Successful Independent Consulting
Turn Your Career Experience Into a Consulting Business
The great American dream for many people is to own their own business. Successful Independent Consulting provides a simple, yet detailed outline for developing a business in one of the fastest growing, lucrative markets for skilled professionals: consulting. Florzak does a good job of addressing the most intricate details for developing a consulting business. He also offers his personal experience of becoming self-employed as a consultant and providing well-researched information that is applicable to the process.
Florzak is realistic: the decision to voluntarily leave a paying job and start a consulting or other business is the most difficult career decision you can make. He then goes on to share his process of moving from a corporate employed computer programmer to a self-employed, technical writing consultant.
Successful Independent Consulting is divided into eighteen informative chapters. Paragraph headings, bold print, italicized points make this book quick reading and easily referenced. The author, additionally, provides many full-page examples of creating a business plan from mission statements to assets; marketing strategies and other suggested materials and formatted worksheets. There are even chapters that cover difficult legal and financial issues of taxes, health/life insurance and retirement funding. This book does a thorough job of discussing the unknown aspects of starting a consulting business thereby removing much of the fear of moving forward into self-employment.
Making a new business profitable is of utmost importance. One of the most important components of successful consulting is getting the word out about one’s business. Florzak states, marketing skills are the most important skills you need to succeed as an independent consultant. Five chapters in Successful Independent Consulting are devoted to strategies of marketing. Marketing is divided into two categories: passive and active techniques. Passive techniques are marketing strategies that do not require personal interaction such as listings in Yellow Pages, web pages, membership directories, etc.; active techniques require interaction such as cold calling, networking, public presentations and other hands-on processes.
Successful Independent Consulting is not a book bogged down with legal terms or financial script, but communicates necessary information in a refreshingly quick and to-the-point manner. (December, 1999)
Reviewed by
Michele McDonald
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. No fee was paid by the publisher for this review. Foreword Reviews only recommends books that we love. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
