A Consulting FAQ

“Consulting”, what is it?

Consulting is giving expert advice in your professional field. Consulting is done across a wide range of disciplines including law, marketing, finance, engineering, accounting. Consulting is performed in virtually any professional field. By becoming a consultant you are telling the world that you are an expert in your field.

How do consultants work?

Consultants provide their client, or the company that hired them, with their expert knowledge, or a specific service, for a predetermined length of time. The arrangement is much like any other kind of contracted service. The consultant’s goal is to find a permanent solution to their client’s needs by providing professional advise and the latest information in the consultant’s field. As a consultant you are obligated to give your client your complete and undivided attention and skills in order to deliver on your client’s expectations.

What constitutes a great consultant?

A great consultant is one who is able to give their client, and the client’s organization, excellent ideas and motivation to execute those ideas. A great consultant also has to be prepared to handle complex situations that may even be somewhat hostile. The consultant must skilled in assessing the situation and be competent in knowing what needs to be done in any situation.

What types of consulting are there?

Generally there are two types of consulting, the specialist, and the generalist.

The specialist focuses on one area competency like their professional discipline or their specific industrial niche.

A generalist consults with the bigger picture in mind. The generalist usually goes to work with an company that delivers broader advice to many clients.

What are the requirements to be a consultant?

When an organization looks for a consultant, they are looking for someone with the ability to offer advice, create ideas, have insights into their industry, and share their expert knowledge. The consultant has to be able to provide their clients new and innovative ideas to create and implement an effective solution.

Many organizations interested in hiring a consultant want their consultant to have a college degree in their field. The consultant must have a genuine desire to help their clients in their area of need.

To avoid having to work long hours with people you do not enjoy working with, or that you just aren’t able to get along with, it is very important that a consultant be a people person in every sense. A consultant needs to enjoy working with all sorts of people.

Conclusion

This posting touched on just a few of the common question about being a consultant. Thoroughly research being a consultant before you actively look for clients to be sure this line of work is right for you. You can start with some of the resources provided below.

Resources

• Getting Started in Consulting
• Consulting From Home
• Learning and Managing Social Media for Consultants
• Consulting Now! – a multi-media online training course

Dancing For Profit

Although the national obsession for group exercise has begun to level off, estimates claim 23 million Americans participate in aerobics in health clubs and exercise gyms.

This includes people enrolled in programs run from community facilities, YMCAs, and gyms, to dance studios in shopping malls.

This figure represents 10% of the US population who exercise occasionally, definitely a fraction of what it used to be 10 years ago when the craze was at its peak and America was waking up to the urgent message of the importance of exercise.

NEW MARKETS

The decline of enrollment-based fitness programs has forced many studios to expand their services.

For example, some jazz exercise studios now offer skin care and nutritional counseling. Some offer shiatsu classes.

The biggest problem for any stationary fitness program is being able to organize classes that work around the schedule of its potential clients.

The interest in fitness remains. The market did not dwindle as the figures suggest. The biggest challenge in this industry is identifying new ways to deliver its services to the market.

BUNS OF STEEL

If you are an aspiring exercise entrepreneur, here are three avenues by which you can deliver and sell your services to your market:

1 – CORPORATE CONTRACTS

Many businesses recognize that healthy employees are productive employees, something the Japanese realized decades ago.

You can send instructors to a business location to conduct exercise classes that are subsidized by the employer.

2 – SATELLITE CLASSES

You can lease community or church facilities, recreational centers or school gymnasiums and hold classes for people in that community. Some very large apartment complexes have halls, or function areas, where classes can be held.

3 – VIDEOS

Students who attend your class once can continue the routine on their own time. That’s the convenience video can offer.

Instead of coming to an organized exercise class, people will attend an exercise class in front of their VCRs.

In fact, a video tape can be an excellent add-on product to corporate contracts, satellite classes, or studio classes.

“I have a 31-step process. I shampoo seats, do the dashboard with Q-tips, clean the trunk, dress the engine, etc. It takes 3 hours for what I do, and I charge $120. That’s detailed.”

This would be a typical response of someone who does Auto Detailing when asked what they can do for your car and how much they would charge you for it.

The age of upscale carwash is here. As we keep our cars longer (average length is 7.5 years) we take better care of them.

This is why the carwash business is booming with $8 billion in revenue, and so is auto detailing.

EXECTUIVE PARKING

Many auto detail services nest their business in executive parking lots. They get a permit from the city and from the business whose lot they use.

This is convenient for employees who otherwise may not have time to bring their cars to a shop that would take 3 hours to get detailing done.

In a mobile operation such as this, you will need a van or pickup truck and access to running water and preferably AC power.

In some cities, there are companies that convert and customize pickup trucks into mobile detail shops with its own reservoir and portable power generator.

140 MILLION CARS

Although many auto detailers will swear that a bulk of their business comes from car dealers, in reality the car dealer market is small and extremely competitive.

Most car dealers need cars detailed before a used car is offered in an auction or is displayed in the lot.

However, the biggest market of all is still on the road, individual car owners, representing all of 140 million passenger cars plus another 30 million pickup trucks on the road.

This market, with an average age of 7.5 years, is ripe for a detail job at least twice a year.

BUDGET DETAIL

The best way to build up a base in this business is to introduce a mid-priced service that offers extras that carwashes do not offer.

Detail jobs in the range of #30 to #49 will open up a new market that can provide a stream of customers. You can provide a written list of what you do and how you build up your rates from the basic price of $30 to the premium rate $49.

With 5 customers a day, at 1 hour each, you can average $200 a day.