One of the real ironies of consulting life is that when you are super busy doing work, you don't have time to look for the next piece of work. It can cause a really dangerous work hard - no money - take work you really shouldn't - work unhappily - still no real money - cycle. The only way around that is to have the discipline to land project B before project A is finished. The larger you are the easier this is, because if 1/3 of your firm has finished a project and has nothing to do, they can pitch in on whatever the other 2/3 are doing for a bit while you sell the next thing. But at six people, we really don't have that kind of buffer.

Now that I've been doing this for 20 years, and have a reputation, opportunities quite often come to me. That's certainly better than calling around trying to get people to give me work. But even the most golden opportunities come with work attached. "Can you get me a resume by noon?" But I don't have a resume, I have worked for the same company with the same job title for two decades. I can give you a bio that lists my skills and awards and some recent projects I've been on. "Sure!" Only thing is, it needs to be updated, or shortened, or lengthened, or something. It's worse when they want resumes or bios from three or four of us. Or "could you flip through the scope of work and give me a quick ballpark of how much work you think your part will be? We'll write up the detailed estimate together next week." Some truly wonderful stuff just lands in my lap, but all of it requires work to ripen it into fruit. Finding the time to do that work, quickly and responsively, and tailoring the bio or company description or whatnot to the opportunity... that's where contracts come from. Back to work for me.

Kate