Look for "Holiday" Projects

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Hi team!

This is a fantastic month to be an independent consultant.

In fact, it might be the best possible month to get started. We’re going to talk about why, and how you could use it to your advantage to get started.

Some businesses need extra help this month

Consulting has different “seasons.”

For example, July is a very slow consulting season. A lot of clients are on vacation and don’t want to start a new project then.

The Thanksgiving-to-end-of-year season is one of the most interesting.

Large clients, like the F500 and Private Equity firms, are almost entirely shut down for new projects. They don’t want to start a project now since they’re all about to be on vacation for a few weeks.

Smaller to mid-sized businesses (say $100M in revenue or less) can be very different. These businesses, especially if they make products that are highly “giftable” are often extremely busy this time of year.

For example: I know of a business in this range that makes baby clothes. They are insanely busy right now, since people often give baby clothes as gifts during the Holidays.

A busy company is a consultants best friend. It means the is temporarily more work, and a consultant could be extremely helpful for them.

How to find these businesses

Long time readers know that I am a big believer in using platforms like Catalant (if you’ve got experience) or UpWork (if you’ve got none) to get started in the consulting space.

If you have the capacity for projects right now, check these platforms daily.

Go to the keyword search functionality and search for the phrase:

• “Holiday”

• “Holidays”

• “Christmas”

• “Busy season”

That should bring you to a list of projects for clients that fit this description.

Based on some quick data work, I estimate there are about 120 projects with these keywords a day on UpWork.

If you check and you don’t see any now, keep checking!

Why this is easier for new consultants

The biggest challenge first time independent consultants have is landing their first project. They don’t have reviews, and they don’t have confidence (yet) as an independent.

It’s hard to win that first project because most new consultants are competing with experienced consultants for high-standards clients.

During the holidays, most companies are not “high-standards”. They need help, immediately, and will often hire the first consultant they can.

2024 Consulting Challenge

With the New Year starting up, I figured it might be a lot of fun to set up a 2024 consulting challenge.

There are some amazing people in this solo consultant community who are doing incredibly well.

Why don’t we celebrate that as a group?

What it would look like:

The goal would be to create a chart like this for next year. We update it every month to show how much the consultants in this community make in total that month.

We can cheer each other on & celebrate really big months together

How to take part

If you want to take part in it, simply put your UpWork URL on this link HERE.

What I will do then is check everyone’s profile and add up everyone’s total earnings. This could be completely anonymous!

If you work outside of UpWork, then just reply to this email and I can help you get set up alternatively!