Work

Note: Some may consider this post as overt self-advertising, as I’ll explain why you should hire me, or my free-agent colleagues, instead of a name-brand consulting firm.

Many free-agents are also natural enterprises, not encumbered by the need for constant growth. I’ve worked as a sub-contractor on bids from large corporations who need my skills for a specific project. It’s usually good work for me, but in many cases I could have put together a team of free agents for a much lower cost and a more effective (in my opinion) project. However, most large corporations and government agencies write their requestes for proposals (RFP) in such a way as to exclude small operators, thinking that they are mitigating their risks.

I have been on both sides of the fence, having written, evaluated and responded to RFP’s, and can say from my experience that free-agents provide good value. I have to agree with the advantages of using a natural enteprise that Dave Pollard lists:

1. Personal relationship (knowledge, trust, partnership, friendship, even love)
2. Customization (really have it your way)
3. Local just-in-time service (responsiveness)
4. Superior innovation
5. Low pressure (since supplier is not dependent on growth for survival)
6. Reciprocality (mutuality, flexible pricing)
7. No corporatist costs to pass on (huge management salaries, huge margins to achieve 20%+ ROI demanded by shareholders, massive advertising, marketing, transportation and packaging costs)
8. Resilience (reliability in the face of economic or other crises, due to superior improvisational capacity and focus on effectiveness rather than more vulnerable efficiency)
9. Quality and durability (no crap from indifferent Chinese factories)
10. Appeal to altruism (supplier is good to its people, its community, its environment, and good for the local economy)

Take for instance my marketing costs – hosting fees for this website and some of my time, compared to the expensive advertising of large consulting firms (Item 7).

In today’s internetworked world, you are no longer engaging a lone consultant working on his own, but an entire network:

Dane has a short post on the importance of elevator pitches and how it’s more important to explain what you do instead of what your job title is (e.g. I’m a consultant).

When Andrea and I go to social events she is frequently asked what I do for a living, and her usual response is, “I don’t know; ask Harold”.

Unfortunately, after more than three years of working for myself, I don’t have a short & sweet elevator pitch. I realise that a lot of the work that I do will not fit into an easy to understand statement, such as, “I buy used bicycles, fix them up and sell them on eBay”. So I’m wondering how important it is to have an elevator pitch that is easy to understand and can be delivered in about 20 seconds. Are these people going to be my clients? Would they be able to refer me to someone else after hearing my pitch?

Almost all of my paid work comes from referrals. Sombody knows somebody else and there is some kind of need and they suggest contacting me. I will then follow up with an e-mail or two and probably a phone call to understand the situation. If we think that I can be of help then I will write a short proposal, outlining the work and the estimated cost. That’s about it.

Am I missing out on new clients because I can’t explain what I do in a short elevator pitch? I’d appreciate any suggestions because I’m learning as I go. Is my consulting section on this website clear enough? I don’t really know because no one has commented on it, even though it is one of the most visited pages on this site.

Or maybe I was thinking about the wrong elevator?

If you are a service provider and your service is interrupted, then you could say nothing and try to deal with the issue as fast as possible. On the other hand, you could tell the truth to your customers. I much prefer the latter:

PBwiki is temporarily down due to a networking hardware problem at our upstream internet provider. We aren’t the only customer offline and the operations staff onsite are working with a technician from the hardware vendor and their upstream link to resolve this problem as soon as possible. We’ve been advised that it may not be possible to fully restore operations for several hours while replacement hardware is located and installed. The fiber optic connectors and transceivers used for these core network systems aren’t for sale on every street corner, unfortunately, at least not before sunrise.

Your wiki is safe, and there is no risk of data loss. Our servers are fine but they currently can’t connect to anything outside of their building. Yes, we love you and yes we miss your wiki as much as you do. It’ll be back in a flash.

Our production servers are located in San Jose, California. You are reading this message on a development machine located in San Diego, California. There’s currently no wiki data here but we have enough offsite infrastructure to show this message. We’ve temporarily remapped all *.pbwiki.com addresses to this message — otherwise you’d just get a timeout in your browser. We have a roadmap plan which will allow us to cope more gracefully with this type of (rare) event in the future.

Thanks for your patience,
–Nathan Schmidt / PBwiki CTO

Last update: Thursday, July 13 2006 4:23am PST (11:23 GMT)

Tempus fugit

Three years ago today I went on my own as a free-agent. It was something I always wanted to do, but I was hastened a bit by my last employer. That company no longer exists but I’m still hanging in there.

When I started, I thought about what had brought about the demise of some companies that I had worked with and I boiled it down to two things – greed & arrogance. I have tried to make sure that I don’t succumb to these success-related diseases. So far, the constant demands of looking for new clients has ensured that I don’t get arrogant about my business. As for greed, I have turned down work that pays well but doesn’t give any real value, and I have charged less than I could with some clients who have had urgent needs. Making a little less is a small price for keeping my principles.

I had previously worked for an e-learning technology vendor and my conclusion on leaving was that selling software licenses and improving learning & performance were not really compatible. That attitude led me into the open source camp and I have not regretted that move. There’s probably less money to be made in the short-term, but open source use is growing and I feel good about recommending the great systems that come out of the more dynamic open source communities.

Blogging has helped me connect to others who are passionate about learning, technology and new ways of work. I feel like I’m living the life of the knowledge worker that was described several years ago by Peter Drucker. My business model is still in beta (and I guess it always will be) but I’m feeling cautiously optimistic that I can continue to make a living doing this.

I also appreciate the support from the great community of bloggers, and edubloggers, without whose help and affirmation I’d be a very frustrated and lonely consultant – thanks :-)

Our vacation is over and I’m back home.

On checking my e-mail I see that I’ve earned 8 cents, which goes to charity, through advertising on my Squidoo Open Source for Learning lens. I guess that means that I’m still a journeyman and had better keep working. According to Hugh Macleod, “A Journeyman gets paid while he works. A Master gets paid while he sleeps.”

I’m open for business :-)

Tomorrow morning I will be flying West with our eldest son on vacation; the first in years. We’re flying to Calgary, then travelling through the Rockies, back to my home town of Revelstoke. Therefore, I won’t be posting anything until about mid-May. This will also be my first blog vacation in two years, though I will be checking e-mail from time to time. Hopefully I’ll have some good photos for my Flickr page too.

Anyway – I’m outta here :-)

Life is different from school in one significant way – in real life you get the test first and the lesson follows. I often say that we learn best from our mistakes, so I’ve definitely learned something this week.

One of my clients recently went into receivership. This is different from bankruptcy, as the Receiver informed me today, because as an unsecured creditor I’m not entitled to any compensation for my completed work. The only secured creditor is the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), “a financial institution wholly owned by the government of Canada” (kind of makes me a minor shareholder). The bank gets 100% of what’s left, which equates to about one third of its investment, so the bank suffers a significant loss but the rest of us get nothing.

What have I learned from this?

• It’s better to be a secured creditor than an unsecured one.
• Receivership is different than bankruptcy.
• As one of 30 other unsecured creditors, I see what kind of an impact receivership/bankruptcy has on the local business community.
• Always, always negotiate some up-front payment, even if you have done work with the client before, so that you’re not out 100% in case of a disaster.
• The project isn’t over until the cheque clears the bank.

For additional learning, here are some definitions from the Canadian Bankruptcy Dictionary [link removed by request of BankruptcyCanada.com – see below for text of request]:

Debenture:
Security instrument evidencing a debt due from one party to another, payable on demand or otherwise, which can be a fixed and/or floating charge on assets and which can grant the lender broad powers to recover the amount due upon default, including the appointment of a receiver or receiver-manager.

Receiver:
A person or corporation appointed by a person who holds a debenture or other security agreement, giving that person authority to take possession of and sell the asset(s) specified in the debenture. A Receiver cannot manage or operate a company for more than 14 days.

Receiving Order (Bankruptcy Order):
An Order handed down by the Court following the successful petition to have a person or company placed into bankruptcy. In an amendment dated December 15, 2004 this term was changed to Bankruptcy Order.

email received 2 Jan 2014:

Hi. My name is Gordon Sands. I am a principal of BankruptcyCanada.com.

We are contacting you to respectively request that you remove or mark as “NoFollow” the link(s) you have to BankruptcyCanada.com from http://jarche.com/  because the links are not in the same niche as our site.

Kindly advise us when you have either removed or marked the links “NoFollow” so we do not send you a follow-up email.

Regretfully we will be forced to submit, websites not complying with our request, to Google using their Link Disavow procedure. This may have an adverse effect on your site.

Yours truly,

Gordon Sands

Gordon@BankruptcyCanada.com

Update: More information on how the golden era of spam comments has ended, and what likely prompted the email “request” above.