How to be a successful consultant
Posted on 08 February 2010
By Mark Miller
Permanent URL of this article: http://retirementrevised.com/career/how-to-be-a-successful-consultant
If your second act involves going solo as a consultant, read Richard Greenwald’s article in The Wall Street Journal exploring the factors that drive success for freelancers and solo entrepreneurs.
Greenwald notes that high unemployment and corporate downsizing has made solo consulting the new normal–and a permanent condition for many. He cites statistics indicating that more than 20 percent of U.S. workers now operate as consultants, freelancers or contractors.
“We can rightly bemoan the loss of security, the shifting of economic risk from institutions to individuals,” he writes. “But crying foul will not change the circumstances that many Americans find themselves facing. Righteous indignation will not turn back time. We can, however, better prepare ourselves for the future.
Success, he argues, depends on a professional approach, long-term planning and strategy, networking, carving out your own physical work space and thinking like an entrepreneur. Via The Wall Street Journal.
