This book is awful...a complete waste of time for anyone with half a brain...if you only have half a brain, feel free to buy it. It's overly simplistic, obvious, insultingly simple and unlikely to help a budding consultant make a dime. If you want REAL advise, pick up any of Alan Weiss's books.

Although Biech makes a number of good points in her text here, the vast majority of it can be chocked up to common sense. The workbook fill-in forms are nice if you're the sort of person that is so unorganized that you need your hand held at every step, but in all honesty if you fall into that category you probably shouldn't be thinking about a consulting career in the first place. Unfortunately I feel like their primary purpose is just to take up space, and make the book feel longer and more useful than it really is. If you boil this "quick start guide" down to the few pages that are actually worthwhile, you wouldn't even have enough pages to fill a pamphlet. Look elsewhere.

Ok, so I wasn't impressed...

This book is definately good at one thing: it makes you think about some important issues of starting your own practice, and it has lots of assignments that I think may be useful. That earns it two stars.

However, what makes this book less useful than, say, "getting started in consulting" (A. Weiss), is the fact that there is no emphasis on creating value for your customer(and setting your fees based upon that value). What Biech is saying is actually that you should divide what you think you should earn in a year by the days you expect to work etc. So whether you help a client gain $50000 or $500000 added value should make no difference on your paycheck... Being value- oriented would help you wether we're talking about gaining clients, getting your fair pay or establishing business relationships. This book hardly touches the issue, even though it's important in so many areas of the business.

What I'm saying boils down to this: There being so many better books on the subject, I see no reason to buy this one. I did, and I'd rather have spent my money on something else.

This is the 2nd of Elaine's books on consulting that I have read (see also the Business of Consulting), and both books are excellent resources that I reference often. As an independent consultant, it's useful to have second opinions-and Elaine's opinions are relevant and based on her very successful experience. Check both books out!

This book is a "must have" for all new consultants. It is especially helpful to those involved in corporate training development and delivery. I have used many of the forms in this book as templates.

This was money well-spent!