Survive or die, IT Consulting [Part 1]

More English writing here, today i will tell you some insides of my start as a freelance  IT consultor, we will talk about the mistakes and good moves that i made to end with 4 months of a steady relationship with two formal organizations, one related whit IT and another not related (directly obvious). Any way i think i will create three parts of these story. Ok lets start saying that tough choices are hard because this choices involve change and we all love the good old routine even if we complain about it, is easy to settle with a steady job or the thing you got going on to pay the bills.  i know because i had a steady job and it is awesome. But hey if the things are not working out… you have to move on into something it does work right? Ok so new questions comes to your mind GET A NEW JOB or GOING ON YOUR OWN. Lets just save us a lot time and lets start talking about why is better to go on your own a least for while.

You will learn about make business.

You will learn how to sell.

You will learn about managing your time.

You will invest on yourself.

 Make business

If you are always working as a lab rat nobody really knows you as a person, they will only know your tech skills which can be ninja type of hacker skills, but you wont be in any business meeting and if you get paid by a salaries is even worse because it doesn’t matter how much hacking /save the company’s name  you do in your shift… you will get paid the same amount of money, see the point? when you are consultant you get paid by the hour of work, and now the question is different… how much my time and skills is worth in this market?  and i say market at the end because well your expectations can be to hight  and you also have to be realistic.  But dont worry if you want a raise all you have to do is… say my time cost this amount of money from now on, and there you go!. I know you get the picture. So for what i know that is much better business that any offer you hear around there…

 Learn how to sell

This part is a key value in the consultor point of view, you had to learn to sell yourself as product that has two group of things to offer to the potential client, first of course the technical aspect and the other, a business plan that involve pricing to attack that requirement or solve that problem that you have been given or you are hired to cover.  Personally had to start reading about this because i didn’t know how to do it, so i bought a book about sells and i have been learning lots from it  (Cómo vender cualquier cosa, a cualquier persona, en cualquier lugar. Autor(es) Dave Kahle) for example to all my clients i given them access to my FTP server so they can upload content to me anytime and things like that… you know other solutions.).  If an opportunity of consulting job comes, be ready for it whit a technical plan and a payment plan that convince YOUR NEW CLIENT that you are the right way to go.

About managing your time

Now that your time is more close to your pocket, you will see everything in effective hours of work and how those hours affect your economy, try to get the best amount of money per hour of work you can. And start an agenda to organize your time for example, when i start my work i run my timer in the cellphone, time for lunch stop the timer, back to work means back to the clock. at the end of the work day you know how much money you did in a single day and you will provide a more detailed report to the people you are delivering your services.

You invest in yourself

On thing is true and that is you have to dress to the part, i mean first impressions, seconds  impressions and why not a third and every time the occasion needs you put your jacket on, a tie and best jeans or pants. buy yourself a nice pen to sing your documents whit some style, presentation cards whit your website, email, and phone number in the wallet all the time (seriously all the time). About the website a Vcard for website is nice but a fully legal Company website is even better. The other day i lost a contract for not having a fully legal company, right now i am only running the business whit personal bills those are legal and all but some companies only work B2B i know … but that shut tell you that you have to take your business that way too. So to conclude this post lets just say, every day you learn something,  if you dont feel good about your work try freelance consulting for while is a lot more exiting.

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