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Last Updated on July 4, 2021 by Tyler Clark
If you’re considering a consulting job of any kind, you should read this article.
Even if you never become a consultant, you should probably read this article.
As a 15 year low capped consultant by trade, I’ve come across some great insights to help you avoid the curse I speak of. Should you choose a similar path to me, I can only hope this information helps you in your career.
Now before we go further, I want you to understand that I love consulting.
I’m ok with the curse.
I’m willing to work in these parameters and I understand the beast and try my best. But of course, this site discusses millionaires and the low capped consultant is a job you don’t want to get caught in if you’re going for big money.
So to start,
There are four types of consultants in general:
- The low capped consultant
- The high capped consultant
- The low uncapped consultant
- The high uncapped consultant
We’ll discuss all of them and the advantages and pitfalls of each type of consultant. There are also subsets within some of these consulting types you should be aware of.
We’ll start with the most dangerous type of consultant: The Low Capped Consultant.
The Curse of the Low Capped Consultant
Over the years, I saw many people caught in this curse of the low capped consultant. I also found myself explaining the curse to friends and colleagues to warn them of the dangers it presented. I never tried to talk anyone out of going into consulting but I wanted to let them know what they were going to be dealing with.
The curse of the low capped consultant defines a type of consultant that is trapped by industry standards, stuck in dollars for hours and typically unable to easily expand their business.
As a personal trainer, I can really only charge within the range of my industry. If most trainers charge between $40-100 dollar an hour, it’s tough for me to go out and charge $150 or 300 per hour. Because the industry operates in this range, I’m pretty much bound by it.
Now you may be saying $40-100 an hour is a great wage and you’re right, it’s a good wage and those that work hard can make a good living as a personal trainer. However, most trainers can’t train 8 people in a day. It’s very tiring and you tend to burnout. My craziest days had 10 or 11 clients in them and that wasn’t sustainable. Let’s say an industry average might be 5-6 clients per day.
As a final note, those clients likely won’t be back to back. Though you’ll only have 5-6 billable hours, those sessions will be spread out over 7 to 10 hours of the day in most cases.
Comparing Two Low Capped Consultants
Comparison #1
A colleague of mine is a massage therapist. She works for a company as an independent therapist and makes $100 per massage. It’s hard work and she currently works 5 days a week and see about 5 people a day on average.
My personal training (luxury service, not covered) vs. a massage therapist (luxury service but often subsidized), gives my consulting job more volatility than her. Her company has a very consistent client flow whereas I have to get my clients from the free market.
There are also always job postings for massage therapists with $80-125/hr pay because many companies cover massages by qualified therapists. Personal training sessions aren’t covered and thus, we see trainer jobs starting as low as minimum wage per hour.
You want to consider all these little subtleties of the consultant role. even though both of us are low capped consultants, there are major differences in our jobs.
Comparison #2:Â
If you’re an electrician, you’re offering a very essential service. People need their electricity to function. This puts you at an advantage vs. the personal trainer or perhaps a makeup artist who offers a service that’s more in the want category.
Here are a few more jobs that fall into the low capped consultant category:
Low Capped Consultant Job Examples
- Personal trainers
- Massage therapists
- Fitness Instructors
- Trades People (plumbers, carpenters, electricians etc)
- Counselors to a certain extent
- Home inspectors
- Makeup artist
- Hairstylist
The Curse Deepens: 3 Consulting Traps
There are 3 big traps consultants tend to get caught in as they try to grow their careers.
Trap #1
Now you may be thinking heck, if I was a massage therapist, or a plumber or a hairstylist, I would just put my head down and work really hard for a few years. I’d put in the time and make a ton of money and then I’d be free!
Herein lies the danger because as you work harder, your work beats you up more. I feel the low capped consultant is at another disadvantage because their work tends to demand a fair amount of time. Personal training sessions are an hour, massages are often 90 minutes. Haircuts and color can take up a lot of time and if you call an electritian, it’s not going to be to screw in a lightbulb.
So the low capped consultant has to put in the time for the money. It might be decent money for your time but it’s going to be tough to put in extra time.
So sure, put your head down and go for it. Both my colleague and I did and we did ok. I even started group sessions where 7 or 8 people paid $20-25 per hour for sessions. You can grind it out and try and make money at this game. Just understand, It will tire you out.
I’ve talked to many trainers and fitness instructors over the years and found that they’d all gone through this phase, burned out a little and now just worked the more reasonable 5 to 6 sessions.
Trap #2
The second consultant trap is the calendar trap. There are a lot of holiday Mondays of during the year off where I live. There are also Christmas holidays and spring break and August and the first week of September and so on and so forth.
Most of these days are light working days if I can get work at all. Most low capped consultants aren’t going to work extensively through the holidays. Clients go away, they get sick, they fall off horses, they have other appointments, the list goes on and on. And this is all perfectly normal. These clients aren’t quitting, they’re just not training with you next week. So how are you going to fill the gap?
This trap is something most consultants face but it’s harder on those that don’t make big commissions to get through the thin work times.
I’ve had clients take 18 months off. They come back but, I have to fill the gap during these times. It’s not easy to get clients in general and now you have to get pinch hitters in when your regulars are away on vacation for the summer in the south of France (true story).
If I was a realtor and sold 3 houses in the spring, maybe I wouldn’t worry as much if I had a few months off.
Trap #3
Never comfortable. The number one question people ask me about my business is: “How many clients do you have?”.
This always makes me laugh for some reason and I typically just come up with some ballpark figure or say that I have a bunch.
The truth of the matter is that it’s complicated.
In a consulting business, consultants can face the issue of never being comfortable with the number of clients they have.
For example:Â
- I have too few clients. This means I’m not making enough money and am financially uncomfortable but not woking too hard.
2. I have just the right number of clients. I’m fairly comfortable but it would be nice to be making just a little more money.
3. I have too many clients. I’m exhausted and physically uncomfortable but I’m making a tiny bit more money.
I’ve been in all of these situations and none of them are what I would call optimal. Luckily, none of them became so dire that something went wrong but they were all tough. A lot of low capped consultants go through these situations time and time again. They are somewhat endemic to the job.
Is The Extra Consulting Hour Worth it?
A friend of mine and I have had many wonderful business conversations. We’re both consultants and enjoy studying not only our businesses but, those of other folks we know. We both tend to work with higher net income and its always fun to share stories. We love the entrepreneurial world.
One day, the topic of working the extra hour came up.
Ok, more specifically, I brought it up.
I brought it up because I knew he had been working these crazy hours as a trades person and I had had an epiphany about it. (Yes, it’s ok to write had had if you’re wondering).
The epiphany was that the extra hour in his job wasn’t worth it. More specifically, it wasn’t worth it in the big picture financially. Because he was also a low capped consultant, working an extra hour almost every day wasn’t going to dramatically shift his financial stature.
After a whole year, it might have given him an extra 8-10%!
Now that’s not a bad little bonus but the point here is that it wasn’t going to be life changing for him.
The extra hour also took away from him being home at a reasonable time so he could have dinner with his children.
It also made for just too long of a day.
So the extra hour had a little financial payoff but big personal drawbacks.
Bonus Tip: I had millionaire clients who worked an extra hour
and the payoff was huge. Â In my friend’s case, I was unsure asÂ
if it was worth it.
In our conversation, we concluded that it felt good to work some extra hours if they didn’t overly interfere with anything. I think this is a nice happy medium. What I liked is that it broke the nastiness of feeling like you had to work an extra hour all the time. By stepping back, it was plain to see the extra hour wouldn’t be life changing and that you could take it or leave it without major consequence.
I’ve worked extra training sessions at 10:30 at night. I’ve also worked early morning sessions and many on the weekends. They aren’t life changing money wise but, I’m glad to do them when necessary and at least I know my beast. I turn some down when they over affect my personal life and as a result, my general financial well being remains about the same and I’m much happier.
Keep that in mind next time you’re faced with hours that stretch your boundaries. Be sure to assess if they’re really worth it in every way.
The Cure to The Curse
There is a cure to this curse.
Granted, there’s nothing wrong with these jobs in the first place.
It’s just important to know what you were getting yourself into.
Now that you know, perhaps you’re just fine with working in one of these jobs. Personal training was a dream for me. I still love the industry. It can be a great job and so can all of the other consulting jobs out there.
But what if you’re contemplating a change?
If it’s time to go in a new direction, the first thing you need to decide is whether or not you want to stay in the field.
Consultants can always go online and offer tips and advice to more people.
This breaks you out of the dollar for hours curse.
You can also move up in your field manage people in the role you currently have. Many construction workers have the option to start their our companies in their industry.
As for the beauty industry, online options are a plenty and many artists have done extremely well on YouTube and other online platforms.
You can also begin the classic side hustle. A parallel business endeavor if you will. I find writing to be a nice offset from personal training. Training is high energy and in person whereas writing offers a quiet space and is more in your head.
It’s a good contrast for me.
This could lead you to wanting to start a blog.
There are also different types of consulting jobs you could do. You’re probably already good with people as a consultant so perhaps you could become an Uncapped consultant or a high capped consultant. You can see more about these options in my article: Job Type Satisfaction and Income Stats | What’s the Best Job for You?.
As a Final NoteÂ
Should you choose to change from your career or add to it, I offer you one more final piece of advice. If you want a little more money, that’s fine, just start another side hustle or even an additional consulting gig. But, if you want to go for more serious money, I suggest you start a platform with you next business.
I believe this to be the best format and key business endeavor to follow for making more money after training all the millionaires.
To learn more about how to start to start a platform, read my tutorial on: How to start a Money Making Online Platform.
The great thing about the curse of the capped consultant it is a curse that can be lifted. If you love your consulting job, that’s great. I certainly love mine. But if you want to try something new, you can cure the curse and head for clear waters any time you wish.
That’s the beauty of the free market, it always offers you lots of options.
Best of Wealth,
Tyler.
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