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34 • The 100 Greatest Ideas for Building the Business of Your Dreams

do anything a company might want to do, and, frankly, thousands of things compa-
nies will never want to do. And they will happily license you to sell it and deliver it,
or will equally happily pay you 15% of the gross fees if you pass them a customer.

In other words, when you are thinking of going into consultancy concentrate on
having a customer to work for immediately you are out and the product side will
look after itself. Assume you can do anything with a bit of help from your col-
leagues, and work on the relationships with people in your current company or in
your customers' or suppliers' companies. In this way, when the great day dawns,
you can work out what they need and find through the network a method of satisfy-
ing that need.

It is quite easy to tag yourself into an appropriate network. Find out who are in
similar skill areas to the ones you are going to bring to market, and talk to as many
of them as possible. But for your selling work, concentrate first on bringing a market
to a product, because that is the right way round.

Idea 21 - Start by booking your holidays

Very early on in my consultancy days I was with a client and took a booking to run
a course. I wrote it in my diary. The same day Penny, my partner in the office, took
a booking from another client for exactly the same days. She wrote it in the desk
diary that I looked at from time to time. As luck would have it we discovered the
double booking in time to avoid a difficult conversation with one of the clients, but
we swore from then on to keep only one diary. Some people do this electronically
but we have stayed with the same white board above the office desk. It is slightly
embarrassing from time to time when I am at a meeting of the board of a client and
the time comes for the next appointment to be booked. They take out their Psions
and diaries or log on, while I have to excuse myself and make a phone call. 'Oh God,
Ken's got to ask Penny if he is allowed to come', some say. But it is worth it for the
security that we can never double book.