zerotomillion

At the age of nineteen I was working at a telemarketing company, managing three hundred telephone sales reps, one trainer and three conversation monitors. As it turned out, my boss, who owned the company, liked a girl who liked me. Let’s just say my employment didn’t last long.

I then found a job with a recruiting agency. My new boss was a family friend, and as they say, familiarity doesn’t always work well in the work force. Because my new boss and I were very close, he didn’t feel compelled to teach me a whole lot. So my training involved him tossing a book at me and saying, “Here is a book of companies that all use an AS/400 as there computer system.” He then tossed a resume at me and said, “Here is a resume of a good AS/400 guy. Call the companies in that book and sell them this guy.”

“Here is a book of companies that all use an AS/400 as there computer system.”

“Here is a resume of a good AS/400 guy. Call those companies and sell them this guy.”

Most of you probably don’t understand the conversation above so let me explain further. There are certain specializations in the business world that are very difficult to find. The above mentioned AS/400 Programmer was one of those hard to find people (about 15 years ago). Companies will generally pay a recruiter 15% of an employee’s annual salary If the recruiter finds the right person.

So I picked up the book that was tossed at me and I began calling the companies listed in the book. I would then ask to speed with the I.T. Manager and my spiel went something like this:

My name is__________. I’ve got a guy that has 7 years of AS/400 programming experience and he is looking for a new situation. Do you have any interest?

Believe it or not that is how I began my consulting career. How does that relate to consulting, you ask? Well, sometimes the I.T. Managers would say yes I have an interest, but mostly they would say, “Do you have any contractors that are available for about 3 months of work?” It didn’t take long to figure out that companies needed temporary specialists more than they wanted to hire full-time people. So I began asking them what kind of hourly rates they were looking to pay for a contractor. I remember that first conversation clearly. That was the day the light bulb went on for me. The manager said he would pay between $90 and $125 per hour depending on experience. That was the day that I decided consulting was where the money was, not full-time placement.

I quickly began looking for about 10 guys that were each good AS/400 consultants. I was looking for guys that would work for about $75 per hour. By the end of that year I had 3 consultants that I was paying $75 per hour and I had them out working for various companies usually billing them out at about $95 per hour. Now because I was working for someone else I didn’t see most of that money. But I now knew where I wanted to go. I wanted to be the consultant!

Read my upcoming post… How I became a Consultant