Wondering how to start a consulting business that funds your goals and lifestyle for years to come?
Let’s take a look at my personal story on how it all started.
The year is 2012…
And I dream every day of freedom.
My life consists of the same monotony – day in and day out – five days a week (plus a half-day on Saturday once a month).
My hourly rate is $17.50, and every day I picture my life, differently… I want to be free, to do what I love, to master a craft, to work from wherever I want (and whenever I want). I attended school online in those days, early in the morning; and built my “business” after hours. Actually – you couldn’t really call it a business.
It didn’t fit the criteria. Instead of earning income (as businesses are supposed to do), it was costing me money… I remained self-taught and learned what worked by figuring out every possible way it did NOT work.
Life is a grueling teacher…
Every lesson is paid for either in time or in money, but oftentimes, the most expensive lessons are those we pay with our time. I can get back all of the money I’ve invested… but my time is gone for good.
By the time you finish this article, you will realize that money is actually the EASIEST currency to trade in. In hindsight, I realized all of my moments of explosive growth, directly followed moments of explosive investments — when I decided that my time was more costly than my money, and thus I chose to invest money to save me time.
It is easier to look at this objectively when you have money… of course, if you have $100,000 sitting in a bank, you might be more prone to say, “I have more time than money.” It is much harder to believe this before you have money, which is what I had to ultimately do! As long as you treat your time as less valuable than money, your time will always be less valuable than your money.
What I am LITERALLY saying to you right now is this:
you determine the value of your life, by your choices.
I made a choice a long time ago that I was going to treat my time as valuable, even BEFORE it was “technically” valuable.
I experienced several false starts, early on. But as it turns out, “false starts” can sometimes be worse than NO starts! I’d rather know the things I do not know than stay stuck with a blind spot. I tell clients now, “the areas we struggle most are not usually the areas we are unprepared for… they are the areas we THINK we are prepared for, but have not yet been tested in.” It is the risk we don’t see coming that will get us into the most trouble.
I tried all sorts of things to figure out my way:
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Dabbling in paid advertising
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Hiring people to teach me how to market myself organically
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Changing my offer (at least a dozen times)
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Blogging
Eventually, I realized something was missing. Embarrassingly, I plowed ahead anyways, thinking that “working harder” would one day fix the issue. Over the following paragraphs, I am going to teach you what I wish I had known in the early days. I will show you how to skip the costly lessons we chose to learn the hard way.
Every writer says that their work will be valuable, and most of the time they’re just trying to fill up pages. I have the unfair advantage of ~100,000 clients that have been a part in putting this together for you. This will be a manual for you on how to start a consulting business that is crazy profitable. I don’t expect you to believe that, yet, but I do expect you to fully invest yourself in the extraction of information from these paragraphs.
Years ago, dreaming of a way out of the cubicle, with a net worth of negative $25k… I vowed that if I ever “made it,” I’d teach people like me how to do it faster. Well, I think it’s safe to say we’ve made it, and this article is a labor of promise that I made to you and myself in the early days.
Somewhere in the world someone is reading this article who feels the exact same way I did. Maybe you’re that person. Maybe you’re just a consultant who heard how much money we make and you want to learn how we do it! Either way, I intend to deliver on my promise.
At a recent conference, someone asked me what I would write about. I had been writing content for our Entrepreneurship Blog for a while, but I told them to close their eyes and just visualize this scenario. I know you can’t close your eyes, but you can play along and feel what I’m about to share with you…
Imagine the following daily routine. Maybe, you’ll find out, this isn’t all that different from your own routine.
You wake up, early. Let’s say 6am. And jump straight into your day. Regardless of your current status, background, or income — just go with me on this for a minute. Go ahead and mentally place yourself in the picture my words are about to create for you.
If you’re like most people, you tend to do the same thing every morning… maybe a pre-day smoothie, some vitamins, obviously get dressed and make sure your bags are packed for the day. Then you walk outside to the car parked in the driveway. You are about to head to the gym, because great days are created in the morning…
You’ve worked hard for this life. Made sacrifices.
Some big, some small – but still significant. You haven’t been handed things cheaply or easily. And you know what? You are happy. Life has its problems, of course. But life is pretty good. You have friends and colleagues who are not as far along as you are, and they look up to you. That feels nice. But every once in a while, there is a nagging fear inside of you. I mean, the facts are the facts.
The house, the car, the current “level” of living — you know life is good, but is it the best life could be? If you decide one day you need a break, an extended vacation, or maybe to just stop working for a period of time, no-can-do. Maybe the house was a bit of a stretch… okay it was a stretch… and you are currently spending a bit more than you are comfortable with each month. Financially, things could be better.
That is all beside the point, though. The point is, you’re making progress. You have nice things. And you’re not “unhappy.” But every morning around the same time, as you open the trunk of your car to put your bags in and head to the gym — the same thing happens. Across the street, in a similar house as yours, you see two Ferraris in the driveway, a 911 Turbo S by the mailbox and a Tesla Model X in the garage.
“Who is this kid?”
That’s the thought you first had when you saw the owner of the garage (and the house attached to it). He’s younger than you by a decade. But clearly he must be doing something very different. With a million dollars worth of automobiles parked inside and outside the house, he has to be doing something different than you, that’s for sure.
Every day this happens like clockwork.
But one day, things change. Your day is going about as normal, you have a great workout. You get to work the same time you always do. The day is relatively uneventful. And before you know it, you’re heading to lunch. On the way back to the office you stop at Starbucks. Thank god for mobile order, right?
As you’re walking in to pick up your drink you notice a familiar Ferrari in the parking lot. And inside is your neighbor, looking like he just worked out, in the middle of the day, chatting with a barista. And your curiosity gets the best of you.
Here are the options you run through in your head:
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Rich parents?
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Gifted some real estate as a kid?
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Living off credit cards?
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…rich spouse??
You go through the list of reasons why he clearly seems to have surpassed you, but – UNLIKE you – he doesn’t seem to be stressed out or grinding away for it. He looks happier than you, easier going than you, and this conflicts with everything you’ve thought about “rich people” — the money hungry, heartless, grind-a-holic bastards who sacrifice their family, friends and happiness for their wealth.
Surely this kid has a job, right? The curiosity won’t let you go. You go up and say hello, a bit of small talk… and then before leaving you ask,
“By the way, would love to talk to you about what you do for a living?”
He looks quickly to the Ferrari then back again and knows your meaning. By the way, you’ve never noticed, until now, but the watch he’s wearing would cost you 6 months of your income. In your head you think, “What in the world, I’ll have whatever this kid’s having!”
He smiles, as if he’s been asked this question a thousand times —
“I’m a consultant. Let’s get lunch sometime.”
A million questions hit your head simultaneously…
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What kind of consulting?
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How did you get into it?
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How can I get into it?
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How much money do you make?
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How long did it take to build?
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HOW OLD ARE YOU?
But now’s not the time or the place. You reply,
“I’d love that,”
…then give him your number and you guys plan on connecting later. All of a sudden you’re not so “happy” with your current level.
You spend the rest of the day, dreaming about what it could be like — to REALLY live at the highest level. Maybe it’s not all about the “toys” for you. Maybe you don’t want a million dollars in high end automobiles.
Maybe the goal for you is just to feel like you can have anything you want if you only knew what to do and how to get it done. Maybe you want some savings, you know, for rainy days that you know are going to come — you just don’t know when.
Maybe you are bored. Bored with the current lifestyle. Bored with the current career trajectory. Maybe you need something fresh, fun, and exciting to do for a living.
P A U S E.
Thinking this way is not a disease. It isn’t wrong. It is a gift! As humans, our greatest NEED is progress. Our greatest NEED is to feel like we are moving in a direction we are proud of.
The important thing to note is that wherever you’re at currently, you are not “stuck” there. You have options, choices, and upward mobility. Let me give you a little insight into this visualization exercise I’ve just taken you through.
In case you haven’t picked up on the analogy yet, the young man in the story, who “seems” to have it all made, is me, but the real life version. I haven’t arrived here by luck, or rich parents, or random gifts from strangers. My wife isn’t loaded, either. I have studied and mastered a particular set of skills that have made “money” worries irrelevant.
To be read literally: I do not remember what it’s like to worry about money, or income, or whether I can afford something. You shouldn’t read that as bragging. You should try to read it as a simple fact. Money, to me, is like water. Or breathing. It just kind of happens when I need it to happen. If you jump off a building, gravity will try to pull you downward. That is not emotional. It is a fact.
Similarly, if and when I want to buy something, I just buy it. That isn’t emotional, it is clinical; and it is a fact. This happened by design. It’s been a long time since I’ve met someone new, or spent any time with someone who didn’t already know me, WITHOUT being asked:
“So um… Taylor, what do you do for a living?”
People have no idea how old I am, but they naturally assume I am too young to have what I have. The other day a pest control salesman came to my door to sell me services. He asked for my father. I laughed and said “He is not here.”
I could tell he was embarrassed and realized his mistake. Then he asked me about my watch. Then he asked me what I did for a living. People from church see the cars and the houses and want to know how I have them.
Important truth:
My life has not come to me without struggle, sacrifice, or stress.
But I would much prefer struggling with great reward than struggling for the status quo. If you could sit down with me and my business partner, Chris, for a few hours, and ask us things like:
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How do you get into consulting as a business?
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How did you get started?
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What are your most valuable tips for narrowing down your offer?
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What if I already have a business, but want to increase profits & cash flow?
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How can I sell more and raise my prices?
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What would you do to create leverage so I’m not working all the time?
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How do I invest profits to turn “income” into “wealth”?
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What are all the mistakes you have made in the last 5 years that cost you millions?
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How did you go from making $13.50 an hour managing real estate to now collecting north of $8,000 per hour (and growing)?
Etcetera…
…We wrote a book about how to start a consulting business which would be a compilation of the answers you would hear.
Get “The Consultant Next Door” Book!
I go much deeper into topics like this in my book, “The Consultant Next Door”
Get it for free now!
It is designed to be your guidebook to more income, and more freedom. In your pursuit of a better life always remember that time is the greatest currency you have. You will never buy more of it. Nobody can give you any more of it. It is life’s greatest pursuit to MAXIMIZE the time we have on this earth.
Ask yourself, “Am I maximizing my time to the BEST of my level of abilities, experiences, and skillsets?” If you’re like me, 5 or 6 years ago, the answer would have to be NO. I want to teach you how to change your answer to a resounding YES.
Consulting offers you a way of providing value to potentially thousands of clients globally without sacrificing the things people get into entrepreneurship for in the first place (freedom, abundance, control, balance, and so on). It is my hope that this book will not only inspire you with ideas and knowledge, but prevent you from making some of the dangerous and costly mistakes Chris and I made along the way to get here.
A peek into our ledgers would reveal multiple businesses producing multiple 8-figures in annual revenues, tens of millions of dollars in cash-producing real estate all over the country, 7-10 different streams of income and profits — all cranking out revenues 24/7 (holidays, vacations, and time away included) – and, what I am most proud of: a global team of people sold on helping us get this info into as many people’s hands as possible. What you are about to consume is life-changing material, and I do not say that lightly.
Everything we have today has been made possible through an extremely innovative and adaptable consulting model that I can teach you. Another point of fact — we have more case studies from our clients than anyone we know of (except for perhaps our personal mentor Jay Abraham)…
I tell you this because the “barometer” on an effective consultant is not how well they do something — but how well they TRANSFER that expertise into other people.
Let’s take a journey through this incredible model of business called consulting and we’ll show you — with the right recipes — how to start your own bulletproof consulting business that will fund your goals and lifestyle for the rest of your life. It’s all inside our latest book, “The Consultant Next Door.”
In your service,
-Taylor Welch
Get “The Consultant Next Door” Book!
I go much deeper into topics like this in my book, “The Consultant Next Door”
Get it for free now!
