u/Exciting-Holiday2106

I’ve been reading a lot about consulting work recently and trying to understand what the day-to-day reality actually looks like beyond the usual “strategy decks and client meetings” stereotype.

From the outside, it seems like a lot of the work is actually coordination, iteration, and managing ambiguity rather than purely analysis or presentations.

For people currently in consulting:

What part of the job do you think people outside the industry underestimate the most?

And what tends to take up more of your time than expected when you first started?

I’ve been thinking about starting my own business, but I’m still in the early stages of figuring things out — especially on the operational side.

From what I can see, a lot of running a business isn’t just about the “idea” or building the product, but a lot of repetitive day-to-day work like handling leads, follow-ups, admin, organizing information, etc.

Since I don’t have real experience running one yet, I wanted to ask people here who actually do:

What part of running your business takes up the most time or feels repetitive/frustrating?

And if you could simplify or remove one part of your daily workflow, what would it be?

Just trying to understand the real pain points before I dive in.