Build a Profitable Consulting Practice

Most consultants are good at their craft. That's exactly what gets them into trouble.

You spent years becoming an expert. You know your field cold. What nobody told you is that expertise doesn't pay the bills. Contracts do. Clients who pay on time do. Knowing how to walk away from the wrong engagement before it eats your year does.

This book is the manual for the part of consulting nobody teaches you.

Richard Lowe spent forty years in the business. Two decades of that running computer operations for Trader Joe's as Director, managing complexity, budgets, vendors, and people at scale. Then he took that experience into consulting, where he learned fast that the skills that make a great consultant and the skills that make a profitable one are not the same list.

Every chapter in this book comes from real engagements, real clients, and real mistakes. The war stories are in here because that's where the actual lessons live. Not in theory. Not in frameworks you'll forget before you hit the parking lot.

You'll learn how to price your services without leaving money on the table, how to write contracts that protect you instead of just sounding official, how to handle the client who changes scope every Tuesday, and how to recognize the engagement that is going to blow up in your face before you sign anything. You'll also learn how to use AI as a billable service offering, which is now one of the fastest-growing opportunities for consultants willing to get practical about it.

Twenty-nine chapters. Forty years of hard-won experience. Zero fluff.

If you're serious about building a consulting practice that pays you what you're worth and doesn't run your life into the ground, this is the book you needed before you took your first client.