The Conscientious Consultant

Many solopreneurs and one-person businesses choose to package their unique experience into consulting services to create an additional revenue stream.

How many are conscientious consultants though?

The conscientious consultant's main tasks are to:

Identify

Spotting a need in the wild is a learned skill. Hunting down the resources you need as an independent consultant, solopreneur, or one-person business to tackle that need is a gift. At the beginning of my single-person-shop journey I said yes to everything. There's a good story behind my always-say-yes position. I'll share it some time.

Listen

To gather useful information that will move things forward, it helps to create a sense of ease and comfort around each interaction. One way to do this is to actively listen for subtext - emotions and feelings - flowing beneath the words your clients choose to share. This helps to uncover opportunities to connect in meaningful, authentic ways. This is always a sound approach. It will take the focus off you and place it squarely on your client where it belongs.

Understand

Creating mutual understanding of <fill in the blank> is a two-way street. A commitment to shared understanding communicates empathy and contributes to an open, judgement-free environment. It also ensures your client is happy with the end result of your work together. Regularly confirming everyone is on the proverbial same page is a way to ensure expectations are met.

Be Resourceful

No matter how good and knowledgeable you are in your chosen niche there are always going to be questions for which you have no immediate answers. Being resourceful and knowing where to quickly find information when you need it is primo. Bonus points if you can gracefully say, "I don't know, but I know where to go to get an answer for you." In my experience, clients appreciate this. This shows you care enough about them to make sure they get accurate information.

These skills lead to a state of, what I like to call, complete consideration. When you use complete consideration when working with clients you are conscious of the power your words and actions can have with, for, and over others. When you thread a series of single words and actions together to form a complete thought that communicates an idea or feeling, the power of those single words and actions arranged in that specific order exponentially increases. This is the ultimate conscientious consultant.

So, can you identify and act upon opportunity? Can you listen actively and fully grasp what is being shared? Can you clarify expectations? Are you resourceful? 

If you answered yes to each of these, you may just be a perfect candidate for becoming a conscientious consultant.