IT Consultant: How To Manage Your Time During Start Up

By:Joshua Feinberg

As an IT consultant looking to go solo, how you can cut through the information overload so you can tune out the distractions and focus on only the most relevant, critical tasks for starting up a business? You need to first realize you may need to stop spending time on things that are not making you any money.

Adjust Your Priorities

If you are serious about starting a business as an IT consultant, you will have to adjust your priorities and manage your time better. When you’re first starting out, especially during the first six months to a year, put 90% of what you perceive to be your research and development time and your technology training time on the back burner for the next three to six months.

Shift Your Focus to Finding Clients

As an IT consultant trying to go solo, you need to concentrate on finding paying clients for your business. Sitting in a classroom, playing with CDT’s, getting all these not-for-resale copies of things and playing around in your lab with new operating systems is not helping your business!

Once you make this adjustment you will figure out pretty quickly whether you need to get more training.

Your Technology Skills Are Probably Ahead of Your Clients

Fortunately, you’re probably six to 18 months ahead of what small businesses in your area need. They’re not early adopters, they’re late adopters. Put your business development needs ahead of your need to feel like you’re keeping up.

The Bottom Line about the IT Consultant

As an IT consultant looking to go out on your own, keep in mind you need to prioritize and manage your time effectively. Take all the time you would have spent keeping up and reading magazines, and put it into demand generation, lead qualification, sales calls and follow ups.

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