You May Already Be A Consultant

The Seven Pillars - Issue 8

Hi everyone and welcome to the eighth issue of The Seven Pillars.

As I was considering the material for this newsletter, I realized that we imagine a great divide between full-time employment and consulting. Even I had always thought of it as an either/or kind of decision. Now I’m thinking that we need to reconsider. Because not only is consulting more within your reach than you thought, it’s more of a necessity than ever.

A few years ago, when I first started consulting in the third sector, a colleague pulled me aside and suggested that I raise my daily rate. I was underselling myself, according to him, and should pump it up by at least twenty to twenty-five percent.

He assured me that even at this new rate I would still be competitive. To me it seemed bold, but still reasonable; so I did it.

A few weeks later, I discovered that another contractor working on similar projects was charging almost three times what I was asking. Not twenty percent more. Three times.

What struck me wasn't the just the money per se. It was the realization that I had no framework for understanding my own value. When putting a budget together, I'd simply guessed. And the guess was off by thousands of dollars.

This experience wasn’t just a wakeup call that I had been losing out on a lot of money. It forced me to start thinking critically about the nature of work, how we measure it, and what it’s worth in the market.

When I did, I realized that the wall between consulting and employment is more imaginary than real.

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Even after a few months of consulting in the humanitarian world, I was still thinking like an employee. I was pricing the work itself: the proposal I'd write, the project I'd design, or the deliverable the client would receive at the end.

This is reasonable for an employee. The work is what you’re paid to do. But what I wasn't pricing in was everything else.

When you're full-time, your organization provides office space. Internet. Electricity. Coffee. A desk. A computer. Healthcare. A retirement plan. They cover your moving costs when you relocate for a job. They pay for your plane ticket home every year. They provide stability and structure and a thousand small things you don't think about because they're just there.

When you're consulting, these costs don’t go away…and if you’re not charging for them then you’re paying for them yourself.

I was pricing my time on the deliverables. Not my time staying alive while doing the deliverables.

Once I started factoring in the actual cost of doing business (including office space, internet, healthcare, retirement savings, the flights home, the moving expenses, the gap between contracts when there's no income) the number I needed to charge shifted dramatically. Suddenly the contractor charging three times what I was asking didn't seem outrageous.

Here's what most aid workers don't realize: you're already pricing these things. You just don't see it because an organization is handling it.

The cost of employing you is much more than just your salary. It's also the costs of the office space you work in. The insurance benefits. The retirement contributions. The administrative overhead of employing you. The paid time off. The professional development budget. The cost of replacing you when you leave.

Your actual salary, your “take home pay,” is a much smaller portion of the total than you think. And when you think of the value of your work as comprising only this small total, you’re not accurately accounting for your full value—a value your employer has accounted for, even if you haven’t.

This fact became glaringly apparent to me when I started consulting. I was charging for eight hours of work on specific deliverables while invisibly subsidizing the rest of the package.

The strange thing about this realization was not only that my work was worth more than I had previously estimated. It made me understand that I had already been a consultant for a long time.

Every time I had delivered a white paper or concept note. Every time I delivered a proposal or pitched to a donor. Every strategic review. That was consulting. I'd just been doing it under a different title. The work was identical.

When I did it as an employee, the organization I worked for handled the invisible background machinery. I had grown used to not thinking about it. And by not thinking about it for so long, I had come to undervalue my contributions.

There is a simple point here: when you start factoring in and accounting for the invisible along with the visible, you start to understand not only your worth, but the nature of the work you’ve always been doing.

Consultants aren't smarter than full-time aid workers. They're not more qualified. They're not solving harder problems. They're just better at one thing.

What makes a good consultant is that they price their work like they understand its actual cost. Not the cost of the deliverable. The cost of being alive while producing the deliverable. They factor in office space, healthcare, retirement, the months between contracts. They understand that every hour they sell has to cover not just their labor but their entire existence.

Aid workers think differently. They price based on what feels polite. What seems reasonable given the organization's budget. What won't make us seem greedy. We’ve crafted budgets before and we know what the “labor” line item should look like. We think about the work; we don't think about the life supporting that work.

To be honest, I started working on this article as a “list of things you need to be a consultant.” But as I thought about it, I realized that the barrier we see between consultants and full-timers is not as big as we’ve always thought it was. In fact, it’s really not there at all. The fact that we do think it exists, I think, is a major factor that keeps people from trying out consulting.

I'm not suggesting that everyone should now become a full-time independent consultant. That's not the point. Most of you won't want to. Many of you shouldn't.

But the sector is shifting. Full-time employment is becoming less secure. Funding is more volatile. Organizations are using more contractors because they can't afford permanent staff. This isn't temporary. This is the new baseline.

In this environment, you need to take a serious look at what you’re capable of. And if you’ve worked in this sector as an employee, then you’ve basically been a consultant. When you realize this, more opportunities open up. And this is critical for those of us trying to get by in the sector now.

Knowing how to take on selective consulting work is becoming a practical skill. Not because consulting is noble or aspirational. But because you need options.

Maybe it's a three-week project while you're looking for full-time work. Maybe it's a small engagement while you're employed and have the capacity. Maybe it's never. The point is you get to choose.

The idea that consultants are fundamentally different is not real. Whether or not you’ve called yourself one is beside the point. You’ve probably been doing the work already. You don’t need to adopt a new “consulting identity.” You can begin now.

Here's the thing about imaginary walls: they stop you anyway.

You've been doing this work forever. You know how to do it. But the moment someone says “consulting,” something shifts. Suddenly it feels like a different thing. A different version of yourself. A different level of risk.

It's not. The work is identical. The skills are the same. The only difference is that you're not filtering it through an organization. You're pricing it honestly. And you're admitting to yourself that you already know how to do this.

But admitting that to yourself is harder than it sounds. So start small.

You don't need to quit your job. You don't need to rebrand yourself. You don't need to build a practice. You just need to test the assumption that this barrier exists.

Think of a piece of work you did recently as an employee. A proposal. A strategic review. A project plan. Something discrete.

Now price it as if you were selling it independently. Do the math and don’t guess. Factor in the invisible costs. Office space. Healthcare. The gap months. All of it. What would you actually need to charge to cover your full cost of living while doing that work?

Write the number down. Don't judge it. Just see what it is.

Find someone in your network who you know does consulting work. Ask them one question: “What was the first consulting project you took on, and how did you decide to do it?”

You're not asking for their rate. You're not asking for validation. You're just gathering information about how real people actually started. What you'll probably discover is that it’s less of a leap than you thought.

At some point, someone will ask you to do work on a project basis. A colleague needs help with a proposal. An organization needs a short-term consultant. An INGO needs someone to manage a specific initiative for three weeks.

When that happens, instead of immediately saying no because “you're not a consultant,” consider it. Price it honestly using the math you did in Experiment One. Be clear about your capacity and timeline. And say yes.

One project. Three weeks. One honest price.

That's not becoming a consultant. That's just testing whether the barrier is as real as it feels.

The wall between consulting and full-time employment is imaginary. But imaginary walls still stop you.

You've been doing this work forever. You know how to do it. The only difference between you and someone calling themselves a consultant is that they've decided to price their work honestly and stop filtering it through an organization.

You don't need to become anything. You don't need to adopt a new identity. You just need to stop believing the barrier exists.

Start with one honest price. One conversation. One small project. Test the assumption.

You'll probably discover that you've been a consultant all along. You just called it your job.

Have you ever done work on your own terms—informally or formally—and what was different about it compared to working as an employee?

Hit reply and tell me the story.

See you next week,

Anthony Pusatory

Founder, The Seven Pillars