Consulting Start Up And Management

Looking to start up your own research and evaluation consultancy? For almost 20 years, Gail V. Barrington has run popular workshops to help professional researchers and evaluators determine if they have what it takes to succeed as consultants. This book makes that helpful guidance, and more, available to a wider audience. Barrington shows readers how to get started, set fees, find work, manage time and money, set up an ownership structure and business systems, manage contracts, and work with subcontractors and staff. With Barrington's advice and encouragement, independent practitioners have the roadmap to success!"I would highly recommend it to anyone starting a consulting career. The author has truly singled out the most important lessons to be passed on, both of the practical type and of those related to consultancy."-George Grob, Center for Public Program Evaluation"This book addresses a big and important gap in the evaluation literature. It provides a clear and concise account of what evaluators and applied researchers need to know in order to succeed in independent consulting practice." -Stewart Donaldson, Claremont Graduate University

Consultants work in all fields. They operate from offices and from home, work for investment firms and as personal trainers, or have expertise as accountants and wedding planners. The independence, flexibility, and potential income it brings make for an exciting and satisfying career. And it’s an increasingly popular one for highly skilled, motivated professionals who’ve been laid off in this unstable economy. This guide features tips and tricks to help beat the competition, including how to: Set—and keep—personal and financial goals Organize important paperwork Price and market specific services Create advertising and publicity plans Grow a business, from finding a partner to managing employees Minimize and eliminate business risks Consultants are paid well for their advice—if they know how to operate a successful business. With advice from experts in a variety of areas, this valuable guide helps you create the business of your dreams!

Leading entrepreneurs into the multi-billion dollar consulting industry, the experts at Entrepreneur show you how to capitalize on your talents to help others achieve their business goals. Coached by experts, learn to define your market, find and keep clients, obtain licenses, set rates, monitor cash flow, hire staff, prepare contracts, agreements, and reports, and more. Includes new interviews with successful consultants, updated answers to frequently asked questions, and a completely refreshed list of the top 20 consulting businesses.

How can you take your skills and expertise and package and present it to become a successful consultant? There are proven time-tested principles, strategies, tactics and best-practices the most successful consultants use to start, run and grow their consulting business. Consulting Success teaches you what they are. In this book you'll learn: - How to position yourself as a leading expert and authority in your marketplace - Effective marketing and branding materials that get the attention of your ideal clients - Strategies to increase your fees and earn more with every project - The proposal template that has generated millions of dollars in consulting engagements - How to develop a pipeline of business and attract ideal clients - Productivity secrets for consultants including how to get more done in one week than most people do in a month - And much, much more

Get from Idea to Product/Market Fit in B2B. The world has changed. Nowadays, there are more companies building B2B products than there’s ever been. Products are entering organizations top-down, middle-out, and bottom-up. Teams and managers control their budgets. Buyers have become savvier and more impatient. The case for the value of new innovations no longer needs to be made. Technology products get hired, and fired faster than ever before. The challenges have moved from building and validating products to gaining adoption in increasingly crowded and fragmented markets. This, requires a new playbook. The second edition of Lean B2B is the result of years of research into B2B entrepreneurship. It builds off the unique Lean B2B Methodology, which has already helped thousands of entrepreneurs and innovators around the world build successful businesses. In this new edition, you’ll learn: - Why companies seek out new products, and why they agree to buy from unproven vendors like startups - How to find early adopters, establish your credibility, and convince business stakeholders to work with you - What type of opportunities can increase the likelihood of building a product that finds adoption in businesses - How to learn from stakeholders, identify a great opportunity, and create a compelling value proposition - How to get initial validation, create a minimum viable product, and iterate until you're able to find product/market fit This second edition of Lean B2B will show you how to build the products that businesses need, want, buy, and adopt.

Turn Your Knowledge and Experience Into Big Bucks! Whether you’re a computer whiz, a business expert, or a fundraising dynamo, your special skills are in high demand. Let the experts at Entrepreneur show you how to capitalize on your talents and help others achieve their business goals! No matter what your area of expertise, this hands-on guide will tell you everything you need to know to start your own successful consulting business. Discover how to get your business off the ground, position yourself as an expert, attract clients, operate day to day, and build revenue. Plus, gain powerful insight from interviews with practicing consultants, answers to frequently asked questions and an invaluable list of the top 20 consulting businesses! Learn how to: Set up your business with minimal startup investment Define your market Build a business brand that gets noticed Capture clients by showing them you’re worth their money Price your service Advertise and publicize to attract more clients Hire a support staff And more You already have the knowledge—this guide shows you how to share it with others and make a profit!

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

This guide for aspiring entrepreneurs provides expert advice on every aspect of launching a new business. It is designed to be of particular value for academics wishing to exploit the commercial value of a new technology or business solution. Inspiring and readable, it shows how to evaluate the strength of a business idea, how to protect inventions, reviews legal steps and responsibilities, shows how to position products in the market, how to create a business plan and raise initial capital. Case studies, exercises and tips demystify the process of starting a business, build confidence and greatly increase the chances of success.