Читать книгу Start & Run a Rural Computer Consultant Business - John D. Deans - Страница 7

A rural computer consultant is the jack-of-all-computer-trades. He or she has to be able to fix, configure, install, test, and troubleshoot everything and anything electronic that businesses use on a day-to-day basis, and do all this for numerous customers that make up a client base.

During my years as an urban enterprise-level consultant, I never imagined doing what I do now or doing it where I do it. My perception during the 1990s was that only big cities had enough computer-related jobs and projects to support full-time information technology personnel. What I’ve learned is that a small town (or cluster of small towns within a 30-mile radius) big enough to warrant a Wal-Mart and a McDonald’s is fertile ground for computer consulting experts.

I grant you that most small-town environments will only support one or two multiskilled consultants, but odds are that should you decide to become a rural computer consultant, you won’t find much competition. One of the reasons I can say this with confidence is that while I was researching this book, I was not able to find any other books describing IT or computer consulting in rural areas. There were, however, numerous books in both hardcover and paperback related to general consulting, IT consulting, and starting small businesses in various IT fields. The common thread to all these books was the need for medium-to-large metropolitan areas as a marketplace.

Another way I learned that there are not many computer consultants working solely in rural environments was by roaming chat rooms and newsgroups. What I’ve discovered is that ever since the IT bust of 2000, many of my peers have had to really scrounge for work just to pay their bills. They’ve had to take almost anything, anywhere, even if it required flying out to the client site on Sunday nights and back again late Friday afternoons. Others have simply given up and taken work in non-IT environments. The past five years have certainly culled many single-skill-set workers and/or poor performers from the IT industry.

Rarely, if ever, did I hear or read of urban IT professionals leaving the city for the country and successfully providing computer consulting and services. If you’re willing to accept some risk, however, the rewards can be great.

I was lucky enough to be able to take all of 1999 off from the IT industry so I could investigate various agribusinesses that could be supported on my 115-acre ranch in Brenham. After learning about multiple types of farming and ranching business models such as raising chickens, goats, and horses, or growing fruit trees or cut flowers, I realized that farming and ranching were not my cup of tea.

During those nine months of testing both plant crops and animal raising, I ran the numbers on Excel and discovered a disheartening fact about agribusinesses. Most of these farming and ranching enterprises require large capital investment, are high risk due to uncontrollable factors such as weather, require hard outdoor work seven days a week, and have a very low payout at the end of the year. This is with no major disasters such as drought or illness.

So in 2000, despite having turned down multiple requests for me to do some consulting work in Houston and Austin, I did finally accept a couple of short-term contracts.

Even at that time, I didn’t believe that Brenham or even all of Washington County would have enough consulting projects to keep me busy, but I decided to start looking for opportunities locally in our new small hometown. Chapter 13 will address in detail how I was able to get my original 12 clients.

As time went on, I was able to gather more rural clients, and by late 2002, I was able to stop taking new Houston and Austin clients entirely. By early 2003, my 40-plus active rural clients were keeping me hopping, so I handed off my remaining Houston and Austin clients to my consultant friends. My billable time was consistently hitting over $10K per month from Washington County clients alone. I had arrived at a small-company plateau I never thought possible just a couple of years before.

It was then, around 2003, when I fully grasped what I had become — a rural computer consultant. I had not planned, projected, researched, or read about this new niche. I had just developed it in real time based on the computing needs of the local businesses.

The exciting thing about being the jack-of-all-IT-trades in the country is that you are doing many different things all day long, and you are rarely at one client’s site for the majority of the day. My normal schedule consists of four, and sometimes up to eight or even ten client-site visits in one day. This would be nearly impossible in a large metro area due to travel times between clients and traffic limitations. Back in the 1990s in Houston, it was rare indeed when I could visit three clients in a day, let alone four or more.

Another good thing about small-town clients is that they are mostly on an eight- to nine-hour day, five days a week. Some of the larger ones may have a second evening shift that you might have to support, but that is rare. This is a major benefit for a rural computer consultant — being able to work from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, and still be close to the house or your kids’ school.

Some days will start out with you having to resolve e-mail problems for Client A, then driving ten or so miles to the neighboring town to troubleshoot backup problems for Client B. Remember that those ten miles will take only about ten minutes, driving through country roads with nice hay fields and cows to look at instead of glaring red taillights and tall buildings. If you do your planning right, Client C is in that same neighboring town and needs you to pick up an old Windows 2000 PC and upgrade it to Windows XP Pro overnight and return it the next morning.

Some days will be project days with specific tasks and jobs to perform on a schedule. Those days are nice, since you are able to focus, plan, and have the required hardware and software on hand. Other days will be in what I call “interrupt mode” or “firefighting mode,” when you go from problem to problem, fixing the computer and network glitches that seem to crop up in threes. Usually, though, after you get a decent client load, you will have days that go as planned and others that are dynamic. You’ll learn to prioritize the level of need, rating it somewhere between an emergency work-stoppage situation and a nice-to-have improvement. Deciding which client to hit next when your schedule gets full is almost an art in itself since you are trying to keep the travel time down and the on-site billing time up.

As I will describe later in this book, the best way to hold on to new clients is by being available and successfully fixing a computer-related problem the business is currently having. If you get a call from a small-business owner who is having network problems and is a friend of one of your current clients, you have got to jump on that one immediately!

Just like any other small-business owner, you must wear many corporate hats. Besides being a computer consultant, you need to also be your own bookkeeper, salesperson, marketing representative, and bill collector, all wrapped into one. When the phone isn’t ringing and your project list is short, your new job for that day or week is marketing!

At the end of the month, with hopefully dozens of invoices to send out, you recheck your billable time and all hardware/software sales, add any applicable taxes, and get those bills in the mail to your clients. Don’t forget about your company’s bills, since they collect up in your in-box just as fast as your personal bills.

Rural computer consulting wasn’t the career I started out in. Nonetheless, my former career in big-city IT was excellent preparation for what I’m doing now. And that’s the topic of the next chapter.