Marc Kramer
For the past 10 years, I have made the majority of my living as a consultant. Every now and then, my father shakes his head and asks me when I am going to get a "real job." He wonders whether I have become unemployable after running so many different businesses. Clients call my office and email me to inquire about what's on CNBC or ESPN or ask if I'm watching reruns of Law and Order with a bucket of popcorn.
Some of my clients invite me to lunch and proceed to tell me how they want to reduce their stress levels and become consultants. I laugh and shake my head. All I can think is that they have no idea what it takes to be a successful consultant. The great part about being a consultant is that you have a lot of flexibility and can wear Hawaiian shirts in the middle of winter. You can play Grateful Dead tunes as loud as you like, and a typical commute is 10 to 20 seconds. Unfortunately, unless you are Jack Welch or the head of marketing or sales for a Fortune 500 company, your road to building a profitable consulting practice will be as difficult as getting your first job out of college. Most consultants want to pontificate on the pros and cons of a particular strategy and then, like the oracle of Delphi, provide their words of wisdom. A friend of mine, a chief marketing officer of a publicly traded company who recently became a consultant, told me that clients don't care as much about his strategic prowess as they do about his industry contacts. At the end of the day, clients want consultants who help them ring the cash register.
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