Being an independent consultant may seem like a glamorous lifestyle to those on the outside, but it's a career choice that should not be taken lightly. The independent lifestyle is not suitable for everyone, and running your own business requires a significant investment of time, energy, and dedication. That being said, a career in consulting can be a great option for the right person for the following reasons:



?You are your own boss. You don't have to report to anyone but your own clients. Luckily, you get to choose with which clients and on what projects you want to work.

?It's flexible. Once your career is established and you have good systems in place for running your business, consulting can be a flexible career. You can take off an afternoon to watch your kid's soccer match, and put in some extra hours that evening if you need to.

?You control your earning power. While you need to be competitive and set rates that your clients are willing to pay, you have some leeway to adjust your rates up or down within an acceptable range. You can also choose to take on extra assignments to earn more money, market your business more aggressively to attract more business, or specialize in working with larger clients to command higher fees.

Those perks would sound great to just about anyone, but taking advantage of those perks requires a tradeoff of hard work and giving up on other things, such as a steady paycheck. It's up to you to decide if you have the right mindset to succeed in running your own business, and if you're willing to give up some of the advantages of working for an employer to have the freedom of running your own business. Take the following points into consideration when deciding whether the consulting lifestyle is right for you.

Being your own boss means you are ultimately responsible for your own success'or your own failure. The survival of your business will fall entirely on your shoulders. You won't have a marketing team behind you getting you clients. If you're uncomfortable selling yourself and meeting new people, you can still be successful as a consultant, but you'll either have to learn alternative marketing techniques or overcome your shyness.

You have no manager and no personal assistant to keep you on task. If you're easily distractible, you'll have to develop strategies that you can rely on to keep yourself motivated. You'll need to stay very organized, particularly if you work for more than one client at a time. You may have different timelines, and you'll have to use project management software, maintain a business calendar or use some other mechanism of reminding yourself of your upcoming deadlines and appointments.

If you require total consistency and a predictable routine, you may be better off working a traditional nine-to-five job. As a consultant, your work schedule may be erratic, your workdays may at times be long, and you will be working with different clients and on different projects pretty frequently. While in some industries, it's possible to land consulting deals that last for years, the point of consulting in general is that you are a specialist brought in on a temporary or project basis to help solve a problem. Likewise, your cash flow will also be unpredictable. Consultants typically get paid only when a project is over, or on a milestones basis with monthly or quarterly invoices. You will need to be able to manage your cashflow with a disciplined approach. You may even go for a few weeks or months without projects, so you'll need to be sure to save money for a rainy day. Some clients, unfortunately, won't be timely with payment, so you'll need to account for potential non-payments as well. So if it's routine and stability that makes you tick, consulting may not be for you.

You'll be working many hours for which you're not getting paid. There's a lot more involved in running a consulting business than simply doing work and collecting payment. You'll have to have a system for keeping track of your expenses and your time spent on various activities for each of your clients, invoicing, and collections. All those administrative tasks can take up a lot of time, which can be frustrating when you need to be spending that time on client projects. You could choose to work with a portable employer of record, which can help save time on back-office tasks and may also provide access to a group health insurance plan.

You're responsible for paying all your own taxes, for business insurance, and for your own health insurance. There are, unfortunately, extra costs that come with running your own consulting business. In a traditional work setting, your employer pays a portion of Medicare and Social Security taxes. When you're self-employed, you're basically hiring yourself, and are responsible for paying both the employer and the employee portion of those taxes. You're also responsible for keeping track of exactly how much you owe and submitting payment on time to avoid penalties. You'll have to procure your own business insurance, like General Liability and E&O. And you also won't have access to the group health insurance plans offered by most employers, so you'll have to find an individual health insurance plan that provides adequate coverage for your family and is affordable.

Be sure to consider the various aspects of a career in independent consulting that will be very different than holding a traditional job. If the benefits of a flexible consulting career far outweigh any potential risks or inconveniences in your eyes, and you've got the talent, then you may be ready to take the leap, and you'll probably be quite successful. If you're not so sure, don't give up on the idea of a consulting career completely, but spend some time evaluating your options, and develop plans for overcoming or dealing with small problems that may crop up before you jump into your new career. Be sure to draw up a business plan for an independent consulting career to make sure you've considered all the financial implications.