Category: Business

Microsoft’s Kevin Beares and I have been engaged in a squabble about the SBS Community Survey. (See his blog entry and all the associated links and comments.) Kevin asked me to stop debating the survey’s methodological merits, which I will happily do at this point. He also posed the following questions: How about telling me […]

A few other solo IT consultants have asked me how I get my clients; that is, what marketing strategies work best for me. Currently, 100% of my new business is generated through referrals. Referral sources include current and former clients, other IT consultants, friends, and people I’ve met through professional networking. My business has matured […]

The recording of yesterday’s conference call with Karl Palachuk is now available. As Karl promised, one of the topics we discussed was my “Ten Commandments” for solo IT consultants. I’ve now posted those commandments, with commentary, on The Schlog.

Michael Vizard has an interesting commentary on the choice we IT consultants face between offering our “own” services and offering similar services from well-known, brand-name providers. It’s not all that different from the choice we faced years ago, between selling “white-box” PCs and recommending or reselling Dell, HP, IBM, and so on. There are still […]

Well, not exactly. But if you’re running a one-person IT consulting business, it should be a reasonably valuable way to spend an hour of your time. Tune in on June 18th at 12:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time, and in the meantime, buy some books from our sponsor.

The head of Boston’s Department of Public Works was suspended for three weeks for having allowed a data analyst to work remotely. In this case, the analyst was working very remotely — from Venezuela. The Boston Globe coverage of the story omits any mention of a rather salient point: was the employee adequately performing her […]

You know how they say that when you’re getting surgery, you should go with a surgeon who does that particular kind of surgery all the time? It’s good advice. It’s not that other surgeons can’t do a good job. It’s just that they’re more likely to be inefficient and make mistakes. Why? Because surgery is […]

Kevin McLaughlin of CMP did just that. I said no.

I’m writing to you today from a Microsoft Response Point training session. Response Point is a phone system intended for businesses with up to 50 users. Although Microsoft supplies the software, you don’t actually buy a Response Point system from Microsoft. You buy a hardware bundle from one of their authorized manufacturers. Currently, there are […]

I plan to add some longer pieces to The Schlog as pages rather than posts, so they can be slowly savored and digested rather than getting chugged down along with the ordinary blog posts. Here is the first.