How To Land Your First Client As An Independent Consultant

By crooky | July 22, 2008

I talk to a lot of folks who are looking to transition from employee to consultant and one of the most common questions I get asked is “how do you land those first few clients?” It’s an excellent question and I’m going to outline how you get started consulting once you’ve decided to make the leap.

1. Leverage Your Network

If you don’t have a network of people who can hook you up with work, you’re not ready to become a consultant. Networking and relationships are the lifeblood of any consulting business. Anyone who tells you otherwise is a fool.

The real conundrum is how you build and maintain the right kind of network to get yourself work. There are two ways to go about this - using your work network (if you’re going to continuing on your current career track) or finding an existing network in your chosen field (if you’re switching to a new career).

I’ve seen friends of mine try things like Business Networking International and professional consulting associations and to be frank, they don’t appear to bring in much work for my friends.

What you need is an established network that you become a part of. If you’ve been working in a field for a number of years and aren’t completely useless, chances are that you’ve made some connections and have people in your network that you can subtly inform that you’d like to work with them.

That’s the way I did it. I left my public servant career and e-mailed my entire rolodex, letting them know that I was leaving and if they’d like to work with me as a consultant, I was available. This landed me my first three gigs.

If you’re switching to a completely different field, you need to find the networks that your clients are hanging out in. If it’s small business owners and entrepreneurs that you’re targeting, find events with “venture” and “enterprise” in the title and go with a stack of business cards.

If you have a service that bundles nicely with something like home rennovations, get to your local home show and get to know the vendors there.

The key is - you need to make a place for yourself in a community that can generate leads for you. Generic networking and networking with other people looking for the same clients as yourself are a waste of time.

2. Find Other Consultants

My first few clients were actually other consultants that were looking for affordable but capable help with some of their projects. There’s no shame in starting out as a hired gun with other consultants. Consider it like apprenticeship. You can learn from more experienced consultants and, as time goes on, leave their protective fold and become a peer.

A few caveats - most consultants aren’t going to pay you top dollar for your time when you’re new to consulting. Be prepared to take $30-$40/hour for your time. You may have to do this for a few years until you build up enough clout of your own.

Some consultants will also feel threatened when you start to exceed their day rates and land better clients than they do. Make sure you stay on the good side of people for whom you sub-contract. If they think you’re a twit, they can hurt your chances of landing new clients by bad-mouthing you to potential clients.

Also be aware of what your time is worth. My rule of thumb is this: if you have no experience, double your hourly wage at your last job and that’s your consulting rate. If you’ve got 5+ years experience, triple what you would get doing the same work for a government agency or a private company. When you’ve got 15+ years experience, triple what you would get in the private sector for the same work.

3. Volunteer

One of the great things about volunteering is the networking opportunities. Great people volunteer and they expect to meet other great people volunteering with them. To say nothing of your skills as a consultant, you can take advantage of the “halo effect” by volunteering your time at the places where the people you want to do business with are volunteering.

DO YOUR RESEARCH! Ask the people you want to work with what causes they support. You might actually find out what causes they support by looking at their website.

At the end of the day, getting your first gig is about who you know, not what you know. You have to be able to deliver on your value proposition when you get that first gig but until then, you need to know someone.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for over ten years.

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How to Write a Great Consulting Resume

By crooky | July 19, 2008

Like many consultants, I was once a salaried employee that read job postings, applied for jobs and wrote cover letters. When you start consulting, you leave much of that song and dance behind you because you shift from marketing yourself from within the strict confines of formal job seeking to sales mode. Even consultants are asked for their resume from time to time and this article will show you how to write a great consulting resume.

Click the graphic to download a Word copy of my Great Consulting Resume. Feel free to modify it for your own use.

Before we get into why you might need an up-to-date resume as a successful consultant, let’s talk about what needs to be in a great consulting resume:

1. The Elevator Pitch

When you apply for a job, you usually have the opportunity to pen a cover letter to accompany your resume. This is not always the case with consultants. The real goal of the cover letter is to state your value proposition. What sets you apart from the other people gunning for this position? It’s like an elevator pitch for entrepreneurs.

For that reason, a great consulting resume has the elevator pitch built right in. Don’t write paragraphs of text about how great you are - keep it concise and relevant to the situation.

2. Core Strengths

Not unlike a functional resume, a great consulting resume talks less about jobs of clients that you have had and more about how you are going to meet the core demands of the position/contract that you wrote the resume for. In the sample resume that you can download by clicking on the graphic, there are two core competencies that the potential client was looking for and they should be handled independent of one another.

The key to writing great Core Strengths for your consulting resume is to re-use the terminology and lingo used by the potential client. Aside from gramar, you need to make sure this section of your resume touches on all of the key technical requirements for the job.

3. Education

Education is extremely important to highlight up front. Many clients are very sensitive to the credentials that their consulting vendors have and while they may not need the specific skills your credentials give you for the job, they still need some level of comfort with your education background.

4. Chronological Work History

As you can see in my sample, I don’t write a description of the work that I did at previous jobs. To me, it’s enough that I cite where I gained the experience necessary to charge my exhorbitant rates. All you really need to state is where you worked, when, your title and where that employer was located.

You draw attention to specific aspects of your work history on the first page under core strengths. Most clients/recruiters won’t make it past the first page. A chronological work history demonstrates what you’ve done with your time since graduation and validates the experience you claim to have.

5. Volunteerism

I’ve written at length in the past about the value of volunteerism for the consultant and for those of you who are already volunteers, now is your time to brag. A special section for volunteerism is certainly warranted.

6. Appendix

I normally advise people to keep their resumes down to one page, two pages max. However, in circumstances where you’ve been consulting for a number of years and accumulate an excellent portfolio of completed projects.

__________________________________________________________________________________

That’s the “what” but you’re probably still wondering about the “why”. Many consultants long for a 50% part time retainer or long-term contract job that does something meaningful and stimulating. This resume is for those rare gems when they crop up.

I had the crazy luck to have two such opportunities crop up this month. For these situations, a ready to download/e-mail CV is a life saver.

I understand that the formatting of my resume is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea but I believe it is a great way to show off your skills and value proposition as a consultant.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for over ten years.

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HHO Redux - The Internet Has Arrived

By crooky | July 17, 2008

I have been getting a huge spike in traffic for my blog lately and 90% of it has been for an article I wrote back in March about HHO Boost systems for your car. If you haven’t read the article, it’s basically a mini fuel cell that purportedly turns tap water into “brown’s gas” which, when added to your engine, helps your gas burn more efficiently. The debate has been raging in the comments section of that article for months but it seems to boil down to the fact that HHO gas can help your gas burn more efficiently but that these little fuel cells people are pushing can’t possibly produce enough gas to make a noticeable difference.

I did discover why my article is so popular. With rising gas prices, people are understandably looking for ways to cut costs and they’re obviously looking into HHO systems. Turns out when you Google “HHO”, my blog posting on it comes up as the #1 search result. I’m even higher than Wikipedia! Hahahahaha!

So, just goes to show you the power of writing about something that people are interested in.

FYI, there’s some interesting information on real HHO projects on the Vancity Change Everything blog.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for over ten years.

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UBC Prof Says No More Subsidies to Fisheries

By crooky | July 16, 2008

This is going to be a controversial post. Feel free to send me hate mail. It’s just my opinion. I have been accused by the Left of being a Conservative. I have been accused by the Right of being a Commie. I am neither. I’m apolitical in many respects. As someone who works in policy development, I try to stay politically neutral. I am not, however, above noting when someone says something really clever or really dumb. In this case, someone has put words to a long-held sentiment of mine - that government subsidies for the operations of any industry are stupid and not in the best interest of anyone.

I put the caveat in “for the operations of” because I believe that some forms of subsidy do more good than harm. Research and commercialization subsidies, for example, do more good than harm. To stay competitive, we need new businesses and a sense of entrepreneurialism are sorely needed in Canada. They add to the economic well being of our country.

When resource-based industries like logging, fishing and farming decline for decades as a contributor to GDP, it’s time to move on. Government bailouts of mills and fishing fleets are ridiculous. Research funding to turn natural resources into higher value products is a smart move. For example - did you know that you can turn Pine Beetle afflicted wood into carbon nanotube-like materials? Carbon nanotubes sell for thousands of times more money by weight than selling off the wood as pellet fuel or art furniture.

Natural resource extraction seems to be this sacred field that no one can criticize. I say “bullshit”. If you applied the same standards to dot coms and natural resource extraction companies, I think you’d hear a different tune from politicians and similar segments of the population.

I’m not shy to tell someone who is living in a dying town, working in a dying industry to get off their ass and get a new job somewhere else. It’s not my responsibility to pay your bills when you refuse to get a different job even though you’re perfectly capable of getting a new job. There’s a labour shortage in Canada. That means there’s no excuse for sitting around, waiting for the government to pay your rent.

I’ve done it. My family has done it. It’s not the end of the world. Kudos to Professor Sumaila of UBC for calling the fishing industry on its collective bullshit.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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Stave Off Depression With Blog Plugin Maintenance

By crooky | July 15, 2008

I was starting to get kind of bummed out about my readership levels. About a month ago, it looked like my readership took a nose dive. At the same time, the amount of spam comments I was getting on my posts skyrocketed. I kept writing but I was starting to lose my motivation. Just today, I discovered that when I upgraded my wordpress version last month, it deactivated all of my plugins - killing my ability to track visitors to my blog and to screen out viagra spam posts.

Let that be a lesson to anyone who has a blog - make sure you know if your plugins are working or not. Don’t just look at the output (successful postings and Analytics) to know what’s going on with your website.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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How to Make Your Business Look Impressive

By crooky | July 15, 2008

I’ve talked about sub-contracting and outsourcing a number of times before but I wanted to explore this issue further after some conversations I’ve had recently. A lot of sole proprietor consultants (like myself) have this feeling that we’ll never be taken seriously unless we have employees and a brick & mortar office. I don’t think this is the case and here are my tips for looking professional while staying small and nimble:

1. Get a website

A lot of sole proprietors I know don’t have websites and don’t advertise their business. This is a mistake, in my opinion. A lot of your potential clients are going to do their research about what consultants to hire online. If you don’t have an online presence, they’re not going to find you.

Admittedly, my site is not a top-ranked Google destination but people still stumble across me - mostly through my blog posts. I also buy advertising time on VancouverConsultants.com. I’ve gotten five referrals in the past year through Vancouver Consultants.

2. Get real business cards

For years, I had DIY business cards that you can make on your own printer. You know - the Avery business cards that you can get at any office supply store. I did a good job on them but they were never going to look as professional as the card stock that normal business cards are printed on. People can tell the difference.

3. Sub-Contract to Tackle Bigger Jobs

I took on a job with Terasen Gas recently where I had to conduct 50 interviews in six weeks. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to pull this off in the time alloted and manage my other clients so I hired a virtual assistant to help schedule the calls/meetings. It worked out beautifully on a number of fronts. The work got done on time and on budget AND people were generally impressed that I had staff that arranged my calls. They didn’t need to know that Cristina works from home as well.

4. Get Google Apps

Google Apps is a great way to expand your business to include sub-contractors and/or business partners while looking like you have a big operation. If you set up your web site right, you can run your company’s e-mail, group calendar and shared documents through Google. No need for complicated IT infrastructure and adding new e-mail accounts costs nothing. You can add hundreds of e-mail accounts at no cost. It’s free!

5. Get Your Elevator Pitch Down

The last thing you want to do is mumble about what it is you do for a living. Most of the time, you have 10 seconds to get your value statement out and hook your listener into a longer conversation about what you do. Come up with a snappy, concise answer. If you, like me, have a complicated value proposition - come up with a bold statement that garners attention. Examples:

- I saved my clients a million dollars last year
- I am a research ninja
- I am a killer app

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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How To Entertain Your Neighbours with Fake Lawyer Letters

By crooky | July 14, 2008

I apologize for being a bit lax on my blogging schedule these past few weeks. I will get back to some serious writing this week. I took a quasi-vacation last week in which I didn’t do a heck of a lot of work and played with my kids lots, drank beer, got a tan, hung out with friends, etc… It culminated this weekend past with me MCing my cousin Sheldon’s wedding.

Before we return to serious posts about serious business, I wanted to share tonight’s bit of insanity with you. My next door neighbours had an unfortunate incident about 18 months ago where one of their neighbours got drunk, got in her car and drove backwards at full-speed directly into my neighbours’ cars - totalling them both.

My neighbours have been much more charitable about the whole situation than I would have been. Their cars were older cars that the owner had restored to prime working condition but were on paper, worth essentially nothing. They received a few thousand dollars for the cars which had recently had over $6000 in parts alone put into them. The neighbour who totalled their cars drove her car back to her parking spot about 30 yards away and went back into her house, trying to sober up by drinking copious amounts of water before the police arrived.

When the police arrived, they charged her with speeding and leaving the scene of an accident. This week, the woman who committed this ridiculous crime has been petitioning my neighbour to sign a statement saying that she didn’t leave the scene of an accident when she clearly did. My neighbours, who never did receive proper compensation for their totalled vehicles, were so upset that they called me for advice about how to respond. At first, I told them to tell her to “fuck off and die” but realizing that this might not be in the best interest of neighbourly relations, gave them the following letter that I suggested they should give to the woman should she return:

They had a good laugh and decided to call her to tell her that they would, under no circumstances, sign any statement saying she did not leave the scene of an accident because that is exactly what she did. I hope you got a small laugh out of my letter and if you need a similar letter for your loved ones, drop me a line. Always happy to oblige.

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Tired of Being Crammed Between Gen X and Gen Y?

By crooky | July 10, 2008

This is something that I swore I would never advertise because I feel it is a liability to my business - I am 30 years old. Now that I’ve put that out there, it’s a much more interesting conversation to explore why my age has been a liability in my business these past five years.

Let me explain it this way - most people would agree that anyone born between 1980 and the late 90s is a Generation Y person (also known as Millenials). By that same token, most people would agree that anyone born between 1965 and 1975 is definitely a Gen Xer.

I was born in 1978. That makes me almost young enough to be a Gen Yer and almost old enough to be a Gen Xer but not really either. This is a bigger problem for me as a former employee and as a consultant than you might suspect. Here’s why:

1. Gen Yer clients of mine expect me to be significantly older than them.

Typically, when you hire a consultant or anyone to give you advice, you expect them to be older and/or more experienced that you. Obviously, I have some depth in a niche of my expertise area or no one would hire me but rarely am I older than my clients.

I avoid this topic like the plague. It actually came up recently with a client of mine. We got talking about demographic dividers as a way to categorize potential customers. They said “how old are you?” Doh! I hate that question. I copped to being 30 and they were quite taken aback. I’m only 2 years older than they are. I asked them what made them think I was older than that and they said “because you seem wiser and more knowledgeable than most 30 year-olds.”

Now, that was a compliment and they insisted that it wasn’t because I am in poor shape for a 30 year-old but this is exactly the kind of conversation I don’t want to get into with most of my clients. They’re very cool and I don’t think it will impact my working relationship with them but it’s come up in the past when I’ve worked for other 20-something entrepreneurs.

The fact is that most of them don’t take me as seriously when they find out that I’m only a handful of years older than them.

2. Gen Xer clients of mine expect me to be older than most Gen Yers they know.

Let’s face it - the newspapers and magazines are full of articles about how much Generation Y sucks. Where Generation X was supposed to be the slacker generation, Generation Y has gotten saddled with this “selfish, narcissistic, pompous, arrogant asshole” vibe that I don’t think is deserved.

You can see how this might be a bit of an image problem when my clients who are in their 40s find out that I could technically be lumped in with these Gen Yers. Most of them know that I am not as old as they are because I don’t have any grey in my hair (yet) and I have young kids. I’m sure they do the math and think “okay. He must have gotten married in his late 20s and now he has a pre-schooler daughter and a toddler son and he owns his own business.” They’re most likely pegging me at 35-40 years old.

When they find out I’m 30 - some of them are visibly angry. It’s like they think I’ve cheated or something. I understand the frustration. Most of my Gen X friends couldn’t find decent jobs when they left university. I was at the leading edge of the generation that didn’t have as much trouble finding work because so many people are retiring now. I entered my Big C “Career” at the same time as a lot of people as much as 10 years older than me.

Again, most of my older clients have been pretty cool when they find out how old I am because the quality of my work speaks for itself. However, I have lost a few clients over the years because of this and it has certainly strained my relationship with others.

********************************************************

So, you can see how I might be reluctant to admit my age to most clients but I’m at a place in my life when I’m tired of lying about my age or refusing to say. If you judge me based on my age, that’s ageism - pure and simple. You might as well be judging me for being white, or male.

While I may have “outed” myself with this post, I’m certainly not going to make it a new policy to advertise my age to everyone I meet and work with. Even if they recognize that what they’re doing to me is ageism if they change the way they feel about me based on my age, it’s not going to change the fact that I’m suddenly different in their eyes.

I want to thank Maren Hogan over at Big O Recruiting for putting into words many of my thoughts about this issue and linking to one of my previous posts.

I’d also invite anyone considering writing a “how to manage Gen Yers in the workplace”-type article to kiss my ass. I’m sure you were a model employee at age 20. Being irresponsible and/or irrational in your youth is something that people born in 1980 or later invented. In fact, they have a patent on it so next time you want to do something assinine at work, you have to send $2 to the Generation Y Foundation. Sure, they’re going to spend it on piercings but you shouldn’t infringe on their IP.

While I’m at it, I’d like to throw out a big “fuck you” to my fellow Vancouverite Douglas Coupland. You’re a shitty writer, no one should interview you for your views on anything because you’re an asshole and my sister, who used to clean your apartment for a living, says you’re a fucking slob.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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Fuel Efficiency - the VW 1L, 110 MPG Mustang and the Impact of Biofuel on Food Prices

By crooky | July 7, 2008

A trio of articles caught my attention this weekend - all of them related to our obsession with high fuel efficiency vehicles that lower our impact on the environment. We’ll start with a follow up on the VW 1L, then a story about a suspicious highly efficient Mustang and finally an interesting statistic about biofuels.

1. Update on the 1L

Back in May, I introduced you to the Volkswagen 1L. I suspect that VW leaked the story to the mainstream media as an inexpensive tactic to gauge the marketability of the prototype. If that’s the case, it looks like they got a good response because they’re planning on putting out a limited number of these cars by 2010.

Volkswagen 1L

When I wrote about this in May, I reported that they would have production models out in 2010 but apparently they’ve gotten more official about it and have suggested that these cars will retail for about $30-45K. They’ve also decided to go with a 2 cylinder diesel motor instead of a one-cylinder motor.

We’ll see how the market responds when these things start hitting the market. I wouldn’t be surprized to see a few on the road here in Vancouver in 2010.

2. The 110 MPG Mustang

Another entrepreneur is claiming to have cracked the laws of physics and thermodynamics to bring us a car with an engine that is 640% more effient than the original. Wow! (SARCASM ALERT). See the video about this “amazing” discovery below:

Now, before you contact this individual to give him your life savings, let me recap the criticisms raised in the EcoModder article that first brought this “amazing” discovery to my attention:

- This car runs on the e85 flex fuel system which demonstrably decreases fuel economy from stock levels in most vehicles.

- He’s actually talking about Miles per Gallon Energy Equivalent MPGe which means the car doesn’t actually get 110 MPG but something far less than that.

- He’s claiming some crazy specs that defy the laws of physics and thermodynamics.

Two other things of note:

- One of the company founders just lost his job at a Ford factory and is probably desperate to try anything.

- The other guy on the video starts going into some crazy rant about how America should dictate gas prices that they’re going to pay to the market, not the other way around.

This whole concept/video depresses the hell out of me. I can’t go on with this section of the article.

3. Are Biofuels Driving Up Food Prices?

The Telegraph had an article today suggesting that biofuels (such as biodiesel based on refined plant materials) could be responsible for as much as 75% Of the increase in global food prices. Food prices have risen by 140% in the past six years and despite the US assertion that it is a hungry China that is driving up prices, a study by the World Bank puts the blame on corn and wheat-based ethanol production.

Never mind food prices, there is some talk that biofuels aren’t as good for the environment as old-fashioned fossil fuels once you account for the fuel used in producing these fuels.

You can argue that biofuels aren’t driving up food prices and they’re not hurting the environment but I believe that there has been enough contradictory evidence to warrant a more in-depth investigation of biofuels before we look to them to replace traditional fossil fuels.

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Aaron “Crooky” Cruikshank is the Principal and Founder of Friuch Consulting. He has written professionally about science and technology for ten years.

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The Hatemail Bag

By crooky | July 2, 2008

When I go out to do research for clients, sometimes I have to send bulk mailers to a large number of people. Earlier this week, I had to send invitations for comments on a new post-secondary education program to several thousand people. Here are some of the better responses I got and how I responded in return:

1. My time is too precious to respond!!!

“I charge for my time just like you. 4 min @ $270.00/ hr.”

My response:

“So… you didn’t fill in the survey, saving you $18 of time that could generate some billable hours but you wasted $4.50 worth of billable hours to tell me that you’re not going to respond to me? Who’s the loser now? I got paid $4 to respond to your note.”

2. YOU’VE UNLEASHED THE FURY!!!!

Edit on July 3: This douchebag is threatening to sue so I’ve removed the actualy text he wrote. Here’s the summary.

“You sent me an e-mail! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!” (plus some wildly inappropriate suggestions about my sexuality, etc…)

My response: “Hahahahaha. How old are you?”

3. Looking for love in all the wrong places

“Take me off your list! No way!”

My response:

“Can’t blame a guy for trying. Have a nice long weekend.”

Her response:

“Hmmm… you`re sweet. Tell me about yourself.”

(10 e-mails later, she starts sending pics and asking about my marital status).

Anyhow, that`s the exciting life I lead as a market research professional. Just thought I`d share.

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