I Spent 8 Years in Consulting. Here's What Transfers and What Doesn't.

Before I started Old North Analytics, I spent eight years in management consulting, most of it in financial services. I worked on large engagements with large teams for large companies, and the experience shaped how I think about problems in ways that I carry into every project today. But not all of it translates, and being honest about the gap between enterprise consulting and small business work is important if you are going to serve small businesses well.

What transfers

The thing I value most from consulting is structured problem-solving. When a client describes a problem, my instinct is to break it into components, identify which component is actually driving the issue, and address that component first. This is not a natural way for most people to approach a messy situation. The natural instinct is to look at the whole mess and feel overwhelmed, or to jump to a solution before fully understanding the problem. Consulting trains you to resist both of those instincts.

The second thing that transfers is rigor around deliverables. In consulting, a workbook is not just a file with some formulas. It has a defined structure, clear documentation, and a logic that someone else can follow without the builder in the room. That standard of quality is what separates a professional deliverable from a personal file that happens to work for the person who built it. Small business clients deserve the same rigor, even when the deliverable is a single Excel file instead of a 200-page report.

Presentation skills transfer directly. Knowing how to present a finding so that the audience understands it and can act on it is the same skill whether you are in a boardroom with 30 executives or in a back office with one owner. The audience changes, but the discipline of leading with the conclusion, supporting it with evidence, and closing with a recommendation does not.

And financial modeling translates almost entirely. Understanding how to build a model that connects assumptions to outputs, stress-test scenarios, and present a range of outcomes is useful at any scale. A 10-person company thinking about adding a second location needs the same analytical rigor as a Fortune 500 company evaluating an acquisition, just at a different scale and a much lower price point.

What does not transfer

The biggest thing that does not transfer is the discovery phase. In enterprise consulting, discovery can take weeks. You interview 20 stakeholders, review existing documentation, observe current processes, and produce a findings report before any solution work begins. That approach makes sense when the engagement is worth six or seven figures and the organization is complex enough to require it.

For a small business, a multi-week discovery phase is a waste of the client's money and patience. The owner can describe the problem in 20 minutes. The data is in two or three files, not a data warehouse. The stakeholders are the owner and maybe two other people. Everything a consultant needs to know can be gathered in a single conversation, and the scoping and solution design can happen in the same session.

The second thing that does not transfer is the deliverable format. In consulting, the standard output is a PowerPoint deck, often 40 to 80 slides, with detailed analysis, charts, and recommendations. For a small business owner, that format is actively counterproductive. They do not have time to read 80 slides, and they do not need a presentation; they need a working tool. The deliverable should be the thing itself, a workbook, a dashboard, a report, not a deck about the thing.

The third is the team structure. Consulting firms staff engagements with a partner, a manager, and two or three analysts. The partner sells and oversees, the manager runs the project, and the analysts do the work. In a one-person consultancy serving small businesses, I fill all of those roles simultaneously. That is actually an advantage for the client, because there is no translation layer between the person who understands the problem and the person building the solution. But it requires a fundamentally different working style than what consulting firms teach.

And the pricing model does not transfer at all. Consulting firms bill by the hour at rates that reflect their overhead, their brand, and their target market. A small business cannot absorb $300-per-hour consulting fees, nor should it have to. Fixed-price, scoped deliverables are the right model for this market, and they require a completely different approach to estimation, communication, and project management.

The useful synthesis

The version of consulting that works for small businesses keeps the rigor but drops the overhead. Structure the problem carefully. Build the deliverable to a professional standard. Present the findings clearly. Price it fairly. Deliver it fast. Skip everything else.

The eight years were worth it because they gave me the analytical instincts and the quality standards that most small business owners cannot access at a price they can afford. The work I do now is not a simplified version of big consulting. It is a different application of the same foundational skills, aimed at a market that has been underserved by both the consulting industry and the software industry for a long time.