The Consultant's Quick Start Guide: An Action Plan for Your First Year in Business

Elaine Biech has a way of taking complex subjects and making them easy to understand, and a way or organizing thinking processes that help readers work their way through them. I personally made the transition from corporate to consulting a few years ago, starting my own firm from scratch, and I stuggled with many of the concepts that this book would have made clear to me. I wish I had had it when I started out,it would have made my entry into the field much easier.

The Consultant's Quick Start Guide is a smart start for consultants. It is a practical, easy to use guide to running the business side of an enterprise. It delivers on the promise of the title. It really is a helpful guide to taking care of business without overlooking, overdoing, or short changing anything important. The explanations, examples, lists, forms cover all the basics. Best of all, using the guide gives you more time to concentrate on the consulting part of your work with confidence and comfort that the business part is well taken care of. Novice or veteran, it's a great tool to give you a fresh start on growing strong and fast.

This book is an excellent tool in helping sort through the clutter. There is so much information available about consulting but finding practical and immediately useful information and tools is overwhelming. The Consultant's Quick Start Guide is well written and laid out in an easy to use format. It is chock full of practical tools...I highly recommend it for anyone interested in consulting - internal and external consultants will love it.

Elaine Biech shares her infinite wisdom from her highly successful consulting business by providing practical guidance and advice to those considering a career in consulting. This Guide helps you decide if consulting is the profession for you. Just how much ambuiguity can you handle? Can you manage the balance between personal and professional responsibilities with ease? How do you structure a business...run an efficient office...develop a business plan...find new clients..transition from your current occupation..and survive the first year.A very user-friendly guide that will help you save time and money!

This book is a "hands-on guide" (workbook) designed for those of us who are still trying to decide if we should stay in our current job or venture out in the consulting world. I love the worksheets, checklists, and endless questions, (i.e., "Are you a match for the profession?" and "Entrepreneur attitude: do you have what it takes?" There are other books out there that cover this topic but most of them make consulting seem "glamorous". And let's face it, most of us think working for ourselves and getting out of the 9 to 5 rat race is a piece of cake. Elaine spells out the pitfalls along with the rewards. (She's been doing it for over 20 years so she obviously finds it rewarding!) She shows you that being a consultant is not just consulting--it's running a business. Elaine makes you work--yes, it takes time to do the exercises! She makes you think--do I really want to work 18 hour days or be away from my family for days at a time? She makes you face reality--can I do this?--do I want to do this? Then she tells you how to do it--one step at a time. Thanks, Elaine, for another great book in the "Business of Consulting" series!