MoneyPhile

Sick of bosses barking at them and fed up at punching clocks, a new wave of professional is setting out to perhaps tilt at windmills. IT, or, Information Technology Consultants can be the modern version of a fry cook buying his own restaurant so that he, not the owner, makes all the profit. However; once the walk-in coolers break down, his cook gets busted for a DUI, the waitress files a harassment lawsuit against the busboy, PETA launches a boycott in the parking lot and the town loudmouth says he got food poisoning on Sushi Night, the cook may begin to wonder if, indeed, it is better to simply walk through the door hung over, punch the clock and get to the end of the day.   Here’s a look into becoming an IT Consultant.

What does an IT consultant do? An independent IT Consultant makes a living by advising businesses on how to best use information technology (hardware, software, or both) to meet their business objectives. This may include gathering user requirements, such as “how to increase sales and production through technology X”, and writing necessary technical specifications, designs, code, and test cases required to achieve the objective. They are also considered Subject Matter Experts, on the jobs in which they are hired for – usually – a niche technology that takes many months to learn, and makes people’s heads spin trying to understand it.

Who is the potential IT consultant? You may think that it is the nice kid with an almost beard fixing peoples computers, handing them back with a cocky smile and giving a little extra free advice on how to keep that crash from happening again, or slipping an anti-virus disc in with the deal, or even telling you which websites provide the best trouble-shooting advice so that trips downtown, lugging a tower and ten-pound screen, cords dangling behind, can be avoided. On the contrary, successful IT consultants are down to earth, social people, who don’t mind cutting through the politics in a company to achieve the goal they were hired for. The potential IT consultant is always networking, laying the groundwork, building a customer base with everybody in town.

Act and dress your wage. If a plumber comes to somebody’s house unshaven, smells like beer and has the manners of a drunken hobo, his boss is going to hear about it. If the same plumber approaches a customer in the grocery store, the same customer whose house he stunk up with BO the previous week, hands him a card and says, Good news, buddy boy, I’ve got my own business, now. Give me a call, that plumber is going to own a very lonely phone. A new IT consultant is a business owner, and so needs to dress and act it.

It is important to remember that a consulting business is not the same as being a behind the scenes business owner. It is a BTB, or, business to business relationship; no different from a lawyer helping a CPA, or, vice versa. So, after that advice, what next?

Almost every expert in the consulting field says the same thing: Specialize. A list should be made of the thing the aspiring consultant does the best. That is because if he just says that he does everything, people won’t be sure what everything is. They have a problem that is a something, and they want somebody who knows something. People will always hire a chimney cleaner to clean their fireplace and smokestack before they hire a jack of all trades.

In the same vein, many new consultants try to target everybody and everything, and if they do that they will simply be flipping over what they tried to accomplish in naming their specialties and market focus. Soon they will find themselves washing client’s cars and helping them solve crossword puzzles. Focus needs to be key in everything, and certainly, in marketing oneself.

The new businessman, or, IT consultant is going to have to remember that they are no long an hourly employee handing out free advice and tips, and telling jokes and marking time. Time will now be something to be pondered, studied, and drawn and quartered into pieces and fragments that are most effective to his new business mind. A journal is strongly recommended, preferably by the quarter-hour so that the business week can be analyzed into what portions sales and marketing fall into, as well as billable hours, and administrative duties.

Crazy people hang out with crazy people for a reason; they’re all crazy. Charles Manson never hung out with Charles Scwaab. Successful people hang out with successful people and the new IT Consultant should get to know the top people in non-competing fields. Not only will these people have brilliant advice but they are connected to the hilt, and all too happy to help out budding businessmen by sending clients their way.