Well we all read in the papers that consultants charge £500 quid a day for um ,consulting, so how do i become a consultant, and what can i consult on.

I am an apprentice trained craftsman,have a good working knowledge of the Care home sector,bikes and riding,and people.

Anyone need ay consulting doing…………….

I have plenty of advice I could offer but first…

Are you prepared to pay the £500/day consultancy fees?

seriously?!

i think you should consult in consulting, it seems to me you know what it is and you'd be good at it. Heck i'd pay you 600gbp a day to consult for me..

Seems as if you go into a company either well performing or failing, then you tell them some things they want to hear and somethings they dont.

Then either way you get paid, if they fail you tell them they should have took your advice, and if they succeed they obviously spent money well on my fees, and i can then cream a lot more off them and similar companies.

Please tell nme its not that simple as i like a challenge.

as a senior consultant i can tell you. Add more value than you cost.

If you want to know how to do that it will cost 800 per day and the clock is ticking

I wouldn't get out of bed to consult for 500 quid.

1500 quid a day is where the smart money is. Obviously the stuff coming out of my mouth when I'm charging that much is positively gold plated. You wouldn't even understand it.

edit: Actually, you'd need a 500 quid a day consultant just to act as a translator.

It's useful to have a completely exagerated idea of your own capabilities, and not to let any real-world experience dislodge it.

I see a lot of consultancy work (in any field) awarded on track record. Which is one of those chicken/egg situations. I'd suggest finding a current consultancy company and offer your expertise as an associate. You won't get top day rates but you build that up over the years.

get a job, get made redundant, return to job saying you are a consultant viola!

#
manitou – Member
return to job saying you are a consultant viola!
Posted 6 minutes ago # Report-Post

I was a consultant viola once, I was replaced by a cello on a fixed term contract.

TAXI!

I was a consultant viola once, I was replaced by a cello on a fixed term contract.

Could you not have worked together? Would have been another string to your bow…..or did the thought of playing second fiddle not appeal?

*rings taxi while putting on coat*

edit: Actually, you'd need a 500 quid a day consultant just to act as a translator.

What Samuri said is that he's is possibly the finest consultant in the land and that he'd cost far more than £500 a day. Infact he is so good you'll have to hire me at £500/day to translate for him. If you couldn't understand what he said, he charges £5000/day for his advice, and his advice is gold plated.

I'm an advice gold plater; tricky work, but steady…

The quoted figures won't be take home. As an academic doing the occasional consultancy project i've been priced at between £500-800, but more than 2/3 of that is overheads.

I get flogged out as a consultant at well over a grand a day.

I see absolutely nothing like that as take-home.

So how do you become a consultant then.

You need to know stuff… or at least convince other people you know stuff so that they'll pay you for your insight.

nicheness is how I did it.

Become very good at something very few people do, identify who needs your services and demonstrate to them how you help them make money/not lose money. In my case its bringing a skill set to a particular market that lacked it.

What Stoner said. A good place to go is management consultancy. Obviously if I provide consultancy it doesn't take long for people to work out what I'm saying is complete bollox because the IT systems I advise on for them don't do what I said they would. Even an IT director can work it out fairly quickly.

With management consultancy it can take years for people to figure out what you said was bollox. Mainly because nobody else in the field has a **** clue either and they all hide their incompetance behind each other.

management consulting is the last thing you should look at unless you want to compete with masses of asses offering the same thing

as stoner suggests, niche sector, preferably high value, and be good very at what you do

but that's still no guarantee of success

and if it was lots of cash for no effort or benefits to clients, you'd all be doing it

oh, it sounds like management consultancy is already filled with asses. That's a pity, it was a good earner for lots of people for a long time.

Try another area where it's impossible to comprehend whether you're doing any good or not, like marketing or sales forcasting.

sales and marketing results can be easily measured, therefore you can tell who is doing any good or not

like to try again?

What others have said – generally you see less than a third of your charge out rate. You also work on a chargeable time basis, which is a royal pain in the arse.

It's much like accounting or law in some ways – if you're picked out to be a partner / associate, then you'll be raking it in. There are a lot of people doing donkey work on average pay who'll be doing so for the rest of time.

like to try again?

Not really, I've had way too much experience with these people to believe they do anything other than wing everything constantly, some luck out and retire on the profits, the rest base their projections on five year cycles and obviously they're long gone before anyone can work out where all the money went.

somebody pays though! I can save a company £000s/annum… cost ya 500/day to find out! 😆

No seriously, I,ve got the magic formula… call me on 00BL0x! 😀

I think we've missed the number 1 'skill' and that is being mates (or often family) with a director of a company…you've got to get yourself down the tennis / golf / squash club and 'network'.

Once you've wormed your way in you can get into the company and start talking to the people already in the business…report back what you've learnt from the workers already in the business but the director didn't want to get their hands dirty talking to…present large bill and smile.

…and as been said, it doesn't matter if you **** it up…you'll be on your way with your large cheque and the directors will never admit they wasted the money.

apply here?

My largest "expense" is tax. As an analyst, apart from some travel and keeping a home office running (stationary, IT equipment, internet access, coffee jar) my gross margin in my business is very high – I have very few overheads. In fact looking at my accounts for the last few years it seems to be 10-12% excluding any salary I might draw (as opposed to dividends).

I then pay the corporate rate on the net operating profit at 21%.

My personal take from every £1 I charge then is about 70p – and then I pay whatever personal tax and NI is appropriate on that based on allowances and how much is as dividend or salary.

And remember, being niche doesnt necessarily mean being the best (although it helps), just being rare. In the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king. Or think of Jones bikes 😉

EDIT: Oh and I would like to differentiate myself from the Management Consultants. I never produce wordy documents, only financial models, and they are very often tested while Im still on the job. If I'm wrong, I'm, going to be there to cop it in the neck! 😉

There you go project ……… with your "good working knowledge of the Care home sector,bikes and riding,and people", select one of those rare niches and fill your boots.

niches are in the crossovers. Think like SS monstercross, or 650b Tourer Gus.

Maybe project can do some OAP pump track training or something?

LOL

it's very easy in a large business to stop being able to see the wood for the trees, to become too focussed on internal operations, politics etc.
so an outsider comes in, uses their external experience and perspective to state what they think is the bleeding obvious. but if senior management couldn't see it and were missing opportunities without their help then that was ££ well spent, no? profits made, business carries on, no-one made redundant etc.
although i did walk out of my last job because they insisted on changing my job title to consultant and my boss was the biggest liar you've ever met…!