In 2024, the US clocked over 921,000 consultants in the workforce, and I’m pretty sure that we all have given ourselves different titles, despite doing similar things for our clients.
This week’s newsletter covers:
How to define your work: consultant, freelancer, fractional, or contractor
How to best position yourself and your services so you stand out, despite what you want to call yourself
When I first started consulting, I spent a lot of time trying to find the right title to position myself to potential clients. Now, I can completely understand why consultants have the uncontrollable urge to define what our role is / who we are. We’re trying to validate our worth in a new-ish rising profession in a market where companies are still warming to the idea of hiring a non-FTE.
I’m here to let you in on a secret: it’s not about what you call yourself, it’s how you position your work and apply that to every opportunity that comes your way – including FTE roles.
Pick your fighter: consultant, freelancer, fractional, or contractor
Before we get into the ‘hows’, let’s start with the ‘whats’. Here’s the list of titles and definitions floating around in the consulting industry at the moment:
Consultant: Strategic council / project basis / c-suite advisory
Fractional leader: Works as the in-house leader that manages a team / agency
Freelance worker: Specialized, tactical projects (e.g. media relations)
Contractor: Maternity leave, sabbatical cover, or part-time employee
Did these titles describe what you thought they’d mean? No? That’s because the titles mean something different depending on who you speak to. Sometimes people want to call themselves what they think sounds more important, other times there are legal, cultural, and other external factors that weigh into what companies need to call an open role in their organization.
When I was entering the consulting world I thought ‘Fractional leader’ sounded more senior, so I chose that. But what I should have focused on is WHY I chose to sound more senior. It’s because I wanted my role to be more strategic and I wanted to work directly with the CEO / founder. But what really happened was I spent most of the time trying to explain what my definition of fractional leadership meant to the business structure, rather than how my proposed services and operation style could help my potential client.
Hindsight is always 20-20, but in that particular client pitch, if I could have done it all over again, I would have put less of an emphasis on my title & operations and more on the benefits of the expertise I could bring to the business.
How to position your services, not your title
Instead of pigeon-holeing yourself by defining yourself as a ‘fractional’ or ‘consultant’ or ‘freelancer’ – which can limit the new clients that come your way and also restrict how you scale your consulting business as a whole – try dropping the label and explain in layman’s how you plan to support potential clients by where their needs are in the market, combined with your skills set and how you want to operate.
Here’s what I mean by that:
I help companies develop company and executive narratives.
I partner with founders to build their personal brand.
I help companies develop thought leadership storytelling programs.
I lead fundraising announcements with a customized long-term storytelling strategy.
I help turn employees into brand ambassadors
And one more thing …
Back to the FTE roles that I mentioned earlier – I have a friend (also a consultant) who was able to turn a FTE job offer into a consulting role by making a case to the company that what they needed didn’t require full time services. The company went for it - and now instead of devoting all his time to one company, he has three clients and is essentially getting triple the income with more work flexibility.
The point is…how you label yourself doesn’t matter because, the truth is, everyone has a different perspective of what each of the key terms means. It’s easy to get lost in titles. But I’m here to tell you from my own experience, that it’s all about how you’re able to help your client, so focus on pitching your serves instead of pitching yourself.