I tweet a daily consulting tip on the @artofgig twitter account and compile them every couple of weeks here as a newsletter issue.
Here are tips 14-27.
Consulting Tip #14: By default, do not bill for travel time unless you actually work on the gig on the plane/train. Bill a high enough rate for billable time to cover overhead of travel-related schedule inefficiencies. Deal with exceptions like risky field travel case-by-case.
Consulting Tip #15: When you get a new lead, ask yourself whether one of your indie-consultants buddies might be a better fit for it than you, and refer them with a specific endorsement if so. Even if it means forgoing some short-term revenue yourself.
Consulting Tip #16: In the indie consulting economy, cooperation is more important than competition. You’re more likely to need support on skills you lack than to run into direct competition for a gig. So always look for ways to rope in buddies, and be open to being roped in.
Consulting Tip #17: Make all introductions (consultant to consultant, client to consultant, client to useful contacts) for free. Influence peddling for anything other than goodwill is rarely worth either the money or the moral hazard. Charge for what you know, not who you know.
Consulting Tip #18: Maintain a real blacklist and put people who behave poorly by your standards on it and stop working with them (both fellow indie consultants and clients). Indie consulting is a natural lemon market, and you are only as trustworthy as your network.
Consulting Tip #19: Make yourself a nice business card (from a service like Moo) with design and artwork that’s meaningful to you. They’re useless for networking but valuable catalysts for your identity formation as an indie consultant.
Consulting Tip #20: Don’t network. Netplay instead. If it feels like conscious “work”, you’re doing it wrong. At best you’ll gain short-term transactional benefits. Your network is ideally a positive externality of playing social games you actually take pleasure in.
Consulting Tip #21: Pay attention to the peripheries of your network. Your best leads will come from your weakest ties. People who know you best are usually your weakest sources of leads.
Consulting Tip #22: Do not book-keep time you devote to things viewed as goodwill (public commons contributions, free stuff, pro bono help to people who need it). Tracking means it is not coming from a place of abundance, and you will end up nursing a grievance about doing it.
Consulting Tip #23: If it feels like thankless work, then you are unconsciously expecting to be thanked, even if you say you’re not. Either charge for it, stop doing it, or structure it to accumulate value as an asset you control. Virtue signaling martyrdom is a dumb payoff.
Consulting Tip #24: Don’t whine about being asked to work for exposure. Do it if it seems worthwhile, don’t if not. Take note of those who exhibit exploitative patterns of trying to score free labor in return for worthless exposure, but you have no obligation to act on this info.
Consulting Tip #25: Do not act like you are in a union of exploited workers. The sine qua non of indie consulting is the search for greater individual agency than employees at any level from janitor to CEO can ever achieve. If that search doesn’t interest you, do something else.
Consulting Tip #26: Maintain a clear sense of what “independence” means to you in relation to all levels of permanent employees. Independence from collectivist agendas is as important as independence from the whims of capricious executives or the blundering of clueless managers.
Consulting Tip #27: Watch for signs of holier-than-thou smugness in yourself in relation to paycheck types. Your role in the economy exists because theirs do. Your choice to be an indie consultant is just that: YOUR choice. Respect theirs.
Here is Compilation #1 (1-13) if you want to backtrack and catch up.
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I’m in the middle of moving-week chaos (I’m moving from Seattle to Los Angeles) so no original-content post this week. If any of you live in LA, especially near downtown, do reply to this email to say hello. I have vague plans to pull together the occasional meetup.