Side consulting work is a question I hear from ambitious professionals. You are good at what you do. People ask for your advice. Someone offers to pay you for it.
On the surface, it sounds like a smart move. Extra income. More exposure. More “experience.” Maybe even a backup plan. But side consulting can either accelerate your career or quietly stall it. The difference comes down to why are you doing it and what it pulls your attention away from.
Why Side Consulting Is Tempting
Side consulting can feel productive. It gives you a sense of momentum, especially if your day job feels slow, political, or limiting. You might consider it for one of 3 reasons:
- You want additional income
- You want to explore independence
- You want to “build their profile”
None of those are wrong. The mistake is assuming side consulting is always additive. It is not. Time, energy, and focus are finite. When you add something, you are always subtracting from something else, even if it does not feel obvious at first.
When Side Consulting Actually Helps Your Career
There are 3 scenarios where side consulting can work in your favor.
#1 You Are Actively Testing a Career Pivot
If you are seriously considering moving into consulting or advisory work, side projects are a safe way to test that path. This is not about hobbies or curiosity. This is about validation. You are testing:
- How much do people pay for this?
- Do I enjoy this work?
- Do I want the responsibility of sourcing clients?
- Am I willing to build a business around it?
In this case, side consulting is not a distraction. It is a controlled experiment that makes sense.
#2 The Work Is Advisory, Not Execution Heavy
Advisory roles can strengthen your strategic thinking without consuming your operational bandwidth. Examples include advising a startup leadership team, sitting on an advisory board, and providing strategic guidance rather than doing delivery work. These roles tend to expand your perspective, improve executive judgment, or strengthen your decision making muscle. This kind of work can complement a senior career path when done carefully.
#3 It Builds Skills You Cannot Get in Your Day Job
Sometimes your role is too narrow. If your job keeps you deep in execution, limited side work that stretches you into strategy, stakeholder management, or financial decision making can be helpful. The key is that the skill must be directly relevant to where you want to go next, not just interesting or paid.
When Side Consulting Hurts More Than It Helps
There are 3 situations where side consulting could get you into trouble.
#1 It Competes With Your Day Job
If side consulting affects your performance, energy, or reliability at work, it will cost you far more than it earns. This does not have to be obvious and can show up as:
- Slower response times
- Reduced preparation
- Less patience
- Fewer proactive ideas
- Missed informal opportunities
Senior leaders notice these shifts quickly, even if they do not articulate them. At higher levels, execution quality matters more than raw effort. Anything that pulls you away from excellence in your core role is a risk.
#2 It Creates Focus Fragmentation
Career acceleration requires sustained focus. Side consulting often fragments attention across clients, context, mental models, and deadlines. This fragmentation limits your ability to:
- Build deep influence internally
- Develop strong executive presence
- Be top of mind for critical initiatives
You may feel busy, but you become less visible where it actually matters.
#3 You Are Using It to Avoid the Internal Hard Work
This is the uncomfortable scenario where you might pursue side consulting because your job feels frustrating, progress feels slow, politics feel unfair, or recognition feels delayed. Side work becomes emotional relief; however, this does not equate to progress. In many cases, investing the same energy in internal relationships, executive communication, strategic visibility, or delivering outsized results would move the needle far more than a side consulting job.
The Questions You Should Ask Before Saying Yes
Before taking on any side consulting work, ask yourself this: What am I giving up to make room for this?
Then ask a harder follow up: Is that tradeoff aligned with my next career move?
If your goal is promotion, executive responsibility, larger scope, or higher compensation inside an organization, then your primary leverage is still your day job. Side consulting that does not directly support that path, it often delays it.
As discussed in a recent community Q&A, side consulting only makes sense when it supports a clear pivot or offers strategic, focused growth. Otherwise, it risks overloading you and pulling attention away from execution, relationships, and visibility that actually drive career advancement.
A Better Alternative for Most Professionals
Generally, the higher return investment is not side consulting. Instead, focus on:
- Becoming exceptional at your current role
- Expanding influence without expanding hours
- Building stronger internal networks
- Being known for solving the problems that matter most
This path compounds faster, even if it feels less exciting in the short term. Executives are promoted because they consistently deliver value where it counts, not because they are busy elsewhere.
Notes from Drew
Side consulting is not good or bad on its own. This should be a contextual decision. If you are testing a pivot or intentionally building toward independence, it can be smart. However, if you are using it to compensate for frustration, boredom, or slow progress, it usually backfires.
The real question is not “Can I do this?” but rather “Should I, given where I want to go next?” If you are clear on that answer, the decision becomes much easier.
