Talking to farmers
My wife and I spent a lovely August Bank Holiday Weekend in Norfolk as guests of friends who are farmers growing wheat, canola (rapeseed) and beans. On Sunday afternoon we went to the local pub and met up with their friends, most of whom are farmers also.
As we stood around in the soft evening light chatting, much of the conversation revolved around work; in particular comparisons between the working life of a farmer and a self-employed consultant. The similarities were all pretty obvious: self-employment, working alone and making every decision for (and by) yourself.
The differences were far more revealing. There are the obvious things like the physical nature of farming work, the dangers of producing a commodity when selling to an aggressive buyer like Tesco and the near-total reliance on weather.
Harder to spot but far more interesting was the idea of 'cost of entry'. With the exception of one man who was the farm manager of a large estate, everyone at the pub had inherited the land they worked. The best way to become a farmer is to be a farmer's son. In fact given that you can no longer go west and simply stake a claim, the only other ways to get into the business are to either sink a lot of cash (yours and the bank's) into buying land or to manage a large holding owned by someone else. The barriers to entering the farming profession are thus remarkably high.
By contrast becoming a consultant requires nothing more than an email address and a business card. Consultancy like stand-up comedy, motivational speaking and any kind of freelance writing has very low barriers to entry. There is no blanket expectation that we be accredited like accountants or even be educated to a given level.
You are a consultant the moment you say you are.
This means that there will always be someone coming after you. Some 'lean and hungry' type who will argue that your 'years of experience' equates to 'complacency' and that she can do a better job cheaper.
In no way am I saying that a farmer's lot is an easier one; I know that as a farmer's son. But farmers should at least be able to see where the next big threat to their livelihood is coming from. For all I know someone was made redundant last Friday who spent the long weekend deciding to go out on her own as pharma marketing consultant rather than applying for another job. Today we don't even know that the other exists but my business depends on me behaving as if she does.
When businesses in high cost-of-entry markets fail its like the Titanic hitting the iceberg, in low cost-of-entry markets like mine its usually the death of a thousand invisible cuts.