Excerpted from SEAK’s course, “How to Supplement Your Income with Lucrative Home-Based Work”
Okay. Let’s go through some of the advantages of being a consultant, and there are many advantages. One of the ones that I like the most is you get to work with very smart people. Okay? And that’s one of my favorite things about being a consultant. I’ve worked with high-powered doctors, surgeons, lawyers, scientists, business people, in fact, I always like to say are much, much smarter than I am, okay, in their field, In their lane. When they get something outside of their lane, they’re smart enough to bring in somebody with specific expertise that can help them. So, if I work with groups of physicians, they maybe bring me in to negotiate some contracts for them. That’s not their area of expertise. That’s my area of expertise. So working with smart people is very invigorating. These people listen. They don’t have to tell them the same thing over and over again. More or less, they’re compliant. So, it’s a lot of fun. It’s very interesting and very challenging.
And I find it really nice that a group of very, very highly intelligent, sophisticated people would hire us to work with them. These people are highly motivated. They have specific issues, specific problems they’re dealing with. Some of them have been going on for a long time. They also have resources/money to solve this problem. If they have a problem, you know, if they have to negotiate a $7 million contract for two or three years, they allocate a sufficient amount of money to bring in a consultant, okay? They’re not going to nickel and dime you, generally speaking. They’re very thankful for your help. In my 20 years as a practicing trial lawyer, I can probably count on one hand the number of people that thank me for doing a great job for them, even though I was doing a good job. But as a consultant, people are very, very thankful for your help. You get to help them, and I think that’s important. But working with smart people is very flattering.
When a group of people, very highly sophisticated, well accomplished, well-known people call you in to act as a consultant, and the FBI calls you up and say, “We want you to come back and train us for the fourth time,” when the FAA called us up and say, “We want you to come back to train us for the third time,” that’s flattering, and that’s very helpful. Let’s go to… Work can be very fascinating because you have different assignments. Okay. One thing about the consulting business, and one of the things that I didn’t like, eventually I didn’t care for about practicing law, it was very routine. If I was a workers’ compensation lawyer, there were so many back cases. There were so many neck cases. There were so many different kinds of cases, but after a while, it became very organized. The back cases were all the same. The neck cases were all the same. The psychiatric cases were all the same. And so, that’s one thing about consulting.
At least in our consulting practice, you have different assignments, and you get to use different skills. So, I can be working on a patent assignment. I could be working on negotiating contracts for a publishing company. I could be working with all kinds of governmental agencies. You’re hired for things that you can’t look up on Google, okay? If you can look it up on Google, then you don’t really need a consultant. Some other answer is correct, by the way.
So, I work in medical issues, legal issues, artificial intelligence groups, patent cases, negotiations, and to tell you the truth, the thing I like the best are the most difficult assignments. Those are the most challenging. Those are the ones where there’s no place to look up what to do, okay? And that’s one of the reasons they hire a consultant. If they could look it up on Google, if they could look it up in a book, if they find a research thing, project, or answers they may not need you.
But when you get these complex problems involving personalities at work, legal issues, medical issues, scientific issues, strategic issues. There’s no place to look those kinds of complex questions up, and that’s where a good consultant comes in. To be able to sift through all the different aspects, and figure out what the real problem is, and try to move towards some solutions.
