Stowe Boyd highlights the importance for consultants to have a good ‘corporate shell’ or ‘corporate façade’ for their work.
(Stowe parted company with Blue Whale Labs some months ago, and is now consulting (and blogging) under the wonderfully titled ‘Brannan Street Irregulars’. Apparently a lot of people still think is with Blue Whale in the same way I occasionally get people assuming I’m still working with Citizen Agency.)
Creating such a shell is something that I’ve been realizing I need to do. My reluctance has centered around the fact that under the terms of my US visa, I am granted permission to work as an independent consultant and as such I am not able to operate as a named LLC or C-Corp. I therefore can only legally operate as “Ben Metcalfe”.
However, as any successful consultant in this industry will tell you, one’s blog(s) and one’s consulting gigs kind of go hand-in-hand. And the name of my blog – and any allure of a corporate shell it might bring – are completely separate to my visa satus.
And so it is for this reason that I have decided to seek a new name for this blog and subtly my consultancy work that goes with it.
Also, it will be nice to go to conferences and not have:
Ben Metcalfe
BenMetcalfe.com
or
Ben Metcalfe
Independent Consultant
on my conference badge anymore.
Suggestions for the new name gratefully received, although I am mulling a few of my own 🙂