What are your thoughts on short-term consultants?
Hey everybody! While working on my main startup I'm been also creating some side projects lately. I occasionally find myself wanting help/advice from experts (particularly on design and marketing). Forum sites like IH and Reddit are great, but I feel like I sometimes need something more in-depth. Do you ever use short-term (1-2 hour) consultants for advice, especially on personal projects? Are they helpful?
You can find short term consultants like that? Typically they want to engage in consulting contracts that makes it worth their time to learn your business/product/project. 1 to 2 hours is a hard gig.
If you know where there are gaps in your experience, and know you can get an ROI, then absolutely hire consultants. I do that for my 'remote controller' for our bookkeeping, and our 'marketing agency' that helps on our marketing strategy. But I sign 3 month contracts and use them as an extension to our business. It's not a 1 to 2 hour gig. Its a certain amount of effort delivered every week/month. It has to be win/win. You want their expertise to move your business forward. You want to be able to measure it, so both sides understand what 'success' is going to look like.