Before we go too much further, we should make sure we’re on the same page about what we’re setting out to do. We’re talking about you as a freelance consultant.
The “freelance” part of the equation
Freelance means you’re self-employed and independent. You work from contract to contract, directly for a client (although you may find yourself working as a sub-contractor to another contractor from time to time.)
Not an employment situation—or an employment-like situation. You’re probably going to be considered, for tax purposes, a sole proprietor. There are other structures, but let’s assume for now that this is the simplest one and best match for you.
In some jurisdictions, there are contractors who act kind of like staff, but without the benefits. In the USA that’s called an “independent contractor”. You have a single client, you go to work in their offices, you do what they tell you, they provide you their gear to work with, but they pay you on contract so they don’t have to offer you benefits or any kind of permanence. (In Canada, contractors in employee-like situations are sooner or later forced to either become employees or true sole proprietors.)
Anyway-we’re talking about you hanging out your own shingle and being your own boss.
And in order to do that, a freelancer has to provide value to their client—enough value that the client pays you good money, and other clients want some of what you offer.
Let’s talk about the consultant part of the freelance consultant equation
So what does a consultant offer?
A consultant is a particular kind of freelancer. A consultant’s job is to offer services to clients in the form of advice and strategy.
A consultant’s job is to solve the client’s problems or to save the client money. Their job is to help them avoid grief and embarrassment, or to help them advance their business goals.
A consultant conducts research, does analysis, and makes recommendations based on what they’ve learned.
Consultants are successful when they can see patterns the client can’t see.
A big part of your work in research and analysis is finding patterns of behaviour, patterns of thinking, patterns of spending that the client doesn’t see or value yet. That’s where you make yourself useful; that’s where you make your money.
Business-to-business… usually
Consultants generally work business-to-business, as opposed to business-to-customer. That is, you’re generally not providing services to an individual customer the way a freelance tailor or a freelance landscaper does. (Mind you, there are exceptions here and the distinction between B2B and B2C, as they say, can get fuzzy.) A consultant generally fills in gaps of expertise within the client’s own company. You’re brought in to offer strategic-level services that they don’t have internally.
A freelance consultant produces documents. Documents and presentations. I realize that sounds simplistic; I realize that we produce advice, strategies, and ultimately value for the client. But it helps me a lot to remember that my concrete output is in the form of a document, a presentation, or usually both.
These are reports or plans containing the research and analysis you’ve done, and the recommendations you’ve come up with to help them do better in the future. Often you end your report by suggesting a work plan or at least the next steps they need to undertake to get there.
Much more than tech stuff
A freelance consultant can advise on technical stuff—engineering, software design, and so on. But that’s not necessarily the case. You can be a social media consultant. You can be a design consultant. You can be a fashion consultant; you can be a landscaping consultant.
You’re the person they turn to when they have a problem that needs solving and they don’t have the expertise in-house. That’s all. You’re the person who offers professional advice.
Briefly, here’s what it looks like:
They write up a statement of work; they put out a call for either quotes or proposals (more about that later) and you pitch yourself to them. If they like your proposal better than anybody else’s, you get the gig. That’s really all there is to it.
A consulting contract can be a few weeks’ duration; it can be months long. It shouldn’t be years long, generally, or you’re getting into an employer/employee relationship.
Recently I read of someone doing what they called micro-consulting. Somebody has a mini-problem that they need advice on; in this case it was feedback on a new website. The entire extent of the engagement was less than a day—but it was helpful to the client and profitable to the freelance consultant. And that’s all you need, right?