After March 3, I plan to leave my current gig to pursue freelance consulting for awhile, along with a number of colleagues. The exact vehicles and logistics are still in the formative phase – fortunately the administrative logistics for consulting businesses are not too arduous.
I find it useful to revisit a post I wrote a couple of years ago on independent consulting because I don't have the sales prospecting scale I use to have within a larger firm. I think that a lot of what I wrote about independent consulting is still true. I might have one additional add, and that is I think that social networking tools are getting better for helping consultants. Just the other day I was just contacted by a CEO of a technology company because of my LinkedIn profile and updates I had made to my status (which stated "Steve is looking for new contract or employment opportunities"). The CEO has been looking to grow his business and is looking for general management, finance, marketing, business development, and account management assistance. Although the lean was toward a full-time hire position for me, the geography is unlikely to work. So now the impetus is on me to work with him to determine whether I can help in either a consultative role or interim management role. Now in all fairness, the CEO knew me from before from venture-related circles and consulting, so this is not a cold networking opportunity. That said, I didn't have to reach out to him for the process to get kicked off. I was able to use social networking tools. And as compared to having to compete against 300-1000 applications for a job (I'm a normal guy and have *never* won in that kind of environment), one has to think about how to measurably change the odds of winning.
Of course, I've probably jinxed my personal opportunity by talking about it in the open. But given that we are in a terrible recession and that freelance consulting is the "new unemployment", I wanted to elevate the discussion.