I recently had a chat with a PhD in business who thought that my definition of a consultant was a scam.

You see, I told him that people don’t need any special schooling, and certainly not a PhD, in order to make a great living as a consultant.

After spending over 10 years roaming the halls of academia, he was highly indignant that I suggest anyone could hold themselves out as an expert consultant without any schooling.

And there it was…

The Big Myth of Being a Successful Consultant

The world is filled with people who are brilliant on any subject you can imagine. And you may be one of them. However…

...knowing a lot about a subject has little to do with being successful as a consultant.

Let’s break this down a bit…

Does being successful as a consultant require that you have a broad knowledge of a topic?

Well, let me ask you… do you care how much I know about consulting if I can show you how to double or triple the number of clients you have in the next 2 months?

I didn’t think so.

And, does having a PhD from Stanford or other degrees, qualifications, licenses and certificates put you on the path to being a well paid consultant?

Well, the fellow I just spoke with had his PhD, and no one’s offering to pay him the big bucks for his advice.

In fact, I'd argue that degrees and certificates is often a really poor path to being well paid at all. I consistently earned more than that PhD over the last 12 years from just ONE of the products I've sold online, requiring only about 4 hours per week of my time, and without any degrees or certificates related to that product.

Taking that one step further, is a successful consultant even someone who gives lots of ADVICE to others?

Let’s just say I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars hiring consultants to give me "advice" about making money… and eventually fired most of them afterward when their advice fell flat. They got no referrals from me, and I’m certain they have never reached the level of what you or I would call highly successful.

Advice is everywhere. Simply giving more of it isn’t going to motivate a lot of people to pay you a lot of money.

The OLD model of being a consultant...

The old model is based on the belief that you need degrees or certificates to be a consultant. Or that you AT LEAST have to have broad knowledge about the topic you consult on.

As I alluded to above, and will show you below, you DON’T need degrees or certificates.

You also don’t need a unique “idea” that you think people might want to learn from you. I’ve learned from painful experience that what you think people want is a bad predictor of what people actually want.

Consulting in a field you are “passionate” about is also a poor predictor of your future success. No one cares how passionate you are about relationships, martial arts or playing guitar when it comes to forking over their hard earned money to you.

To quote the wise old uncle in one Jackie Chan kung fu flick “How much do people pay you to protect yourself?”

Also, writing great advertising copy doesn’t cause people to line up to pay you for your services. If the desire DOESN’T ALREADY EXIST in the marketplace, you're going to have a tough time creating it out of thin air with your words.

The NEW model of consulting…

It’s all about helping people make a change.

People don’t pay you for your expertise or knowledge. They pay you to help them transition from their current situation to their future desired situation.

Basically, that means solving a problem, but when you think of it in terms of “future desired situations”, it opens your mind to a ton of opportunities to make money in the consulting business.

For example, if you ask yourself what problems accountants have, you may be tempted to think they simply want more clients. But…

...if you ask 20 of them what their desired future situation is, you hear many more opportunities arise:

“I want to escape the 9 to 5 rut and start my own company”

“I want to keep my job, but work remotely from home”

“I run my own company, but I want to work less hours without decreasing my revenue”

“I’m stuck at $75K per year, and want to break the 6-figure mark”

See what I mean? Same group of people, many different “desired future situations” (problems) and opportunities for you to help them.

That’s the difference between the old “It’s all about my degrees & certificates” model, and the new “It’s about helping you make a transition” model.

Final Tips on Being a Successful Consultant

First, don’t try to create a “unique” fix for a problem that doesn’t actually exist.

We all get bright ideas and think everyone’s going to love our idea and fall all over themselves to buy it from us. I personally spent 2 years developing a software program that I believed was going to solve a problem in the market. Problem was…

… I forgot to ask the market if they really had a problem that my software was going to fix. Basically, everyone thought it was “unique” and “cool”, but not cool enough to spend their hard earned cash on.

Which brings me to my next tip: How do you find out what problem a group of people have?

Get ready to have your mind blown...

… you ask them. Period.

You’ll never guess what people want, and will waste time and money if you try. So, just take your accountant to lunch and ask him about his problems, desires and frustrations. It’s the most direct route and is well worth your time.

My final tip is to believe you can FIND a solution to their problem, and NOT limit yourself to problems you already know how to solve.

Most people will never spend an entire day of their lives trying to solve a nagging problem.

But if YOU can just dig in for a week and find the solution, many people will pay you handsomely for it.