kaisdavis

Heya HNers,

Jumping in here to offer a bit of context to this post!

We — a collection of 13 consultants — wrote the Independent Consulting Manual (ICM) to offer advice, guidance, and direction to consultants who want to grow their business.

The ICM is based on our shared experience growing our consulting practices over the last few years. While it would be impossible to offer a 'Comprehensive Guide To Everything Consulting,' we've done our best to share strategic (ex: building a productized consulting offering, positioning your business, qualifying your prospects and clients, writing better proposals, etc.) and tactical lessons (ex: using cold email outreach, using facebook ads, avoiding late payment, etc.) to help give consultants, like you, a strong direction of the strategies and tactics available — and how to implement them in your business.

Wherever possible, we worked to go 'above and beyond' in the advice we share to make sure that it's actionable, relevant, and specific to an independent consultant who is looking to grow their business.

As Bryce Bladon was kind enough to write in the introduction:

> It would take years of experience and dozens of new and interesting mistakes to learn as much as I have from Kai and his colleagues over the first few months of knowing them. That’s what this book is: a shortcut for time, effort, and mistakes.

> If you’re someone who considers themselves an independent _anything_, then you’re probably someone who understands accountability. You understand that this book is not going to catapult you to ridiculous new heights of success as soon as you finish the last chapter.

> What it is going to do is provide proven and actionable advice. It’s going to make you reflect on how you do business and it’s going to make you better for it.

We wrote the ICM to provide actionable advice specific to independent consultants. But, much like any skill, it takes action on the part of the reader to implement the advice and, slowly, consistently, over time, improve their business to get to that next level.

I know that from when I started my independent consulting practice to when I had my first 6-figure year, it took 5 years of consistent, steady progress. With the ICM, we're offering lessons, advice, and direction to help the reader understand the steps to take to reach that point. Much like a cookbook, we're offering lessons and recipes to follow. The job for the reader is to implement, test, refine, and repeat.

Our Guarantee — We collectively stand behind our product and the quality of the information we're sharing. If you buy the ICM, read it, and find it lacking in any way, not up to your standards, or not meeting your expectations, all you need to do is hit reply to your order email and let me know you want a refund. Then I'll send you an immediate refund. (We list a 14-day money back guarantee on the website and the truth is after 14, 28, or 365+ days, if you said "Hey, you know what, I made this investment and I'm just not happy with it, I'd like a refund," I'll instantly refund you your purchase).

Am I explaining all of that well? I deeply appreciate any questions you have for me / us. I'll be checking this thread throughout the day. You can also always message me on Twitter as @kaisdavis.

Thank you!

— Kai, Editor, Independent Consulting Manual

To me, it wasn't an option. I'm not a developer — I'm an SEO and Outreach Consultant — and so using something off the shelf (at first a pages template, now Remarq) made a lot more sense.

I didn't want to build something DIY or right to customize something. Pages — and now Remarq — made it easy for me to get a beautiful output.

And, on top of that, there was an ROI consideration. How much time would I spend getting Pandoc working that I could spend growing my business, mapping out a campaign for a client, or relaxing?

To me, the cost of Pandoc was too high.

I've been beta testing this and it's been revolutionary — and saved me a bunch of money.

I spent ~$250 on a pages template to use for my reports. And because I write everything in Markdown, my workflow is:

• Write in Markdown

• Open up report

• Painstakingly hand copy and reformat Markdown to Pages

• Save as PDF

• Send to client

Now? I take that markdown, drop it into Remarq, and — BOOM! — I have a beautiful report that I can send to a client.

It's pretty awesome, you guys.

Patrick - what's the product your Internet buddy is selling?

I keep trying to complain about paradise and then — NOPE! — it's a tropical island.

What about beyond a startup scene? Entrepreneur meetups? Marketing associations? People Who Like Making Money Online coffee hangouts?

> What steps do you take to ensure clients pay you on time and what actions do you take when they don't?

1. I only work with clients that I trust. How do I find out if I can trust them? Extensive interview process. Is their business sustainable? Have they worked with freelancers before? Do they have references for me?

2. I have clients pay me up front. No, seriously. I have a contract that lists my rate and asks for the money up front. If they want different payment terms, we can negotiate from there (and usually to a point that we're both happy with).

3. I don't let myself get 'underwater' with a client. I use Harvest to monitor the time I spend working on client projects. It sends me a notification when I get within (80%) of the time allotted on the contract. I have a text expander snippet that I fire off to the client with something like 'Hey, we're at 80% of the time you've paid for on the project' and let them know if I think we'll need more time or need to reduce the scope.

4. I attempt to collect in this order:

(a) Phone call to the company [the person I'm working with on their side] confirming they received my invoice (10 days after due) (b) Phone call to the person who signed my contract confirming they received my invoice (15-20 days) (c) Repeat phone call to the person who signed my contract (30-40 days) (d) Letter from my attorney

How often have I had to use these? Once. Why so infrequently? Because I follow points 1, 2, and 3 with new clients.

I haven't done direct outreach for a few months. I'm moving to Honolulu next week and will be restarting direct outreach in November.

Back of the envelope / from memory? Leads (meetings) with ~1/10 contacts and projects from ~1/3 meetings.

I do Wordpress development, online advertising, search engine optimization, and social media work. It sounds like I might fall into both of your markets — marketers who need a solution for wordpress development / tweaks and wordpress developers looking for projects.

If you're interested in chatting, shoot me an email at [email protected].

That's incorrect. I believe I heard this via Cable on John Gruber's 'The Talk Show,' but you can still have an app in the MAS and provide updates even if the app is not available for sale.

Yup, that's the key:

You aren't asking for a job, you're asking a _person_ to talk. Not listen to a pitch. Not give you anything. Just talk about their experience and what they see going on at the company.

Kai's Rule #1: People love to talk. They love to talk about their jobs, their struggles, and their opinions on the company.

Encourage them to talk. They'll tell you where the gold is buried.