From CIO to consultant: One year on

It's already 12 months since former IT director Mike Barrett decided to take a chance and start his own business. So he thinks it's the right time to resolve what to do differently in 2008.

Christmas may already seem a distant memory but at least - with the help of some free range organic turkey and a glass or two of red wine - it gave me a chance to ruminate on the events of the past 12 months.

It's been an interesting time for certain. I've survived my first year in business, thrived despite the red tape provided by the government, banks and most of all the dreaded HM Revenue & Customs.

It really does feel now like I'm doing a proper job rather than playing entrepreneur. I have security in having regular clients and have several successful projects under my belt.

Right from the start, I always planned the consulting phase as a learning process. Time to find out more about the market and try to spot a niche that would enable me to create a business of my own rather than working for someone else. By the way I think I've spotted that niche but more of that in future columns.

The tail end of last year was so busy I hardly had time to think. So, I decided I need to take the next step. But to do that I would have to do things differently and make - and stick to - some new year resolutions. So here they are:

1. Be ruthless about time management

Like all start-ups, in the beginning, roughly 90 per cent of my time was spent planning the business and only 10 per cent actually doing paid work.

Of course that's largely because when you start out you don't have any paid work so you spend most of your time planning how to find it. During the year, as I established myself, this shifted rapidly to the point before Christmas where I was spending 100 per cent of my time on client projects.

That sounds great from a financial perspective but leaves no time for developing the business, being able to carry out any research or even to do the boring background work like invoicing and accounting.

So my first resolution is to claw back some of that precious time, cut out uninteresting or unproductive tasks. This will allow me time to:

2. Make time for business strategy

The problem with consulting is that there is only so much of it you can do. One person can only really expect to work so many days in a year. Despite avoiding daily rate contracts at all costs, inevitably you hit a wall where you can't generate more revenue.

The other problem is that if anything were to happen to you, the income dries up immediately. Not so much of a problem if you are 18 and living with your parents but it doesn't give much security if you have a mortgage to pay and family to provide for.

The main objective for the next 12 months then is to generate non-time based revenue - business that is not specifically reliant on me working for a set number of days.

Over the past 12 months this has been at the back of my mind and in everything I have done, I have tried to make it an investment in infrastructure for the future.

So as well as consulting, I've also collaborated with businesses for content management and ad serving development and support. The key element here is support as this is provided by the partners but I take a cut of the annual fees. This arrangement provides me with income that isn't reliant on me physically having to be on site.

It is modest revenue at present but I now have a product that I can go out and sell to other potential clients. As that scales, the percentage of revenue from non-consulting work will increase along with my financial security.

I've also been building up a store of training collateral from my consulting assignments. Much of the work I've been doing has required me at some point to present to the board or senior management about particular topics.

I'm in the process of building these into a set of training modules that I can then offer as a product. By charging per delegate, the revenue achieved is much less reliant on the time involved and the preparation time is virtually zero once you've presented the course once.

3. Make time for marketing

Now that I'm starting to think about products, marketing those effectively is going to be really important and this is an area I've never really had much experience of before.

As a consultant, my blog has been a great way to increase my profile and provide people with an effective way to find out about who I am and what I do. My highest ranking content is still the About Mike Barrett page.

Now that I need to educate my potential clients about products, I'll need to improve my website and create sales documentation to explain them professionally.

4. Maintain my charity work

One of my main aims last year was to become more involved in my charity work with the Byte Night project. This was really easy at the beginning of last year when I had time. My policy was to deliberately immerse myself in it so that I have no excuse to back out now that I'm busy.

We increased the monies raised last year by more than 40 per cent from £280,000 to over £400,000 and this year we'll be pushing this total close to the magic half-million mark.

This will be a huge challenge and require even more effort than last year but it is a great motivator in dedicating time to a deserving cause.

5. Make time for me

Last year was the most exhausting I've ever known. Not just physically tiring but mentally and sometimes very emotionally draining. Working for yourself means you are never off-duty.

Your mind is always mulling over the next challenge, nagging you about the things you keep putting off, worrying about getting the next assignment. Evenings, weekends, lying in bed, it feels like every minute is taken up by the business.

As the company's most valuable asset, it's important that I look after it. Without me, there is no business and it's easy to forget that time to recover away from it all, is as important as working every single minute available.

No start-up business can afford to be complacent and the first year is always going to be tough but it feels like there is finally time to step back now and again and use some of that ruthlessly regained time for me.

So there they are, unlike my previous resolutions, published for all to see. Perhaps that will be a good incentive for me to stick to them this year.