Is a consulting business really a business? And if it’s not, then what exactly is a business?
During my trip back home, I’ve had some discussions with some friends and some family. People that have achieved great things in their own businesses as well as in other’s, by providing services.
We can all agree that service providing can be qualified as a business but if consultancy is the service provided, is that really a business?
Is Consulting Business Really A Business?
Let me explain why I ask.
Service providers do things for their clients that their clients either can’t or won’t do. They either can’t because they lack certifications or they won’t because they just don’t feel like it. Think architectural services and think cleaning services.
What service does a consultancy business sell? It sells thinking. A consultant is a brain for hire. A consultant, however, does not have authority to make decisions. People don’t hire consultants to run their businesses. They hire them to provide insight and a fresh perspective. We can even say that a consultant is more of an educator than anything else. As such, the business of consulting is not a business, but it’s more like private tutoring.
Is Consulting Business Actually Education?
Education is the best investment you can make in yourself because once you have that, nobody can take it away from you. At the same time, education is more persistent than your physical fitness and health because those can slowly decay if you don’t take care of them. Education, however, is something that sticks with you for your entire life. Yes, sometimes you need a refresh, but that happens probably every 5 to 10 years.
Is it shameful to consider yourself a business owner if you run a consulting business? Is it shameful for teachers to teach? I don’t think so, but at the same time as someone building and consolidating a consultancy business about businesses, I know I can’t really take pride in this thing as being a proper business. This is because I see businesses every day. Businesses of all shapes and sizes. I work with them, sometimes really closely, and I see and maybe even unlock some value that the business owners don’t see.
But every time I see your business I cannot help but compare it to my own. I think it’s a mistake to consider a consultant as being a brain for hire because people don’t need to hire brains, especially in 2026 when they can just ask an LLM.
Conclusion
I think a consultant actually offers a transformation. That transformation is for the owner and maybe even the employees as well. The transformation is for them to successfully achieve a higher level of awareness. For them to better understand their options. For them to reframe their past experience, to better internalise them in order for them to make better decisions in the future. that is the transformation that a business consultant is selling.
We could argue the transformation is a new identity, but I think it’s simply a leveling up of the same person. Every person has infinite potential but at the same time a person doesn’t know what it doesn’t know. That’s exactly why consultants are worth hiring, for a finite amount of time, with a fixed scope for that particular timeframe. A consultant is not a coach and a consultant is not a mentor. A consultant should be able to identify proper KPIs. A consultant should oversee optimisations of specific processes in order for those KPIs to be achieved. After that, the client can either choose to use the same consultant for a different process or they can just simply part ways.
This last description sounds more like a service business and less like private tutoring. But the problem with private tutoring is that there are no KPIs. The results are solely dependent on the client’s performance. The tutor has no skin in the game.
Is a consultant a fractional C suite? that would better fit this last description with processes and KPI.
What do you feel you need to hire a tutor for? Do you feel that a fractional C suite would be better suited for your business?
Let me know. Shoot me an email at sorina@sorinadumitru.com