Independant Consulting

Long story short, I'm working for a massive consulting firm, and I really don't like having bosses which is what it is is. I'm thinking of going solo with an emphasis on financial strategy, marketing analytics, and data analytics. So my question is whether anyone has gone out and hung up their own shingle so to speak to perform business consulting on a solo basis? If so any lessons learned? How did you go about getting clients? What % of time did you put into selling work vs delivering work?

I'm considering doing a few projects for free just to build a solo portfolio. Has anyone tried this? How did you go about pricing your services? I'm not thinking about billing anywhere near my current rate as quite a bit of that has the name of my firm baked into it. So I'd probably be billing at <50% of what I currently bill which is fine.

Has anyone used stuff like the Elance, Odesk, or Guru sites? It seems like you're mainly competing against low cost talent offshore on there, and while I have no doubt in my ability to put together a pitch deck, financial model, etc versus any of those folks I'm not sure how to convey the value prop in an online format. Obviously superior work samples are an easy differentiator.

Anyhow, if anyone has gone this route I'd be interested in hearing your experiences. I'm looking to spend the next 6 months trying to do this part time & marketing services to see how feasible this endeavor would be.

A 3:1 ratio of non-billable to billable seems extremely high. I would expect that to be flipped the other way or at worst 1:2.

Well as for my background I'm almost 34, and have a degree from a top tier MBA program. I've been working in financial services and consulting for the last 10 years. I've done everything from financial ops to financial calculation system design (product management standpoint where I create requirements documents, algorithms, test plans, & consult with clients) to standing up PMO offices and dealing with C level execs (I don't own those contacts obviously) to fixed income analysis, and analytics. Long story short is that I get billed out at a ridiculous rate, and don't see very much of that. Don't get me wrong I make a very good living, but it's all relative right? Also, my firm takes care of most everything for me (tech, research tools, sales, etc...) so I understand why I don't get a big cut of the pie. I appreciate that, but I'm in a eat what you kill type of mood lately. The other issue is that I see the partner end goal and I'm not sold on it. Call me crazy, but I want to own the whole thing. Therefore I'm just trying to learn from anyone that's been there and done that.

In an ideal world, I would work exclusively in financial strategy, marketing strategy, and analytics. The nice part is that they all sort of blend together as they're all very numbers driven, and none mean much without the other. In my ideal world I'd also work with companies quite a bit smaller than the ones I currently work with. I think that I could make a much larger impact at that level, but them having the money to actually pay me might be an issue.