By the time you established yourself as an expert in the field like he did, consulting opportunities would open themselves up.
I just have a very small network compared to him, haven’t tried to market myself and just through word of mouth, I’ve had a couple of people asking me about consulting for their startups that could have easily netted $30K - $40K at $125-$150/hour.
I have a strict policy about not doing side gigs so I turned them down. But now, I probably would have had to turn them down regardless because of a conflict of interest since I do consulting as part of $day_job.
Lol thanks for the attack on my writing skill and ability to promote myself!
Being an expert in a field and being able to write a book doesn't mean you're any good at consulting. That's my point. It's a different skill.
Also, consulting really involves only a few things:
- marketing yourself
- being able to listen to people and figure out their needs
- being a good communicator and being able to explain concepts well.
- being technical sound enough to solve the problem.
- being disciplined enough to be a consistent worker.
Most of which overlaps with being a successful technical author.
I'd have absolutely no idea where to even start consulting, or whether I'd have any aptitude for it. I'd be very surprised if anyone anywhere wanted to pay me $100k for consulting!
But I could probably write a book.
People have strengths in different areas.