There are soo many consultants out there - for business development, marketing, website design, website development, PR, etc… Over the past year or so, many of my friends/readers suggested that I do some consulting, but I've decided to stay away from that for several reasons. Here are my thoughts on the good and bad of the consulting world:

Consultants have it made!

Firstly, consultants have pretty awesome jobs and pretty thick pocketbooks. These consultants can choose their projects, work whenever they want and wherever they want, given that they meet any deadlines. They usually get paid more for short term projects than people will the same skills, working fulltime. Because of this short term commitment, they usually have the right to charge more.

Entrepreneurs are not consultants. Sounds like a pretty good life, but being a consultant just isn't an option for the true entrepreneur. The true entrepreneur has several options: create his or her own company from scratch or start a consulting company. (McKinsey and Company, for example.) In order to satisfy a real entrepreneur's needs, s/he needs to be running an actual company.

Consultants = Bad for Companies

Personally, I don't like the idea of consultants. Matter of fact, I hate it. If I was so desperate for advice, I would call up some business friends, ask my parents, or even recruit the help of my customers! (matter of fact, when my last company hit cash flow crisis, we sold out to a wealthy customer of ours!)

According to good old Wikipedia, McKinsey and Company is known to have charged its business clients upwards of $10,000 per day for a consulting team. Even $300 for a single day sounds like a lot! Critics often argue that consulting companies do not completely understand the company or the vision of the founders, compromising long term strategy for short term gains. The values of the founders may not be aligned with the consultant: for example, I personally believe that your team is the most important asset that you have, and investing into long term strategy is of the utmost importance. However, the consultant may suggest the company cut some costs that will compromise both of the above. How would my employees feel if we cut their health care as the result of these random consultants? They'd be pissed!

Real-life examples: Zappos.com and Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

1) Zappos.com is one of the few companies I truly admire because everything they do is for the long haul. According to an old news.ycombinator.com article, they tried hiring consultants but found that it made much more sense to just hire people within the company to do everything from marketing to web development to shipping management and logistics. For example, many shoe companies would outsource customer support to India, but Zappos has all customer support representatives within the company because the goals of true employees are much more likely to align with the values of the company and its founders.

2) In another example, my dad is a supervisor in the radiological engineering department at Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital. The hospital is best known for being among the top cancer hospitals in the world, but why? Because the people working there are amazing. My dad's priority is in fixing any x-ray machine on the property without having to bring in an outside consultant for two reasons: 1) Outside consultants would cost the hospital $300/hour - money that should be used towards helping cancer patients, and 2) Outside consultants don't care as much about the hospital's goals. The consultant wants to make the most money possible, and taking a longer time to fix a machine means a thicker pay check. My dad, however, wants the machines fixed ASAP so that doctors and patients could actually use them. It's an inconvenient truth, but insiders are much more likely to work towards their employers' goals and priorities.

The bottom line:

As an entrepreneur, being a consultant is not on my agenda. However, I could possibly see myself starting my own McKinsey and Company. (or not!) - this isn't to say that I wouldn't work at a consulting company or do consulting for a very brief period, but being a consultant is not something I see on my long-term agenda.

As an entrepreneur who ran a botched company, I would not hire consultants unless I absolutely had to. My support team of four was completely internal and they did a way better job than any outsourced person could or would do. If I ever needed to find consultants, I would call up some of my seasoned-entrepreneur-friends and recruit their advice. If I wanted something like graphics or website design advice, I'd recruit the help of my customers. The short story is, as a company, I'd stay away from consultants if any alternatives exist.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore at early collegeBard College at Simon's Rock.

She loves chatting with fellow students, readers, and entrepreneurs, so don't hesitate to email her or message her on AIM! Feel free to subscribe to her blog or stalk her twitter.

Lets start with a salesman example. Back when I ran immature dedicated server company #1, I remembered having to follow up on my leads several times before they would convert into a sale. Most people in the business didn't bother. Either someone bought or they didn't, and other companies would dismiss their leads if the leads didn't buy on first glance. I found myself chatting with prospective clients, sending them fact sheets, sending them follow-up emails, and occasionally becoming friends with these prospective clients! It takes a little more effort than salespeople prefer, but commitment truly works.

The next example applies to the average Joe. When you don't get your way in regards to anything, it doesn't help to ask again. For example, I was having trouble redeeming my United frequent flyer miles for my trip to Vancouver. I called a total of seven times and wasn't able to get help five of the seven times I called. The first two times, the operator told me that there was no way that I could book a flight from New York to Vancouver, then from Vancouver to San Francisco. Why? They didn't have a good reason. They claimed that it was just "part of the rules," but I think they're just ignorant. I'm the customer; therefore, I'm always right no matter how wrong I probably am.

On call attempt #3, an operator told me that I could redeem my flyer miles going multi-city. Great! Unfortunately, I had to wait for some other charges to apply to my account and call again the next day. I called again the next day and the operator gave me a new problem: that my mom would have to pickup my plane tickets from the airport because I was using her frequent flyer miles. Knowing my mom, she'd probably go ape shit on me. I called three more times, and I finally got through. This non-Indian gay guy operator was probably the friendliest and best-informed United phone operator I spoke with. He mailed my tickets overnight and the rest is history.

All of this feeds back to the main idea: If you don't get your way, ask again. If that doesn’t work, ask again. And again. Seriously, it works!

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, and Jessicamah.com. In her free time, she enjoys the prospect of being an underage angel investor while partying like a rock star.

Ugh. ServerBeach killed our server this morning at about 4AM PST. Their support forums tell us there was a power outage, but then our mysql server wouldn't boot up and all of that means lost users and lost revenues over a stupid power failure.

Our first reaction was to go ape shit and yell at them, but having been in the hosting business before, I understand what they're going through. Most of this isn't directly their fault, but they do promise us almost perfect uptime. Serverbeach hosts companies such as Youtube; and when infrastructure goes down, a lot of money is lost by everyone. Even if the root cause of the power failure was environmental, fingers will be pointed at ServerBeach because of their promises of superb service towards businesses.

Although I did say I'd forgive them, I would like some reimbursement. Their SLA reads:

In the event ServerBeach fails to meet the Replacement Guarantee or customer experiences Infrastructure Downtime or Network Downtime as outlined herein, provided Customer follows the procedures outlined herein, ServerBeach will apply a credit ("Credit") to customer's account in an amount equal to five percent (5%) of the Net MRC for the affected account for each half hour of downtime or fraction thereof. "Net MRC" means the monthly recurring charge for hosting service for the server experiencing the issue excluding any add-on or optional services which are not included as part of the standard hosting plan but are included as part of such customer's monthly recurring charge.

That's just lame. I want 3 months of free service!!! Now I remember why I got out of the dedicated server business back at age 14... because I had to deal with customers like me.

Jessica Mah is a 17 year old entrepreneur, blogger, and sophomore in college. She's currently the founder of a startup, managing editor at Startupism.com, SimonsRockers.com, and Jessicamah.com.