The first five tips I set out came from discussions with consultants who have been in business for a while who were answering the question:
I wish I’d known that before I started in business.
For example, tip one:
How to quit your job gracefully and professionally
is seen by just about every one as really important. I’d agree with that. My first customer was my previous employer. That’s the case with lots of consultants.
Even where this isn’t the case, your previous employer often makes the introduction that will get you started. Therefore, it’s important to work hard on parting with your employer on good terms.
The tips about taking advantage of available support and not working alone:
Take advantage of available support.
are both tips that existing consultants felt were important, too. It’s so easy just to work away on your own and not achieve as much as you could as quickly as you could. In the end that’s one of the reasons why so many new businesses fail. They don’t develop their abilities to generate business fast enough.
I don’t think consultants have a unique selling proposition when they first start out. That’s why I always encourage new consultants to focus on offering unique support and flexible support to customers and letting their style and approach develop.
Finally there are so many unhappy business people who haven’t obeyed the simple rule about managing their own online presence that a warning about this just had to come early in the series of tips.
Now we’re finished with those pieces of general advice for experts starting out in business it’s worth thinking about some more focused tips.
Tip six in the series of one hundred tips to help you when you start your consulting business is:
Decide what you legal status is going to be.
Are you going to be a sole trader?
Are you working in partnership with someone or with more than one other person?
Are you setting up a limited company?
Are you setting up a social enterprise?
Are you setting up another sort of business?
You need to decide and you need to decide quickly.
There’s something else you need to think about.
Will you be employed or self-employed?
Again, you need to know this. You also need to let the right authorities know about your decision, starting with HM Revenue and Customs.
Deciding on your legal status in business is something to do before you start trading – or at least before you raise your first invoice, or think about how you are going to promote yourself.
Starting Your Business – what did you do?
Did you have any difficulty in deciding on what sort of business to set up?
How did you decide which was the right legal status for you?
Let me know in the comments . . .
About Margaret Adams
[...] Decide what you legal status is going to be. [...]