Being a consultant takes a few ingredients. All consultants have to be able to juggle wearing a multitude of different hats while completing a variety of goals and objectives. Your job is to create plans based on what your customers want or need. So, what’s the difference between a good consultant and a great consultant? Good consultants reach out to existing customers and ask them what they might want or what they need.  They then create plans around the feedback that they’re given. They’re playing it safe. Great consultants, on the other hand, dream about what people really want or need. They bet on those ideas paying off and they take risks to produce greatness.  

Long gone are my days of searching through bags, cars and throughout the house for a pair of reading glasses. As a consultant, I have just a few “must have” items that work for both my time traveling for clients and also for my time at home. Reading glasses are a must. Think of how many times you’ve been on an airplane, in an airport, in a meeting or in a new hotel room while traveling through business. Nothing is in one place; you’re shuffling through your bags to find what you need. My biggest complaint was buying glasses I would continually lose or having a pair with a case too big to carry comfortably. Being on the road for work weekly, there are ample places for me to lose track of belongings.

Every week, J&S Tech Designs publishes weekly guest posts to our website and to our weekly newsletter. These articles are from guest authors who can provide informative, interesting and useful perspectives to our readers on a variety of topics related to our business. This week, we are in need of a guest blogger. If you're reading this and would like to be a guest author you can visit our Guest Post Submission Page and submit an article for review.

As a consultant, you are sometimes called in to look over business’ existing well oiled processes and are tasked with coming up with a better solution.  This is known as disruption consulting. You are being pulled into a situation where the status-quo isn’t currently working and you are being asked to come up with and execute a better solution.  While it’s the best choice for many businesses, disruption consulting is going to ruffle some feathers and as a consultant you had better know what you are doing. 
 

Have you ever had the opportunity, in business, to barter or trade services with another business? When presented with the opportunity, how does it strike you? Some consider bartering and trading services as a negative. If there’s no cash flow, then there’s no point. What do you think? Does it make sense, when you are starting out for instance, to trade with another business for services?  What about later in your business cycle? In our opinion the answer is yes, yes, and yes.