I’ve Never Had a Job (aka How I Made a Consulting career by Working in the Gaps)
I’ve never had a job.
Well, that’s not quite true.
Through college and grad school, I had a slew of work study positions and spent summers in a mix of paid internships, paid research positions, and paid TA work. These things covered a range, from cleaning toilets to helping pre-service teachers integrate technology into their curriculums to working on visualization software related to the solar panels on the International Space Station.
So, the more accurate statement is probably: I moved straight from school into full-time consulting. And, in that sense, I haven’t been an employee in over 20 years.
How It Started: I Never Wanted to Be a Consultant
I listen to other people’s stories about following their passions and a driving desire to be an entrepreneur … and … I don’t really get it. I’ve never felt that way. In fact, when faced with the option of becoming a consultant for a large firm during one of my internships, I can clearly remember myself saying, “I don’t want to be a consultant” – and I meant it.
That conviction was born from a lot of misconceptions about what this life is.
Primarily, the kind of hustle required when your financial security is tied to people deciding to hire you again and again and again – rather than getting hired once, showing up, doing the job, retiring. It seemed like a level of work I didn’t want. (Turns out, the hustle isn’t necessary, even though it does take a fair amount of work.)
Instead, I wanted a life where I could do interesting work and where I could add value – without the grind.
And so, when I took my first consulting position, I didn’t realize I was starting on the consulting path. Someone came to me with an interesting task that I thought would be relatively easy to knock out. I took on the job, signed the contract and the NDA, and made my first $20,000 as an independent contractor.
The result of that first consulting position was shown to the board of the company, which triggered the interest of others in the room, and, after a few more contracts like this, I woke up one day and realized, “I’m a consultant.”
What Made Consulting Possible In the First Place: I Had Recognized Value – and People Felt Like They Had Exhausted All Other Options
In fact, that first job came to me in a phone call from someone I knew. Their side of the conversation went something like, “Do you still do computer stuff? We can’t find anyone to do this small job.“
That small job was a custom database application that helped record, track, and triage issues that arose during power outages – people trapped in elevators, flooded tunnels, generators not kicking in, etc. – on a multi-building campus. There was a laptop version that could be used on its own if power was out everywhere, and a server version that could be used to both sync the laptop data and to handle issues at all other times. There was a visualization layer based off the campus map (available on both laptop and server), so folks could see at-a-glance if any buildings had reported issues (and how severe they were). And the idea was that this data could also be used post-incident to help inform future policy on responding to these issues.
All in all, not really small in terms of importance and impact to the client. But, from the standpoint of a larger consulting firm, with their obligation to pay salaries and cover overhead and other costs, there wasn’t enough there to justify them committing resources to a project of this size.
So, the first thing that made consulting possible for me was the size of my operation, that is, I only had to account for myself with this work. I was still a student at this point – writing my dissertation and working around campus – so the money only had to be assessed against whatever resources I needed to get just for this work, with the rest going to taxes and profit. Compared to larger companies, my assessment for whether I could take on the work also had to account for fewer moving parts, like how this work and its deadlines would fit in with my existing commitments and priorities. As we were finalizing scope, my flexibility in being able to answer emails and take phone calls also helped, I’m sure.
The second thing that made consulting possible for me was my perceived value. That phone call came from someone who knew I had a BA and an MS in computer science, and that I had interned at NASA. That’s credibility I didn’t have to establish for myself, per se, because my ability to get those degrees and be brought back to intern for multiple years was essentially demonstrated by other organizations that were de facto signing off on my value.
Even so, the initial $20k project didn’t come to me all at once. They initially asked for only a portion of what this project became. Only after I delivered that did they start realizing other potential for this project, including discussions with me about feasible ways to branch this out for what they wanted to do – constrained both by the tech and by how they needed to use the data to make decisions, and enabled by my existing abilities. I wasn’t learning on the job or using this opportunity to pay for my personal growth. This first task was well within my existing capabilities.
In addition to that, people tell me I’m “affable.” The perceived ability to do the work, paired with my personality, made it easier for my contact to “sell” me to the final decision maker as a vendor for this contract.
Third, and probably most important for this first contract: They had exhausted their other options, and they had no choice but to take a chance on me if they were going to solve this challenge. In other words, I was the option of last resort. They were literally at the point of calling anyone they knew. And there’s nothing wrong with that.
My Consulting Career Has Looked a Lot Like a Standard Corporate Ladder Trajectory
Formally, I started out as an independent contractor (what some might call a freelancer) before creating my company Blou Designs LLC in 2013. But that’s not really the important part.
The work itself is what mimicked the corporate trajectory. I started on the lower rungs, doing the work that came my way (i.e., custom software consulting). That gave me a breadth of exposure across a lot of different parts of a company: facilities management, regulatory compliance, signage, finance/budgeting, etc. Rather than from-scratch projects, I also started working on frontends and backends to the software of other companies, or coordinating their software with my own. As I became a familiar face with a good track record, that breadth of exposure also meant I started getting invited into the conversation earlier – before the software scope conversations were happening – and talking more about data, policy, and how the business operated. As I pivoted away from custom software, I pivoted towards work that addressed more of the business from a birds-eye view. The work itself followed that transition, morphing custom software projects into custom data projects, and incorporating standard operating processes and procedures (SOPs), operational brand alignment, and finally advisory work.
From a corporate standpoint, this isn’t dissimilar to how one might progress up the corporate ladder, transitioning from executing/operationalizing other people’s strategies to more pure strategy work.
The difference is that I haven’t left my willingness – and ability – to get into the weeds when necessary. And, by being outside of the corporate hierarchy, there’s nothing in my job title that says I should be leaving that work to someone else.
My Niche is Fuzzy – On Purpose
There’s a difference between how you start and how you end up. For me, I started as a sort of choice of last resort who could step into the gap left by other consultants.
20 years on, it’s still the case that most of my clients come to me because they feel tangled or uncertain, like they’ve exhausted their options – or just don’t know where to start.
That’s fine with me, because the sweet spot I’ve honed isn’t for a particular niche in a traditional sense, but for being the person you call when the problem seems too small (but still important), too messy (but you still need to find some structure in that chaos), or too broad (and so there’s no niche person that’s the obvious next choice) – and your problem seems lost in the gaps.
In other words, where I’ve ended up is: I’m the person you call whenever the problem doesn’t fit a standard role or engagement.
But, if you’re someone who is more comfortable with labels and categories, then, in the words of one of my clients: “You’re the best coach I’ve ever had, even though you don’t call yourself a coach.” (Because I’m a consultant, who just happens to employ a lot of standard business coaching techniques to get to the heart of things so we can strategize, plan, and achieve what’s needed.)
