Companies are increasingly turning to the liquid workforce as part of their overall talent strategy. This talent is not only supporting short-term needs but also providing strategic support with knowledge workers serving as on-demand advisers to executive teams and corporate boards. But how do you develop a robust and reliable freelance talent pool that can become a strategic asset to help your company quickly pivot and scale where needed?
1. Start by identifying your talent needs.
Always start with your strategic priorities. Consider each and ask whether the priority could be accelerated by engaging the liquid workforce. Do you have talent gaps? Could a blended workforce fill these gaps? What are your near term needs and how could on-demand workers help?
The answers to these questions will help you identify where best to engage the liquid workforce and what skill sets and experiences you will need to look for when considering 1099 workers.
2. Source your global liquid talent.
There are many ways you can find liquid talent, including through one of the many freelance workforce marketplaces that provide access to workers around the globe. In my experience, the best freelancers and consultants that I’ve worked with have come through referrals. Ask your network for referrals, making sure to share details about the kind of skills and experiences you need. Your existing global workforce is also a great source for referrals to freelancers.
3. Build an onboarding process with ease and efficiency in mind.
First impressions have a big impact. Creating a standard onboarding experience for all your liquid talent not only helps your company save time (and reduce potential compliance risks) but also improves the experience for freelancers. The initial onboarding experience says a lot about what your company is like to work with. For example, you can make onboarding easy and efficient with automation. Using an electronic, automated process can significantly streamline the process for you and the freelancer, saving both of you time and effort. Ensure that liquid workers feel welcome throughout the process, not like they are jumping through a series of hoops to begin work.
4. Establish best practices for your hiring managers.
Working with the global, liquid workforce is a new form of people management, and your hiring managers need training to successfully manage freelance and on-demand talent. Their goal should be to build a relationship with the freelancer, not just oversee the churning out of a project. Sharing best practices for managing freelancers will increase the likelihood that this talent will want to work with your company in the future.
5. Build an internal talent database.
Managing liquid talent is similar in some ways to managing employee talent. Develop an internal talent database where you capture all the information related to your workers. What are their skills and experiences? How are their communication skills? What areas or functions are they best suited to support? What projects have they worked on? How were those projects rated? Capturing and tracking this information makes it easy to identify the right talent within your talent database for any given project.
6. Create a positive work environment.
Like your W-2 workforce, the global, liquid workforce also wants to work in a positive environment where their work is valued. Don’t forget this is a mutual selection process — the talent also needs to choose to work with you — both initially and for any future projects. Lead with mindfulness, be aware of time zones and cultural differences and get to know your on-demand workers as people. In my experience, I’ve found that this helps freelancers feel less like task robots and more like valued team members.
Consultants and freelancers seek opportunities to learn and continue to build skills in an environment with reasonable processes and procedures. To retain talent for future engagements, make sure to always compensate fairly and make payments on time.
7. Structure a performance management system.
Providing feedback to your liquid workers throughout and at the end of a project is essential to building a successful and ongoing partnership. Gather performance feedback from anyone who worked with an individual freelancer. Incorporate these responses and share them as a performance review with the freelancer. Keep track of the performance reviews in your database and include notes on working style or other factors that will help for partnering on future projects.
The future of work is here (it’s more than just remote work) and it’s time to strategically engage the liquid workforce as part of your company’s talent strategy. These tips can help you continue to grow and build it into a strategic asset for your company.
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
FlexTeam is a mission-based micro-consulting firm, co-founded by Yolanda Lau in 2015, that matches talented mid-career women with meaningful, challenging, temporally flexible, remote project-based work opportunities. FlexTeam’s clients are businesses of all sizes across all industries and sectors. FlexTeam’s most requested projects are competitor / market research, financial models, and investor decks. FlexTeam is also the team behind Liquid.
Whether you’re just venturing out in your new self-employed career track or just starting to explore project-based work, the key to your success will be finding and landing clients. Fundamentally, this begins with thinking of yourself as a business and learning how to promote and grow your business.
Whatever services you’re offering, you’ll have to be your own marketing and sales team. You’ll have to learn to market your expertise and services, build your credibility, articulate your value to clients, and sell yourself and your service offerings.
1. Get comfortable selling yourself
When you start a small business — and yes your own creative or consulting business is a small business — selling certainly can be of the most daunting tasks at hand. If you’re a natural salesperson, consider yourself lucky. For the rest of us, it can be the most frustrating and challenging part of being self-employed as an independent consultant. Whether it’s because we feel underqualified for the position — hello, imposter syndrome — or simply because we lack experience in sales, we have to get comfortable selling ourselves and our services to get work (and get paid).
2. Determine your rates and convey your value
Use your previous salary to calculate your hourly rate for on-demand consulting, advisory, and creative services. If this is your first consulting gig, be honest — building trust goes a long way — and be prepared to offer a discounted rate to the client to win the business. That said, it’s best to understand the value of your services and the return on investment (ROI) it will provide to your client. If the total projected ROI is higher than what you would likely bill at an hourly rate, then it may be advantageous to sell your services at a flat project fee. Whenever possible, be prepared to reframe conversations on the value that you provide via your services — versus simply what you charge.
Hopefully, before you started your new creative or consulting business, you invested time and energy into establishing yourself as an expert in your industry. Attend conferences (even virtual conferences), and join and contribute to online industry forums. These are valuable opportunities to connect with potential clients. Offer advice when asked, say yes to speaking opportunities when they present themselves, and share your thought leadership.
5. Reach out to your network
Networking is the best way to get work as an independent consultant. Most independent consultants that I’ve spoken to have landed their first client through their personal and extended network. This means you have to be confident enough to tell friends, former colleagues, and acquaintances that you are available for work — practice your pitch often so that your network can pitch others for you. Former colleagues or industry peers often make the best first clients as they are already familiar with your work and understand the value you provide.
6. Learn how to qualify leads
Qualifying leads a critical step in the sales process. Do it efficiently and you’ll waste less time with potential clients they will never pan out — allowing you to spend more time on the prospective clients with more potential. Start by making sure your lead is a decision-maker. Thinking you’ve closed a sale only to find out that your prospect has to check with his or her boss is deflating — and not a great use of your time.
Create a list of qualifying questions to quickly assess whether or not you can meet the client’s needs. If your services don’t align with what they’re looking for at the price point you’re offering, move on.
7. Sell your skills and services
To get ready to sell to your first client, be prepared to speak to your industry experience, previous roles, level of seniority, and your unique and specialized skills. Make it easy for your prospective clients to understand who you are from looking at your LinkedIn profile and reviewing your business website. Then, when you do meet with a qualified lead, work to convey to them that you are the expert with the right problem-solving skills to address their pain points. Be prepared to use the initial meeting to conduct a needs assessment — use this time to evaluate the problem, understand the gaps in the client’s workforce, and start considering possible frameworks for your solution. End the meeting by promising a written proposal, and then follow through. How you evaluate the pain points, approach the solution, and draft a proposal are critical to winning business.
8. Be prepared to walk away
I firmly believe in building a business based on trust and honesty. Don’t be afraid to share your qualification process with your clients — and to let the client know if you’re not the right fit. Do this right and the client will come back to you when the right opportunity presents itself. Or a project that isn’t a good fit at a risk to your client relationship. In addition, learn to make peace with firing clients. Your consulting or creative business doesn’t have to be for everyone. If a client isn’t a good fit for your working style, feel free to turn down future projects; though, if possible, I would recommend referring your former client to other consultants who he or she might be able to work with.
Sales doesn’t come naturally to most of us. And it can be even more intimidating when the product you’re selling is essentially yourself. Build confidence in promoting your business and you’ll find success landing clients — and join the future of work while finding work-life fit.
Got questions? Let me know in the comments!
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
If you’re an independent consultant — or considering self-employment or project-based work to find work-life fit — you’ve likely wondered how (and whether to) market your business and your services. Marketing and branding can be a challenging process for many business owners, but this gets even more difficult when your business is you.
Many new consultants are shy about selling themselves — I know I was when I first got started 15+ years ago — so I’ve put together six tips to help you cultivate your brand, market your services, build your business, and join the future of work.
1. Determine what services you will offer
Getting your service offerings right is an important first step. Ideally, you’ll find your niche and become a thought leader in your niche. It’s easy to say you offer IT Strategy, Graphic Design, Financial Analysis, or Strategic Business Services. But you’ll benefit from nailing down the specific project-types that you can offer. Put yourself in your prospective clients’ shoes, think about the problems they face, then put together a list of your services that solve your clients’ pain points. This should be an iterative process — as you grow your business, you may want to add new service offerings or remove unprofitable ones.
Once you’ve determined your services, consider putting together a price list. Whenever possible — when projects can be clearly constrained and carefully scoped — I recommend listing a flat rate for each service you will offer. Calculate this flat service fee by taking your preferred hourly rate and multiplying it by your estimated hours for each project or service type.
2. Work on your personal brand
Now that you have your own business, always keep in mind that you are your own brand. All of your branding efforts should have a consistent feel, theme, and message. Think about the kind of feeling you want your brand to convey as you craft your messaging — and even as you determine your brand colors. In terms of social media, make sure to update your LinkedIn profile as that’s the first place many potential clients will look to get your credentials.
Keep in mind that as an independent professional, your actions in your personal life may impact on your business. Differing messages or actions across your personal and professional social media channels could lead to being perceived as dishonest or untrustworthy. Everything you do, say, or publish online reflects on you and your business — and ultimately affects your success as an independent professional.
3. Work on your pitch
Every business — including your consulting or creative business — needs an elevator pitch. Craft a concise, compelling, easy to understand 30-second statement describing your business and your services. (They call it an elevator pitch because you should be able to give it to a potential client in the time they happen to join you in the elevator to the time they reach their floor.) Working on your elevator pitch will help you hone in on what is unique about your business. A memorable elevator pitch will allow your clients and potential clients to sell your services for you!
4. Build your business website
A professional website is a valuable marketing tool and the backbone of a good brand. Your website is where potential clients will turn when they’re researching your credentials. Make sure your website is professional, modern, and well-written. Get professional help if you need it, but be sure your website is built so that you can maintain it yourself — personally, I prefer building my business websites with WordPress, but there are several other options for easy content management.
Be sure to optimize your website for search (SEO) by writing copy that matches your chosen keywords. Moreover, track your metrics — such as page views, audience insights, acquisition channels — with Google Analytics so you can constantly refine and update your site. Don’t forget to take advantage of your network of fellow freelancers here! If you need help, consider trading your services for help with your website.
5. Establish your credibility with thought leadership
Establishing yourself as a thought leader builds your credibility and is a cost-effective marketing strategy for independent consultants. Join online forums where you can share your expertise. Write blogs on your own website, on LinkedIn, or via Medium — allowing potential clients to stumble upon you organically. Speaking opportunities at conferences and professional organizations are another way to promote yourself. The more you can build your credibility as a thought leader, the easier it will be for potential clients to believe in the value of your services.
6. Leverage your network
Social media has become an effective way for brands to speak directly to their customers and clients. As discussed earlier, start with your LinkedIn profile. Keep it up to date and share content relevant to your business and your industry. Offer advice on posts made by others. Then, depending on your industry, you may also want to cultivate your public Twitter account and/or your Instagram account. You’ll want to find a balance between sharing valuable information and promoting yourself.
Join industry-related forums as well as online groups for freelancers. Leverage your social network properly and it’ll turn in to a steady stream of new clients via word of mouth referrals. In addition to networking via social media, be sure to attend relevant conferences (yes, even virtually) and periodically reach out to past clients as well as potential clients that haven’t panned out yet.
Remember, your consulting or creative business won’t sell itself. Once you’ve established your brand, built your credibility, and cultivated your pitch to match your unique skills and services, it’s up to you to sell with confidence to leverage your network and grow your business — the business of you!
Got questions? Let me know in the comments!
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
The future of work is the liquid workforce. Companies that expect to maintain their competitive edge must engage and activate the liquid workforce, often by hiring on-demand advisors and consultants, along with other skilled freelance workers.
Whether you’re already a consultant or a former executive looking for new challenges, it’s a great time to start your new consulting business. I speak from decades of experience consulting on my own and starting my firm when I say that for people like us, there’s nothing more rewarding than running your own business.
On-Demand Consulting When You Have A Full-Time Job
Even if you have a full-time job, you can still start a part-time consulting business by working at nights and on weekends. It’s a great way to learn new skills, make contacts with potential employers and give your resume a boost — plus, add some extra money to your bank account. Just be sure to check with your employer to see what restrictions are in place regarding outside compensation.
Starting Your Consulting Business
It’s pretty simple to start your consulting business. Just order some business cards, and create a simple website on Squarespace or WordPress, and you’re pretty much ready to go.
You can use your Social Security number (SSN), but with the increased focus on freelance workers’ rights, I highly recommend incorporating your consulting business and applying for an IRS employer identification number (EIN). Talk to an attorney and an accountant to figure out which structure is best for you. The advice I’ve received is that incorporating helps to substantiate the claim that you are indeed an independent contractor — and this allows companies to be more confident in engaging your services. With increased focus and regulations on freelancer rights, be prepared for clients to ask about your incorporation status. Personally, my own consulting firm is incorporated as a limited liability company (LLC).
Some people choose to start their consulting business with their name. Others choose names that convey the services they offer. Others choose more abstract names. Regardless of how you choose your business name, be sure to have business cards to give out to potential clients.
How To Set Your Hourly Consulting Rate
It’s best for new consultants to start by setting their hourly consulting rate, which can be used to calculate a monthly retainer and as a guideline for project-based fees. Most fledgling consultants struggle with setting their consulting rates, but it doesn’t have to be difficult to calculate based on your current or most recent annual salary.
Imagine your most recent annual salary is $100,000. Begin by converting that figure to a basic hourly rate. Full-time employees typically work 2,000 hours per year after holidays, so divide 100,000 by 2,000 to get 50 — or $50 per hour as a starting point.
Why You Should Add A Buffer To Your Hourly Consulting Rate
However, on-demand consultants and advisors should also add in a buffer. That’s because consultants pay for their own healthcare and office expenses, along with not being eligible for paid sick time or vacation days. In addition, consultants rarely work 40 hours per week for clients, as they need to spend time on business development (BD) to get their next projects, and they have to spend time invoicing and collecting from clients.
Most consultants I know add a buffer of 30% to 50% to their hourly rate to account for all these expenses. Those same consultants will add a much smaller buffer when using a marketplace or other service that allows them to focus their work hours on billable project hours — versus BD and sales or time spent billing clients.
If you build in a 30% buffer to your rate of $50 per hour, you can charge $65 per hour. If you add a 50% buffer, your hourly rate becomes $75 per hour. More experienced on-demand consultants and advisors with highly specialized skills, pedigreed backgrounds and proven track records of delivering results to clients usually increase their rates beyond that. I’ve worked with on-demand expert advisors who charge as much as $800 per hour, but $65-$75 is a terrific place for a brand-new consultant in search of their first client to start.
Gut Check
After arriving at an hourly rate, be sure to do a gut check. Think about the potential impact your work may have on the client’s business, how urgently the project need is, and how specialized your specific experience and knowledge are. These are just a few reasons you may want to consider adjusting your hourly rate. Don’t sell yourself short!
Now that you’ve calculated your hourly rate for on-demand consulting and advisory services, you’re ready to embark on your new venture. You will be thrilled when you get that first check — but more importantly, congratulations on setting yourself up for an independent and rewarding career path.
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
FlexTeam is a mission-based micro-consulting firm, co-founded by Yolanda Lau in 2015, that matches talented mid-career women with meaningful, challenging, temporally flexible, remote project-based work opportunities. FlexTeam’s clients are businesses of all sizes across all industries and sectors. FlexTeam’s most requested projects are competitor / market research, financial models, and investor decks. FlexTeam is also the team behind Liquid.
My dad is a surgeon. Specializing in transplants, he was always on call and rarely home. As a teenager, I vowed to find work that would allow me to spend time with the family I hoped to one day have.
My journey to find work-life balance led me to MIT where I studied Chemical Engineering and Biology (I took a detour on the pre-med path). During college, I was almost always employed part-time. I worked at a retail shop on Newbury Street; I tutored students enrolled in Introductory Biology; and I supported Women’s Recruitment efforts for MIT Admissions. It was in my role at the Admissions Office, where I was on a team that created MIT’s first online resource for prospective female undergrads, that I saw the advantages of working independently and remotely on project-based work.
Then, graduation came and it was time to get a job. I stayed on campus to start my career at the MIT Technology Licensing Office. Working to commercialize MIT-developed technology through licensing agreements with startups and passionate entrepreneurs (along with the traditional big corporations) opened my eyes to entrepreneurship. And it gave me an intensive education in intellectual property, negotiation, business development, marketing, branding, product development, alternative dispute resolution, trademarks, accounting, communications and public relations, and much more.
So after a two-year stint at the TLO, I went off on my own path. I co-founded a real estate development, investment, and property management firm, where I focused on operations. That led to other business opportunities, which led me to what I’ve been doing for the last decade — helping people start new ventures and helping those small businesses grow.
I’m so thankful that I’ve been able to make a living by doing meaningful work, while also having time for what matters in life — family and friends.
But not everyone is so lucky.
I’ve seen too many friends make the difficult choice between a fulfilling career and time spent with their children. Some have chosen to return to their jobs on a part-time basis, only to find that their responsibilities are closer to full-time at part-time pay. Others have chosen to jump back in head first, relying on loving grandparents or nannies to help with family responsibilities. And some have chosen to stay at home for now and hope to return to a career when their youngest kids reach school-age. Of those in the last group, many are using volunteer roles to keep up their skills or work a few hours a week at hourly jobs that don’t utilize their education or experiences.
A study in 2005 by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce found that 37 percent of highly qualified women have voluntarily left work at some point in their careers, and among mothers, that statistic rises to 43 percent. Pew Research estimated that there were over 370,000 highly educated and affluent stay at home moms in 2014. And it’s been well documented that those who choose to take a break from their traditional career are financially penalized when they return to the workforce (the “motherhood penalty”). According to the Center for Talent Innovation, women lose 16 percent of their earning power when they return to work, and one in four returns to fewer management responsibilities.
But my unusual career has shown me there is another way.
Project-based consulting.
Short-term project-based work with clear milestones and deliverables could allow mothers (and fathers, as well as daughters and sons caring for elderly parents) to find work-life fit. These caregivers could continue to earn an income, keep their skills up-to-date, while retaining time to care for their families. Those who no longer need to worry about the long-term costs of leaving the traditional workforce are happier and more satisfied; and happier caregivers lead to happier families, and a better society.
I’m not the first to espouse the mutually beneficial nature of project-based work. In a 2013 article for the Atlantic, Paulette Light wrote:
Project-based work provides many benefits to both businesses and those re-entering. Freelancers don’t hit the bottom line as hard as because they aren’t paid benefits. With clear project descriptions, deadlines, and compensation, more moms who may be overqualified for a position might decide that they are willing to help out with a project because it meets their needs in the short term. I am sure that many moms will even step up to do a project even at the cost of their family because the timing is only temporary. As the business and the mom work together more, maybe a full-time job will come of it when all parties understand the value.
I think it’s safe to say that the benefits of project-based work are clear, for mothers, families, and businesses.
In 2015, McKinsey Global Institute found that advancing women’s equality in North America and Oceania alone could add $3.1 trillion to $5.3 trillion to the GDP in those regions by 2025. By increasing the number of women in the workforce, reducing the motherhood penalty, and improving gender equality using 12 other outcome-based indicators, the potential increase to GDP in this region is equivalent to the current GDP of Japan or Germany.
A recent study by Danielle Lindemann, Carly Rush, and Steven Tepper found that artistic careers — that is, those in performing arts, design, art history, writing, film, the visual arts, and music — did not have the wage penalty associated with motherhood that is found in most other industries. They theorized that this lack of penalty was due to the flexibility in employment as well as the project-based nature of artistic work. So increasing the number of women engaged in project-based work would surely decrease the motherhood penalty, getting us one step closer to gender wage parity.
Now let’s go back to the statistics of highly qualified women — previously defined as those with a graduate degree, a professional degree, or a high-honors undergraduate degree — who have left the traditional workforce. In 1982 to 2013, 44.1 million college degrees were granted to women. Let’s assume that five percent attended the top 40 schools and that 37 percent of women voluntarily leave work; that leaves 815,850 highly educated women between the ages of 24 and 55 who have left the traditional workforce.
Let’s say that project-based consulting could allow these women to work as much as they want to. The average American with a full-time job works 47 hours per week. Let’s assume that the working moms in this country spend 28 hours per week on family responsibilities, as they do across the pond. So if we assume that moms want to work only as many hours as is the difference between normal full-time employment and is needed to fulfill family responsibilities, that means moms would be happy to spend 19 hours per week working. That seems low to me, given an informal survey of friends who are moms. My unscientific survey leads me to believe that mothers would like to generally work from the hours of 9am to 1pm, or approximately 5 hours a day, leaving them time to drop the kids off, pick them up and take them to after school activities, and take care of all other tasks to run a household. So we can guess that moms would like to work 19 to 25 hours per week.
Collectively, that’s$37.6 billion to $49.5 billion worth of paid work that project-based consulting could enable. And that’s just the 815,850 women with degrees from the top 40 colleges who have left the workforce.
Imagine how high that number would be if we did the same calculation for all women with college degrees who have left the workforce; all 16.3 million women. That increases those values to $751 billion to $989 billion.
If you are a caregiver who has left or wants to leave the traditional workforce, update your LinkedIn profile summary to state your interest in project-based work. If you are already doing project-based work, mentor would-be project-based consultants. Those who have a gap in their work history will need help understanding current business practices, coaching to regain their confidence, assistance with resume writing, and support to determine how their skills translate to clearly defined projects.
For business leaders who want to support work-life fit
If you work for a small or medium sized business and are in a position to retain project-based consultants, use your social capital within your company to do so. Then, convince your peers to do the same. Your employer will thank you.
If you own a business, start engaging highly educated and experienced moms (and dads, as well as daughters and sons) who have left the traditional workforce on project-based work. Like me, they could perform strategic analyses, craft a go-to-market strategy or customer acquisition strategy, assess your competition, determine where to cut costs, generate blog posts, manage your social media, guide you through a difficult negotiation, or help you decide whether to enter a new market or create a new product. Others could help you create financial models, craft a marketing or communications strategy, write PR pieces, assist with legal issues, plan events, and help with the hundreds of other things small businesses need help with. Small businesses like yours are the economic engine of our country, driving innovation and growth.
Still not sure how project-based consultants could help you manage and grow your business? Contact me and I’ll be happy to help you brainstorm.
Whatever the project, be clear with your goals and expectations to ensure you will be happy with the results.
Of these, only FlexTeam focuses on moms who have left the traditional workforce. Regardless of the method you use to find workers, helping to make project-based consulting commonplace will help more people find work-life balance, which will surely benefit us all. This is the future of work.
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
During college and in high school, I was almost always employed part-time. I rarely worked during the summer, and I liked the challenge of juggling coursework with employment. So it’s no surprise that I was only 19 years old by the time I had worked my #FirstSevenJobs.
Here they are:
English as a second language tutor. 📝 Sometimes, I forget that I started my first venture in middle school. On an external hard drive of archived data, I still have the worksheets I made for my students.
Babysitter. 😊 What teenage girl didn’t babysit? I never babysat actual babies, just children younger than me. I’ve always loved children and I also volunteered in childcare centers and preschools.
Punahou School math tutor. 🔢 Yup, I’m a true nerd. For as long as I can remember, math has been easy for me. My parents signed me up for Kumon in elementary school and I started learning calculus in middle school. I was that annoying kid turning in math tests 15 minutes into the 50-minute period. Being in the honors math track in high school, I had the privilege of spending my free periods sitting in the math tutoring center waiting to help the students enrolled in less advanced math classes.
Punahou School Physics Honors teaching assistant. ⚛ I graded assignments and tutored students. I’m sure I had other responsibilities, but I don’t remember what they were anymore.
SAT-prep tutor. 📓 Yes, I’m proud to admit that I’m a nerd. Back when the SAT had only two sections and a combined score of 1600, I got a near perfect score of 790 on the verbal section and 800 on the math section (see #3 on being a math nerd). Anyway, doing well on standardized tests is a sure-fire way to get tutoring clients. This was my second freelancing gig, not including babysitting.
Retail sales associate at Quiksilver, Newbury Street, Boston. ☀️🏄🏽 I’m from Honolulu. Before attending college in Cambridge, I had never before been to the East Coast. And I had not seen snow fall. So on a cold winter day, when I walked down to Newbury Street from the Boston brownstone I lived in, I was over the moon to find a newly opened surf shop that reminded me of warm days on the beach. In a way, even in this job I was freelancing. I saw the store struggling to penetrate the market, so I took it upon myself to start marketing the store to other homesick students from Hawaii. It would have been a lot easier if Facebook had existed then.
MIT Introductory Biology tutor. I don’t recall how I got this job. 🔬 It must have had something to do with having declared a double-major in Biology and Chemical Engineering. The work was easy, helping students with homework assignments and grading homework assignments (or, problem sets, as we they were called at MIT).
This trip down memory lane has reminded me that I once wanted to be a teacher. I loved children and thought I wanted to be a preschool teacher. Given my math and science aptitude, I later thought it was my duty to become a high school teacher focusing on Advanced Placement courses. And I’ve long wanted to participate in yoga teacher training to get certified to teach yoga, which I’ve been practicing since 1996. But the memory of a Punahou teacher telling my parents that I was too smart to be a teacher is what has always held me back from pursuing that career path.
I’m reminded now that I’ve always been passionate about education, lifelong learning, and helping others. It’s why I volunteered in a childcare center for toddlers from low-income families, and volunteered in a homeless shelter for women and children, and was once a volunteer tutor for immigrants studying to pass the US Citizenship Exam. And it’s the reason I have been an Alumni Mentor for MIT’s 12.000 Solving Complex Problems for the last decade.
And I see that I’ve always been a freelancer and entrepreneur, creating my own career, searching for work-life fit, seeking new challenges and skills, and looking towards the future of work. So it’s no wonder that my path has led me to entrepreneurship and small business consulting. My specialty is creating and improving processes to maximize efficiency, reduce costs, and increase customers and revenue. But my job is really teaching and helping small business owners so they can grow their business.
What were your first seven jobs, and how have they shaped your career? Let me know in the comments or contact me personally!
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
We’ve all heard that the “gig economy” is the future of work. Estimates put the number of Americans doing freelance work between 54 million and 90 million. In particular, there’s been an increase in the number of freelance strategy and management consultants, as well as marketplaces and platforms connecting businesses to independent consultants. Boutique sites like SpareHire, HourlyNerd, MBA and Company, Hillgate, Toptal Business (formerly Skillbridge) and 79 Studios’ own FlexTeam make top quality consultants more accessible to and affordable for smaller businesses.
As a CEO or founder of a small or medium business, you may benefit from hiring an external independent consultant. And once you do, you may find that you can’t work without them. Here’s why:
1. Independent Consultants are Affordable and Provide Cost Savings. Freelance independent consultants are cheaper than hiring a full-time employee. They require fewer overhead costs, in terms of office space, software licenses, benefits, paid time off, payroll tax, and other fixed payroll and office expenses. Moreover, while they often come at higher hourly rates than full-time or part-time staff, you’ll rarely pay them for 2,080 hours a year. And hiring a freelance independent consultant is much more affordable than engaging McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, or any of the less well-known firms.
2. Independent Consultants are Experts. Freelance independent consultants tend to be highly skilled, extremely experienced, and educated at top universities. Many freelancers have worked at a big name consulting firm or are industry experts. At FlexTeam, we provide vetted MIT-educated women who are former CTOs, CMOs, COOs, CEOs, investment bankers, management consultants, industry experts, graphic designers, serial entrepreneurs turned consultants, and other top tier talent. Hiring freelance consultants gives you access to skills and experience levels that would come at a much higher price tag if you were to hire them as full-time workers, allowing you to scale your business efficiently and economically.
3. Independent Consultants are Ready to Go. Freelance independent consultants can work independently with little guidance. They have almost certainly worked on many similar projects in the past, and will efficiently work on yours. They hit the ground running and don’t require training, saving you time and money. And your patience.
4. Independent Consultants are Flexible. Freelance independent consultants are highly flexible and adaptable. They can augment your existing teams, or they can work on their own on special projects. FlexTeam, specifically, augments your management teams with on-demand executive level brainpower. Freelancers’ flexibility allows them to adapt to your company culture and the specific needs of your company, thus producing better quality results.
5. Independent Consultants are Easy to Hire. Freelance independent consultants can be hired within a few days. Compare that to engaging a consulting firm or hiring a full-time or part-time employee, which can be a lengthy (and sometimes unsuccessful) process. There are interviews, negotiations, compliance and legal issues, and other time-consuming aspects of the traditional hiring process.
6. Independent Consultants are Committed to Excellence. Freelance independent consultants are committed to customer success and happiness. They recognize that their ability to get future work is dependent on the quality of every work product they create. Since their livelihood is at stake, they are more committed than consultants employed by traditional firms.
7. Independent Consultants are Professional. Freelance independent consultants usually spend time upfront clearly scoping detailed projects. They like to work on deadlines with specific milestones and deliverables. They have their own consulting agreements, though many are happy to sign one provided by your company.
8. Independent Consultants Understand the Importance of Confidentiality. Freelance independent consultants work with dozens of clients across industries on varying projects. They are accustomed to working with confidential information and are comfortable signing Nondisclosure Agreements. Again, their livelihood depends on the quality of their work and keeping their word.
9. Independent Consultants Meet Short Term Needs. Freelance independent consultants allow businesses to meet their short term needs without the time-consuming, frustrating, and costly process of hiring full-time or part-time employees. With freelance consultants, companies can hire an on-demand Chief Marketing Officer to craft a marketing strategy, a Chief Operating Officer to create a strategic growth plan, an analyst to assess new markets or create a financial model, a data scientist to figure out your KPIs, an experienced entrepreneur to write your business plan, and more. All just for a short sprint at the right price.
10. Independent Consultants are Always Available. Freelance independent consultants work irregular hours, often more than 5 days a week. Since they work odd hours and don’t have to operate during business hours, they can work on your project when you need it done. Given clear milestones, deliverables, and deadlines, they create time to get the work done optimally.
Still not convinced? Try hiring a freelance independent consultant for one small project. Just a small investment of about a thousand dollars. You’ll see that once you outsource work to a freelancer or a team of independent consultants, you’ll gain breathing room to tackle the rest of your endless to-do list.
Yolanda Lau is an experienced entrepreneurship consultant, advisor, and Forbes Contributor. She is also an educator, speaker, writer, and non-profit fundraiser.
Since 2010, she has been focused on preparing knowledge workers, educators, and students for the future of work.
