Starting is the hardest part?

I am 3 weeks into my new career as an independent strategic consultant--focusing mainly on social enterprise (definition? I like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_enterprise), social business, and innovative charities and aid organisations.

I have a few active clients thus far and I am learning--quickly--how much work the non-billable part of this job is going to be. In these three weeks, I have had six "business development" meetings (potential clients) and have four scheduled for next week. It's really exciting to meet a variety of people working in this space, learn a bit about their work, and do my best to impress them with my ability to add value to their business. But I have to remind myself that this part of the job is not what pays the immediate bills! Independent consulting definitely has its cash flow issues, as Clay and I learned last week. And I have a sneaking suspicion that this will be a feast-or-famine kind of thing...one month every potential client I've ever met with will want some work done, and the next it will be tumbleweed and crickets chirping. Setting rates is also an interesting minefield. I had a meeting last week where I was asked my day rate, took a strategic second to think about the capacity and likely payscale of this organisation, and gave a rate at the higher end of the band I have decided is appropriate, all without batting an eye. SO proud of myself for shooting higher--I do believe that I am worth it an believe me, the figure is not astronomical. And then, the person I was meeting with wrote that damn number down, also without batting an eye. Damn! Too low! Well, live and learn. If I do get the gig it will be helpful anyway, since I am taking on a business planning opportunity for a start up dot-com that is significantly below anything that looks like my range of day rates.


But the payoffs--non-financial, I mean, are huge. I am working right now with RED, part of Design Council UK (http://www.design-council.org.uk/mt/red/), helping them do porject planning, top-line budgeting, and sponsorship pitch strategy for their 3-year project on ageing. They take a design-led approach to improving public services, considering the end user first and making as few assumptions as possible about the problems they are trying to solve. For this ageing project, they will spend hours and hours with older people and their carers and families, in their homes, at the doctor, and in the workplace. The goal is to understand what is really happening in our ageing society, and how radical transformation to public services--instead of incremental innovation--can improve all of our lives, because the current systems just weren't set up with today's society in mind. All fascinating stuff and they are inventive and passionate designers--and it is really rewarding to feel that I am adding value here. I am providing a fresh pair of eyes and some business thinking to their model.

The RED office is in a great part of town--Covent Garden--so it's a nice place to spend 2 days a week. Great shopping (not that I'm buying anything these days!), lots of people, good coffee shops.

Another piece of work is with a favorite professor of mine from the MBA at Oxford, Kim Alter. Kim founded her own social enterprise consultancy, Virtue Ventures, a few years back and has had amazing success with it--travelling all over the world helping develop social enterprise strategy, and contributing to major thinking on better development and aid strategies. Kim's asked me to contribute research to a job she's doing for USAID, one of the largest development aid funders in the world. We will be looking at who is out there funding social enterprise (SE) and Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP--really worth a look, good description here), and what their strategies and outcomes are. It will be an interesting opportunity to talk to a lot of people working in this field--of course there are really varied levels of success and efficiency in this space. More on this project as we get further into it.

Finally, I am hoping to bring in some new business soon, business that will offer me great learning opportunities and of course the opportunity to really add value to the social impact-focused work. I chose this line of work for a number of reasons--a major one being that I can't seem to bring myself to have a "normal" job, not once in my adult life thus far--but I will not be satisfied building my own consulting business if I am only financially successful and meet interesting people. More than anything, I like to feel useful--this runs all the way through my life and is likely the reason I always do dishes at parties and enjoy getting things off shelves for people shorter than me. In a larger sense, I like to feel useful in the sense of contributing something valuable to people and situations left out of prosperity. I hope that is what I will be able to do.

In some ways, this venture is an apprenticeship for me...I intend to take as much learning with me as possible whenever (if) I move into my next career life. Here's to another rollercoaster...