Consultancy rates?

[PestoQueen]

Interested to know what roles you have and consultancy rates? I’m working freelance and building my business as a registered nutrition professional and I’ve started working but after 6 months I feel I’m working really hard for not that much money after tax etc. I’ve got many years of experience, degree, registration, post grad courses and experience spanning 20 plus years and I’m starting again after a career break. My main work history is being employed, so I’m quite new to this!

I don’t want to say to much about what I’m doing as in the Nutrition field among Registered professionals, is not a big place and it might be a bit outing to give more info!

Without knowing more about what you do, I’d be expecting you to charge £60+ and hour.

Other people's rates are not very relevant here. It is very dependent on what service you are offering, who your clients are, your level of skill / experience and what the market is currently like. In my field (which is not nutrition related), consultancy rates vary between about £450 and £1800ish per day so it's a wide range and depends on all of the factors I've noted here.

Difficult to say without more info but £500-750 a day

It depends how useful and niche the information you provide is. There is a shed load of nutritional advice online, some good much shite.

The reality is that all the nutritional advice anybody needs (elite sports people aside) can be written out in a few paragraphs. Avoid processed foods and eat fresh lean meats, fish, nuts veg etc.

When it comes to nutritional consultancy I think it very much depends how good you are at convincing people that they need your help.

Thanks, it’s consulting on various things but largely recipe analysis, menu development, producing resources for chefs, assessing against current standards and providing advice, menu coding, meetings with other stakeholders but it is quite specialised work for NHS

Again, without being too outing, I’m doing if for less than 60per hour!

(just edited for clarity)

I think it also depends who your clients are - it sounds like they might be NHS Trusts. If you are providing input to NHS Trusts in trust-wide catering / nutrition, I'd be looking at a day rate of at least £400 - but I am not sure that is what you are doing given that a lot of NHS catering provided by external providers. So it's hard to know - you may need to expect a lower rate it if it's individualised work for patients / individuals in dietetics or smaller settings. Also I think it will depend upon you qualifications and experience -i.e. how we qualified / experienced are you to assure the setting of their compliance with standards etc.

There's likely to be a going rate for your service/skillset/qualifications?

£60 ph would be very very cheap for some people but very very expensive or not the way to charge for others, eg people charge per day not per hour. Also depending on whether you also charge for travel or if that's on top.

It’s so industry and sector specific I don’t think anyone can advise unless they do something similar in the NHS, where budgets tend to be low but skills are in varying levels of demand so rates will vary from one type of consulting to another. A management consultant could easily earn £1200-2000 a day but that’s a totally different type of work. Do you not have a network or industry body where you can ask or get a sense of rates in your old field?

A nutritionist working with a premiere league football team could earn 20x what someone doing a similar thing in the NHS is doing.

Thanks all, @CakeandslippersI’m a old and experienced RD

In that case you should be charging £600-£1k a day + VAT and travel

Thanks 🙏🏻