J Blair, Consulting

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The Free Lance

Just last week it happened again. A former colleague who I hadn’t heard from for nearly a year called and suggested it was time to “catch-up.” In that last interaction a year ago he blindsided me causing personal embarrassment and embarrassment to an old friend. But I agreed anyway. He was in over his head then and wasn’t coping well.

“Catch-up” is usually code for “I’ve decided to try to be a freelance consultant and want to know how you did it.” Some of the calls are a lot more direct and usually go nowhere. In these, the caller skips all the preliminaries and asks if I have any leftover clients or room in any of my existing engagements for their services.

For several years I struggled with how to react to these folks. My wife calls them “foul weather friends.” When the “weather” in their career is foul, they become my friend. Should I help? Should I remind them that there is very real "favor bank" in the freelance world and their account with me is already far overdrawn? Or should I listen, be helpful, but limit the contribution to just the time for lunch? (I do have to eat lunch everyday and usually these folks buy.)

There are also a far greater number of people who are considering the life of the solo consultant and who suspect there are no shortcuts (or even a very good map!). I enjoy sharing my multitude of blunders with them. A few have become very good free lance consultants and now could provide me with solid advice.

What follows is for both the foul weather friends and for those who really believe that they could make a contribution, know that there are no shortcuts and would enjoy being a “free lance.”

In the early 1980’s I was the victim of another’s success. Honeywell still thought it was in the computer business and in order to really get things going they needed to replace the very operationally oriented General Manager then in charge of their large computer business with a sales and marketing guy who would light a fire under those arrogant engineers in the factory. It was a great promotion and vindication for the marketing guy. He had been lambasting us ever since Honeywell purchased GE’s computer business in the early 1970’s.

In less than three years the new GM had driven out most of the senior management of the large computer business. The engineering VP took early retirement. So did the manufacturing VP. I left for Silicon Valley (I was the CIO for the division at the time). The software development VP left shortly after I did. And the new GM was fired soon after that. As for turning around the business??? It was about that time that the gradual sale of the Honeywell computer business to Machines Bull in France began. Honeywell decided that it was not to be one of the players.

Silicon Valley was a super experience. It had an incredible amount of energy and the pace was exhilarating. I soon found that many were working a day job and during the evenings and weekends they were planning to start a new company. I soon began to act like a “native.” The day jobs were a disappointment though. Burroughs was purchasing Memorex (where I had landed) and I found myself responsible for making deals with new disk drive start-ups to shore up the holes in our R&D. In less than a year I was recruited back to Honeywell but in a recently purchased subsidiary located just two blocks from the Memorex facility. That was a lot of fun for a while but soon the buzz came off the chips we made for computer games (70% of the business) and the growth turned into decline that looked very familiar to the declines many of the .com companies faced beginning in the second half of 2000.

Sometime in this three-year adventure in Silicon Valley the idea of being a “free lance” shifted from fantasy to a plan. Through a friend with a decade or more as a solo consultant I received a lot of good advice and eventually some referrals. This period was also a time of shifting from being a “corporate citizen” to becoming a member of the technical and business community. The shift in role was most evident by the way I started to identify myself. No longer was it important to be “ John Blair, IT Director at Honeywell Synertek.” I began to introduce myself as just “John Blair.”

As Synertek (the Honeywell subsidiary in Silicon Valley) continued its free-fall, we decided to do what many of the books on “how to be a consultant” tell you not to do. We quit our jobs (Barb was a secretary for a small legal practice), sold our house and moved . . . back to Phoenix.

And we never looked back. Every year since has produced enough billable time to allow us to pay the mortgage and squander a bit on some hobbies and travel. The billings were always more than the salary we left in 1984. In fact, there were several years when we approached the “theoretical” limit of what a solo can expect for gross billings.

One of the dilemmas facing the free lance is that of describing what they are doing. Some, quite properly say they have founded their own company. I never founded a company. It seemed (and still seems) like an overhead that has little benefit. Personally, I find the “founded my own company” a bit pretentious when it comes from someone who has declared a corner of the den to be company headquarters and has no employees, inventory or other accoutrements of a company.

Solo practitioner is a better description. Doctors and lawyers have used this phrase to accurately describe their freelance brethren. From a whimsical point of view, I like the term free lance. I picture myself somewhat like the man of La Mancha. A little worn, somewhat confused but ready to lay waste to the nearest windmill. Like most analogies, the use is limited and the analogy with Don Quixote stops there.

The term “free lance” has an interesting history.

In the Middle Ages, nobles challenged to a duel would often send a surrogate fighter in order to spare the noble's own hide. The Free Lance would wander from town to town in search of a fight. If need be, he'd help drum one up in order to earn a day's pay. His life was full of adventure, but his career was invariably quite short.

Today, the lance has been traded for a pen (to write on whiteboards) and a computer. Overworked (or overwhelmed) executives have replaced the nobles, and the fight isn't nearly so deadly. . . If it was, many of us would have found another lifestyle. A few other descriptions I’ve collected over the years also help to provide the freelance context used in this book.

from castle to castle, lord to lord, and giving us the modern word for working independently. Then as now, it was a way for ideas to be spread. It was also considered an intriguing way of life but not quite as respectable the knight who lived in the castle (or today, the executive having a real job with a real company).
free to engage for any state or commander that purchased his services; hence, a person who assails institutions or opinions on his own responsibility without regard to party lines or deference to authority.

I like the “without regard to party lines or deference to authority.”

The lifestyle of the free lance fits me. How well it fit was brought home in 1999 and 2000 when for the first time in 15 years I had a job. A client and good friend was poised to take his company public. I was asked to help in this crusade and couldn’t say no. Being an employee is an honorable role. So is being a free lance.

It could be the part about “without regard to party lines of deference to authority” which caused me to long to rejoin the ranks of the free lance. Maybe by the time you finish reading these short essays you’ll conclude whether you fit the role of the employee or the free lance.

To Be Continued . . .