Setting Up Your Consulting Practice

If you are currently in a corporate role and thinking about transitioning to the independent, professional world in a year or two, it’s a fantastic time to invest in building your thought leadership platform. 

In a lot of ways, this is good for your company as well, because you’re also building your company’s visibility; but at the same time, you’re building your visibility. So obviously, with the permission of your company and not having anything confidential, look for opportunities to write something about what your firm is doing in an industry journal.

Look for opportunities to give a presentation at an industry conference. Breakout sessions can be even better than giving a keynote speech, so don’t disregard the benefit of being in a breakout session or in a panel discussion on a focused topic. Also, look for opportunities to be a guest on podcasts to talk about what’s going on in your industry. You could write guest blog posts.

Look for opportunities to raise your visibility through giving speeches. When you have the authority of the position that you’re in, you’re head of supply chain at company X, Y, Z or you’re the head of strategy at company A, B, C,  it gives you some authority to get invited to give talks: for example, even your local business school or your alumni where you went to school. Reach out to the management consulting association. Ask them if they’d like to have you come and give a talk to their members.

Look for opportunities to give speeches, to write blog posts, to appear on podcasts, to speak at conferences and then keep a list of every time you appear in one of those. 

Same thing with press; if there’s a reason at your company for you to speak to the press, take advantage of that and then keep links to all those articles. When you become an independent consultant, you want to have all those links so you can have press that you’ve done and you can use that on your website as thought leadership that’s coming from you.