International income: Consulting
If you’re at all familiar with the content on this site, you’ll know that there is only one hard requirement for moving abroad to escape the collapsing Western world: have at least one reliable source of self-employed, location independent income – ideally at least 2-3 in diverse niches.
I’ve already covered blogging, affiliate marketing and selling information, which are absolutely awesome ways and hit all the criteria, and I personally enjoy them tremendously.
Today I want to talk about consulting, another great option.
Keep in mind that I’ve got no experience with consulting myself – this article is based on research and talking with consultants.
Don’t see it as a professional resource, more of an introduction to the topic and to give you an idea of what to expect.
What is consulting?
Consulting is basically selling your expertise to a company, in order to help them achieve a specific result.
For example, you could be a productivity consultant, and get hired by a company to increase the productivity of their employees by X%.
Other options are things like time-management, financial, legal, expansion, internationalization, and so on.
There are a lot of options here, and you could consult a company about pretty much everything it wants to pay for.
Consulting isn’t the same as coaching, as the latter is more aimed at a one-on-one basis, or at small groups. Consulting is mostly for companies.
How can you earn money with consulting?
Earning money with consulting is rather straightforward.
The first step is picking a niche – what are you good at that companies would pay you for?
- Are you good at time-management?
- Using particular software?
- Maybe you know a lot about how to avoid paying taxes?
- Do you have experience with lowering a company’s overhead from a previous job?
Think this through diligently: what do you know that is valuable to a company?
After picking a niche I would suggest you really make this your area of expertise, so do more research, and really become a grand-master.
Once you’re the very best, like no one ever was, you need to find some clients.
Reach out to companies who you think (by doing research) could use your help.
LinkedIn is a great way to do this, because you can use it for research at first: befriend some employees and see what they are struggling with, and talk to them about what you do.
If a few employees mention that your niche could benefit their company, it’s a good idea to get in touch with whoever is able to make the decision to engage your services.
Other options are social media, or just directly contacting a company via email or phone.
After that, make sure you set up an airtight and favorable contract, and then there is just one thing left to do: fulfill your terms of engagement to the best of your ability.
Why is consulting so great?
This is a great option to get location independent income because it hits several important aspects:
- You are self-employed and your own boss. Sure, the company hires you, but you’re free to set your own terms
- In theory, you can do it wherever you want. With high-speed broadband internet being available pretty much across the world, and software such as Zoom, there really isn’t much need for you to still physically go to a company to do your consulting – but this of course depends on your niche. Once you’ve escaped the West, you can keep working from wherever you end up
- You don’t need a degree or a lot of certificates. Companies are interested in one thing: can you provide them with a tangible result in the area they are struggling with? If you can, they don’t give a shit about your degree or lack thereof
- Almost anyone can get started with this within a very limited time frame, which makes it ideal for competent professionals with marketable skills
- If you offer a valuable service, for example saving a company 10% of their costs in overhead per year, you can command a large fee
In short, consulting is a great way to earn an international, location-independent, self-employed income.
It’s not for me personally, but I know plenty of people who make a killing being consultants, so if this sounds like something you’d enjoy, there’s nothing stopping you.
