Service Industry

It is 2022. I now have a side-hustle (rental business), a hobby (golf), and many family responsibilities. But I am also co-president of a small but mighty and growing consulting business. And that is, literally, my full-time occupation.

Consultants get ribbed all the time, and often for good reason. All the jokes, funny movies, and eye rolls don’t materialize from nowhere, but from negative stereotypes that are all too often true. 

It is both a matter of personal values and professional ambition that I desire to be a different kind of consultant and hold my colleagues to the same standard. When my kids, at various points in their lives, have asked me the invariable question, “dad, what the heck do you do,” I don’t hesitate with my stock answer: I help people. 

It is a very rewarding profession if you frame it like this. I respect all my clients, and in many cases there is a deep professional admiration and personal love. So I want them to succeed. And it brings me joy to know I can contribute to that or at least watch it up close. Which often, although not always, leads to me being successful, so that’s a good symbiosis. 

But it is not an easy job. This level of commitment means no small amount of grinding and hustling, long hours and hard conversations. I hope I am not becoming or ever was a workaholic. I feel I have a pretty good sense of boundaries and derive life from many other things outside of work. But helping others often means being spent, going the extra mile. I do it gladly, but I don’t do it without cost. 

One can overdo this of course. But it’s important for me that when I get hired you get my “A” game. And that you know I’m thinking about you beyond the specific thing I’ve been hired for, rooting for your success and doing what I can to contribute to it. Like a good long run, you ache after. But it’s a good pain, a pain that also feels good because you pushed yourself in service of something worth pushing on.