Stuart R. Gallant, MD, PhD

Consultation—offering your professional services to companies on a time-limited basis—can be a rewarding type of work.  It is gratifying to be introduced to a project that is behind schedule and threatening a company’s future—and within a short period of time be able to put the “car back on the road.”

Because I have been consulting for over a decade, I am often asked how to get started in consulting.  The question usually comes in some form of, “Stuart, I have started doing CMC consulting.  If you know any companies looking for my expertise in <CMC area> please let me know.”

Today’s post covers some basics of consulting.  (Note:  There are two big categories of consultants:  experts who work for consulting agencies and independent consultants.  This post is really aimed at the latter group.)

LinkedIn

With the vast number of internet tools, doing your own business development has become much easier.  The first place a consultant should think about developing clients is LinkedIn:

• Consolidate and upgrade your LinkedIn profile:  Many LinkedIn members have two or three profiles.  Get rid of the old profiles that have 5 or 10 connections.  Look at the profiles that you admire and steal ideas to upgrade your profile.  Not saying my profile is perfect, but there are some good things about it:  www.linkedin.com/in/stuart-g-aa347338/
• Expand your network:  Connect with every work colleague, vendor, and business contact you have ever met.  A good initial goal is to have >500 connections.  These should not be random people—a minimum standard is, “Have I ever had an extended meaningful conversation with this person or have we worked together on a project?”
• Reach out:  Now that you have a professional looking profile, reach out to those colleagues and friends who are your connections.  Send them a LinkedIn message which lets them know you remember your time with them.  You have started consulting—if they hear of opportunities in your specialty, please let you know.
• Paid subscription:  There are some advantages of a paid LinkedIn subscription (premium.linkedin.com)—you may want to consider a subscription.
• Join groups:  No matter how many connections you have, you won’t have substantial reach in LinkedIn without using groups.  Groups like the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society (www.linkedin.com/groups/110767/) and the American Chemical Society (www.linkedin.com/groups/51209/) have tens of thousands of engaged members.  You can expand your network by posting tastefully to these groups.  Most groups don’t allow open appeals for work, but making blog posts lets folks know you are around and potentially available.  You can repost your blog posts to groups of which you are a member.  See below on blogging.

Blogging

As a consultant, you are looking for low-cost ways of increasing your visibility to potential clients.  A great way to do this is blogging.  There are innumerable ways of setting up a website.  Years ago, I watched “How to Create a Website from Scratch in Under 10 Minutes!” (www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjEOMuHShVg)—the details are now out of date, but the big picture is there on how you can have your own blog at a very modest price.  This also allows you to have your own email address as:  yourname@yourwebsite.com.

Networking

There is no substitute for face-to-face interactions when trying to develop new business connections and clients.  As a consultant, attending as many free events as possible is helpful—local professional societies, local investor groups, etc.  You may also want to create a business development budget for yourself.  I like to attend a certain number of paid conferences, like CPHI (www.cphi.com/en/home.html) and the national meetings of ACS (www.acs.org) and AIChE (www.aiche.org).  Have some nice business cards with you—yes, people still use business cards.

Being a Consultant

I started off my career at Bayer AG.  As a consultant, having prior experience in a traditional corporation is invaluable.  Large pharmaceutical corporations contain all the departmental specializations that move drugs from discovery, through development, to commercial launch and marketing.  Understanding how Research and Development, Quality Assurance, Quality Control, Manufacturing, Engineering, Supply Chain, Regulatory, and Marketing function together allows the consultant to diagnose and break down challenging projects into manageable bites.

As a consultant, you will use everything you have learned since the beginning of your career, but there are a few skills that will be particularly emphasized:

• Project Management:  These days most pharmaceutical development projects, once they are sufficiently advanced, have a dedicated project manager.  As a consultant, you will need to be able to project manage your own portion of the project, as well as communicate effectively with the team’s project manager.  If you’ve never had a course on project management, reading through a few books and checking out some YouTube videos on project management is a good investment of your time.
• Lab Skills:  The traditional arc of a scientific career starts in the lab and often moves into managing first a small group, then a large group.  Senior folks can become disconnected from the day to day of getting work done in the lab.  In today’s lean startup world, there’s a good chance you may find yourself back in the lab—even if you are pretty senior.  I regularly see director level folks, and occasionally VPs, in the lab.  So, be prepared to dust off those skills if your hands are needed to move the project forward.
• Travel:  Today’s virtual pharmaceutical companies use a lot of contract research and contract manufacturing organizations (pharmatopo.com/index.php/2022/11/09/selecting-and-working-with-a-contract-manufacturer/).  There is no substitute for visiting your contact partners when they are doing work for you (testing, manufacturing runs, etc.).
• Customer Focus:  Dedication toward customer satisfaction and building strong customer relationships are key features of the modern economy (think:  Amazon and Uber).  You need to communicate well with you client in order to understand their full needs.  You also need to reassess regularly to be sure you are meeting the client’s needs.
• Drive For Results:  Like the man in the movie said, “In this business with me, I do not buy a service, I buy a result.”  As a consultant, you need to be invested in the success of the overall project—not just in your little piece of it.  So, if you have any doubt that the plan is going to work, you must bring up you concerns and be sure they are addressed.
• Creativity:  Traditional pharmaceutical development and manufacturing succeeded by throwing resources a problem—overbuilt equipment and facilities, testing and retesting prior to conducting a production run, staffing at levels 2x higher than needed, or more.  Today, with lean development, projects take on more risk—“No engineering run, we are going straight to manufacturing for release to the clinic.”  This does not entail risk to the patient because appropriate controls are in place, but it does increase operational risk.  Consultants need to be creative to maximize the chance of success when the company is “shooting three pointers” rather than “layups.”

Business Aspects

As a consultant, you are running a business.  You will need to take appropriate steps to run your business:

• Incorporate:  As an independent consultant, you will want to establish an LLC and use it to establish a degree of personal financial projection.
• Insure:  Consultants need malpractice insurance, just like doctors.  Professional organizations, such as American Institute of Chemical Engineers, provide professional liability insurance a reasonable price.
• Determine Your Rate:  You will need to determine a fee structure that is in line with your area of consultation.  Expenses are billed to your client, so you will need to track your travel and other expenses to pass those expenses through to your clients.
• Templates:  You will want to have available template agreements for common business transactions (non-disclosure, your consulting services, etc.).
• Policies:  You will need to think about what policies govern your consulting.  For me, I have 3 rules:  1) I do not subcontract—I only sign contracts with the sponsor of the project; 2) I only do hourly consulting—no fixed fee per project consulting; 3) I do not sign noncompetes.
• Conflict of Interest:  Guard against conflicts of interest.  Do not accept fees for steering business.  Your only interest is your client’s best interest.

Conclusions

Consultation is an interesting kind of work for two reasons:  the number and variety of projects that you can be exposed to and the criticality of the work.  You will usually be working in the critical path of any project that you consult for.

For consultants, the biggest challenge is usually workflow.  At times, you will be working late hours to keep up with a project that is about to make a filing.  At other times, your projects will be on hiatus as clinical data is accumulated.

Your best business leads are always going to be the people you know.  (See above under “Reach Out.”)  Feel free to reach out to me if you would like more specific or concrete suggestions for you consultation challenges.

Disclaimer:  PharmaTopo^TM provides commentary on topics related to drugs.  The content on this website does not constitute technical, medical, legal, or financial advice.  Consult an appropriately skilled professional, such as an engineer, doctor, lawyer, or investment counselor, prior to undertaking any action related to the topics discussed on PharmaTopo.com.