TITLE : CONSULTANT'S HANDBOOK: HOW TO START & DEVELOP YOUR OWN PRACTICE, THE.

INTRODUCTION

Ten years ago, I started a consulting firm with about $20,000 of borrowed money - which I promptly lost. And when I say prompt, I mean prompt. The process of going from $20,000 to zero took three months, tops.

About six months out, I realized that there were a couple of things about consulting that no one had told me. Basic issues having to do with marketing, billing, and cash projection. Believe it or not, the business I started is now a successful multi-million dollar sales training firm that deals with scores of Fortune 500 companies. Eventually, I learned how to manage these issues from personal experience.

The point of this book is a simple one: you don't have to learn the way I did.

For the last five or six years, I've given seminars on consulting with a great deal of success. The participants have been people from all walks of life. By taking my course, they learned about the practical problems that confront anyone attempting to start a new business as a consultant - and some practical solutions to those problems.

This book is based on those seminars, and is geared toward the very real questions that you are asking -- or will eventually ask -- if you're seriously considering a career as a consultant. How do you establish a practice? How do you determine what fees to charge? What is a proposal? Howisitwritten? How much money will you need to start out? In answering these questions, I'll be drawing on my own business experiences, and, in many instances, explaining in some detail how I've solved these problems these questions raise. I'll also oudine some of the techniques I use on a day-to-day basis in operating my own consulting firm.

I cannot decide whether or not you should become a consultant. Only you can do that. What I can do is show you what tools you'll need - and which you may already possess - to seriously pursue the business of consulting. And make no mistake about it, that's what consulting is - a business.

If you operate on the principle that you are embarking upon a business - a very special kind of business - you stand to reap the tremendous benefits that consulting has to offer. You may already be familiar with them: independence from the const4nt difficulties of working within one bureaucratic structure; immediate interplay with the "bottom line" of your business; and the chance to work, at your pace, on the work you're most adept at performing and enjoy the most.

Read this book carefully. Study and consider the relevancy of every suggestion for your particular consulting business, which will be based on your skills and unique qualifications, not mine, ,What I offer is experience in the field - and if you can use that experience to your advantage, this book will have served its purpose well.