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    I Want To Be A Consultant: How To Get Clear On Your Business Purpose
    I Want To Be A Consultant: How To Get Clear On Your Business Purpose
    I Want To Be A Consultant: How To Get Clear On Your Business Purpose
    Ebook97 pages1 hour

    I Want To Be A Consultant: How To Get Clear On Your Business Purpose

    By Cindy Tonkin

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    About this ebook

    Thinking about becoming a consultant? Already a consultant but wanting to set a clear direction and clarify what you're doing? Then this is the book you need.
    It takes you through step-by-step the upside and the downside of consulting as a career. Offers you a quiz to see if you have what it takes to be a consultant.
    There is a comprehensive checklist and questions to help you decide what you want from your consulting business and create a personal business plan. The personal business planning format will help you define success.
    All of the helpful worksheets and checklists are available as pdf downloads from Cindy's website.
    Each element is described methodically, with Cindy Tonkin's classic stories from the real world of consulting.
    This a 2014 rewrite of part of Cindy Tonkin's 1999 Australian Consultant's Guide, which helped more than 7000 consultants build their businesses.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCindy Tonkin
    Release dateOct 6, 2015
    ISBN9781311531636
    I Want To Be A Consultant: How To Get Clear On Your Business Purpose
    Author

    Cindy Tonkin

    Cindy Tonkin is the consultants’ consultant – specialising in working with people whose consultative skills differentiate their product and service. Managers, sales people and consultants. A qualified NLP-trained trainer she combines an extroverted, energetic presentation style with a strong understanding of what makes people tick. The results are fun, dynamic ways to make your sales force, your management team or your cultural change program work.Her solid background in consulting and training means she can design a change program with whatever change elements you need – coaching, training, workshops, action learning projects, whatever suits your organisation’s culture and outcomes!With more than 20 years experience in reengineering and productivity improvement, she has the project management skills to deliver your requirements on time, on budget and in the way you need them to work long term with your organisational culture and market. As a comedic improviser, Cindy can link anything to anything, and surprises often result.Her first book, The Australian Consultant’s Guide, was an Australian Institute of Management bestseller. She has written more than a dozen other books for consultants and managers since then

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      Book preview

      I Want To Be A Consultant - Cindy Tonkin

      Introduction

      This book is different from other books for three very important reasons. First, it is a guide as to the mistakes and great decisions your future colleagues have made. It is based on real world experience. I am an Australian consultant who has worked successfully in the industry for over 25 years, 22 of them in my own consulting business. This book relies on my own experience as well as the experience of a vast network of consultants in many different industries, from Management to Image to Engineering.

      Secondly, it gets down to the nitty-gritty. This book will tell you how to do it, step-by-step. It will tell you how to create a useful business plan, determine how much to charge and help you generate new business.

      Thirdly, this book is not about making consulting seem mysterious, mystical or magical. It is about making consulting, accessible and possible for the right people. Consulting is a profession for smart, resourceful, creative people. If this is you, then this is your book!

      Practical advice about whether and how you can become a consultant

      Reading this book will give you practical advice on how to get more quickly to the successes and avoid the mistakes my colleagues and clients or I have made.

      It is also an opportunity to preview being a consultant before you have to experience it – find out the joys and the traps prior to your livelihood depending on it. The next best thing to virtual reality.

      Reading this book is like reading a guidebook on your journey through the consulting universe. Just don’t panic!! You will find options you may not have thought of on how to run your consulting business differently, more profitably, less stressfully, or just with more fun.

      Consulting is a growth industry

      In High Income Consulting, Tom Lambert says that the consulting industry world-wide is growing by 20% each year, and will continue to do so for some years. Businesses are outsourcing more and more of their work – not just the cleaning or the printing or the accounting, but also the ‘thinking’ work.

      Charles Handy outlined in The Empty Raincoat the structure of our world of work. It included what he called ‘portfolio workers’, people like consultants, who are loyal to their profession, rather than to a single organisation. Consulting is a bigger and bigger part of how people earn a living in the 21st century. You are one of many who may be thinking about it.

      The downside of the growth of consulting is that there are a lot more people out there vying for work – anyone can set themselves up as a consultant. If you don’t know how to find work you can end up in debt and under-employed.

      The good news for you is that you have found this book. I have been out there for 22 years now, and found some things that helped me to smooth out the peaks and troughs. My colleagues, friends and relatives have made mistakes you do not have to make. That’s why this book exists.

      Here I guide you through a series of questions and checklists so you can define why you’re in business, what success means in your particular consultancy, and how you will know you when you have it.

      We’ll look at the pros and cons of consulting – why people do it, why they give it up.

      Then we’ll take you through the process of what I call a personal business plan. It’s not business planning in the normal sense, it’s very personal.

      You’ll create a wish list of what you want to get out of your business, factoring in your life, your ambitions, and your obligations.

      Other books in the series look at office set up, getting official with the tax office and banks etc, and how to get and find business. Of course there’s a book on how much to charge because we all care about that and another on templates and checklists to help run your business.

      This book is part of the consulting specialist secrets series for consultants. Click here to find the rest of the titles.

      So this book is written in that context.

      Let’s go!

      Special note: If you want to read more quickly, scan for the stories in italics. They will give you much of the information, and in an easily digestible form.

      So here’s what’s coming up:

      • the upside of consulting

      • the downside of consulting

      • a quiz to see if you have what it takes

      • a checklist and questions to help you decide what you want from your business

      • a personal business plan format help you define success

      Let’s get into it!

      The upside of being an independent consultant

      Why do people consult? Here are some of the advantages of being in the consulting business. I elaborate on each of these in later pages. Consultants have:

      • flexible working conditions

      • varied work and work contexts

      • more challenges

      • ‘instant’ businesses.

      All of these things make being an independent consultant a very attractive proposition. Each is a positive, but as you may be aware, there is always a flip side. The flip side comes later. First, here is some more detail on all the good things about consulting.

      Flexible working conditions

      As a consultant, you can arrange your life around your work, if you want

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