There are many people who would like to stop being reliant on their day to day job and start in business for themselves. A simple way of achieving this would be to take their current job or career and simply sell themselves privately to clients. This is providing consulting services in the same field as they were working in before.
The immediate reaction to this suggestion is that the new business is the same as the old. The whole point of wanting to get out of the day job was to get away from what you were doing. However, whatever the consulting skills used, your own business is never going to be the same as working for somebody else. No matter what industry or sector, being self employed is the key requirement when wanting to give up a day job and start new business opportunities.
Starting with your most familiar skills will assist the start up of your new business. You are aware of what clients want, you have the expertise to help them and might even know a few customers to get you started. Of course you will have to be careful not to "poach" clients from your old boss in a way that might be illegal.
So how do you choose what skills you have that might be of use and how do you decide whether or not there will be a chance of easy money making selling them to clients? Remember, you will probably be charging three, four, five or more times as much per hour as you were being paid before. Can you convince somebody that your services are worth as much? But remember this, you are expected to be charging more particularly as that is what the customer expects, and the extra is the profit and overheads any business should reasonably expect to make.
Most skills and professions can be tailored into a consultancy. The obvious ones include accountancy, bookkeeping, legal, property surveying, banking, languages and the like. Every single one can form the heart of a business that can be developed into a profitable hourly charge. However, there are many more jobs that can be turned into consultancy and thereby provide an easy and quick way to make extra money.
Think of where you might work now, in a printing shop, builder's yard or factory. Various areas connected to the safe or efficient running of a business could be the foundation for a consulting company. You need to identify an area that you know something about and one which you are prepared to find out some more - to polish off your skills.
As an illustration, you might have helped your employer to work towards a quality mark accreditation which will have involved you getting to know the process and what is required. These are both areas where you can quickly research a bit further into each subject, then sell yourself as a consultant able to help those who are seeking similar things.
There is no end to the diversity of skills a consultant can sell. The key aspect is for the consultant to know just a little more than the potential client. The next crucial issue is having the skills to persuade the receptive client that you actually know much more than they do!
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