A couple of summers ago, I found myself in the small office of a tech start-up asking questions about my ambitions as a consultant. I had finished business school almost a year before, but my age still betrayed my actual skills as a marketer and started these kinds of questions with just about everyone I met. “Why marketing?” “Why consulting?” “Why start-ups?”
Before that day, though, I hadn’t given any real thought to the answer. I’d craft an explanation around the mission of a particular business or explain that I was looking for something more challenging than a traditional job. The truth was, I just wanted a job.
It’s been some time since then, and I’m still in consulting. Actually, with the exception of 4 months of seasonal part-time work, I’ve always been a consultant. The irony is that I never set out to be one … it just happened.
I’ve heard so many stories about reluctant entrepreneurs that the term has become cliché. Unfortunately, I find myself in the same boat as many of these individuals – pursuing a career I had no intention of starting in the first place. It’s awkward to find yourself travelling a path you never set out to walk, but a bit exciting, too. I get to set my own hours, I choose who I work with, and I get to claim all of my finished work as purely mine. It’s a fantastic feeling, but it’s fraught with frustration as well.
There are times I’d give almost anything to be working a traditional job. To have set hours, a set list of to-do items, expectations set by someone other than myself. But those times come the most when I’m having a questioning day. The kind of day where I question whether or not consulting was the right field for me to be in. It takes just one bad client experience to start the questioning phase … but just one good client experience to end it.
I’d never give up doing what I love, no matter how hard it might be to keep moving forward. So for all of you who are just starting out in the field, keep this in mind:
If you love doing the work, don’t let anyone take it away from you. Even if you fell in to the work completely by accident.