How to Build a Successful Consulting Business in Forbes

I loved talking to Aliza Licht about running your own business and speaking about your work. Check out the piece in Forbes for advice from changemakers I admire including Susan McPherson, Trae Bodge, Sara Wilson, Caroline Waxler, Jasmine Garnsworthy, Stacie Henderson, Ronnit Vasserman and Kara Silverman.

I worked for a wonderful person for 13 years during the day while doing theater at night. In the later years, working for him also allowed me to build my consulting business on the side until I was ready to jump off on my own. I gave my notice when I booked my first three big corporate clients all in one week with workshops in four cities in five days. During that week of travel, I found out I was pregnant (like most things in consulting, everything happens at the same time).

Believing I could work for myself was the hardest part, but work has been going strong ever since, through having a baby and starting my own company.

In the interview with Aliza, when I said I was lucky, she said, “When business is good, it isn’t luck.” It made me proud of what I’ve built. I don’t stop to feel proud too often. Having this article come out on New Years Day is a nice moment to do so.

Starting PresentVoices and running my own business has been one of the greatest challenges of my life, second only to parenthood. I love my work but it is all-encompassing. It’s also the only way for me to exist in the world. This is not a choice. It‘s what I am meant to be doing.

On a day like today, with a to-do list a mile long and a kid home sick with a fever, I remind myself that I make the rules. I can write this post while she’s napping at my side. I can get things done tonight after she goes to bed. There’s a million things to do but it’s ultimately up to me. I am lucky, no matter what, but it’s cultivated too.

Give it a read and share it with entrepreneurial folks in your life (no, you don’t have to work for yourself to be entrepreneurial). We’re all entrepreneurial just like we’re all creative. It just depends how you express yourself and put yourself out into the world.