An aside about running a business

I tend to not talk much about the business side of things on here, but there was a beautiful ‘wait, and you’re also a mum?’ moment at a recent conference.This led to a few questions about what it’s like to start your own consultancy business.

Author

Affiliation

Cara Thompson

Building Stories with Data

Aside from the focus on figuring out what the key skills you want to offer are, and earning a reputation for being good at what you do within your community, part of my answer is always “Try to get along to one of these free webinars - it will give you the basics of all the things you need to think about in the early stages”.

I’ve learnt most of what I know about running a business from Tracey Miller, George Swift and the team at Bigger Brighter Bolder. The other pieces of the puzzle came from consulting for David Keyes when I was starting out, who gave me the confidence to do this, and was incredibly generous in sharing how he goes about running his own consultancy.

Surround yourself with good people. Stay true to how you want to do business. And, as I’ve given a few trusted friends licence to keep me accountable for, don’t get too LinkedIn-y. (The next post will be back to the usual technical dataviz stuff!)