… In which we examine the difference between consultants and experts and show how we can get real value from our knowledge. We also find how working with our hands and living in the cracks can bring joy, happiness and financial reward.

DOOMED

When, many years ago, I was coaching the outplaced executives in the pleasures of self-employment, I would go around the room to find out if anyone had a coherent plan on how they would generate revenue. I tell this story over and over again to make a different point to different audiences, but the idea is that I can smell trouble simply by going round the room and asking for people’s ideas. My performance goes a little like this:

“What are you going to do?”

“Consultancy.”

To myself, “Doomed”; out loud “You?”

“Consultancy.”

“Doomed. You?”

“Consultancy.”

“Doomed. You?”

“A tea shop in Devon.”

“Let me guess, it is going to be called the Mad Hatter.”

“Yes, how on earth did you guess?”

“I don’t know, I just had a funny old feeling.” To myself, “Doomed.”

One day, after this performance a fairly agitated woman approached me and asked, “Why are consultants doomed?”

I was a bit nonplussed; no one had asked me that before. It got me thinking that probably the people in the audience who were, or wanted to be, consultants thought I was just having fun and saying that for effect, and everyone else was concerned with other things like opening tea shops. But I do think consultants are doomed.

What is a consultant? Pause here, have a think, and reply to that question. Then tell me when you will need to pay for the services of a consultant.

The truth is that, as we trundle through life, we come up against things that we can’t fix for ourselves because we lack the skill or the understanding. We now have some choices; we can buy a book or a CD of instruction, or go on the internet and teach ourselves how to fix whatever is screwing life up at the moment. This is good if it is a very regular event and we have invested the time and the effort into acquiring a valuable and often used new skill. We could get someone else to show us how it is done, or we may acknowledge that we don’t have the time, inclination or capacity and we hire someone else to actually do it. In the real world that is what happens to everybody. Sometimes, we just do not have the knowledge, ability or time to fix things for ourselves. When you are in such a bind have you ever felt the overwhelming desire to pay good money to consult with anyone about it or do you just want an expert who will come and fix it?

Where the Consultants Live

You may notice that I have used the words ‘real world’. That is the world where you will be living and working from now on. The other world, the unreal one, is populated by the upper echelons of corporations and government where the motivation is self deluding, stupid or even sinister. That is where consultants live. Consultants are not individuals; in fact, we should call them consultancies. Possibly the outwardly kind and avuncular CEO of a major corporation can see that axing 10,000 jobs and moving production to the Far East could save him and shareholders 100 million or so a year. Well, this nice chap, that we even see on the TV sometimes giving sage and kindly advice, can hardly be seen to be destroying the lives of 10,000 families. So he calls in the consultant, gives them a Machiavellian whisper in their ear, a cheque for two or three million, and after a few months a 500-page report appears condemning the Western plant and showing that the company’s survival depends on relocation. The CEO sheds a tear, gives a sad shrug that would shame Pontius Pilate and as he chokes back emotion tells the world that, heartbreaking though it is, one cannot contradict what is in black and white and the plant will have to close.

It may well be something like that which has resulted in you joining us as self-employed so I suppose something good came of it. For government it is a very expensive form of King’s new clothes-ism; they need expensive smart people to tell them that the stupid things they are doing and the horrible failures they are creating are in fact the right things to do. The spectacular thing these consultancies pride themselves on is their ignorance. Just think about it: they are often offshoots of huge accountancy firms so how can they send management consultants in to show how to run a hospital? Their justification is breathtaking. Surely doctors, nurses and patients know what is needed?

“No,” cry the management consultants. “These people are so close to the problem that they have become the problem. As our fine thought processes are unsullied by any knowledge of health or medicine, we can bring a fresh understanding.” They can make an expensive virtue out of stupidity.

Welcome to the Real World

Real world individuals and small companies are not so gullible. Therefore the consultant is dead, but long live … the expert! If you were considering consultancy, do not be downhearted but do be realistic. Corporations and governments have a very special hidden agenda for employing consultants, think tanks, and institutes. They want the corporate global names that charge thousands and thousands per day. No one, but no one, wants a cheap consultant, but for us mere mortals we do need to talk to an expert.

“How do I fix my computer?”

“Can you fix my computer?”

“Is this the right way to get a tax rebate?”

“Can you show me how to sell more?”

Here is a test for you: when you were thinking of becoming a consultant, do you have a knowledge or skill that would benefit and be valuable to other people so much so that they will be prepared to pay you for it? If you have some airy fairy thing about goal setting or colour me successful you may very well be on thin ice, but if you can fix my photocopier, well, come on in.

IT ISN’T WHAT YOU KNOW

Hopefully, this section of the book will help you to choose what you would like to do, happily filling your time making money for the rest of your days (well, actually, for as long as you want to or stay interested). Before you choose you have to see where there is an opportunity and whether you would enjoy exploiting it.

In Matthew Crawford’s very clever book (in Europe The Case for Working with your Hands, in the US the book is called Shop Class as Soulcraft), he puts forward the case for working with your hands. He talks about the so-called knowledge economy and also the threat to jobs. To put it very simply, he says that if your job can be sent down a line, then it is most likely under threat. The doctor is safe but the radiologist isn’t. The architect is under threat but the builder isn’t. He goes on to say that the world we live in is obsessed with the idea of the post-industrial knowledge economy. We study and sweat and work our way through college and university to obtain ever more esoteric degrees and qualifications that result in us working in some dismal cubicle with loads of other ‘knowledge workers’ along with the constant threat of being fired.

PRIDE IN THE JOB

The other thing that Matthew Crawford goes on to claim is that to work with your hands is actually more mentally challenging than office work. As an inveterate fiddler with mechanical things such as motorbikes and, on the odd occasion, washing machines, I can accept that. One often stands and watches some delinquent machine, thinking to oneself, “Now why is it doing that?” You then have to explore the mind of its designer and run the ‘What if’ scenarios in your head.

My beloved pinball machine blew up one day and it was packed with a spaghetti of endless wires. I dreamed about wires for so many days and nights that I actually gave myself a temperature. I have never in my life applied so much intellectual effort to a project and when I eventually fixed it, I felt great. As wage slaves you very rarely get that sense of achievement. When I was a kid, I drove a bulldozer and built a stretch of highway. I still drive that road and can see with pride the bit I dug out.

A POTENTIAL DISASTER

I would, however, also like to reverse that thinking a bit. Educa­tionalists claim that they are getting better at spotting potential even amongst disadvantaged kids. That is great, but let’s fantasize about where that is taking us.

You know those meat thermometers that are attached to a spike? You shove the spike deep into the meat and a little dial tells you the true state of what’s going on inside. Imagine you had an implement like that which you could shove in a kid’s head and, regardless of class, wealth, opportunity or disability, this thing would either read ‘intelligent’ or ‘stupid’; a device that, regardless of the kid’s inclination, would give an unchallengeable measure of intelligence and therefore potential. Maybe 90% of the children tested would read ‘intelligent’ and surely therefore should go on to further education to gather the glittering prizes, but what of the remaining 10% quite categorically diagnosed as stupid? Should we abandon them to leave them to their fate? Of course not! The enlightened educationalists among us, while realizing there is no chance of raising their intellect, also understand that useful employment can be found for them through gentle and undemanding training. Today known as vocational training, these somewhat lesser people could learn to work with their hands in the building trade, hotel industry, beauty or mechanics. So what do we have here? Someone in the future who is clinically diagnosed as stupid, adjusting our brakes, applying chemicals to our faces or, best of all, we see the happy prospect of a stupid electrician.

Too Cool for School

Worse than that, if this cursed meter has shown us to be intelligent, we get packed off to college for three or four years to learn some high-falutin’, book-based knowledge from people who have never had a real job in their lives. We come out with a huge debt and a bit of paper, to do what? It is just like being in that priority boarding queue again: as you look around with your bit of paper clasped smugly in your hand, you realize with horror that everyone else has one, too.

In the old days, when college education was for the elite, one would meet some work-grimed tradesmen and realize during the conversation there was considerable intelligence there. The reaction was almost inevitable: “You are too good for this job, you should be working in an office somewhere.” The trouble is, we all started to work in an office somewhere and what a dismal unfulfilling place it turned out to be.

Let’s get a couple of things straight. First, working with your hands can be very effective and rewarding both emotionally and financially if those hands are attached to a brain. Second, whoopee! Skip, hop, jump and sing, you are free at last, free to choose what you would like to do to earn your living. If brainwork with paper and computer is your bag then rejoice, for together we will find you paying customers, but if, despite your bits of paper and citations, you would love to wield a hammer, a spanner or a frying pan, make no mistake that can make you rich and happy, too.

Oodles of Poodles

In my book, Go It Alone, I mentioned a physicist who had been laid off from the nuclear industry. He came on one of my outplacement courses, and some months later I saw him, clearly prosperous and happy. What on earth does a surplus physicist do for a living? I asked him.

“So what are you doing?”

The reply was somewhat unexpected.

“Poodle parlour.”

“What?” Did my ears deceive me?

“I have opened a Poodle parlour and I have never been happier. When I was 5-years-old, I could do quadratic equations. My mum told me I was destined for great things, but the problem was I hated the stupid easy quadratic equations and wanted the challenge of kicking a soccer ball. Then when I was married my wife lovingly but firmly drove me on to my professorship and doctorate by making huge sacrifices. My hobby was clipping poodles, my passion was clipping poodles, but I was trapped by the ‘a man with your brain clipping poodles, never!’ But now redundancy has set me free although I must confess one of my favourite tail shapes is modelled on the Strontium 90 atom.”

The crazy thing is that, although his family was scared by his choice of work, they now realize that they like life with a very happy and contented man.

Consultants doomed? Without a doubt, but expertise – now that’s something that we all need. Experts, however, can be very broad ranging. You may pay them to tell you if your understanding of Greek philosophy is correct, or they may come to your house armed with a big sledgehammer to bang fence posts in for you. Whichever, if you can be acknowledged as an expert, you can charge a premium.

LOOK FOR THE CRACKS

If what is put forward in this book is the truth and the only way to be saved is to be self-employed, then surely everyone will do it and we are all back in the same queue again. Well don’t worry; this is a little book of secrets and golden opportunities that in percentage terms very few people will share. The perfect storm that is shattering Western commerce will probably affect about 300 million people. If one percent of those people read this book, that will make it business book bestseller of the century so already you are in a pretty elite band, and this is where the first of a series of opportunities presents itself. Crawford calls it working in the cracks.

If you are in a minority, there is always an opportunity. A thousand peoples’ lives are ruined when the steel works closes, but the one person – the 0.1 percent – who stays behind to sell the scrap, becomes rich beyond his wildest dreams.

At the time of writing, we have been bombarded by the major retailers of CDs and DVDs giving profit warnings. My friend, who is a recording expert in the industry, has often chatted with me about the total demise of the retail music business with downloads, MP3 players, and online tax free sales. Yep, the end is nigh. Then I heard on the radio today that Indy record shops are booming. Well, that shot my fox, so I had a think and this is what I believe is happening. Maybe a big city centre music store needs £100,000 a week to break even, with 150 staff and a huge floor area in a prime site. Through technology they lose 50% of trade and have to close. That still leaves £50,000 per week going begging. Even if things decline further there will always be a hard core of fans who like their music bought undiluted from a place where they can mingle with like-minded individuals and where they will meet an ‘expert’ (that’s you). My musical friend is a world’s expert on getting beautiful pure sound on to cassette tapes, and is mourning their passing with good Eastern European gloom, but even he admits there must be millions of cassette players in the world. If he is the last person creating great products for them, he might just find a gold mine.