Successful Independent Consulting : Turn Your Career Experience into a Consulting Business

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Summary: A practical content-rich guide!
Review: "Successful Independent Consulting" is the best straight-forward, practical and content-rich source for the novice or the experienced consultant. For the experienced, it is an affirmation and a review of the necessary basics to being an independent; for the novice, it is the very mentorship Florzak himself recommends beginners seek. His book is the beginners' mentoring guide to becoming a successful independent consultant.

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Summary: "Must" reading for anyone wanting to become a consultant.
Review: In Successful Independent Consulting: Turn Your Career Experience Into A Consulting Business, Douglas Florzak draws upon his considerable experience and professional skills to create a practical, informative, "reader friendly" guide providing professionals in any field with a detailed "how to" plan for setting up and maintain a consulting business. Florzak explores the types of consulting work available, how to create a business plan, set up an office, and surveys the issues of contracts, law and taxes, fees, basic record keeping, retirement fund and insurance selection, and even offers marketing tips for utilizing the Internet. Successful Independent Consulting is further enhanced with a recommended list of resources for independent consultants and worksheets to help launch and maintain a consulting business. If you are contemplating becoming a career of professional consultation in your chosen field, begin with a thorough reading of Douglas Florzak's Successful Independent Consulting.

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Summary: Perfect if you are on your own or want to be
Review: Successful Independent Consulting is the best available source of written information and advice on independent consulting I have come across. I recommend it highly as both a reference tool and for in-depth reading. It is an unusually well organized, well exemplified, comprehensive, and concise. It is full of critical, savvy insights for prospective and new consultants as well as those in the business for many years: some tips I already knew and could recognize as critical to consulting, and some were new to me and are proving to be very helpful in my career. It also has substantial, high-quality appendixes of additional resources, and is a great value. If I were just starting out in consulting, I would build much of my career plan on this book, and I know I will be referring to it frequently in years to come.

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Summary: Comprehensive How To
Review: This book is an excellent compendium for anyone new to the independent consultant market and for people who haven't learned all the ropes yet. I wish I'd had it a year ago, when I started my company. Doug has included information that it really has taken me over seven years to garner, and the section on retirement plans was new news to me! Easy to read, easy to reference, I don't believe there is a more comprehensive book on independent consulting on the market. I plan to hand it out to my employees and to the independent consultants with whom we work.

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Summary: Okay, but....
Review: This book is okay. But, I have used "Strategic Organizational Change" by Beitler as a reference guide in my work as an organizational change consultant. It is full of checklists, examples, etc. Beitler captures 25 years of experience in one book!

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Summary: A tremendous help!
Review: This is an excellent guide for anyone new to starting independent consulting and a good refresher to established consultants. After going through several similar books, this one, by far, is the best written, most helpful of the lot. He guides you through basic and more advanced steps in making your idea a reality in a clear, concise, and "user friendly" way. His approach is realistic and not stuck in the mundane as so many other "start your own business" books seem to be. While another book insults your intelligence by emphasizing the importance of street lighting for your new office (no kidding!) or devotes boring paragraphs on the evolution of their own business card logos, this author guides the novice entrepreneur effectively and intelligently from concept to practice. This book is highly recommended for professionals who do not have a background in business and who find "business speak" confusing and want a cogent initial guide. So if you are thinking of expanding your career path through independent consulting, and if you think "starship" when someone says "Enterprise," then you need this book to start thinking clearly about your new endeavor.

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Summary: An Exceptional Road Map!
Review: Wish I had bought this book first. Douglas Florzak gives concrete and practical advice for veteran consultants and persons contemplating a consulting career. While he's a Technical Writer with a programming/systems background, he writes in easy to understand, non-technical terms.

I found the book informative and well organized. Of particular interest are the 4 chapters dedicated to marketing. Some of the active & passive marketing techniques and internet marketing methods presented have already helped my business. The worksheets are useful and the Recommended Resources section points to a variety of other beneficial material.

This book is a must read! I highly recommend it.