Flying Solo

September 2, 2009

This originally appeared on AlansForums.com, but I think it has utility for my larger community:

Short and Sweet

Okay, so what makes people successful in the solo consulting business? Who else would know as well as I?!

• The self-confidence to help others with the belief that your value is an asset and needs to be shared.

• Obvious manifestation of value and expertise in the form of identifiable intellectual property and testimonials to your ability.

• Using value and outputs as the barometers of worth, and not time, tasks, and inputs.

• Ongoing learning and development. The capacity to ask more questions than to provide “answers” and solutions.

• Continual reinvention, wherein your learning and intellectual capital evolve and are recombined to create new products, services, and relationships.

• The belief that you are a peer of buyers and an insistence, from square zero, that your relationships be with buyers.

• The ability to communicate superbly in writing and speech, and to convince and influence others in a two-person meeting or a conference of three hundred.

• The recognition and exploitation of discretionary time as wealth, and the successful engagement in “one life” (not a business and a personal life).

• Prudent risk-taking, the acceptance of failure, and the ability to cut losses without cutting one’s wrists.

• The avoidance of both scope creep and scope seep as excuses to justify value, price, and presence.

• The creation and participation in peer and professional communities so that a “lone wolf” doesn’t become a crazed hermit.

• A total gratitude for the physical, emotional, and spiritual conditions which have guided you to such a place in your life.