they may engage you simply to takeadvantage of your perceived ‘desperation’ by squeezing as muchout of you as they can get.

Type of consulting: Strategic consulting usually commands a higherprice than operational or process consulting. A strategic consultantusually plays the role of a problem solver while an operational orprocess consultant plays the role of processor or implementer.Thus, clients usually expect to pay higher for a consultant whomthey engage to deal with issues they consider as of strategicimportance, as opposed to consultants they engage to do processwork. As an example, clients would expect to pay a performancemanagement consultant higher, compared to a consultant who isengaged to compile an employee manual. This is because clientsusually view performance issues as strategic, and one who engagein it a problem solver, while compiling a manual is considered aprocess work.

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Perceived Value Added: This refers to how much the client valuethe results of your work. The more they value it, the higher wouldthey be willing to pay. For example, client usually pays higher forstrategic consulting because its value added is perceived as highercompared to process or operational consulting. But certain highlyspecialised process consulting that are technical in nature may alsobe perceived as high in value added, and thus might command ahigher price. Quality inspection to acquire international certificationof quality standards might be one example of this type ofconsulting. Sometimes, speed is also considered as a value added.A client who needs something critical to be done speedily may bewilling to pay a higher-than-usual price for it.

Your Cost and Earning Structure: In setting his fee, a consultantshould also take into consideration his costs and expectedearnings. As a consultant, how much do you need to earn in orderto cover your fixed costs as well as earning a worthy profit margin?

There are three typical ways a consultant could charge his fee. They are:

Project-based: A consultant could set a fixed fee for the wholeconsulting project. The total fee could be calculated by multiplyinghourly billing rate with the estimated time to be spent on theproject, plus a certain percentage of profit margin.

Time-based: A consultant could quote his fee by the time spentdoing the consulting project. Time-based fee could be set at anhourly rate or daily rate. Hourly billing would be hourly rate x actualwork hours; daily billing would be daily rate x number of days.

Retainer-based: This type of fee is when clients pay the consultanta regular monthly amount. The clients may or may not call the

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consultant for his services during the month. Basically, theconsultant is on-call or on standby basis. As a part-time consultant,you may have difficulty with this type of arrangement because youwill not be available to render your services during normal workhours. However, if you could arrange with your clients to attend tothem outside normal work hours, and they are agreeable, beingpaid on a retainer basis is as good as having a second stream ofsteady income.

Out of pocket expenses are usually reimbursable. You may also be ableto charge for travel time to meet your clients, but this time is chargeableusually at reduced rate.

The following table shows how you could calculate your hourly or dailyrate of consulting fee.

Calculation ExampleEstimate the number of hours you spenddoing part-time consulting

3 hrs per day x 6 days a week x 40 weeksper year = 720 hours

(assuming you only want to work for 40weeks in a year doing consulting)

Estimate your average annual income to beearned from consulting

RM50,000.00

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Hourly rate:Divide by estimated annual income by thenumber of hours you would be spendingdoing part-time consulting

RM50,000.00 / 720 hours = RM69.44You may round this to RM70.00 per hour

Daily rate:Hourly rate x 8 hours

(assuming a full day’s work is worth 8hours)

RM70.00 x 8 hours = RM560.00 per day

Table 4: Calculating hourly and daily rates

Ensuring that one gets paid for work done is a critical concern. As a part-timer, you have your regular income as your main source of livelihood. Butit does not mean you could afford to wait indefinitely to get paid. Thus, inyour negotiation with client and in your formal consulting proposal,contract document, or letter of agreement, you must clearly specify theterm of payment.

For example, if you charged on a project basis, you may require that one-third of your fee is to be paid when you commence the consulting job,one-third to paid when the project is half-complete, and the remainingone-third to be paid within seven days of project completion. You couldspecify also that a late fee charge will be levied upon the client if hedelayed in paying you. This charge could be specified in a certain Ringgitamount per day of delay.

Make sure that you and your client understand and come to an agreementon payment matter before the work start. As a part-time consultant,especially if you work alone, you do not have much time to spend chasingafter payment. And if you have to do that with a client, sooner or later, itwould sour your relationship with the client. Remember that even thoughyou are doing consulting on a part-time basis, you have to conduct yourbusiness professionally. In turn, you must let the client know that theyhave to deal with you professionally, too.

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8.8 Develop a Business Plan if You Intend to Apply for a LoanA business plan is formally required if you want to apply for a loan to startyour business. The purpose of a business plan is to show the viability ofyour proposed venture to potential lenders worthy of their investment.

Some institutions have a set business plan format which you could followif you apply for their loan. In general, however, your business plan shouldinclude the following information:

Business Description: Including the name of your company,location, partners or existing shareholders, and the consultingservice you offer.

Market Analysis: Including analysis of the relevant consultingindustry, trends, estimated size of the market, competitors, yourtarget market, and your rationale for targeting the selected marketsegment.

Marketing Strategy: Including your policy on setting fee, andmethods you use for promoting or marketing your services.

Financial Information: including you projected balance sheet, profitand loss, cash flow forecast, and any other information relevant toyour business. To ensure that you furnish the correct and completeinformation, you may want to consult an accountant to help youprepare this part.

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Licensing, permit and legal information: If your consulting arearequires license or special permit, you must show that you havethis ready, or if not, your plan on obtaining it. You should highlightany legal issue which may be relevant to your loan application.

Pertinent Qualifications: Include your resume which shows youreducational qualification, experience and professional know-howthat lend credibility to your consulting venture. This is to assurepotential investors that you have the necessary knowledge, skills,and competence, a.k.a., the human capital, to do what you proposeto do.

Your business plan should provide enough information to induce the bankor the financial institution to grant you the loan. Do not disclose every littledetail which could potentially give away your competitive position or tradesecret. However, do not withhold information which ethically you shoulddisclose so that the highest level of trust and good faith could be establishbetween you and your potential financier.

8.9 Promote Your ServicesAs in any business, in order to get clients, you have to market or promoteyour services. However, when you do independent consulting on a part-time basis only, your level of marketing or promotional activities may notneed to be as intensive as when the business is your whole livelihood.You want to get clients, but you must weigh the time you have available todo the work. Having to turn down clients because your time is limited isalmost as bad as not having clients at all. In future, the clients you turndown now may think you are not available to do work for them, thus maynot contact you at all. Of course, if you are successful at attracting clients,

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and the businesses that come in provide you with long term sustenance,you may want to opt for full-time consulting.

Some of the ways you could promote your services include the following:

Contact your past employers to see whether they could use yourservice. Since they know you, and supposing that you left them ongood terms, they may trust you to do a consulting job for them.Plus, they do not have to worry much about confidential informationof the company; you are already in the know. In addition, they donot have to spend much time explaining to you the intricacies of theorganisational culture and politics, policies, practices and otherissues. Your insider knowledge may be viewed as an advantagesince potential clients do not have to tiptoe around sensitive orconfidential issues with you.

Contact the people you know and ask if they could refer you toanyone or organisations that may want your services. Becauserelationship is the basis for human connection, referrals by the yournetwork of contacts may get your foot in the door of potentialclients faster.

Expand your network of contacts. Some of the ways to do thisinclude:

Join a professional associations and be active in theiractivities. Of course, you have to balance this with realitycheck on your available time.

Check the Internet for relevant virtual groups that you couldjoin. For example, if you are interested in coming intocontact with other Human Resource professionals, you maywant to join Jobstreet’s virtual HR network(www.jobstreet.com.my).

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Attend seminars and conferences. While developing yourown human capital, you could get to know other people andadd to your list of contacts.

Be a speaker or presenter in seminars and conferences. Notonly will you expand your network, you are also building areputation for yourself.

Teach or lecture in lifelong learning programmes attendedby adult learners. Most of the students in such programmesare employees of organisations. You may be able to getvaluable information about companies which you couldtarget as potential clients.

Be involved with social, religious or voluntary organisations.Be realistic, though. With full-time work commitment andhaving a part-time independent consulting business on theside, your time for voluntary work may be very limited. ForMuslims, in addition to strengthening the bonds ofbrotherhood, the Friday congregational prayers alsorepresent good opportunities to network.

Establish relationships with other consultants. They may be asource of consulting job for you.

Create a marketing databank, complete with e-mail addresses. Youcould e-mail your brochure to potential clients. E-mail is cheaperand faster than snail mail.

Do a telemarketing. This involves calling up potential clients. It maybe easier to do this if you had e-mailed your brochure to them. Youcould treat your phone calls as a follow up on your earlier e-mails.

Ensure that your business is listed in the Yellow Pages or tradedirectories. Provide enough information in your listing so that clientswho may be surfing the directories could identify you and your

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business immediately. This is why the name you choose for yourconsulting business must, as much as possible, be informative ofthe services you provide.

To build a name for yourself, write for newspapers or tradejournals. You could also start a quarterly newsletter, preferablydigital, and send to your contacts and potential clients. Your clientscould become a source for your newsletter materials. Yournewsletter could be a conducive medium where people feelcomfortable writing about their specialisation. You do not need tocomply to strict trade journal standards which may frighten new orinexperienced writers.

When promoting your services, keep in mind the persuasive angles whichyou may use on potential clients. According to Dr David Karlson (1991), aselling approach that focuses on the needs of the client is calledconsultive client-driven selling.

In persuading potential clients to engage your services, your persuasiveangle or rationalisation may include the following:

That the skill needed to do that job is not available within theorganisation, and you could provide this skill effectively orefficiently;

That the organisation’s personnel do not have the time to do thejob, and instead of leaving the job untended, you could do it forthem;

That as a consultant, you may be able to view their problem from afresh perspective and may be able to offer new ideas andsolutions;

That you could do the job faster or cheaper than in-house staff;

That as an external consultant, you do not come under theirpayroll, thus eliminating payroll- and benefits-relatedadministration, as well as not being included in the company’s head

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count; your overall costs would be lower than the costs of hiringfull-time employee to do the job;

That as an external consultant, you are hired on a temporary basis,based on job needs. You are not a deadwood that the organisationhas to carry when there is no job. Once the job is completed byyou, the client do not have employee termination issues to dealwith because your contract is for service, and not of service, whichis employee-employer based relationship.

Sometimes, a person ‘falls’ into part-time consulting because someonerequests him to do a job on the side. Thus, without much promotion, hispart-time consulting career could take off. How much promotion you needto do in getting clients for your services depend on you. If you want tobuild a big clientele, especially if you are eyeing full-time consulting as thenext step, you could do extensive promotion. If you simply want tomaintain a comfortable part-time consulting pace, getting one client with aworthy long-term project may be enough and you need not do muchpromotion after that.

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9. Dealing With ClientsYou may get a consulting job through direct award or competitive bidding.Regardless of how you get the project, there are certain criteria that you mustsatisfy in order to fulfil the expectation of the client. These include:

Your understanding of the client’s problems and why he needs yourconsulting services. When you write up your consulting proposal, youmust show that you understand the client’s business and his needs. As aservice provider, you must provide a service that your client needs.Otherwise, it would be useless for the client to engage your service.

Your ability to identify what are the objectives of the consulting project.Are the objectives you identify the same as those identified by the client?Again, this relates to your understanding of the client’s needs. There mustbe an agreement in terms of objectives between you and the client.Perhaps your fresh opinion on the problem could point towards anobjective different from the client’s original objective. Whatever thescenario, you and the client must hold to the same objectives. This isbecause the objectives would become the basis for measuring whetherthe project is completed or not. The achievement of the objectivessignifies the success of your consulting work for the client.

Your ability to present the action plan that you would follow in completingthe project. In smaller projects, the schedule and steps may be quiteclear; in big projects, identification of project milestones may necessitateyou to outline specific steps to show how you would progress with yourwork from one milestone to the next in order to complete the wholeproject. Your ability to state the steps you will do in the action plan willenable the client to assess your ability to undertake the whole the project.

Your ability to estimate a reasonable time duration in order to completethe project. Speed is a competitive advantage in the Internet age, butsloppy work done speedily is useless. Conversely, taking too long a time

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would use up resources, and your untimeliness would cost your client.You must estimate a reasonable time frame within which to complete theproject.

The reasonableness of your fee structure. Sometimes, in order to win aproject, you may lower down your price, especially if you are baiting to geta first-time client. This may work, but that client may expect the same ratefor latter projects. You should clearly state what are your introductory rateand regular rate, if they differ. You must be prepared to negotiate ondifferent fee structures in order to meet needs of worthy clients.

Your ability to establish a good relationship with the client. One of themost important criteria that a client will look for, even if they may not say itout loud, is whether they can work with you or not. People in organisationsmay not have much choice in having to work with other co-workers whoare ‘not nice’ or who they do not particularly like. In fact such people maybe the cause of many headaches and heartaches in organisational life.

But dealing with an external consultant is another matter. The people whoare the clients know they can choose whom they work with, and theywould prefer those they have a good relationship with. Good relationshipacts as a lubricant that smoothens the flow of work, and enable conflictsto be solved quickly and as painlessly as possible.

There is no sure-fire way to establish good relationships with clients, butthere are general pointers you could follow. These include:

Conducting small talks and exchanging pleasantries to establish acomfortable atmosphere when meeting with clients. A goodconversationalist could charm other more easily.

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Listening well to understand, and communicating well to beunderstood. Thus, you must develop your listening andcommunicating skills.

Attempting to make good first impressions. Be friendly, yetprofessional. Dress appropriately. Present a positive attitude andattractive personality. Do not act condescending or patronising.While as a consultant you must present an expert voice, as aperson you should not present yourself as better than your clients.

Take notes in meetings. This shows you take seriously your client’sviewpoints, ideas, and what he says.

End each meeting with the clear understanding between you andthe client of what to do next, and who do what.

Regularly update the client on the progress of your work. Do notsurprise your client with unforeseen problems. Solve any problemthat arise at its smallest level; stop small problems from morphinginto big problems.

Once a comfortable rhythm of working together has beenestablished between you, some clients may be inclined to use youas a sympathetic ear for other problems in the organisation. Nevertake sides, and do not get involved with the internal politics of yourclient’s organisation. Maintain your distance professionally.Remember that there are many versions of the same story, eitherin personal or professional setting. If you start getting involved withinternal issues of your client, or are seen as taking sides, it maydamage your credibility in the eyes of the opposing parties.

Subtly remind the client of the benefits that you provide throughyour consulting project. In fact, in your proposal, you should state

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clearly the benefits the client will get from contracting out the job toyou. Do remember the persuasive angle or rationalisation that youuse to persuade the client to engage you when you are promotingyour services.

While there must be a formal contact person for you in the client’sorganisation, you must also attempt to build relationships witheveryone involved with, or affected by, your consulting project. Youneed to create as many allies as you could, and you need to buildyour reputation and create a brand name for yourself in the mind ofas many people as you could.

Events may happen beyond your control that may cause delay tothe project. Be prepared to deal with possible delays with patienceand grace. If you could, try to propose solutions which couldmitigate the delay.

When you forward your invoices to the client, make sure to providesufficient information and supporting documents as necessary sothat he can easily approve or process the payment for you. This willhelp to ensure that you can get paid on time. When dealing withlarge or bureaucratic companies, sometimes insufficient supportingdocuments can cause major delay in processing of payment. Donot underestimate the importance of enclosing the relevantdocuments when you submit your invoices to clients.

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In order to build a successful consulting business, you must have the skillsnecessary to deal with clients. However, you may find out through hard knockexperience that clients are not the same. You will find that you have preferencefor certain clients while others you do not care to work with. It is not true that youshould take on all jobs that come your way. A belief that you grab all the jobsproffered to you by any kind of clients works only for those who are trulydesperate, or those who believe in the profit-maximisation theory at whatevercosts.

Supposing that you still could live on your full-time income, and that your part-time consulting business is a labour of love, you may want to be selective withyour clients. You should believe that not everyone is worthy to be taken on as aclient.

Below are several things you could do when selecting clients. Mary F. Cook(1996, pp 52-54) calls it the ethical issues for clients. However, it is a goodguideline on how you can choose clients and deal with them in such a way thatyour interests as a consultant is protected.

You want clients who respect the consulting relationship. This meansconducts are aboveboard, and there is mutual respect and cooperation toget the project done in the best possible manner and yielding the bestpossible results. Projects may get derailed if there are frictions betweenconsultant and clients, and especially if the clients treat the consultant asa servant who should be at their beck and calls, and whom they couldsubject to any kind of egoistic abuse or power trip treatments. You do notwant to work for a client who treat you like dirt, except maybe if the moneyis astronomically profitable. Even then, after a while, the money may notbe compensation enough, especially if your soul is besmirched.

Do not submit a proposal to a client that you know has already selectedhis consultant of choice. You would simply be wasting your time andresources. Sometimes, due to purchasing, tendering or contracting

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requirements, client have to undertake competitive bidding process toaward jobs to outside contractors. Sometimes this is done simply for showbecause they may already have their choice in mind. Do not waste yourtime engaging is such an exercise, except if you could create yourproposal with minimal cost and you want to go on a fishing expedition fora possibility of future jobs from that client.

There are potential clients who ask to meet you, then start picking yourbrain for free advice. In the long run, you would not survive by giving freeadvice. In such situations, you should tell the clients that you would beglad to work with them but you first need to agree on consulting projectparameters or elements before you could offer advice.

After committing to a consulting project, the client may ask your advice onanother matter. In order to limit your free advisory service, you mustanticipate such events and build it into your project agreement or contract.You must have clear clauses or agreement on additional fee chargedrelating to consulting on additional issues beyond the first agreedconsulting parameters.

In order for you to survive, you must be able to count on clients to pay ontime. Clients who consistently dishonour such a basic business dealing isnot worth having. As such, always identify in your letter of proposal thatyou expect to be paid within a certain time period. You could also ask fora portion of the fee up front. A serious client who genuinely want to retainyour service would pay up. State in your proposal that clients will becharged a late payment penalty if they do not pay within the stated billingperiod. A properly drawn contract would make this legally binding and youcould sue for remedy in the court of law if this clause is breached.

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10. Establishing a Formal Consulting Contract With ClientsUsually, the formal consulting relationship starts with a submission of yourproposal. Sometimes, you may have to submit a preliminary proposal beforedrafting a full-fledged formal proposal. You could write your proposal aftermeeting with your client and the proposal should include the most importantelement or parameters such as:

Statement of the client’s problem

Objectives to be achieved by the consulting project

Project scope, content or coverage

Consulting method or action plan

Project schedule or estimated project duration

Project deliverables, which is the final product that you will deliver toyour client. It could be a report, presentation, a tangible system orsolution to solve the problem, a training programme, or a combinationof deliverables.

Fee structure and payment terms

Communication methods and contact persons

Assurance of your qualification or ability to undertake the consultingjob

Once the client signs and accepts your proposal, it becomes an agreement or acontract. Alternatively, your client could draft a letter of agreement which youmust sign and accept to form a formal working contract. A third option is to drawup a formal contract document. For small projects, the signed proposal or letterof agreement may be enough. For big projects, a formal contract document maybe more appropriate.

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To be prepared as a professional consulting business, you can consult a lawyerto draft a standard contract which you could use time and again. The importantelements or parameters commonly included in a contract include:1

Project Objectives: What are the results you want to achieve for the client byundertaking this project?

Definition of ProjectSuccess:

What tells you that the project is successfully completed?How will success be measured? Who will measure it andwhen?

Project Scope: What is the content of the project? What are the tasks andactivities that you, the consultant, will perform to achieve theproject objectives? What are not included in the project? It isimportant to specify the exclusions or things not included inthe project because at later times, the client may ask you todo additional things, either related or unrelated to the project,but are outside or beyond the scope of the current project. Inyour current project then, you may have to include clausesthat specify additional fees for work done outside of thecurrent project scope. This is to safeguard yourself fromgetting sucked into eventually doing a lot of pro bono work forthe client. Some clients may be less ethical than others; if youare not careful, you may be taken advantage of.

Project Deliverables: What is the product of your consulting work? What is requiredof you to deliver to the client? It could be a written report, anoral presentation, a digital copy, a system, a trainingprogramme, or a combination of many things. For example, acomplete employee manual could be a project deliverable fora consultant who is engaged to compile such a manual for aclient. A translated text would be a project deliverable for atranslator who is engaged by a client to do translation work.

Ownership of Productor Deliverable:

Most consulting works are specialised such that ownership ofthe product clearly belongs to the client. Sometimes, however,your consulting work may result in the formulation of aproduct that has a commercial value. If so, who owns thecopyright? Will you, the consultant, be able to sell the productto other clients?

Term, Period orDuration of Contract:

When does the agreement regarding the project takes effect,and when does it end? Duration of contract usually includethe duration of undertaking the project itself. The contractduration needs to cover the commencement until the end ofthe project work.

1 Most of the elements are obtained from Dr David Karlson, Consulting For Success: A Guide forProspective Consultants, Crisp Publications, Inc., Los Altos, California, 1991, page 83.

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Project Schedule: Your contract must clearly specify the start date and end dateof the project. The dates may change, but the provision forchange should be stated in the contract. Scheduling shouldalso state any milestone date to track the progress of theproject. An additional issue for a part-time independentconsultant is the time the work is to be done. This is importantif the consulting work requires you to meet or contact theclient frequently. As a part-timer, you work full-time during theday. Thus, you have to get the client to agree to meeting orcommunicating with you outside of normal work-day hours, orduring weekends when you are no engaged with your full-timework.

Confidentiality: It is usual for clients to ask you to sign confidentiality or non-disclosure agreement pertaining to client’s information ortrade secret.

Communications: How would you communicate with the client throughout theproject duration? Will there be regular meetings? Does theclient require written progress report? A written progressreport is usually required for big projects. Who is the projectmanager on the client’s side? Can communications beconducted via phone calls, e-mails, etc?

Staffing: The issue of staffing will arise if the project is big, which mayrequire a number of people working on it. Or if you have staffemployed by you, the client may want to know who willactually do the project. You may also have to specify thatsubstitution of staff is acceptable under circumstances whenthe initial person could no longer proceed doing the project.

Supervision: This is usually related to communications. Who, from theclient’s side, will supervise your work? Who does you reportto?

Equipment: Sometimes, you may have to specify clearly who provide theequipment needed to do the job. As a consultant, you musthave your own basic equipment which usually includecomputing equipment. But sometimes clients may provide theneeded equipment, especially if technical work is involved.

Location of Work: Location of work depends to a large extent on the nature ofyour consulting. You may be able to work from your ownoffice, or the clients may require you to go to their offices. Or,you may have to go to a third party location on behalf of yourclients.

Fees and PaymentTerm:

How much is the total price of the project? How do youcharge for your consulting work? Is it on a daily rate, hourlyrate, fixed lump sum basis, or a monthly retainer? How andwhen will the client pay you? What are the reimbursables?What documentations are needed for invoicing? How will youcharge for additional work, if any? Remember the projectscope issue; you do not want to be taken advantage of andend up doing additional work for free.

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Incentives andPenalties:

Sometimes, because of their business needs, client may bewilling to give a financial incentive for the consultant toexpedite the project and complete it ahead of schedule. And ifthe consultant delays in completing the project, client maycharge a late penalty. This is especially applicable if theclient’s other projects or work depend on the timelycompletion of this particular project.

Termination: Always be prepared for the possibility that things may notalways remain rosy. What if things don’t work out as planned,regardless of whether it is anyone’s fault of due to entirelyunavoidable circumstances? In your contract, always agree inadvance on how to end the contract if either party becomesunhappy or unable to continue with the project. How muchnotice is needed, and what fees would be due?

Cancellation: This is similar to termination. What if the project getscancelled after the agreement is signed? How will theconsultant be compensated for his time that has beenreserved to do the project? Can the consultant getscompensation for expenses incurred on preparatory worksprior to formally starting on the project? What if the consultanthad purchased specialised equipment to do the project? Willthis be reimbursed by the client?

Arbitration: The arbitration process should be specified clearly in thecontract. If dispute arises over the contract, and thecontracting parties are unable to resolve the issue on theirown, how will they go for arbitration?

As can be seen from the above list, a contract document contains the usualelements of a consulting project proposal or letter of agreement. But a formallydrawn contract document usually contains more detailed clauses. Such clauseshelp to establish a clear relationship and protect the rights and responsibilities ofthe contracting parties - the consultant and the client. It is your choice whether touse a formal contract document, a letter of agreement, or whether a signedconsulting proposal suffices.

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11. Managing the Demands of Doing Part-Time IndependentConsulting While Working a Full-Time JobWhen you are working concurrently on a full-time employment and anindependent consulting business, you are in effect holding down two jobs.Having one job could be highly demanding already; you could realistically expectthat having to juggle two jobs would be even more so. Thus, you have to beprepared, anticipate and manage the challenges and stress of holding down twojobs. If you do not handle both jobs well, one is bound to slide off at some pointin time, and you may need to revert to a one-job situation to survive.

Managing the demands of a full-time job and doing an independent consultinginvolve managing four elements that could become a potential source of stress:your family life, your full-time employment, your consulting clients, and yourself.

11.1 Your Family Life

Before starting your part-time consulting business, discuss the idea andpossible issues and concerns with your family. If they could help in anyway, and if they are willing, ask for their help. It could be simple taskssuch as taking messages from clients for you. At the very least, youshould ask your family to be better at managing themselves so thatdependence on you is lessen. But be clear that it does not mean youwithdraw from your family life or that you are less concerned about them.

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You must make time for your family, too; it is just that your time is boundto be more limited now that you are starting a business.

Educate your family members about your consulting business so that theyhave an understanding of what you are doing, as well as why you aredoing it. If they understood what drives you, it is likelier that they would besupportive of you and would lessen any possible feeling of neglect ordisconnection that is could happen in families whose members are busypursuing their own individual things.

Let your family know that you are setting a certain time period during theevening on weekdays and on weekends to do your consulting work.These times are considered as work time and they must not disturb youduring such times, unless emergency situation arises. This is especiallyimportant if you work from home.

Discuss with your family on how to keep a good home life going. Forexample, everyone could pitch in doing household chores such as doingthe laundry, housecleaning, mowing, etc. Perhaps you could employ afull-time or part-time domestic servant to help out.

If you have school-going children, arrange for a dependable school busservice to send and pick up your children from schools. This arrangementwill free you from having to rush in the morning or afternoon.

Even though you may be busy, you cannot neglect your children’sschooling. Make alternate schedules between you and your spouse onchecking the children’s homework. Older children can also be quite helpfulin assisting their younger siblings on homework matters; they have gonethrough the same books and know the drill. And you should reward themfor doing such good deeds.

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Planning is key to being organised, and being organised lead to lessstress. Thus, plan your time in advance. It is useful to have a monthlycalendar that shows every family member’s activities. This keepseveryone informed of what is going on in each other’s life and also avoidof scheduling conflict. And everyone is responsible to update his or herown schedule on the calendar. An example of a monthly calendar isshown below.JANUARY MAMA NONA LISA1st – Saturday2nd – Sunday3rd – Monday4th – Tuesday 6pm @ PJ, meet client5th – Wednesday 4-6pm Hockey6th – Thursday7th – Friday8th – Saturday 8am @ PJ/proposal 8–10am Youth Club9th – Sunday10th – Monday11th – Tuesday 8-9:30pm Tuition 8-9:30pm Tuition12th – Wednesday 4-6pm Hockey13th – Thursday 8-9:30pm Tuition 8-9:30pm Tuition14th – Friday15th – Saturday 8–10am Youth Club16th – Sunday17th – Monday18th – Tuesday 8-9:30pm Tuition 8-9:30pm Tuition19th – Wednesday 4-6pm Hockey20th – Thursday 8-9:30pm Tuition 8-9:30pm Tuition21st – Friday22nd - Saturday 9am @ PJ/presentation23rd - Sunday24th – Monday25th – Tuesday 8-9:30pm Tuition 8-9:30pm Tuition26th – Wednesday 4-6pm Hockey27th – Thursday 8-9:30pm Tuition 8-9:30pm Tuition28th - Friday29th – Saturday 8am-2pm Sport Day @ school30th – Sunday31st - Monday

Table 5: Example of a Monthly Family Calendar

It may also be useful to have a simplified full year’s calendar printed ontoone page to see how the family plan goes for the full year. The full year’scalendar should contain family activities such as family holidays, trips, and

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other important events that must be planned in advance. Paste thatcalendar on the refrigerator or a wall where everyone can see it.

Share the fruits of success of your business with your family. This couldmean rewarding the family with a good holiday, buying meaningfulpersonal gifts, or purchasing household goods for the family. A better lifefor you should be a better life for them, too.

11.2 Your Full-time Employment

The first thing you should check is your employer’s policy on employeesworking a second job, either on a part-time or full time basis. It is notunusual for companies to state in their policies the prohibition ofemployees to be gainfully employed elsewhere. This is for the purpose ofpromoting employee’s health and focusing his sole attention on his full-time job. In addition, the employer usually wants to avoid conflictingdemands made by multiple employers, as well as complication that mayarise if the employee’s second job is physically hazardous.

Strictly speaking, being an independent consultant does not fall within theambit of being gainfully employed by another party. You are working foryourself. And your employer do not have the rights to your personal timeoutside of normal workday hours. Thus, so long as you could manageyour time, and your outside work do not affect your performance at yourfull-time job, you are free to earn additional income in any way you would.

However, you should also check for non-compete agreement with youremployer. This is important if you provide a consulting service that couldbe perceived as your employer’s competition. If such an agreement exists,and you are offering a competing service, this is considered a breach of

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ethics and trust, and you should consider either resigning from your job todo the consulting full-time, or abort your consulting plan, or do a non-competing consulting service instead.

Let’s say you intend to provide a non-competing service. When you startyour consulting business, you have to decide whether or not to tell youremployer and your co-workers. This depends on how comfortable youfeel, and the level of trust you have in the relationships with your employerand co-workers. A word to the wise, it may be advisable to keep a lowprofile at the initial stage because you do not know what is in the hearts ofothers. Some may be genuinely happy for you; some may start watchingyou for any sign of slacking off.

Use your wise and rational judgment. You could talk to some friends; afterall they are your network of contacts and associates.

Be professional and aboveboard at all time. Do not do your consultingwork in your full-time job office during your normal workday hours.Realistically, you cannot stop your consulting clients from calling yourpersonal mobile phone or sending SMS (short messaging system).However, do curb these to the minimum. And do not get caught by workcolleagues having a lengthy discussion with your clients during office time.A small grudging remark made by a resentful co-worker could do a lot ofdamage to your reputation at work.

Do not use the office computer to do your consulting work. Get an Internetaccess at home and establish an e-mail there. Do not use your office e-mail for your consulting business. Remember, office e-mails are theproperty of your employer, and he can check your e-mail activities. Do notrisk losing your job by misusing company property.

Schedule your full-time work carefully so that you do not have to workextra hours. Sometimes, you may still have to; if so, try to keep it to a

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minimum. This means you have to be efficient at doing your full-time workwithin the normal workday hours time frame.

Eventually, you will have to inform your employer of your consultingbusiness. If you have been doing it for some time and that yourperformance at the office has not suffered, it would be easier to assureyour employer that you are not jeopardising your job and the company.Therefore, your employer may treat your part-time consulting business asa non-issue. However, if your performance has indeed decreases, youmay run a risk of your employer starting to look for a reason to terminateyour full-time employment. You have to be aware of this possibility.

On a positive note, you may be able to use new skills or knowledge yougain from consulting to the benefit of your employer. There may beprojects at work that you could do better than others simply because youhave done a similar thing for a client. Volunteer for such projectsparticularly if they can make you shine and so long as they do not eat upyour personal time that should be allocated for your consulting business.This should gain you some brownie points with your employer, which maylead to them being understanding, accepting, or more tolerant of your sidebusiness.

Finally, keep the confidentiality of information and trade secrets of youremployer. You could make use of knowledge and skills relating to policies,processes, procedures and systems, but these should not be identified asbeing your employer’s. It is understood that your consulting expertise isbuilt upon the cumulative experience of working for previous employers.Thus, the information you use should not betray the trade secrets andtrust of those you have worked for.

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11.3 Your Consulting Clients

Because you are doing consulting on a part-time basis, it is wise for you tochoose a service that you could do outside of normal workday hours. Forexample, you should not choose to do part-time consulting on computertroubleshooting since computer breakdowns occur at all hours and clientsneed immediate attention. As a full-time worker, you are not free to dropeverything and rush to your client’s aid. Your service should be somethingyou could undertake at your own time. As such, you must inform yourpotential clients early on that your available hours is after normal officehours or during weekends. You may have to drop clients who insist thatyou attend to them during weekdays, but this is the trade-off that you haveto accept.

As a condition of accepting the consulting project, establish a prioragreement with the clients on the time when they could call or contactyou. Explain that they are not to contact you during work hours, exceptunder dire circumstances. However, you should allow SMS to yourpersonal mobile phone because this is a speedy method of shortcommunication.

You should utilise your driving time fruitfully. You can call clients or yourcontacts while driving to and from work. Ensure that your mobile phone isequipped with a hands-free microphone. Nowadays, technology hasadvanced so much that communication is easy. While you must upholdthe ethics of reserving your normal nine-to-five time for your full-timeemployer, communication between you and your consulting clients shouldnot be hindered by this time barrier.

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The idea here is to assure your clients that you are doing the bestconsulting service to meet their needs, while maintaining control over yourtime. Do not put yourself in a desperate mode; if a client insists that yoube available to them at all hours, weigh the worthiness of doing so.Sometimes a lucrative consulting job may come your way that you have todo full-time. If it is worth it, take a leave from your full-time work.Otherwise, do not take on clients that are going to give you a hard timeabout your consulting time schedule.

11.4 Yourself

When doing the planning for your consulting business, do not put yourselfunder a rigid deadline to establish your business. Remember, you stillhave your full-time job to provide for you and your family. Thus, do notrush yourself unnecessarily and end up feeling overwhelmed. Therefore,do one thing at a time and schedule for one or two evening a week towork on your plan.

Buy a laptop which you could carry everywhere. This should be your mainequipment for creating plans, doing research, as well as a repository foryour consulting work. However, do keep a copy of your data on compactdiscs so that should any problem arise, you do not lose such valuabledata. Having a laptop also enables you to work on your consultingbusiness during lunch hours. In addition, organise and file all your hardcopy materials in a ring binder which would make it easy for insertion ordeletion.

Reprioritise your life. Decide which activities in your life that you want tocontinue, and which ones you could stop doing. The intention is to createmore time for you to do your consulting business. For example, if you

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often dine out or go to the movies, you may want to lessen this. But do notcompletely cut out fun activities from your life. You need fun things to doso that from time to time you could relax and avoid getting so boggeddown by work, work, and more work.

Do not over-schedule. Remember that your consulting is a part-timebusiness. If you have time to spare, do more. If not, do less. Do not feelguilty if you think today you achieve only a small amount of work. Do asmuch as you can within the time that you have.

While you cannot delegate the core consulting work, you could get outsidehelp in administrative matters. For example, if you have a lot ofdocuments to type and you do not have the time to do it, contract out thetyping service. And you could pay an outside accountant to attend to yourfinancial and accounting matters. Keep all your receipts so that he cankeep a good accounting or bookkeeping records for you.

If you need to do research for the consulting project, use the Internet. Oryou could contract out the research part to someone, then you can buildthe cost into the project fee.

Need for rest differ from one person to another. Some people need morerest than others. Some people are the classic burning-the-candle-at-both-ends junkies. Physical health is very important, and you need muchenergy to keep going. Eat healthy food. Stop bad habits such as smokingor drinking alcohol. Schedule time for exercise. Cleanse your mindthrough prayers, meditation or simply having a quiet time in short spurtsthroughout your day.

If you start to feel overwhelmed, stop and remind yourself that you are notdoing the business for anyone else. It is yours and thus, the control is inyour hand. You can determine how much consulting job you want toaccept, and what kind. If it is a rush job and you do not have the time to

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spare, unless it is very lucrative, refer the job to one of your networkassociates. By doing so, you will be perceived by associates as a goodcontact to have, and you build alliances through such perceivedgenerosity.

Periodically assess your progress. Proceed at a pace that you arecomfortable with. Remember, your full-time work needs attention, too. Andso long as it is your main source of income, you must ensure that you doyour full-time work well, too. You cannot afford to concentrate solely onyour consulting business and neglecting your full-time job.

Finally, it is useful to have a fun outlook on things. Do not be stressed out.Look at your consulting business as a fun thing to do. Consider it as alabour of love, and is not a burden. Share your consulting anecdotes andits financial gains with your family. Get their support, because if you donnot have it, they could be your number one stressor.

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12. Ethics of Part-Time ConsultingEthics are the barometer that tells you right and wrong. At the instinctive level,you will know you face an ethical question if you feel uneasy or a nagging doubtabout a situation. Ethics is humanity’s guide towards doing good and rejectingevil. Ethical concerns touch every aspects of life, be it personal or professional,individual or group, in economic, political, social, religious, even biologicalsituations. And so does doing business has its ethics, though what is consideredas ethical or not may differ from one region to another, from one country toanother, or from one culture to another.

As mentioned earlier, doing part-time consulting while working at a full-time jobinvolves a delicate balancing or juggling act. You have to be good at both,otherwise you will compromise your act, and the balls will come crashing down.

In order to maintain your credibility as a consultant as well as a full-time incomeearner at another employing organisation, you have to uphold certain ethicalstandards.

According to Mary F. Cook (1996, pp 4, 46-50), some of these ethical standardsinclude the following:

Deal fairly and honestly with both your current employer and youroutside clients. As has been mentioned earlier, do not steal your full-time employer’s time or the use of their equipment. Another examplewould be to never sell an intellectual property you develop for youremployer to an outside client. The property of your employer is notyours. However, you could develop an intellectual property on your

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own which you could use with your client. However, be clear on theproperty rights so that you would not be faced with legal issues later.And when invoicing your clients, never bill greater or lesser than youractual fee. Provide sufficient proofs and supporting document. Andnever pad your expense billing simply to get some extra Ringgits ordollars from the clients. If you were found out, it could break the trustthat you have established.

Build trust in both your full-time job and your consulting practice. Forexample, do not divulge any trade secret or proprietary informationbelonging to your full-time employer to the client.

Never give less than your best to any consulting project. Do not doconsulting in an area you are not an expert. Either turn these projectsdown, recommend other qualified consultants to do it, or propose towork with an expert consultant on the projects. Your third option wouldactually provide you a means to gain expertise in that area. As such, ifsimilar projects come your way in the future, you may be able to do it.In doing nothing less than your best, you are safeguarding yourreputation. Reputations make or break a consulting business. You mayhave the best technical knowledge but if you have a lousy reputation,eventually no one may want to work with you.

Another situation which you may encounter is when the client alreadyformulate his answer to his problem but wants you as an externalconsultant to provide credible back-up for his plan. This situation mayarise in situations where the client may need to justify his plans to hismanagement or board of directors. In such cases, if you do seeproblems with the plan, inform the client and see how you could work itout. If it is unworkable, do not back up a faulty plan. And you muststand your ground to the client. As a consultant, you cannotrecommend something that you know most likely will fail.

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Treat your company and your consulting clients as you would want tobe treated. This is the business equivalent of the maxim ‘Do untoothers as you would like done unto you.’ This ethical standard includesall things such as be respectful, be professional, be fair, be nice, andso on and so forth. It is a universal human ethics standard.

One issue you may face would be whether or not to solicit clients youmeet as a result of working at your full-time job. If you provide acompeting service with your employer, it is clearly unethical for you todo so. It would be worse if it means the employer may lose the clients.However, remember that by providing a competing service, it isalready considered unethical if you continue working for that employer.But if people you know from working at your full-time job approachesyou on their own for your service, then it is ethical for you to accept.And it is also considered ethical for you to solicit clients from peopleyou know from work if you provide a clear non-competing service andyour getting such clients would not affect your employer. After all,these people would be considered your network of contacts andthrough which you could promote your consulting services.

If you are being asked to do work for competing clients, tell both andget consent. Some clients do not want you to work for their rivals,fearing leak of confidential information, or worse, losing a perceivedcompetitive advantage. If you were hired to do a project that would putthe client ahead of their competitors, by having you working for themtoo, the competitors would gain on the lost ground and your clientswould still be at par. It is ethical to inform the competing clients of yoursituation. The decision on whether to proceed hiring you as aconsultant is the clients’ call. But if you end up doing work forcompeting clients, ensure that you do not play the double agent role.Uphold your informational boundaries for both clients so that they bothknow you are trustworthy. Confidential information that you learn as aresult of working for a client is not to be discussed with other clients.

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Finally, do not accept a project from someone who is asking you to beunethical. You do not need to build your consulting practice or build adesperate reputation for unnecessarily or arbitrarily bending the rules.You could save yourself from unwanted problems and headachessimply by refusing to compromise your own ethical standards.

13. Conclusion

Independent consulting is an attractive and challenging career option for thosewho have what it takes to be in the business. With the right human capital,perseverance, and a little bit of luck, it could be a highly rewarding career. Thechoices for the type of consulting service to offer is limitless, so long as your areable to find buyers for your service. And you do not have to jump with both feetinto independent consulting. In fact, a good way to start is by establishing a part-time business while holding down a good paying job. This way, you still have theanchoring line securely tied to the harbour while safely boating around for extrafish. Of course, doing a part-time business has its limitations; time and staminabeing two of your major concerns. But it is indeed a less risky way to start life asan independent consultant. It buys you time to get established without the addedstress of having to earn the minimum financial sustenance for your family. And italso buys you time to find out whether or not the business is worthy of your full-time attention. Indeed, whether part-time or full-time, independent consultingcould be a means for you to achieve personal and professional control andsatisfaction, as well as financial success in your life.

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Bibliography

Biswas, S. & Twitchell, D., Management Consulting, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.,2002

Cook, M.F., Consulting on the Side: How to Start a Part-Time ConsultingBusiness While Working at Your Full-Time Job, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1996

Hale, J., The Performance Consultant’s Fieldbook: Tools and Techniques forImproving Organisations and People, Jossey-Bass Pfeiffer, San Francisco, 1998

Holtz, H., How To Succeed As An Independent Consultant, Third Edition, JohnWiley & Sons, Inc., 1993

Karlson, D., Consulting For Success: A Guide for Prospective Consultants, CrispPublications, Inc., Los Altos, California, 1991

Lippit, G. & Lippit, R., The Consulting Process in Action, Second Edition, Pfeiffer& Company, 1986

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Documents

Assignment Title DOING PART-TIME INDEPENDENT CONSULTING ...iuce.net/article1.pdf · 8.9 Promote Your Services 36 9. Dealing With Clients 41 10. Establishing a Formal Consulting Contract