After reading the article and the comments, I'm having a bit of a "a-ha!" moment with the billing question (by week, why didn't I think of that).
I have been an independent technology consultant for 12 years now, with a variety clients (big and small) and I'd say "successful" over all. I generally follow all of the good advice principals mentioned in these comments (mostly think long term with a client, don't charge for the small stuff, make the client feel important, etc).
The one item that keeps coming up over and over is that I'm "independent". It's just me. I get hit by a bus and my clients are out of luck. Now I agree that generally speaking they don't want anyone else working on their projects, but at the same time they would really like some backup. This seems like a nearly impossible problem. I'm not interested in hiring anyone for the reasons mentioned here. Plus, acting alone doesn't appear to give me the ability to get the really big projects ($1M+). Clients aren't going to give "just me" a project of this scale, it wouldn't be good business sense.
So, I've been stuck with letting "IT consultancy firms" find me work on several occasions. They get to mark up my rate, often mix me with other techies, and basically get to sit back and collect money for something that I'm delivering. I'm the one at the client, building the relationship, looking for more work, etc. It's always bothered me that because I'm not a "firm", I don't appear to bill higher rates or win bigger projects. Honestly, it's just me delivering the work anyway. Hopefully this makes sense.
The only way I've come up with to reverse this course is to create a firm where I partner with follow IT consultants and we own the firm. Ownership, I think, is the key. If I work for an existing IT firm, I make a nice hourly rate but I have nothing to show for it at the end. Meanwhile, the firm's ownership, who often are not techies and do not have technology skills, gain everything at the end of the day. If the technology staff owns the firm, then that builds in all sorts of interesting incentives. Now the owners actually have a reason to refer other technology people to the firm, builds firm value. Clients see the combined value of the firm, thus hopefully opening the doors to bigger projects and better value. Plus, the "backup" problem is solved since clients understand that there is a team.
I haven't quite figured out how to get this off the ground (really just started thinking about it over the last couple of months), but it's interesting to me that other independent IT consultants haven't done this already. Or, maybe they have and there's some obvious reason why it doesn't work.
I have been an independent technology consultant for 12 years now, with a variety clients (big and small) and I'd say "successful" over all. I generally follow all of the good advice principals mentioned in these comments (mostly think long term with a client, don't charge for the small stuff, make the client feel important, etc).
The one item that keeps coming up over and over is that I'm "independent". It's just me. I get hit by a bus and my clients are out of luck. Now I agree that generally speaking they don't want anyone else working on their projects, but at the same time they would really like some backup. This seems like a nearly impossible problem. I'm not interested in hiring anyone for the reasons mentioned here. Plus, acting alone doesn't appear to give me the ability to get the really big projects ($1M+). Clients aren't going to give "just me" a project of this scale, it wouldn't be good business sense.
So, I've been stuck with letting "IT consultancy firms" find me work on several occasions. They get to mark up my rate, often mix me with other techies, and basically get to sit back and collect money for something that I'm delivering. I'm the one at the client, building the relationship, looking for more work, etc. It's always bothered me that because I'm not a "firm", I don't appear to bill higher rates or win bigger projects. Honestly, it's just me delivering the work anyway. Hopefully this makes sense.
The only way I've come up with to reverse this course is to create a firm where I partner with follow IT consultants and we own the firm. Ownership, I think, is the key. If I work for an existing IT firm, I make a nice hourly rate but I have nothing to show for it at the end. Meanwhile, the firm's ownership, who often are not techies and do not have technology skills, gain everything at the end of the day. If the technology staff owns the firm, then that builds in all sorts of interesting incentives. Now the owners actually have a reason to refer other technology people to the firm, builds firm value. Clients see the combined value of the firm, thus hopefully opening the doors to bigger projects and better value. Plus, the "backup" problem is solved since clients understand that there is a team.
I haven't quite figured out how to get this off the ground (really just started thinking about it over the last couple of months), but it's interesting to me that other independent IT consultants haven't done this already. Or, maybe they have and there's some obvious reason why it doesn't work.