Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
What if solution A requires 10 more man hours on the contract? That's monetary gain too. If the mortgage is due and the wife bought too many wingdings at the home store, solution A because bit more appealing.
Not for true consultants, true consultants only consult. They only get paid to make a recommendation, then they walk away and someone else does whatever work is desired by the clients. - which is why I asked how NTG reconciles that situation for jobs they both consult and implement.
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@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv you keep saying sell. That should be the entire discussion. Period. End of Story.
A consultant consults. A salesperson sells. Period.
What if solution A requires 10 more man hours on the contract? That's monetary gain too. If the mortgage is due and the wife bought too many wingdings at the home store, solution A because bit more appealing.
Of course but those are consultant man hours and have nothing to do with getting paid by a third party.
And are effectively unavoidable, not an intentional accepting of money in exchange for peddling a product. And they are 100% visible to the customer. And the customer can optionally choose to remove that influence (and often does.) There is zero hidden bias here, and zero intentional anti-customer bias.
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@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv you keep saying sell. That should be the entire discussion. Period. End of Story.
A consultant consults. A salesperson sells. Period.
What if solution A requires 10 more man hours on the contract? That's monetary gain too. If the mortgage is due and the wife bought too many wingdings at the home store, solution A because bit more appealing.
Of course but those are consultant man hours and have nothing to do with getting paid by a third party.
I don't think he meant 10 more consulting hours.. he meant 10 more implementation hours. - unless you did mean consulting hours @guyinpv ?
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@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
What if solution A requires 10 more man hours on the contract? That's monetary gain too. If the mortgage is due and the wife bought too many wingdings at the home store, solution A because bit more appealing.
Not for true consultants, true consultants only consult. They only get paid to make a recommendation, then they walk away and someone else does whatever work is desired by the clients. - which is why I asked how NTG reconciles that situation for jobs they both consult and implement.
That's a grey area, I think. Well worth considering, and we do, but all IT is advice, really. Giving advice and doing work overlaps heavily. There is no totally clear line. Customers can make one, but one doesn't appear naturally.
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@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
What if solution A requires 10 more man hours on the contract? That's monetary gain too. If the mortgage is due and the wife bought too many wingdings at the home store, solution A because bit more appealing.
Not for true consultants, true consultants only consult. They only get paid to make a recommendation, then they walk away and someone else does whatever work is desired by the clients. - which is why I asked how NTG reconciles that situation for jobs they both consult and implement.
The answer to that part of the quesiton is that because as a consultant, i recommend these 2 or 3 solutions that you hired me to research for your specific situation.
Now that you have paid me for my time for research, you can now pay me to implement whichever one you want, or you can take these specs to someone else to implement them. This works because the client owns everything at this point. All of the information and knowledge should have been transferred in the recommendation paperwork/meeting.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
What if solution A requires 10 more man hours on the contract? That's monetary gain too. If the mortgage is due and the wife bought too many wingdings at the home store, solution A because bit more appealing.
Not for true consultants, true consultants only consult. They only get paid to make a recommendation, then they walk away and someone else does whatever work is desired by the clients. - which is why I asked how NTG reconciles that situation for jobs they both consult and implement.
That's a grey area, I think. Well worth considering, and we do, but all IT is advice, really. Giving advice and doing work overlaps heavily. There is no totally clear line. Customers can make one, but one doesn't appear naturally.
It can be a grey area, but see my above point.
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@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
What if solution A requires 10 more man hours on the contract? That's monetary gain too. If the mortgage is due and the wife bought too many wingdings at the home store, solution A because bit more appealing.
Not for true consultants, true consultants only consult. They only get paid to make a recommendation, then they walk away and someone else does whatever work is desired by the clients. - which is why I asked how NTG reconciles that situation for jobs they both consult and implement.
The answer to that part of the quesiton is that because as a consultant, i recommend these 2 or 3 solutions that you hired me to research for your specific situation.
Now that you have paid me for my time for research, you can now pay me to implement whichever one you want, or you can take these specs to someone else to implement them. This works because the client owns everything at this point. All of the information and knowledge should have been transferred in the recommendation paperwork/meeting.
Agreed, they have the plans that they purchased your recommendation for. Now they can use you or not...
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@Dashrender said
which is why I asked how NTG reconciles that situation for jobs they both consult and implement.
As your consultant, you can take my system designs, my plans, my ideas, my solutions to anyone else and if they are even half competent, they can implement them no problem, so you win. You have paid for that and you receive that.
If you then want me to physically implement the plan, that's fine but that's a separate piece of work.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I'm going to use a childish example.
I hire you, to go into bakeries and pick the best baker for me.
Now, you are down to 2 bakeries.
One of them, says they will give you some money if your client buys from them. The other does not.
Which bakery will you most likely recommend?
Now, your client finds out about this, how does that affect your relationship and the work you delivered for them?
Ok, if I may.
If a person wants a bakery, one of the first things out of my mouth is who I consider top bakeries already. I'm not going to somehow "pretend" like I never heard of bakery A and then kind of "pretend" that they come out on top while secretly knowing all along I have a commission with them.
In the real world, I would disclose that I have a recommended baker that I work with and here are the benefits X, Y, Z.
Nobody is suggesting to be sleazy or secretive about affiliations or partner vendors or solutions or that a particular link is an affiliate.
Completely hiding the affiliation or pretending like your top baker was totally by accident is what I think we're talking about, is "corrupt".
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@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv you keep saying sell. That should be the entire discussion. Period. End of Story.
A consultant consults. A salesperson sells. Period.
What if solution A requires 10 more man hours on the contract? That's monetary gain too. If the mortgage is due and the wife bought too many wingdings at the home store, solution A because bit more appealing.
Of course but those are consultant man hours and have nothing to do with getting paid by a third party.
I don't think he meant 10 more consulting hours.. he meant 10 more implementation hours. - unless you did mean consulting hours @guyinpv ?
I wasn't thinking in terms of consult versus implement. That's an interesting angle.
Typically I do both for people.
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@guyinpv said
In the real world, I would disclose that I have a recommended baker that I work with and here are the benefits X, Y, Z.
I don't care about the one person who happens to be your buddy or your mate or the only person you've ever used in the past though.
I'm paying you to go out and research all of them
I want you to do detailed work. Then hand me the data. -
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv you keep saying sell. That should be the entire discussion. Period. End of Story.
A consultant consults. A salesperson sells. Period.
What if solution A requires 10 more man hours on the contract? That's monetary gain too. If the mortgage is due and the wife bought too many wingdings at the home store, solution A because bit more appealing.
Of course but those are consultant man hours and have nothing to do with getting paid by a third party.
I don't think he meant 10 more consulting hours.. he meant 10 more implementation hours. - unless you did mean consulting hours @guyinpv ?
I wasn't thinking in terms of consult versus implement. That's an interesting angle.
Typically I do both for people.
I do both almost every time.
But they are still separate projects.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said
In the real world, I would disclose that I have a recommended baker that I work with and here are the benefits X, Y, Z.
I don't care about the one person who happens to be your buddy or your mate or the only person you've ever used in the past though.
I'm paying you to go out and research all of them
I want you to do detailed work. Then hand me the data.Exactly. When you are being paid to consult, you are being paid for knowledge. You should be able to turn over a detailed set of opinions (consulting is always opinion) based on your knowledge and research for the specific scenario you are hired for.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv you keep saying sell. That should be the entire discussion. Period. End of Story.
A consultant consults. A salesperson sells. Period.
What if solution A requires 10 more man hours on the contract? That's monetary gain too. If the mortgage is due and the wife bought too many wingdings at the home store, solution A because bit more appealing.
Of course but those are consultant man hours and have nothing to do with getting paid by a third party.
I don't think he meant 10 more consulting hours.. he meant 10 more implementation hours. - unless you did mean consulting hours @guyinpv ?
I wasn't thinking in terms of consult versus implement. That's an interesting angle.
Typically I do both for people.
Most of us do, at least part or most of the time. But certainly not always because there is an inherent conflict of interests when they are mixed.
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@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said
In the real world, I would disclose that I have a recommended baker that I work with and here are the benefits X, Y, Z.
I don't care about the one person who happens to be your buddy or your mate or the only person you've ever used in the past though.
I'm paying you to go out and research all of them
I want you to do detailed work. Then hand me the data.Exactly. When you are being paid to consult, you are being paid for knowledge. You should be able to turn over a detailed set of opinions (consulting is always opinion) based on your knowledge and research for the specific scenario you are hired for.
Exactly. And often I refuse to give final recommendations. Like the Synology example, I nearly always give a "this or that are good" final option. So Synology and ReadyNAS, for example. Or HPE and Dell for servers. It's rare that one single product shines so much that there isn't a "six of one, half a dozen of another" option.
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@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said
In the real world, I would disclose that I have a recommended baker that I work with and here are the benefits X, Y, Z.
I don't care about the one person who happens to be your buddy or your mate or the only person you've ever used in the past though.
I'm paying you to go out and research all of them
I want you to do detailed work. Then hand me the data.I get you, but you're hiring a bakery consult. You assume I've never researched them before? That I've never recommended one and know what happened in the aftermath? That I've never seen a similar list of requirements and had similar research done? That I've never talked with peers about their own research and discoveries?
Let's not pretend that consulting is like starting from scratch on day one and you know nothing about the subject matter.
When Sally wants web hosting for less than $8 a month on Wordpress for her change-the-world social commentary blog, she couldn't give two rips about my ethics and morals. Grab a cheap host with cPanel, there are many, they'll do the job.If Bob wants 12 chocolate muffins for his daughter's sleepover, I'm sure one baker or another isn't going to destroy the night either way.
All I'm saying is if someone wants a backup strategy, they will hire a consult who specializes to some degree, in just that. Surely they will have some favorites. They won't be online finding "Bob's Super Backup 5000!" that was just released a week ago. They won't be recommending such a new product anyway. Tried and true is good too.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Breffni-Potter said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
I'm going to use a childish example.
I hire you, to go into bakeries and pick the best baker for me.
Now, you are down to 2 bakeries.
One of them, says they will give you some money if your client buys from them. The other does not.
Which bakery will you most likely recommend?
Now, your client finds out about this, how does that affect your relationship and the work you delivered for them?
Ok, if I may.
If a person wants a bakery, one of the first things out of my mouth is who I consider top bakeries already. I'm not going to somehow "pretend" like I never heard of bakery A and then kind of "pretend" that they come out on top while secretly knowing all along I have a commission with them.
In the real world, I would disclose that I have a recommended baker that I work with and here are the benefits X, Y, Z.
Nobody is suggesting to be sleazy or secretive about affiliations or partner vendors or solutions or that a particular link is an affiliate.
Completely hiding the affiliation or pretending like your top baker was totally by accident is what I think we're talking about, is "corrupt".
If you are disclosing everything, then there is no issue. You can get any commission you want, conscious free, as long as it is disclosed. No problem at all there.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
Let's not pretend that consulting is like starting from scratch on day one and you know nothing about the subject matter.
When Sally wants web hosting for less than $8 a month on Wordpress for her change-the-world social commentary blog, she couldn't give two rips about my ethics and morals. Grab a cheap host with cPanel, there are many, they'll do the job.If Bob wants 12 chocolate muffins for his daughter's sleepover, I'm sure one baker or another isn't going to destroy the night either way.
Except they are paying you to care. They are paying you to not treat it this way. They could have done that on their own without you. They are paying you to know certain things, know how to determine other things, do the work to fill in the gaps and provide recommendations. Sure, getting it wrong might not be a disaster, but you should be trying to do a good job as the quality of your recommendation is the sole thing that they are giving you money for.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
All I'm saying is if someone wants a backup strategy, they will hire a consult who specializes to some degree, in just that. Surely they will have some favorites. They won't be online finding "Bob's Super Backup 5000!" that was just released a week ago. They won't be recommending such a new product anyway. Tried and true is good too.
Sure, but hopefully favourites are based on experience or some factor that is valuable to the customer. Of course they are paying for your experience and opinion, but only if that opinion is based on value to them. I like Veeam for backups, as an example, but if a customer hires me to look at backups, that's a minor factor compared to looking into what the customer's needs are and finding what option is specifically useful for them.
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@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@Dashrender said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@JaredBusch said in Home business ideas for transition out of 9-5?:
@guyinpv you keep saying sell. That should be the entire discussion. Period. End of Story.
A consultant consults. A salesperson sells. Period.
What if solution A requires 10 more man hours on the contract? That's monetary gain too. If the mortgage is due and the wife bought too many wingdings at the home store, solution A because bit more appealing.
Of course but those are consultant man hours and have nothing to do with getting paid by a third party.
I don't think he meant 10 more consulting hours.. he meant 10 more implementation hours. - unless you did mean consulting hours @guyinpv ?
I wasn't thinking in terms of consult versus implement. That's an interesting angle.
Typically I do both for people.
In that case, you've already been hired for the whole job, you're not really a consultant then either.
