Business management

In starting and growing a consulting business, you face many decisions. One of the earliest decisions you need to make involves the structure of your business. Should you set up a sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation or some other structure? Nina Kaufman offers this discussion of the reasons to avoid sole proprietorship. However, even if sole […]

After more than 10 years in consulting, I’ve gone through a lot of goal-setting exercises. Some of those goals included: planning a consulting business graduating from an entrepreneurship program getting my first client achieving part-time success leaving my full-time job making more than I did in my full-time job securing my first "Fortune 500" client

It’s Friday. Regular readers know that I reserve Fridays for the Friday 5 — a weekly top five list. Last week, I said I was making an exception when I linked to a list of the top 10 ways to clear clutter. Well, this week, I’m making an exception again. I found Ron Garrett’s top

Last week, I complained about my top 5 sources of office clutter. Since then, I’ve stumbled across Life Organizer’s 10 simple ways to clear clutter from your home and office. I usually stick to top 5 lists for the Friday 5, but I’m making an exception this week. This suggestion stuck out for me:Make a

Subcontracting tends to be common in the world of consulting. Whether you’re the subcontractor or the person hiring others for subcontracting, you’ll run into outsourced outsourcing at some point. But some consultants shy away from working for other consultants. That’s because some consultants seem to think that they need not pay till their client has

Do you think of yourself as a freelancer? There’s almost no difference between a freelancer and a consultant. In either case, you have a variety of clients and projects. It seems that some people prefer the term "freelancer" because it sounds more informal. But make no mistake: you’re still running a business. What’s involved in

Subcontractor — what is a subcontractor? A subcontractor is an indvidual or organization that assumes all or part of another party’s contractual obligations. The subcontractor signs a contract to take on some of the work for which another company has a contractor. For example, when contruction companies are hired to build houses, they often farm

Looking at buying a business, instead of starting one from scratch? Check out this week’s Friday 5, a list of the top 5 mistakes made when buying a business (expired link), via Michelle Knudson. She notes the importance of evaluating the potential of the business: We often get so sidetracked by the idea of being

When you’ve got too much work on your plate, you may start thinking about farming out work to subcontractors. It’s tempting to look at the work available and consider that you could still mark it up and make money for doing nothing. However, the realities of hiring subcontractors should not be taken lightly. In hiring

As your consulting business grows in popularity, you may find yourself in the favourable position of having too much business. That excess of work means too many leads coming in, too many requests from repeat clients and too many referrals from people who know and trust your work. As great as this situation sounds —