What if you're an "ideas guy?"

When you're starting off in your career, no one takes your ideas seriously.

And for good reason: you have no real world experience!

A lot of the best ideas that have actually have a chance of being implemented require you to understand how organizations work: your clients or your company.

But it's discouraging to always have your ideas shut down and ignored.

And if you're aspiring to go 1099, it's very likely you're a creative type who is always generating ideas on how to improve things. It's probably one of the reasons you want to go 1099.

The thing is, you likely even have less power and influence as a solo 1099 than you did as a W2 employee!

So to get your ideas implemented, you need to learn some client consulting skills which is likely a weakness of yours. It is for me.

These include:

• Deep listening - Pay attention to what the client cares about and be able to repeat it back to them
• Communication - You're probably 10 steps ahead of your client with your ideas. Being able to explain it in terms that they understand so they can confidently explain it to their boss is critical
• Persuasion - Persuasion is the art of getting a client to do what you want without any formal authority over them. You will need to learn to address their objections, show how your idea helps them with something they care about, and then guiding them to take action
• Adaptability - Your ideas likely will have to change form to adapt to client feedback and organizational reality

Exercising creativity in a business context requires dealing with the messiness of other people. There is no way around it.

So if you do want to be successful with new, creative ideas, you need to round it out with consulting skills that help you implement them.

Want the full playbook? Check out Going 1099.