BusinessHABHow to Become a Green Business Consultant: Companies are no longer free to simply reshape large areas of land at will.
Large organizations must accurately predict the environmental effects of their activities.
Find ways to limit the damage, and ensure that they remain compliant with environmental laws and regulations.
Increase your green consulting marketability with a good mix of education and skills.
Green techniques are often steeped in science and technical detail.
So environmental research and work experience is a plus.
Having a science degree also gives you a solid footing for consulting work.
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How to Become a Green Business Consultant
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How to Become a Green Business Consultant
These environmental laws and regulations apply to a huge number of industries.
From construction to waste management to energy development and city planning.
Before starting a project, companies in these industries and many others must hire an Green Business Consultantt.
To analyze the effects of their proposed plans and submit their findings to local government.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
Green Business Consultant ask questions like:
- How will this business activity impact the environment?
- Does this activity comply with local, state, and federal environmental laws and regulations?
- How can we reduce the negative impact of this proposed activity?
Green Business Consultant will often work for large consulting firms.
But they can also work as independent consultants as a part of smaller firms or government agencies.
The success of an Green Business Consultant typically relies on their ability to get proposals accepted by highly knowledgeable biologists.
Which means they will need to have a similar level of training and understanding.
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How do you grow your Green business consulting practice? What skills do you need?
Here are steps to becoming a Green business consultant.
Whether you call yourself a consultant, coach, advisor or mentor.
These steps will help you develop skill sets as well as grow your business.
I’ve been a Green business consultant a long time, and these are the essentials that have worked for me.
I think they’ll work for you, too.
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How to Become a Green Business Consultant
A Green consultant works with clients on strategy, planning and problem solving, and helps clients develop business skills and knowledge.
These topics range from designing a business model or marketing plan.
To determining which marketing techniques to use and how to use them.
You’ll often help clients learn how to plan and implement projects.
A Green business consultant gives advice, teaches skills.
And brainstorms with the client to produce practical results and enhance strategic thinking.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
A Green Business Consultant helps clients to create success by focusing on personal development.
Time management, self-sabotaging behavior (like procrastination and distraction), finding clarity, decision making, and getting into action.
When you put on your coaching hat, you don’t give advice.
Instead, you help the client find the answers from within themselves.
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Environmental Consulting Business
There is a lot of confusion between what the ICF (International Coach Federation) calls a “small business coach” and what the rest of the world thinks a “small business coach” is.
Don’t get hung up on titles unless you want to strictly follow the ICF definition.
You can call yourself a consultant, advisor, mentor or coach.
And most clients will understand that it means you’ll help them solve problems and grow their business.
Pay attention to the outcomes the clients seek. (If it helps, I call myself a “coach-consultant” to show I use both coaching and consulting techniques when working with clients.)
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
You need both consulting skills and coaching skills in order to be effective and provide real value.
I have been working with micro business owners.
And solo entrepreneurs for over 20 years and I rarely find one that doesn’t need both coaching and consulting.
It’s true: they almost never approach me and ask for straight coaching.
They ask for consulting. They ask for practical advice and brainstorming.
But in the search to find solutions and to map out a strategy.
A small business owners will stumble unless they do both the personal development work.
And the business development work that leads to success.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
Here is a list of things to consider when you are starting or growing your Green consulting practice:
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
1. Start with your own skill-building.
You cannot be an effective consultant if you don’t bring value to the small business owner.
Be relentless in your ongoing education.
You become more in-demand and can charge higher fees.
Based on the your wider the breath of knowledge and expertise.
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How to Become a Green Business Consultant
2. Check your experience level.
It’s rare that a small business owner will entrust their business to a Green business consultant who has never owned a business before.
Or to a consultant who doesn’t have a high level of expertise in a specific topic area.
An expert is defined as having 10,000 hours of experience with the topic they claim as their expertise.
If you use a traditional 40-hour workweek as your ruler.
That means you need at least 5 years’ full time experience with your small business topic in order to call yourself an expert.
3. Determine your Big Why.
Before you get down to the nitty-gritty of designing your business and getting clients.
Figure out why you want to be a small business consultant.
And why you want to help these owners.
Why this specific target audience? What is your motivation?
Knowing this will keep you going when you hit the inevitable speed bumps along the way to building your business and serving your clients.
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How to Become a Green Business Consultant
4. Determine what “success” looks like for you personally.
Keep your eye on the target. The definition of success differs from person to person.
Take some time to visualize all the ways that a successful consulting practice will manifest in your personal and professional life.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
5. Write a business plan.
Go through all the same steps you would go through with a client, and work on your own business model design.
Things to consider: what legal format you’ll use, what are your mission and vision statements.
What are your offerings, your pricing and profit models.
Include the resources you will need to succeed, like money, time, skills/knowledge, equipment, and people resources.
Set goals and milestones for the next 1 year, 3 years and 5 years.
Read my blog post about what should be in your business plan.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
6. Write a marketing plan.
There are many small business consultants out there.
How will you be remarkable and stand out from the crowd?
How will you connect with your audience and build rapport and trust?
Will you use traditional marketing techniques only, or combine traditional and internet marketing?
Which of the 100+ available techniques will bring the best results?
How much will you invest in marketing (in both time and money)?
What are the goals of your marketing?
Read my article about how to choose the best marketing techniques for your consulting business.
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How to Become a Green Business Consultant
7. Learn coaching skills.
You will be working with human beings who have their own set of strengths and weaknesses.
Learn deep listening skills and how to ask meaningful questions to get clarity and provide focus.
Learn how to hold clients accountable for implementing their action plans.
And how to deal with difficult client situations.
You’ll find that you work as much with the business owner’s mindset.
As you do with the practical logistics of running a business.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
8.Choose a focus or niche.
Determine if your specialty requires you to have a license or certification (financial and tax advisors, legal advisors, insurance advisors).
Will you focus on a small topic area, like email marketing strategies.
Or will you be an expert who can help clients with a wide range of challenges and projects?
Will you work with a particular size business based on number of employees or revenue?
Will you work only with local clients, or will your consulting business be national/international?
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
9. Decide if you are going to advise them, or do the work for them.
Some consultants are more like mentors and advisors.
Who work with the small business owner to do planning and strategy work.
Other small business consultants provide a specific service as a sub-contractor.
To augment the client’s staff (such as part-time CFOs, website designers, and copywriters).
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
10. Learn the problems
Learn the problems that most small business owners have and formulate a strategy to define and solve those problems.
When I work with my mentoring clients and the students in my consulting classes, I outline the top 29 problems that my clients commonly need help with.
Use readily available strategies, tools and assessments.
To help solve these problems, or create strategies of your own.
Consider putting together your own consultant’s toolkit.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
11. Get the Business Model
Deeply understand the seven areas of a business model.
To help your clients in the areas that are causing the most damage.
Or have the best return on investment if they make a change.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
12. Systemize your own business
Systemize your own business so that you have maximum efficiency.
Use templates, automation and sales scripts.
Take time early in the setup of your business to create these systems to free up your time and attention for more important tasks.
Hint: you‘ll then teach these efficiencies to your clients.
13. Get help with the administrative and marketing work.
Outsource the tasks that you do not want to do.
That you are not an expert in, or that take away from your revenue-generating time.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
14. Get your ego out of the way.
While your work can and should be meaningful to you, you are not a consultant to pump up your own ego.
You are a consultant to serve your clients.
You are going to advise them, help them to determine the pros and cons of each course of action.
And then allow them to make their own decisions.
You cannot stop them from making unwise decisions or from not following through on an implementation plan.
Equally, if your client has a big win, it may be partly due to your advice.
But much of the praise needs to go to your client for making it happen.
Decide in advance what a “successful client engagement“ means to you.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
15. Be honest about your own areas of personal development.
No one is perfect. Sometimes we procrastinate.
Sometimes we get distracted. Sometimes we let anger or fear get the better of us.
Sometimes we don‘t communicate as well as we could.
Discover your weaknesses and either learn how to overcome them.
Or hire staff to help deflect them.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
16. Choose marketing techniques that bring qualified leads to the sales conversation.
Track your marketing relentlessly.
If your marketing isn‘t bringing the desired results, revamp it.
Do not choose marketing techniques.
Because they are a hot trend if they don‘t bring in leads or help build your brand recognition.
17. Learn problem solving, decision making, project management, and time management skills.
These four skills will provide the backbone of the assistance you will offer clients and help you run your own business successfully.
18. Learn from the masters.
Why reinvent the wheel? You can discover savvy shortcuts by paying attention to the leading consultants in your industry.
In any small business consulting niche there are always several people who have risen to the top of their profession.
Study their offerings, their marketing methods.
The way they run their businesses, and the way they work with clients.
Determine if those methods would serve you and your clients, too.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
19. Develop communication skills.
Communication skills are essential in almost any field.
But they are especially important in a field where you are selling yourself all the time to businesses.
One of the best ways you can improve your oral communication skills is to work in retail.
It‘s also important to to take communication classes in college.
Such as speech, debate, or business writing.
They can help you develop your communication skills.
20. Make a point to work on your communication
Make a point to work on your communication in everyday conversation.
For instance, pay attention to how fast you‘re speaking and try to speak slowly.
Also, make sure you are enunciating your words and speaking at an appropriate volume in any group you‘re in.
If you’re not sure what you sound like, consider recording yourself and listening to the recording.
It’s also important to actively listen in any given communication.
If you’re listening, you can respond to what the person is actually saying.
Which makes the person feel important, a quality you want when you‘re trying to sell yourself or your business.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
21. Be a leader.
Often in Green business consulting, you will be working on your own.
Even if you are a part of a larger consulting company.
However, when you go into a business.
You will need to be a leader, as that business will be looking to you to help improve the way it works.
One way you can improve your leadership skills is to run for leadership positions while you are in college and high school.
Go out for student council. Run for a leadership position in Future Business Leaders of America.
These positions will help teach you leadership skills.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
22. Work on your organizational skills.
When working as a business consultant, you‘ll likely need to manage more than one business at once.
Because you‘re working on several businesses and multiple projects, you have to be extremely organized.
One way to be organized is to use the tools at your disposal.
Email organization, online calendars, and other project management tools can be a big help.
Another way to work on organization is to develop your own systems.
So that your files are organized in such a way that you can always find them.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
23. Be able to work to a deadline.
Green Business consultants often must meet tight deadlines to cater to their clients’ needs.
Therefore, you must be able to work under stress.
And to deliver the work when you saying you’re going to do so.
Going to college is actually fairly good preparation for working on a deadline.
Since you must manage several classes at once and turn in your work on time.
However, when you get out in the world, your job will often depend on you making those deadlines.
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How to Become a Green Business Consultant
24. Be prepared for long hours.
The Bureau of Labour Statistics estimates that about a third of management analysts.
A subset of business consultants, works more than 40 hours a week.
That means you’ll need to be prepared to put in long hours, especially when you‘re first starting out.
This position will also usually require you to travel because most of the time, you won‘t just be working with businesses in your area.
Because much of your work is done with the client at their place of business.
You’ll need to travel to where they are.
25. Get sustainability concepts
As a green consultant, you need thorough knowledge of green or sustainability concepts. Clients expect you to apply your expertise in green methods and technology to help them reduce their carbon footprint. You must know best practices and technologies that will help them do just that. This includes knowledge of viable methods for reducing energy consumption, recycling a variety of waste products and overall knowledge of green markets. For example, if you consult with homeowners about energy savings, you must know about energy audits and options for curbing energy loss.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
26. Focus in areas of interest and experience
Because green concepts are applicable to many industries, it is a good idea to focus your efforts in areas where you have interest and experience. For example, if you have a real estate background, you may choose the home construction industry and help builders identify eco-friendly products for their builds. If you have experience working for federal, state or local governments, you may target government entities and consult with them on how to reduce office waste. Whether you want to push environmentally friendly products or energy alternatives, choosing a customer niche increases your opportunities for success.
27. Learn to Increase your green consulting marketability
Increase your green consulting marketability with a good mix of education and skills. Green techniques are often steeped in science and technical detail, so environmental research and work experience is a plus. Having a science degree also gives you a solid footing for consulting work. The most likely educational path is a bachelor’s degree or higher in environmental science, ecology, biology or natural resources management. You will also need strong verbal and written communication skills, as clients will expect detailed information by way of project proposals and technical reports before moving forward on your green recommendations.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
28. Don’t overlook the business side of green consulting.
You need a certain amount of business smarts to develop a profitable business model. This includes knowledge of business planning, product or service pricing, and marketing strategies that attract clients. Your goal is to promote and sell your green expertise regarding conservation of natural resources in a cost effective way. For your business to survive, you must find customers that can benefit from your green services and build business relationships that yield enough billable hours to sustain your business.
29. Know about the Benefits of Being a Green Environment Consultant
Besides the benefits, you will get from starting and growing a small business of your own, working as a green environment consultant gives other benefits as well. The work you do will help the environment. The range of environmental issues that need attending to is huge. From deforestation to energy conservation to wastewater treatment, you can turn what you feel most passionately about into a career.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
30. Have an idea about the Demands
You have a broad target audience and can work with businesses, individuals, or families. Green practices are becoming integral to business, and with such a focus on environmental issues in the media, individuals and families want to contribute to the betterment of society as well. Also, governments around the globe are pushing conservation and green initiatives.
31. Know how to reduce office waste
With expertise in a particular field, you will be primed to assist their needs. For example, if you have a real estate background, you could help businesses find eco-friendly products that would suit new construction. Or if you are experienced in working with state, local, or federal governments, consulting on how to reduce office waste could be a way to go.
32. Stay up to date on environmental regulations and laws
Keeping up with ever-changing laws and regulations will involve a good deal of your time. You need to stay up to date on environmental regulations and laws, which can change rapidly. A good suggestion is to monitor the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency site, but this depends on your level of commitment. You need to be able to speak in detail on pertinent laws and regulations, old and new.
How to Become a Green Business Consultant
33. Try to come up with creative solutions
One way to adapt is to constantly try to come up with creative solutions. You have to be able to think creatively to develop solutions for your clients’ everyday environmental challenges. This puts a lot of pressure on you – and frequently, too. Not only will you have to be able to speak authoritatively about laws and regulations, but you have to be well-versed in technology, too. Sometimes, this will be central to a solution. So make sure you are up to that task.
Conclusion:
I‘ve been helping small business owners since 1996 to grow their business and get the outcomes they want.
I teach my techniques to other small business coach-consultants.
To help shortcut the learning curve and create an effective and efficient consulting business for yourself.
Increase your green consulting marketability with a good mix of education and skills.
Green techniques are often steeped in science and technical detail.
So environmental research and work experience is a plus.
Having a science degree also gives you a solid footing for consulting work.
BusinessHAB