The Four Things You Should Have Before Making The Jump Into Consulting
How to really prepare for a post-employment career in consulting - and make it a big success.
Hi, I’m Rich. Welcome to my weekly newsletter, where I share systems and frameworks for scaling your consulting practice from $0 to $1m+ in revenue.
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Why Consulting Is a Terrible Career Choice After A Layoff
Over the past five years, I’ve noticed dozens of people trying to succeed as consultants after a layoff.
I can’t think of many, if any, who succeeded.
But can you guess why?
The answer might surprise you.
The reason why few people make it as consultants after a layoff is that they’re coming at it from a place of shock and fear, rather than excitement and ambition.
It’s a little like pushing someone off a boat into freezing water. They see consulting as a life raft to stop them from drowning. So they start swimming towards it in desperation.
But in the meantime, they’re looking for anything else that might keep them afloat. If there’s any passing flotsam that seems closer, they start heading that way instead.
That combination of desperation and constant distraction makes success unlikely.
They start resorting to quick-win tactics, which do more harm than good. They start thrashing around and grasping for any possible lead. They don’t build the systems that make a long-term pipeline.
And even if they do survive this, perhaps by securing a client or two, they have a far bigger problem.
They didn’t want to be consultants in the first place.
They didn’t want the unpredictable lifestyle of constantly foraging for clients, variable income, and the extreme self-reliance consulting requires. They wanted consistency, predictability, and the connection that comes with being part of a team.
The very things that attract some of us to consulting are the same things the vast majority of people don’t want.
The freedom of becoming a consultant, which so many people seek, goes hand in hand with the fear of being 100% responsible for everything that happens.
If you can’t live off the land by yourself, this isn’t for you.
How To Prepare For A Career In Consulting
To make the jump into consulting, you need four things.
1) Your Safety Net
It takes time to build a sustainable career, so you need to be financially comfortable with burning through some savings until you can build the pipeline necessary for success. I recommend a year of savings to get things truly up and running.
Your financial runway is critical. If you have only a couple of months, you will become desperate and start making counterproductive decisions. For example, you might:
Accept bad clients vs. waiting for those in your IDP.
Start cold-calling and pitching vs. building positive relationships.
Say yes to vague “advisory” work with no clear outcome, just to get something signed.
Chase RFPs and procurement-led work even though you have no differentiation and almost no chance of winning.
Position yourself as a generalist because narrowing feels like closing doors you can’t afford to close.
Spend weeks perfecting your website, logo, and messaging instead of having uncomfortable conversations with real people.
Constantly rewrite your positioning because you’re looking for certainty instead of testing reality.
Avoid telling prospects the truth because you don’t want to risk rejection.
Say “yes” to unrealistic timelines to appear flexible and accommodating.
Spend money on tactics (ads, funnels, tools, courses) before you’ve earned the right to use them.
Bounce between job applications and consulting outreach, never fully committing to either.
These are all dangers to watch out for. The goal isn’t to pretend they don’t exist, but to simply accept that if you find yourself doing this, you might have a financial safety net problem.
2) Close Industry Relationships
Don’t confuse this with industry reputation; we’ll cover that shortly, but you do need strong industry connections if you want to thrive.
It helps to know many people in similar roles at organisations, the major industry vendors, event organisers, and those running or heavily involved in other industry groups.
You need to know you don’t rise alone.
And these should be the kinds of connections where you’re not just polite, but you’ve debated the minutiae of industry or personal lives over lunches, drinks, or dinners at some point. You need to build your network of allies.
Without these relationships, you’re likely to:
Publish content that goes nowhere because there’s no trusted network amplifying and sharing it.
Fail to build momentum around your ideas because your reach depends entirely on algorithms, not people.
Miss opportunities where someone could have said “you should speak to Richard” at exactly the right moment.
Have no one introducing you to decision-makers with context and credibility.
Rely on testimonials instead of living advocates who explain why you’re good.
Be forced to explain yourself from scratch on every sales call.
Build your positioning in isolation, with no one to pressure-test your ideas or tell you when something doesn’t make sense.
Overestimate how differentiated you are because no one is challenging your assumptions.
It’s extremely hard to thrive without having strong industry relationships you can rely upon.
3) Strong Industry Reputation
It's massively helpful to be well-known within your industry. I’m not talking about close industry connections; I’m talking about a larger following of people who have heard of you, know you, and can refer to or talk about you to others.
Success in consulting depends entirely upon the number of people who trust you to solve their problem.
You should have a growing email list or following on one or more platforms. You should be frequently invited to speak at events and give talks, etc.
Your reputation is absolutely critical to your success.
Reputation is a flywheel - once it gets going, more doors open up where you can grow your reputation even further.
Reputation is also the beginning of the sales process.
Without a reputation, you’re likely to:
Attract enquiries from people who don’t understand your value or pricing.
Struggle to command premium fees because prospects have no external signal of credibility.
Depend heavily on referrals instead of generating consistent inbound demand.
Find that sales conversations start sceptical instead of curious.
Compete on explanations rather than being assumed competent.
Take longer to build trust with each new prospect.
Be excluded from shortlists because your name doesn’t ring a bell.
I’d strongly recommend building your platform well before you make the actual jump into consulting.
You should be publishing, speaking, or connecting with others - so by the time you make the jump, you have a good group of people eager to jump with you.
4) Broad And Deep Industry Expertise
The common mistake is to overvalue your years of experience working at a single organisation.
Your experience is good, but you need a stronger base of expertise and knowledge to solve clients’ problems. You need to know:
The industry lingo and how different roles interpret the same terms differently.
The major platform vendors, technologies, and service providers shaping the space.
The most common problems organisations face and what they typically spend to solve them.
How different organisations are approaching those problems, and why some approaches fail.
The patterns that repeat across organisations - not just anecdotes from one environment.
You should be replete with a database of interesting industry examples that you’ve gathered. Experience at your past company helps, but broader industry experience will prove far more valuable. Don’t over-rely on your experience. Have your own benchmarks.
Without this kind of expertise, you’re likely to:
Give advice that’s technically correct but contextually wrong.
Default to solutions that mirror your previous employer rather than the client’s reality.
Miss early warning signs because you haven’t seen the pattern before.
Struggle to answer basic comparative questions like “what do most organisations do here?”
Lose credibility when clients realise your examples all come from the same place.
Underestimate budgets, timelines, or organisational resistance.
Overpromise because you haven’t seen how hard change actually is elsewhere.
It’s worth spending time deepening your expertise (often through research/publishing) and developing unique frameworks and benchmarks before making the jump into consulting.
Consulting Isn’t A Refuge
It’s not something you fall into because circumstances force your hand. It’s something you move towards deliberately, with preparation, intent, and appetite for uncertainty.
When people fail after a layoff, it’s rarely because they aren’t smart or capable. It’s because they try to build a consulting career while optimising for safety, certainty, and short-term relief - the exact opposite of what consulting demands.
Successful consultants build the foundations for success:
They give themselves runway, so fear doesn’t drive decisions.
They build relationships long before they need them.
They earn reputation before asking for trust.
They develop expertise that goes beyond a single organisation or role.
By the time they “go independent,” they’re not jumping into the unknown. they’re stepping into something that already exists.
If you’ve just been laid off, consulting might still be the right path, but not yet.
The smartest move is often to pause, rebuild stability, and prepare properly.
Because consulting rewards those who can stand on their own two feet - not those still scrambling to stay afloat.
Good luck!
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Love this Rich!...and I do think many would be wise to invest in all four of those bullet points even if you are very comfortable in your current position. Not only will it enrich you career and life, but it is a great way to hedge and protect yourself from a dynamic and unknown future.