How do you decide what sorts of clients to seek out, agree to consult for, or position yourself to consult for in future?
E.g., would you ideally want to mostly work with clients who are fairly focused on typical EA cause areas and who seem fundamentally receptive towards prioritising well within those areas (even if they don’t currently prioritise well)? Or would you aim to focus on a different type of client? Or do you not have strong preferences on that front?
One of the realities of consulting is that, unless you get very lucky, you generally do have to be at least somewhat opportunistic in taking projects early on. I’m now in the fourth year of running my business and I’m able to be a lot pickier than I was when I first started, but if I limited my work to clients that were only focused on typical EA cause areas, I’d run out of clients pretty quickly. So I’ve cast my net quite a bit more broadly, which not only expands the opportunity set but also hedges against me getting typecast and positions me to be competitive/relevant in a wider range of professional networks, which I think is valuable for all sorts of reasons.
Another thing to keep in mind is that I’ve found that having clients that look great on paper doesn’t always mean that you are able to achieve a lot of impact with them. Some of my most successful projects have been with clients that did smaller-scale work or were less sophisticated in their approach, because they knew they needed guidance from an outside expert and were willing to cede a lot of authority and creative input to me as part of the process. When you’re really trying to innovate and move the field forward, it helps a lot to have clients like these because they aren’t anchored on the usual ways of doing things, which makes them more open to trying out ideas. A lot of the sales process for consulting comes down to reassurance that someone else has done this thing and it worked out great for them, so getting those first few case studies locked down can be really important.
So it sounds like part of your theory of change for your work is getting opportunities to test out innovations related to better decision-making practices and generating examples of these working, in order to inform other efforts to improve decision-making which are perhaps higher stakes in a direct sense?
A part of it, definitely. At the same time, there are other projects that may not offer much opportunity for innovation but where I still feel I can make a difference because I happen to be good at the thing they want me to do. So a more complete answer to your original question is that I choose and seek out projects based on a matrix of factors including the scale/scope of impact, how likely I am to get the gig, how much of an advantage I think working with me would offer them over whatever the replacement or alternative would be, how much it would pay, the level of intrinsic interest I have in the work, how much I would learn from doing it, and how well it positions me for future opportunities I care about.
How do you decide what sorts of clients to seek out, agree to consult for, or position yourself to consult for in future?
E.g., would you ideally want to mostly work with clients who are fairly focused on typical EA cause areas and who seem fundamentally receptive towards prioritising well within those areas (even if they don’t currently prioritise well)? Or would you aim to focus on a different type of client? Or do you not have strong preferences on that front?
One of the realities of consulting is that, unless you get very lucky, you generally do have to be at least somewhat opportunistic in taking projects early on. I’m now in the fourth year of running my business and I’m able to be a lot pickier than I was when I first started, but if I limited my work to clients that were only focused on typical EA cause areas, I’d run out of clients pretty quickly. So I’ve cast my net quite a bit more broadly, which not only expands the opportunity set but also hedges against me getting typecast and positions me to be competitive/relevant in a wider range of professional networks, which I think is valuable for all sorts of reasons.
Another thing to keep in mind is that I’ve found that having clients that look great on paper doesn’t always mean that you are able to achieve a lot of impact with them. Some of my most successful projects have been with clients that did smaller-scale work or were less sophisticated in their approach, because they knew they needed guidance from an outside expert and were willing to cede a lot of authority and creative input to me as part of the process. When you’re really trying to innovate and move the field forward, it helps a lot to have clients like these because they aren’t anchored on the usual ways of doing things, which makes them more open to trying out ideas. A lot of the sales process for consulting comes down to reassurance that someone else has done this thing and it worked out great for them, so getting those first few case studies locked down can be really important.
Thanks for the answer :)
So it sounds like part of your theory of change for your work is getting opportunities to test out innovations related to better decision-making practices and generating examples of these working, in order to inform other efforts to improve decision-making which are perhaps higher stakes in a direct sense?
A part of it, definitely. At the same time, there are other projects that may not offer much opportunity for innovation but where I still feel I can make a difference because I happen to be good at the thing they want me to do. So a more complete answer to your original question is that I choose and seek out projects based on a matrix of factors including the scale/scope of impact, how likely I am to get the gig, how much of an advantage I think working with me would offer them over whatever the replacement or alternative would be, how much it would pay, the level of intrinsic interest I have in the work, how much I would learn from doing it, and how well it positions me for future opportunities I care about.