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Small Business Consulting

Small business consulting (along with individual consulting) can be a great addition to your work at home career or home based business. There's really nothing like human interaction when it comes to helping someone thrive in one or more facets of their financial or personal life. If you have experience or extensive knowledge in any field, you can do this.

Small business consulting can range from aiding in the planning of a company's infrastructure to simply listening to a business owners concerns, and brainstorming possible ideas for rectifying the various areas which may need improvement. If you feel that you are not qualified due to a lack of credentials, keep in mind that, above all, people want results. Results, therefore, are what builds credibility - not certifications, formal education, or fancy business cards. The latter are simply nice additions to your portfolio, similar to being an earnest, genuine, and respectful person.

If you're certain that you would be able to assist a company, business owner, or salesperson in successfully achieving a higher level of performance, then there shouldn't be a reason to not charge for your services. Oftentimes, people will take you much more seriously if you do. 'Free' tends to portray an image of offering no real value, even if this is completely contrary to the truth. The expression "You gotta look out for number 1" is in order here; It implies that you need to at the very least survive (or in other words, break even), and preferably be well off, to be in a position of empowering others. We agree with this statement.

Small business consulting is also a great way of positioning yourself as an expert. Since your clients will be directly taking up your time, and paying you accordingly, they'll absorb your advice with strong consideration and may refer you to other non-competing colleagues in their industry who could also benefit from your services. Even the most successful businesspersons do consulting on a fairly regular basis. Whether it's purely for financial reasons, or for maintaining a status of authority in a particular niche, varies per person... but we'd say that in most cases it's a combination of the two. Their motive for one-on-one coaching may also be to inspire and/or "give back" in some way, with not much concern for monetary or industry-wide growth.

Communication can be done through phone, live Web-based text chat, online voice/video calls, or e-mail. Staying organized shouldn't be too difficult at the very beginning, but as your customer base increases you may want to utilize the services of an online appointment scheduling provider (where you can easily refer clients to book their own appointments [along with an optional, free initial consultation] independently). It really doesn't matter what field you're in. Small business consulting can become your reality, and should be woven into your monetization mix.