The Consulting Dilemma: Is Trading Time For Money The Best Business Model?

I did consulting for 9 years.

The money was great. The projects were interesting. The people I met were amazing. The brands I worked for were world class. The travel kept me up my toes and so did client expectations.

I loved it but I also knew that I could do things smarter.

The bottom line: trading time for money whether as an employee or a consultant doesn’t have leverage. Once your time is up, you’re done. You hit the ceiling.

One thing you can do then is increase your hourly rate. I did exactly that and succeeded. But then again, your hourly rate is also capped. There is only so much that people are ready to pay for any given expertise.

You can of course hire more people like you and become a body shop. You then continue trading their time for money. Lots of overheads guaranteed and you got to find them enough work.

There are plenty of body shops out there that make less profit with lots of consultants compared to a better organised business that banks more profit with a tiny team. Less can be more.

I inherently knew that the business model was flawed.

Then 2016 came along. My business had grown substantially over the course of 6 years. I’m talking 50 to 110% growth per year.

My team had grown, we had moved into beautiful offices and I had established a joint-venture partnership covering all capital cities in Australia and even New Zealand. We were ready for major change management projects and large-scale training delivery.

It flopped.

Enormous amounts of time were unrecoverable.

Considerable amounts of money down the drain too.

One valuable lesson emerged louder than ever: change the business model for the better.

Since then, I have been on a journey to reinvent the delivery of my value proposition.

We have evolved in many ways:

·     From bespoke to ready-made.

·     From lots of solutions to hyper focus on 3.

·     From inefficiencies galore to hyper lean.

·     From manual to automated.

·     From local to global.

·     From transactional to recurring business.

·     From high cost with a select few to low cost at scale.

Most importantly, I thoroughly enjoy this new business model. It has plenty of opportunities for massive growth, leverage and reach. It can outlive me and work independently of me for the benefit of others.

My point being:

It pays off to go back to the drawing board. Challenge yourself in what you know, what you do, how you do it and why you do it that way.

It’s insane to continue feeling stressed, overworked, and stuck doing things the same way as before and expect different results.

If you’d like to get some guidance from someone who has been there before and done it, join my free workshop series “Business 2 Lifestyle”. We just got started!

Get in at www.bramlagrou.com/freedom