Consulting The Right Consultant

by on

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.

By Alyssa Royse

When was the last time you went to a networking event forstartups and entrepreneurs and heard someone say, “it was fine, but it wasmostly a lot of consultants?” Last week, probably. And the word “consultant”was likely said as if it was your acne-prone, near-sighted, third-cousin onceremoved that your crazy aunt Edna had suggested you take out on a date.Consultants! We know they’re there, but we don’t know what to make of them,much less what to do with them. As a result, we don’t give them enough credit.
 
So let’s try and figure this whole thing out, and maybe wecan all work together (or at least get along.)
 
First off, let’s divide those pesky consultants into a fewspecific species: 
  1. Task Masters – these are people who can be given a finitetask to execute on, clearly identified by a specific skill set and result.Think of bookkeepers, accountants, lawyers, programmers etc….
  2. Temporary Team Mates – these are people who bring aslightly more diverse set of skills to a project, and are as valued for theirvision and energy as they are their skill set and result. They are great forspecific projects for which you don’t have enough bandwidth, but know that youcan’t really hire another full-time employee.
  3. Next Level Leaders – these are people with moreexperience than anyone on your team who may be able to get your company /project to the next level, but probably wouldn’t want a full time job with youbecause you are, and we mean this in the nicest possible way, beneath them.

Why work with a consultant? The short answer is: because youneed to. There comes a point when you have too much to do, and neither theskill set nor the time to do it. At such a time, the best decision you can makeis to get help. While it is easy to look at that as a simple expense that youmay not be able to afford, you need to step back and look at the labor andopportunity lost while you fail to delegate. Sure, that consultant may cost you$120 an hour, but not freeing up your time and energy to pursue that $50,000sale or strategic partnership is going to cost you a hell of a lot more. Notdelegating when you need to is the equivalent of driving a train withlaser-focus on the tracks, and forgetting to put coal in the engine’s furnace. 

When do you need to think about hiring a consultant? 

  1. When you have tasks that need to be done and you don’tknow how, or have time, to do them. You need someone to just write the FAQsection of your web site, or be the CEO’s voice on your blog because, as greatas he is, your CEO just can’t write (or doesn’t have time to,) or you needsomeone to manage your books, develop a launch timeline, track yourprogress….HIRE A TASK MASTER.   
  2. When you have enough traction that even doing yourcore-business is unmanageable, but you don’t have enough SURE revenue andgrowth to hire another employee, and there’s this great opportunity that youdon’t want to pass up…HIRE ATEMPORARY TEAM MATE. (You canalways see if they want a “real job” in the future.) 
  3. You have grown steadily, and are suddenly stagnating abit, not sure where to go next. There’s nothing wrong with where you are, butif you could just tap this one new market, you could….HIRE A NEXT LEVEL LEADER.
  4. You need to convince investors, or your board, that yournew vision is the right one. HIRE A NEXT LEVEL LEADER to design the new visionand convince the board / investors that it’s the right idea.
  5. You need to make a big push to “announce” yourself in anew market, but it’s just a temporary sprint. HIRE A TASK MASTER or TEMPORARYTEAM MATE. Something like….  Youhave a product that has been used in operating rooms, but you now realize it’sgreat for use in kitchens. Resist the urge to hire a marketing manager, buthire a marketing consultant to get you in view in the new market, and spendyour money on sales instead, which is what you will need for the long haul.

You get the picture. Hire a consultant to do something thatyou can’t, or do something that only needs to be done for a short period oftime.

But who do you hire? Here’s the little known secret aboutconsultants, they’re everywhere, some of them don’t even know they’reconsultants. A consultant can be anyone, they don’t have to have a consultancypractice, or even a track record as a consultant. They just have to have askill that you want and the time and desire to use it to benefit you.
  • Ask your friends who they have used.
  • Look around you and identify work that you admire, findout who did it, and ask if they’ll work with you. Need a writer? Read blogs,find a voice you like, ask them if they’ll write for you. Need a designer? Lookat design that you like, find out who did it, ask them if they’ll design foryou. Don’t limit yourself to people who identify themselves as consultants.
  • Look around you and find people you like. This is anincredible community of brilliant people. The vast majority of us areunderemployed, or working our asses of to build our businesses, but not makingany money at it yet (and most of us need and want to make money.) If there issomeone in the community who you’d like to work with on a project, but youthink they are unavailable because they’ve got a startup of their own, askthem anyway. You may be just be what you each need to get to the next level, andmay even discover a great new relationship that will be useful for years tocome.

There are a lot of reasons why really talented people arewilling to consult rather than have a “real job.” Some of us are justgenetically incapable of doing the 9-5 thing and would rather consult. Some ofus have short attention spans and prefer the intense sporadic sprints ofproject work. Some of us have kids or hobbies that we want to prioritize ourhours around, but can work at unconventional times. Some of us were downsizedand haven’t found anything else yet….

Great, now you know you need a consultant, and you foundone, but what do you do with them? Successfully working with a consultant is nodifferent than any other relationship. It requires clear communication,expectations and accountability.

  • Make sure you know exactly what you need them to do.Whether it is a specific task, or developing the means to get you to the nextlevel, you need to know what you want them to do. And you need to BOTH agree onthe outcomes, time and compensation before you start. If there are anyuncertainties, it is best to say so up front and allow for the possibility thatthe deal may have to change if the scope begins to creep.
  • Make sure that the consultant has access to all theinformation and team members they need in order to do the best job possible.
  • Get it in writing. A clear contract is the key to a cleanrelationship. This should include budgets, timelines and clear outcomes thatyou are paying for. It should also include clear language about who is payingfor incidental expenses required to get the job done, and what those expensesare likely to be.
  • Check in, but don’t micro manage. If you aremicro-managing your consultant, then there is no point in hiring them, you may aswell do it yourself. If you want and like and trust them, then get out of theway and let them do their job, so that you can do yours.
The truth is, we all use consultants all the time, we justdon’t realize it. We outsource everything from house-cleaning to educating ourchildren, cutting our hair to designing our workouts and mixing us the rightcocktail at happy hour. The reasons we do those things – from “I don’t know how to” to “I don’t have time to” to “I’m just happier that way” -  are the same reasons youshould use consultants in your business. There are people out there who can dowhatever it is that you need done, and using them to do it is often the bestdecision that you can make.
___________
Alyssa Royse writes real good. She is busy with her startup,but will happily write real good for you too, if you pay her, seeing as hersuper-stealth-startup isn’t paying her yet. She knows lots of brilliantconsultants – some of whom don’t know they are – who will work for you too.She’s hired some of them, and is damned glad she did. Real glad.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to GeekWire's free newsletters to catch every headline

Job Listings on GeekWork

Find more jobs on GeekWork. Employers, post a job here.