How do I start a consulting business with very little start-up capital?

What does it take to start a tech consulting business?

• Hello. I am interested in my tech company(long term) and I would like to have a small consulting firm on the side to generate revenue. I am planing on working with a friend from school. I am still in highschool so I can spare a few years to learn. I am well versed in Java and web development (HTML,CSS,JavaScript,basic Rails). I have heard of tech security consulting before, but what are the different types of consulting and how does one prepare for a position like that? Thanks.

• Answer:

  To be a consultant you need to be an expert on whatever it is people will hire you to consult. The annoying thing about consulting is that it completely consumes your time, so keeping it on-the-side beyond hobby-level income will prove difficult. A large part of being a consultant is spent on non-billable activities unless you are able to completely fill up your schedule with paying projects and streamline your billing. If you are a skilled in web development, I would build a product instead of a consulting company. The difference is that with a product you will not have the 1:1 relationship of being paid an hourly rate for your time. With a product your investment of time can scale 1:N. That is why I chose to convert my disaster readiness consulting practice into a narrowly-defined product. My consulting now becomes a lead generation activity (I speak to a group of people and they either buy my product or become my resellers) instead of a single engagement. The challenge with technology security consulting, in particular, is that you have to be a special person. You have to have evil thoughts but also enough restraint to not put them into use. At some point in the past, you probably did put them into use (I certainly did) but then grew up. You need to think like an attacker, and that is not optional. Go to http://www.defcon.org sometime to see what it's like. When the young attendees grow up, we go to http://www.blackhat.com. If you were a prospective information security consultant, you absolutely would not be posting this question because it does not match their personality. Therefore, that career is not for you. So what does it take to become a consultant then? Deep domain knowledge. If you want to consult on building WordPress sites, for example, which is a great way to go today, you will know which of the 15000+ free plugins are important to you and what most of them do. You will know which premium plugins are worth buying. You will know how to secure a WordPress deployment and how to recover after a security breach. You will have an array of go-to themes that are free and some premium themes. You will know which copywriters and graphic designers are worth hiring. You will have an above-average understanding of SEO and have a relationship with someone who is a dedicated SEO consultant to whom you will refer your clients. You will know enough about CSS to understand that code. I now made it obvious to you that I probably know more about WordPress than the majority of others. You should be able to write with similar conviction without relying on buzzwords. Track record of success. Someone must validate your expertise. You can use my testimonials product for that. Ability to reach your prospects. There are a lot of wannabe WordPress consultants today around the world. How can your prospective clients find you? Be not afraid to charge high rates. $100/hr, $200/hr etc. These rates may sound absurd to you, but they are common. You may not be able to charge that initially, but you should be ready to charge at least $40/hr in the beginning. Be an exceptional communicator. Once you turn 18, join a http://www.toastmasters.org club to gain vital public speaking skills. Become very good at writing in English. Ideally, you should be at least an intermediate level advertising copywriter. That will enable you to persuade people. Ready to get started? Identify what it is you are good at and print up some business cards. On the card put: Your name Your email address Your website Your LinkedIn profile if your name is very common Your phone number Title: WordPress and Internet Consultant (be descriptive, business card scanning software will dump this line directly into your customer's address book). One-sentence description of what do you do ("I prepare businesses to survive any disaster" is what's on mine) Ignore things like twitter names, facebook URLs and so on. You can always write them on the card using a pen. Your street address is not necessary. Keep it simple. No logos, no italics, no colors. Make a boring black and white card. Don't use glossy coating. It makes it impossible to write on the card unless you carry a Sharpie marker like I do, which is very annoying. Matte cards work better. My advice is to print the email and phone number BIG. You don't want your prospects to strain their eyes trying to read your phone number or email. Always carry at least 5 of your cards in every article of clothing. You never know when someone will ask you for one. I thought I didn't have any cards once but, since I followed my own advice, I had 3 in the pocket of my athletic pants.