What a Book Does for a Price You Want to Raise
September 1, 2026
Price is a claim about value and you have no evidence a stranger can check. Everything supporting your number lives inside the experience of people who already worked with you.
Tag: Consulting
Consultants sell judgment, and nothing proves judgment like a book. These articles cover consulting: building a practice, winning clients, and the publishing strategies that turn a consultant’s expertise into a client magnet.
ConsultingBehind the Book: Build a Profitable Consulting Practice
September 1, 2026
I went into consulting with twenty years of corporate experience and no idea how to run a business. The technical work came naturally and the business side nearly destroyed me. Every mistake in this book is one I made.
CareerA Client I Kept Running Got Me a Twenty-Year Job
September 1, 2026
The best job I ever had came from doing unglamorous maintenance work well for somebody who was watching without either of us thinking about it. No application, no resume, no search.
ConsultingThey Hired Us to Settle an Argument, Not to Answer a Question
September 1, 2026
Before you commission a technical assessment, find out what decision it is going to be used in. Honest engineers doing honest work can still produce a report that exists to strengthen somebody's position in a negotiation, and the outcome will…
ConsultingMy First Consulting Job Paid $600. I Had No Idea What I Was Doing.
June 16, 2026
Overconfident, underprepared and completely naive, with my eye on six hundred dollars and no idea I could not do the work until I was in too deep.
SEE » The Authority Gap: 30 Days of Uncomfortable Truths series
Business BooksPurdue University Used “How to Manage a Consulting Project” in Course
June 6, 2025
Discover how 'How to Manage a Consulting Project' became part of Purdue University’s curriculum.
Career StoryReal Data, Assertiveness, and the Night Trader Joe’s Almost Lost Everything | Consulting Guest Lecture 2019
September 30, 2019
The September 30, 2019 class session: pivoting clients and billable research, the telemedicine million-dollar lesson, micromanagers and the heart-to-heart Richard once received, money trails and the SEC, the confusion technique, agenda enforcement, feelings-versus-data failure signs, and the consultant who rebuilt…
CareersHow to Manage a Consulting Project: The Guest Lecture | Professor Makadok’s Yearly Consulting Class
October 10, 2018
The 2018 session of an annual tradition: a business school consulting class taught from Richard's book, with live answers on vetting consultants, telling a CEO he's wrong without saying so, the time-quality-money triangle, the $10 million Trader Joe's lesson, scope…
Career StoryThe Statement of Work, Clause by Clause: The $10,000 Client Who Vanished | Consulting Guest Lecture 2017
September 18, 2017
The September 18, 2017 Skype session: both chairs of the consulting table, the client who paid $10,000 and disappeared, specificity plus negative scope in deliverables, client commitments inside the project definition, billable meeting caps, same-day recaps confirmed by everyone, the…
Career StoryConsulting 101 for Student Teams: One Manager, Real Data, and the Recap Email | Consulting Guest Lecture 2016
November 1, 2016
The November 1, 2016 class session: how consulting found a college coder, training first-time consultants, the enthusiasm-is-not-data warning for entrepreneur clients, one manager per project with rotating roles, division of labor in writing, agenda-enforced meetings, the same-day recap email, project…