So You Want To Be A Consultant 260
Stephen Friedl writes "I've been a self-employed consultant for almost 20 years - I still have my first customer! - and I'm asked often about the business by those who are considering it. It's not for everybody, and there are often surprises, so I've written up a Tech Tip that recounts my experiences and provides advice for the n00b. Executive summary: It's much more about customer service than it is about technical skill."
me too ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Keeping your first customer is NOT perse a good thing. Only if you still make money on work for that customer. The first 10 years of my own business, I found my self spending a lot of time giving phone-support for previously programmer stuff. Or for other stuff... or for no stuff at all (help, my mouse doesn't work properly anymore !)... The most difficult thing in being self employed is : learn to charge for everything. If you work on something, even if it is only 5 minutes : bill'em.
It's the only advice I can give. If you start a relationship with your customer based on free support (in the widest possible interpretation of support), yuo're fucked
So true (Score:5, Insightful)
Communication, communication, communication. And it's not billable, most of the time - so take that into account when you set your rates for the time you can bill. You can spend 60 hours a week working in this mode, and only be able to charge for 15 of them sometimes.
One of the most debased professions... (Score:5, Insightful)
With the Y2K and dot-com booms, "consultant" became used to mean someone with more than three months of IT experience...
Thankfully (for us real consultants), most of the amateurs have returned to horse farming, or whatever they used to do.
It'll still be a while, however, before "IT Consultant" on a business card impresses anyone.
Why work 16 hours a day? (Score:1, Insightful)
Because all work and no play makes Johnny a dull boy?
So true ... customer service keeps me in business (Score:3, Insightful)
My advice for new consultants:
Incorporate. Protect your savings, house, car, etc., if there's a disaster.
Be available. This includes evenings, weekends, and vacations.
Be responsive. Check your customer email several times a day and respond.
Fixed bid projects. (Score:5, Insightful)
One thing I would like to add, though, is a fixed bid tip. The author admits he does not have much experience with this type of work and omits one important detail that can save a lot of headache for both parties and keep cashflow going during a large project.
Always try to do a fixed bid project with milestone based payments. This keeps the customer happy since they get to see the code at intervals, gauge the progress, and offer feedback. It lets you get paid as you go and helps you use customer feedback to make changes (and no matter how good the spec, there will be) as you develop.
Re:are you going to pay me? (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why being under-capitalized is the number one reason new businesses fail.
Some of this strikes a chord with me... (Score:4, Insightful)
Recently, I was in salary negotiations with a company without any competing job offers. I asked for a really high salary relative to others applying for the position. When asked why or do I have any other offers, I simply reiterated that I am very interested in this position, and the salary is what I have discovered through other companies is market.
The name of the game is: "Never show all your cards"
The secret formula is... (Score:5, Insightful)
50% Personality, 50% Technical Ability.
If you can't walk into an office and within 2 minutes be mostly comfortable and getting along with everyone, then you shouldn't be a consultant. You don't have a long time to get going, like you would if you were an employee. There's no training, no hand-holding. You are there doing your thing. It's actually quite fun and interesting most of the time!
I also still have my first client.... heh
-m
Re:Technical skill? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm much more on the technical side of consulting, and the only "marketing" I do is publishing original, technical content [unixwiz.net]. Mainly I write C code all day, though I'm sure that this slashdot post is seen as "marketing"...
Steve
Simple Rule of Thumb. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:me too ! (Score:4, Insightful)
I've not found this to be the case: the consultant gets to pick what he does and does not charge for, and if customers know that every time they call you, they get billed for 5 minutes, it doesn't create an entirely friendly environment. I think that a certain amount of "freebies" is part of maintaining a good customer relationship: I get paid for my time, but I don't nickel-and-dime my customer to death.
Steve
Re:Simple Rule of Thumb. (Score:3, Insightful)
Often the case on consulting projects when a client who lacks expertise wants to make design and development decisions that he's not qualified to do.
The trouble with consulting (Score:3, Insightful)
Transparency really is key (Score:3, Insightful)
- We don't do anything billable without a contract in place. This means there are no unpleasant surprises later when the client says "oh, I didn't realise this would be so much" or "we don't have the budget allocated." On the other hand, if there is no arrangement ahead of time (perhaps what I'm doing is outside the scope, or they're a new client) then we don't invoice, and the time we spent was our problem.
- Don't charge for the small stuff. Quick phone calls don't add up to a ton of short charges as they do with a lawyer. But it also means that if the subject is clearly long then I have to pay attention and be sure to tell the client "You know, this is going to take more than a few minutes. Let's schedule a time to go over this in detail." It also means, as TFA says, that you have to fire people for whom this doesn't work -- in that case the calls are just a symptom of something worse wrong with the client relationship.
Basically our principle is: if you wouldn't like to receive a bill for it, you probably shouldn't be sending one for it.Re:me too ! (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, you don't have to be an hourly-billing nazi. You can go the extra mile for a customer without charging them - as the whim guides you. You just have to know how to make it clear that it's exactly that - something extra you are doing beyond the call of duty and that you normally _WOULD_ and _WILL_ charge for it.
You don't have to be anal about it nor do you have to let your customers walk all over you. There's a rewarding middle-ground.
And this customer-service advice goes for the entire tech industry - from frontline engineers on the telephone providing first tier support, right up to the QA, developer and product engineer guys. Without your customers, you're nothing. You are making your product for them. You live and die by your reputation with them. Stop treating them like a nuisance or an ATM machine and you'll have loyal customers.
self-discipline (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been doing this kind of work for the last six or seven years. And it took me the first five to figure out how to work at home. During that first five years, working at home was not easy! I hadn't yet developed the discipline needed, nor the mental state necessary for home and work to co-exist.
I eventually figured it out, and am extremely happy with my lifestyle right now. The first step was learning how far I had to distance my work life from my personal life. For example, we bought a new house this year. When looking for a house, the number one necessity on my list was an office area on a seperate level than the living area. We found one with a basement den that became a really wonderful office. It's a half level from the living room, and a full level from the bedrooms. Wonderful.
Something else I learned was that, no matter how much I thought I could get done with a TV on, it was best to be distanced from all television. The same goes with music with lyrics. For maximum concentration, I need to listen to instrumental music (fortunately my two favorite musical genres are classical and movie soundtracks). Interestingly, as long as I play only instrumental music, I have better concentration than if I don't listen to any music, because it will drown out other distracting noises. (headphones are also a good signal to the wife: don't bother me!)
Speaking of the wife, another challenge after getting married was not only me learning to work at home, but my wife learning to let me work at home. Make sure that everybody in the household knows that work time is work time. If you worked at an office, nobody would expect you to swing by the house to straighten up the living room at 2:30 in the afternoon. Don't make it an excuse for not doing any extra work (believe me, wives hate that), but make sure that your wife knows that while she's welcome to ask you to help out, not to expect it to get done until after your work time.
Now, if anybody has figured out how to cure the
One comment about financial difficulties (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, it was, until the project kept growing, and they kept requiring me to bring on more people to help finish the project. I was opposed to adding people, but it was "if you can't, we'll have to find someone who can". We were billing on an hourly basis, but the lag time on invoices began to creep up, mostly due to the fact that my previous company was bought out, and the billing system cut-over didn't go all that well.
Long, sad story later, I was *way* in the hole, and about to vanish into a cashflow crunch that would eat my little company. I went to my client and laid out the situation for them. I told them that I had not expected to have so many people on the project (about 16 subcontractors, each pulling in around $50/hour), and pointed out all the efforts I had made to meet their shifting requirements. After a very reasonable conversation, my primary contact lit a medium-sized fire under the AP department, and I got a sizeable check that put us up to date.
So, I believe that sometimes letting the client know that they've put you in a bind can be useful. Particularly in this case, where replacing my whole team mid-project wasn't a great option for them.