The Saraswati, Ganesha & Lakshmi Paradigm of Consulting Business

I have been using this paradigm for a while with my friends and today I thought let me make it immortal by capturing it in this blog :) 

When you start a consulting business, you will try hard to connect with people. For that you will do a lot of engagements without thinking of return. I call those engagements as "Saraswati Engagements". They do not provide any monitory return but you gain experience to interact with the audience and test your skill. In the second phase of "Saraswati Engagements", you approach people and offer them your services for lectures or workshops and people will start knowing more about you and your skills. This phase is "Network Expansion"state of "Saraswati Engagements". Eventually, if you are good, people will start inviting you for events and will usually (in India) give you "Ganesha"Idol. I term these engagements as "Ganesha Engagements". These engagements help you gradually eliminate obstacles from your path towards being a professional. Slowly the size of "Ganesha" idol increase and you become from one of the speakers to "Guest of Honor", "Program Chair" or when you get lucky "Chief Guest". As you gain maturity and your brand name spreads, people start asking you about your remuneration to speak in their programs. That my friends I call as "Lakshmi Engagements". 

So next time when someone asks you to do something - now you can smilingly ask: "Is this is a Saraswati (S), Ganesha (G), or Lakshmi (L) Engagement?"And based on the response and your state in the SGL hierarchy, you can decide the priority of serving the request.