Ask HN: How do I start my own consulting firm?
I hope this isn&#x27;t read as a off color comment,<p>but from reading cosmorocket&#x27;s statement of inquiry,<p>I would say that he has to loose referring to anything as &quot;stuff&quot; right out the gate, from this morning&#x27;s coffee on, and forever.<p>I mean to illustrate a more valid, less snarky, point, however:<p>When people hire consultants,<p>very often, if not prototypically, it is because they want to understand something that is outside their domain or their immediate efficient use of time, or to learn about something they are unsure whether it may meet their needs.<p>Hand waving and calling anything, &quot;back end stuff&quot;...<p>well, it rather blows as a pitch.<p>Certainly it fails at making a impression of confidence in our own knowledge, whether that is unfair doesn&#x27;t much matter, if you don;t get the chance to expatiate further.<p>Knowledge != knowing what something is, and how it works. at least not in any consulting gig I think worth the name.<p>Knowledge is, very definitely, the breadth and depth of understanding a domain specialty sufficiently to relate and connect that to as yet undefined but potentially complimentary scenarios.<p>I want to be very very harsh, here, towards cosmorocket,<p>and this is intended well,<p>but all cosmorocket&#x27;s questions are about the mechanics,<p>and it is utterly transparent to the reader that the absent component is appreciation for what it is that cosmorocket can bring to the table.<p>At least in the above question for HN, the reality of the quantity for sale is sorely absent.<p>I think this is why we&#x27;ve got a busy discussion full of anecdotes about corporate life, but nothing much at first glance that answers, &quot;sure, you can do this, so you put it like that, and take home that&quot;. Hmm, in a roundabout way, some answers are a bit like that. But to really work, a proposition has to be simple enough at its core to be a one liner. The most sophisticated product in existence, can still be sold as &quot;solves all your storage deployment problems whilst making IOPs a commodity you control, and compliance facility and data discovery and data loss guarantees a fixed affordable price&quot;.<p>Many people admire the sophistication of big sales outfits.<p>Corporate sales is not something many actually encounter, in life. Being pitched by EMC on a roll, eager to sell you dozens if not hundreds of TB or mainframe class storage in the nineties is a spectacular memory, like going to a grand opera. But it does all boil down to people who can cut through the chaff in a instant, so that what is too easily dismissed as frippery and trappings, are really aides and props for detailed discussions, not valueless glossy blurb. Great salespeople use their tools in ways not immediately obvious, and with skills akin almost to artistry. I may gush a bit much for your taste, but having been pitched by full on gung-ho teams, and felt at times overwhelmed by the sheer onslaught of energy and attrition of new supporting roles that a major enterprise sales effort fields to win your PO, i developed a real respect for the orchestration. I&#x27;m saying this by way of a analogy, that the casual onlooker might see glossy brochures that are terrible at defining anything, but their purpose is more discussion prompts, than hard data points.<p>I&#x27;d like to take cosmorocket aside, grab a empty conference room, and brain dump a whole 30 years of stories.<p>But the one thing I hope cosmorocket might get from my putative one on one, is the one i can give right now, just it won&#x27;t seem like a hill of beans: If you want to be a consultant, and the adjective successful is a condition, because a unsuccessful consultant doesn&#x27;t exist any more, or never did, you need one fundamental skill: to be able to relate to people by understandng hw they understand the technology you are discussing, so that you can get into their minds how they see their use, and whilst adding a core skillset and experience base, and maybe some tech sauce you might have rolled yourself, such as tools for cloud deployments you scripted, read back to your customer a interpretation of both what you can add, and what they might be missing, evaluated against as hard data as you can find, so that they understand the value to them of the next step they take with the technology you discuss.<p>Consulting is about making people understand the values of technlogy that matter to them, and educating them about tools that leverage technology to aide their needs, which needs you have to understand both from their appreciation of their needs, as well as what that adds up to in reality in practical as well as technical terms (i.e. sanity check, and eval whether they are risking expensive or dangerous poor assessments or make bad assumptions...) and explaining this in a way they can accept with the least impact for the biggest result your bill plus any extra dollars spent, can get your customer.<p>Selling to the next customer (i do prefer that word, even if people would say I got clients, not customers, because saying &quot;customer&quot; makes you focus on a product delivery, not wishy washy relationships, that frankly are strong only when you deliver as if you were shipping product) you get the next sale by opening up how you got the last, not by detail, but by example, and that is your pitch, then: &quot;I did x for Z Corp, by this method, and they got a, b, and c, and i can give you this ROI for my work, and this customer reference.&quot;<p>Bu the first customer youwill get, probably you will best emphasize that you have a command directly of tech, that you have extensive domain experience in, where you see a edge that youlearned through your work, that is not widely enough deployed or accepted to be able to offer exceptional returns, and with a very low (relative, but do not ever sell yourself low, that is fatal, you must charge a market rate, even if you think big consultant rates are ridiculous for the customer you pitch, you need to be relatively in the same order as that, or else offer a discount plus earn out &#x2F; bonus on other results that can add a big multiplier, if not a zero, to your contract payout) initial cost. As one man, you almost guaranteed got the low initial cost (another reason to watch tonor pitch yourself low) so you must move fast top the steak of your offer: which is &quot;I do this with that, and it rocks your ___blank___ to the next level, and we can measure that, and we can do thisby performance in next to no time.&quot; To get a start, you must optimize time as a component. Your hours get multiplied by everyone you touch with the work you do hours. Your $400 hourly rate (not ridiculous a number) can touch and cause cost at $4,000 &#x2F;hr moment you interact with any significant team in any operation.<p>I started very down &#x2F; skeptical, but you have to.<p>Biggest and only advice I would ever personally offer:<p>there is nothing like the wrath (and bad PR effect) of a upset client for your consulting. Everybody will dump on your head.<p>cosmorocket, i&#x27;ve been harsh, sorry, but i mean well, i got not stacks but enough time to kick about, if you wanted to email me, i&#x27;ll shoot at explaining better why I am right down on how you pitched this question, but also why that, and maybe the answers that arose from that, are not end of world is negative, or foreboding. But i would not encourage you to be optimistic for enthusiasm&#x27;s sake.  Consulting has fewer pom pom girls than startups. And far less of that, directly or indirectly, is allowed around any scenario i reckon you might find yourself in. Anyhow, I&#x27; be happy to traduce any optimistic cynicism I can, if you shout me. Good luck!