My Best Advice for New Solo Consultants

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Hi there!

The Franklin Effect has become relatively well known over the past ~5 years.

Its premise is simple: we like people for whom we’ve done a favor.

The term is named for Ben Franklin, who frequently employed this strategy to build relationships with political opponents.

The reason the Franklin Effect has become more well-known is it’s frequently talked about in networking & sales books.

Networking gurus tell you to “ask for advice” when reaching out to someone new.

For better or worse, the Franklin effect can be seen in full force in my Twitter DM’s and email inbox. People reach out to ask for advice about building, scaling, or exiting their solo consulting business.

So, this week, I figured it could be value to share three pieces of advice!

I apologize for sharing unsolicited advice here for anyone who isn’t interested in it!

Piece of Advice #1: Leave the ego at the door

Building a solo consulting business means checking your ego at the door. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve done.

99.9% of successful solo consultants will experience most or all of these:

• Your first clients will not be your ideal client

• You will do work at <$10/hour

• You will be dismissed, passed over, or ignored by clients

• Your project work will be “beneath” you

To put this into perspective: I’ve worked with a Harvard MBA who lost out on projects to a high school student.

The high schooler had good reviews on the consulting website; the Harvard MBA was new and had no reviews. Despite the Harvard MBA, he was at a disadvantage.

Here’s the thing: the Harvard MBA was (clearly) smart. They intuitively understood going in that this could happen.

But, seeing it happen is a completely different ballgame. It was jarring for the MBA.

What does this mean for me?

I’ve met hundreds of independent consultants. I know only two who have skipped this step. One was a F500 CEO and another was a former senior White House official.

Said differently: you are most likely not exempt from this struggle.

My number one piece of advice is to push down the ego and gut through this step. It could last a week, or it could last a month.

But, you have to do it.

If you believe the first work is beneath you, you’ll never get the later work that is worth your time.

#2: Stick with one until $50K+

This is the corollary to #1.

Many new consultants land a shitty first project. Rather than realizing that’s the reality of getting started, they believe the channel was wrong.

For example: “The clients on Linkedin are terrible, that was my problem! I’m going to leave Linkedin and instead get my first few clients on Catalant!”

Your first clients won’t be great, regardless of the channel you use. The natural temptation is to blame the channel rather than blame where you are in your consulting journey.

So, new consultants constantly bounce between channels but never become masters of any of them.

A consultant should not expand from their first channel until they reach $50K. That’s also the bare minimum; sticking in one place until you’ve hit $100K is also fair game.

Master something first, then move on.

#3: <1 hour/week on the back office

There is a lot of “stuff” to the administration of a consulting firm:

Required Stuff

• LLC creation & maintenance

• E&O insurance

• Bookkeeping

Optional Stuff

• Website

• Linkedin Page

• Crunchbase Page

• CRM set up

• + 100’s of other things

Here’s the most important part: a lot of “stuff” does NOT mean it should take a lot of time.

You could easily get sucked into spending too much time on the back office.

As a solo consultant, your time is precious. 95% of your time should be on acquiring new clients or consulting for existing clients.

Your website doesn’t matter. You don’t even need a website! (I still don’t have one for my consulting business.)

Why do new consultants waste a ton of time on their website?

I think there are two big reasons here:

• First, websites are complex. They could absorb weeks of your time (if you let it happen.

• Second, fear of rejection. Consultants are afraid of being told “no” by clients, so they play around with the website. Website’s cannot say no

My best advice: skip the website :)

How can I help?

If you reply to this email, it will come directly to me & I’ll respond as quickly as possible.

To head off a very common question: I’m sorry but I don’t have any quickstart guides, courses, communities, or other paid resources!

What would be most helpful to read about next week?

Let me know what would be most helpful for you :)

Quick Tip

I’ve added this new section for a quick tip for consultants!

The QuickTip this week is to use Exploding Topics. (Note: this is not sponsored; I don’t get any money from them for mentioning them or if you go to their website)

However, I’ve found them to be exceptionally useful.

They basically show when a new term is rapidly growing search volume.

For example, Data Lakehouse has been growing rapidly over the past ~year or so.

I check Exploding Topics monthly to see if any new terms are growing fast and related to my work.

If there are, I spend 15 minutes reading up on that term.

I can remember at least 3 times with a client where they asked me if I knew about a new thing (e.g: a Data Lakehouse) that they had just heard about.

In all three cases, I had found it and researched it already due to ET. I could then credibly speak about it to my clients.

That’s useful for clients, and it’s useful for you, because it shows that you are a consultant who is “up” on the latest trends within the industry.

It’s a big credibility boost :)