Mark Cummuta
President
Triumph CIO Group

Feng Shui (business-homes) $75, $100/hour
Spanish Classes: $25-50/hour
Latin Marketing: 30 minutes free. I am expert helping Hispanics getting their business going in American and helping Americans tapping into the Hispanics market. But i m not an expert charging. I have failed and people have took advantage, gave away all the secrets and they never call me again
Translations: 0.20 per word
My Spanish Book
I also have the women retreat (womeninnature.com) and the networking going (spanishwaves.com) and I sill have some free time, I am looking for more work. Nunca me satisfago!

I’ve been doing what you just described for the past 5 years. The minimum I’ve made annually is triple what I was making in my ‘real job.’

I have a couple of suggestions that will sound contradictory. The first is to create scarcity. Maxwell Maltz of PsychoCybernetics talked about his early days as a plastic surgeon. When people would call for an appointment, he would page through his empty appointment calendar and offer them the ‘2 possible hours he had available, 3 weeks from now.’ Don’t allow youself to appear to be too available, it lessens the perceived value of your time.

Here’s the contradiction. Quite often, the lifespan of it mattering that you’re an expert at something can be quite short. Get what you can while your expertise matters. Something could supplant Linkedin, or your strategies could become more commonly known. Unless you’re doing something else that pays more than $250/hr cram in all you can while you’re hot.

Final thought: offer an ‘Implementation’ service level as well as a one-time strategic session. The Implementation level would include a number of followup sessions spaced over time to monitor the followthrough and results of the strategy sessions. Kind of like Weight watchers. Knowing they’re going to need to show progress at the next meeting they are more likely to followthrough.

You book automatic revenue without spending additional acquisition resources and you’re much more likely to get referrals because your clients are more likely to get results.

Good Luck,

Jim

I apologize, Jason.

My user name on the last entry was supposed to be Andrew, not Jason. I was confusing my own name with yours!

Sincere apologies.

As well as a consultant, another area of consideration may be that of a teacher, trainer or tutor.

Personally, this is something which I may well give serious consideration once I return from to my home country of Australia later this year, after the expiration of a period of teaching English in South Korea.

Prior to going to Korea, I served several years as an accountant, during which time I achieved CPA (Certified Practising Accountant) status in Australia. Whilst I don’t really see my future as being in the accounting profession when I return, I am thinking that one possibility may be to leverage my accounting background and perhaps earn a part time income conducting classes teaching small business owners one or more of the popular small business accounting software packages.

Of course, I would need to obtain appropriate licenses from the software vendors concerned in order to become a certified trainer, and I would need to update myself with respect to new features on the latest versions of the programs concerned, but it’s certainly one way in which I could potentially leverage my professional background at least on a part-time basis.

With respect to your suggestion about starting a consulting business, do you think it is possible that a part time teaching and consulting business could work well together, with teaching services covering more general issues and the consulting aspect being tailor made to the requirements of specific clients?

Imagine if you lost your job, how this might fit into your survival strategy.