By Julia Rittenberg, Kelly Main for Forbes.com
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Table of Contents
- 1. Outline Your Plan
- 2. Register Your Consulting Business
- 3. Determine Services and Pricing
- 4. Build Your Website
- 5. Market Your Consulting Business
- Frequently Asked Questions
Those with a high degree of expertise in a particular field can leverage their knowledge to build a profitable consulting business. Whether you’re in between jobs or looking to make a change, learning how to start a consulting business is the first step to making great use of your skills. In return, you can create a lucrative business and can charge upwards of $300 per hour–all for sharing your expertise with others. Here’s everything you need to know.
1. Outline Your Plan
To get started, you’ll want to put together a strong business plan. While you don’t have to stick to every single thing, it’s a good idea to have guidance for your business.
The first choice to make is your business name. Since you’re starting an individual consulting business, your business name can be your personal name as a trade name or a business name. If you have a name that you want to use that feels more recognizable and eye-catching, make sure you factor the registration costs into your original budget.
If you need to design a logo, you can do that yourself or reach out to designers. The logo will help you start marketing to your target audience, whether that’s business owners or companies or individuals. If you want to consult in a certain industry, you should start building a list of contacts to reach out to when you’re ready to launch and take on new clients.
With all of this information ready to go, you can start on the administrative side of your business.
2. Register Your Consulting Business
Before you start doing official business, you’ll need to register with your state’s Secretary of State as a sole proprietorship or as an LLC. You should also check to see if there are other legal requirements for small businesses in your state. If you are planning to grow the business, registering as an LLC will make it easier to track your business expenses for taxes. It can cost about $50 to $100 to register your business online, depending on the state.
If you’re starting a consulting business as a side hustle, it might be worth it to invest in a business to register your LLC for you.
3. Determine Services and Pricing
Determining your rates also means determining what kind of services you want to offer. Consultants offer a variety of services. You can offer a wide range of support for a business, but do less of a deep dive. Alternatively, you can be hyper-specific in your expertise and go deep on a certain aspect of a company’s business. For example, if you’re an HR consultant, you can take a larger view of a company’s HR operations, or focus on their hiring practices for a specific department.
You should also consider if you want to take on short-term or long-term clients. Doing one-off consulting sessions is still a lot of work, even compared to long-term consulting. Your pricing strategy should reflect the amount of preparation you have to do. It also may depend on your industry to decide how you want to price your services: either a one-time payment, hourly rate or monthly retainer.
4. Build Your Website
A consulting business needs a website so clients can find you easily. If a business is doing research into finding a consultant in your industry, you want your website to pop up for them. If you are familiar with SEO best practices, you can do this yourself, or hire someone to optimize your website.
Here are the best platforms for building a professional website:
- Squarespace: This platform is very user-friendly and has plenty of award-winning templates. In addition to great designs, it’s also affordable with all-inclusive plans starting at $16 per month. However, it does lack more robust customization options for more experienced coders.
- Wix: This all-in-one website builder offers a drag-and-drop site editor, making web design both easy and highly flexible. However, it’s a bit more expensive than Squarespace with plans starting at $16 per month.
- WordPress: The world’s most popular content management system, WordPress, is not the most user-friendly, though it is one of the most customizable and affordable options (as you only have to pay for web hosting for around $4 to $8 per month). It’s the best option for those who have very unique website needs or experience with the CMS.
Building a website can seem intimidating, but many of the best website builders make it easy for beginners to create a site without any experience or coding knowledge. However, keep in mind that websites do require ongoing maintenance, so you might want to hire a virtual assistant or work some time into your calendar to do regular website maintenance and updating.
5. Market Your Consulting Business
Marketing a new business can be difficult, but being diligent about finding new marketing channels and leveraging connections will make it a lot easier. Try these simple and low-cost solutions to start marketing.
- Search engine optimization to rank on Google
- Online business directories (i.e., Google My Business, Yelp, Yellow Pages)
- Pay-per-click advertising (e.g., Google Ads, Facebook Ads, YouTube Ads)
- Subreddits for entrepreneurs or your industry
- Slack groups for freelancers
- Find local networking groups (e.g., local business associations)
- Participate in industry networking events
Working on this yourself, in the beginning, will require a fair amount of time, but when your business grows, you might be able to hire a social media strategist or partner to work on finding business leads.
