The Selling vs. Doing Dilemma
However, there's a classic problem when any individual tries to function alone as a consultant: "When you're selling, you can't be doing, and when you're doing, you can't be selling." To thrive, you must do superb work. Unfortunately, that may leave too little time to go out seeking new clients and projects to keep you busy after your current projects are finished.
When do you get your job offer... when you "pitch" your consulting proposal or after you've performed?
Obviously, an offer could come at either time.
However, one can't caution you strongly enough not to go in with a phony offer of consulting services, which is really a thinly disguised request for employment. If that becomes your game, it's dishonest; it's transparently obvious; it deserves to fail; and it almost certainly will fail.
Frankly, if a prospective client is going to offer you a job, you're better off if the marriage comes after a successful consulting engagement, not before. By then your prospective boss knows you and your work. There's less chance that he or she will preempt your independence, only to become disillusioned and discard you later.
Meanwhile, you've also found out some beneficial information. You know lots more about the client company. You know whether you enjoy consulting. And, after your "firm's" pension and profit-sharing plans are in place, you know how much more you're salting away when working for yourself, rather than a large corporation. This is probably your one-and-only shot at independence. Don't toss it away casually.
On the other hand, your earnest pitch for a consulting assignment will show you off to advantage. Therefore, it very possibly may lead to an excellent employment offer, instead of a consulting contract. If so...and if you accept...congratulations and best wishes! You've found a job by not looking for one.
But suppose you don't get an employment offer. You just keep on working for several employers.
Is that so bad...if you make good money and enjoy your work?
Consider two statistical facts:
1. America's largest corporations are cutting the number of executives they employ (and other employees too).
2. America's small- and medium-sized companies are creating most of the new jobs at all levels.
That's right. More jobs - at all levels - are ending than are being created by our biggest corporations. Fortunately for the nation, and for you if you're seeking employment, our smaller companies are creating more new jobs at every level, including executive, than the largest corporations are ending. Unfortunately, smaller companies struggling to grow can't afford - at their stage of development-to pay high salaries.
So the good news is that smaller companies may have employment for you when the biggest ones don't. The bad news is that, being smaller, they can't afford to pay you as much as you've been making with MegaCorp.
However, with luck, you may get equity participation in a smaller company that can make you far, far richer than if you'd stayed at MegaCorp earning three times the salary for a few more years, while watching your MC options sink under water.
Which brings me to the wise words of my friend Paul, 59 years old, who was tossed out of his Senior VP - Marketing & Sales job after 29 years with the same company:
"I discovered two things, John: It's true that there aren't always that many jobs. But there's always plenty of work!"
Acting on this insight, Paul, who'd led a hundred people at headquarters and a thousand in the field sales force, immediately got in touch with the presidents of smaller companies marketing to the same types of customers he'd dealt with for 29 years. He also contacted the presidents of customer companies he'd sold to. And several of those CEOs realized that Paul had a great deal of knowledge they could use.
As a result, Paul got "Crandall-type" continuing relationships with three smaller companies, working the scattered-day equivalent of one-week-per- month for each. He also secured exclusive distribution rights to a couple product lines within his tri-state area.
The bottom line for Paul is employment. The three consulting activities generate about the same money he was making in his corporate job. But now he has much more economic security. He can lose any one of his part-time deals and still have a good solid income. Meanwhile, his personal distributorship business continues to grow, entirely separate from his three relationships with other companies. Paul has found the best of all worlds...a chance to become entrepreneur of his own young business, while retaining an income from other people's established businesses.
