<story><title>Ramit Sethi and Patrick McKenzie on Getting Your First Consulting Client</title><url>http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/17/ramit-sethi-and-patrick-mckenzie-on-getting-your-first-consulting-client/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>patio11</author><text>Happy to answer questions, as always.&lt;p&gt;Ramit and I recorded three of these interviews on starting consulting businesses, although we have poor message discipline so we couldn&apos;t resist talking product as well.  The next one is about pricing.  (It could be &quot;Charge more!&quot; for an hour, but isn&apos;t, although I hit that theme a few times.)&lt;p&gt;On a related but unrelated note, my usual podcast with Keith Perhac (and special guest Brennan Dunn next time) also is going to be a consulting-stravaganza next time.  We talked the origin stories for our three consulting businesses (I run a sole-prop consultancy as roughly a 20% time project, Keith runs a small practice, and Brennan runs a fairly large many-people-at-full-time-utilization consultancy) and what we&apos;ve learned along the way about hiring, pricing, cashflow management, chasing invoices, pipeline, and all that fun stuff.&lt;p&gt;My totally subjective opinion is that, if you&apos;re a freelancer or consultant, any one of these will be &lt;i&gt;probably&lt;/i&gt; more useful than the entire rest of my blog put together.  If you liked any of that, you&apos;ll like these, probably a lot.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>IsaacL</author><text>&quot;My totally subjective opinion is that, if you&apos;re a freelancer or consultant, any one of these will be probably more useful than the entire rest of my blog put together.&quot;&lt;p&gt;You&apos;re right there -- I was reading the first few paragraphs and thinking &quot;thank God I&apos;m reading this now and not 6 months down the line&quot;. So much actionable advice.&lt;p&gt;Here&apos;s a question for you: as someone making money from both services and products, but who has avoided the VC-lottery-ticket startup game, what&apos;s your opinions on starting a service business vs starting a product business?&lt;p&gt;I&apos;m in the early days of building an e-commerce startup while freelancing on the side. Even though my day rate is on the low end, I&apos;m still earning more than most people my age in the UK (I just graduated), except maybe junior IB analysts, and I&apos;m pretty confident I could earn way more, especially if I focus on freelancing^ full time. Pitch myself at a much higher level, start hiring a few people, build a service business.&lt;p&gt;^(Yeah, I know, I should say &quot;consulting&quot; and not &quot;freelancing&quot;).&lt;p&gt;But the obvious downside is that a service business isn&apos;t scalable. A scalable product business is much better, &lt;i&gt;if&lt;/i&gt; it&apos;s a success. Plus Steve Jobs and Elon Musk would never have made the history books, or had the same impact on humanity, if they&apos;d sold services instead of products -- but they&apos;re the 0.001%. What&apos;s your opinion?</text></comment>
<story><title>Ramit Sethi and Patrick McKenzie on Getting Your First Consulting Client</title><url>http://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/17/ramit-sethi-and-patrick-mckenzie-on-getting-your-first-consulting-client/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>patio11</author><text>Happy to answer questions, as always.&lt;p&gt;Ramit and I recorded three of these interviews on starting consulting businesses, although we have poor message discipline so we couldn&apos;t resist talking product as well.  The next one is about pricing.  (It could be &quot;Charge more!&quot; for an hour, but isn&apos;t, although I hit that theme a few times.)&lt;p&gt;On a related but unrelated note, my usual podcast with Keith Perhac (and special guest Brennan Dunn next time) also is going to be a consulting-stravaganza next time.  We talked the origin stories for our three consulting businesses (I run a sole-prop consultancy as roughly a 20% time project, Keith runs a small practice, and Brennan runs a fairly large many-people-at-full-time-utilization consultancy) and what we&apos;ve learned along the way about hiring, pricing, cashflow management, chasing invoices, pipeline, and all that fun stuff.&lt;p&gt;My totally subjective opinion is that, if you&apos;re a freelancer or consultant, any one of these will be &lt;i&gt;probably&lt;/i&gt; more useful than the entire rest of my blog put together.  If you liked any of that, you&apos;ll like these, probably a lot.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>nmcfarl</author><text>I’d just like to say thanks for the AWESOME link out to CastingWords! (Though we are a little wary of making our strategy, and delivered turnarounds, quite this explicit :)) Regardless we do love happy customers - and this strategy delivers both in keeping us afloat, and keeping the customers happy.</text></comment>