{"id":4805,"date":"2020-04-17T23:50:02","date_gmt":"2020-04-17T18:20:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.setmore.com\/blog\/?p=4805"},"modified":"2024-04-04T16:02:05","modified_gmt":"2024-04-04T10:32:05","slug":"all-businesses-offer-online-consultation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.setmore.com\/blog\/all-businesses-offer-online-consultation\/","title":{"rendered":"The One Thing All Businesses (Even Yours) Can Offer: An Online Consultation"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

No matter your industry, the one resource that you accrue throughout your career that is both replenishable and never ending is your own expertise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you design websites, brands, or logos? Draft presentations or speeches for big corporations? Maintain payroll for your company? Contractor? Tattoo artist? Cake decorator? T-shirt designer? Blog post writer? How often have friends or junior colleagues asked to pick your brain about something in your career track or industry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Literally everyone who\u2019s been in their game for a few years can offer<\/a> their advice and expertise in the form of a consultation. In this post we\u2019ll lay out how you can do it, and support your business with extra income while encouraging others to respect your time as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The difference between a Freelancer and a Consultant<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

A freelancer does work. They use their expertise to produce a set product or outcome. A consultant helps others do work by giving advice, instruction, or an outline to get them started. For a consultant, their expertise is<\/em> the product, and they excel at making their expertise communicable and transferable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s also important to note that the boundaries here are often blurry. Usually the first step in any freelance gig is a consultation, where you determine the client\u2019s needs and establish the scope of work to be done. For a website designer, this means figuring out things such as: does the client\u2019s website need an intake form? Which browsers and devices must it be compatible with? And so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how do you make the jump from freelancer to consultant? We actually already tipped our hand here – you have to package your expertise as the product. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

—<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s a heuristic? You already know & use them everyday<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Heuristics are a set pattern of doing something in an efficient manner, usually developed through experience and trial-and-error. It\u2019s just a fancy way of saying how you learned to do something and be good at it. So for consultants, their expertise is the product, and your expertise is made up of heuristics: all the neat tricks and techniques that make up a particular skill. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making crispy, fluffy pancakes is a skill. But the heuristic required to make them might be things like, using a tablespoon to separate egg yolks from egg whites, or folding the batter rather than stirring it. Knowing that a cast iron pan will give you a better crisp than a teflon pan – that\u2019s a heuristic. (Ok, who\u2019s hungry?)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be a consultant means you\u2019re sharing your heuristics with your clients. This is what we mean when we say learn to package your expertise and make it transferable. Here\u2019s some practical ideas to get you started:<\/p>\n\n\n\n