Whether you’ve ever been a consultant before or not, I hope you’ll start thinking of yourself as a consultant in 2015. You are the CEO of your own business. Your career is your business!

You can’t let your employer run your career —  not that most employers are sitting around worrying about their employees’ careers, if we are honest. You have to run your own career, and that means knowing what problem you solve for your employers.

If you think about it, a full-time employee is just a consultant with only one client. I hope you’ll take the next step in 2015 and get a consulting business card. You can consult at night and on the weekends. It’s a very good thing to do, not just for the extra income but for the mojo boost and the understanding of the market that a part-time consulting business gives you.

My daughter was just 19 when she started a music theory coaching business. She was happily surprised to find that people who pay fifteen bucks an hour for babysitting will pay thirty-five dollars an hour to someone who can teach their child to read music and understand music theory.

Some kids are really talented players or singers but they don’t know theory, and you have to pass a theory exam to get into music school.

My daughter started to pay attention to pain. Some parents had a lot of pain around music theory instruction. There is pain everywhere! No matter what sort of pain you solve, somebody  has it and they will pay you to make it go away.

 

 

It doesn’t take much to start a consulting business on the side. You should talk to your accountant, but you may not even need to incorporate your consulting business. In the U.S. you can consult under your own social security number. All you need is a business card, and you can get that from any office supply store or from vistaprint online.