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From CIO to consultant: Top tips for cutting the red tape
And getting your business off on the right foot...

By Mike Barrett

Published: Thursday 19 April 2007

Join a club

If you are going to spend any time commuting into a major city like I do, you'll have days where there are big gaps between the meetings you've set up. You could spend your downtime drinking coffee in Starbucks and using their wi-fi. But an even better option is the a myriad of clubs that, for a modest fee (between £250 and £500), provide a place you can work and conduct informal meetings any time during the day. It's much more cost-effective than a London office that you'll hardly ever be in.

Most industries have a club that caters for their population. In media the Century Club in Shaftsbury Avenue is the main hub. It's also notoriously difficult to get into with a restricted (and full) membership list. For pretty much all clubs you'll need to get proposed and seconded by existing members but if you've been in any industry for a while that shouldn't be a problem.

The easiest alternative is the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall. As a limited company, you will qualify as a member. They have three or four large meeting areas, restaurant, bar and meeting room facilities (at extra cost) which should cover pretty much all your needs.

Buy quality tools

As a mobile worker, your most important work tool is your laptop so choose it wisely. The biggest dilemma is weighing up the pros and cons of lightweight versus a decent sized screen. Unlike working in an office where you can have a nice, flat screen monitor at both ends of your commute, you are going to spend a lot of time looking at your laptop screen in Starbucks, hotel rooms, the IOD and anywhere you can scrounge a desk for the day.

So while the new Sony TX3XP looks sexy and weighs next to nothing, it has a tiny screen and keyboard that would drive me to distraction in a week. At the other end of the scale the Dell XPS M2010 has all the features of a desktop but is pretty heavy to carry around all day.

I chose the Sony Vaio SZ3XWP/C not because of its easy to remember model number (ha) or the fact James Bond used it in Casino Royale. I chose it because it's relatively light (1.69kg), has a 13.3-inch screen, three-hour battery life and a proper, full size keyboard.

Read. A lot.

There are a million books out there on starting your own business - some are good, some bad, some too American, some plain out of date. Here are my recommendations for the five best books for the budding consultant:

• The Art of the Start - the classic start-up guide

• The Beermat Entrepreneur - simple, solid advice

• Getting Started in Consulting - very American but vital advice on how to charge

• How to Succeed as an Independent Consultant - a more English version of the above

• The Art of Project Management - it's an art as well as a science

These five books will give you loads of hints and tips about how to get off on the right foot. Why learn everything for yourself by trial and error when you can kick-start the process by learning from other people's mistakes?

Of course these books have their shortcomings - even the most recent was published in 2005. In my next column I'll explain how a new generation of online tools can help you project a high-quality image with minimal outlay.

And don't miss my previous columns about my first month as a consultant and why I left my day job in the first place.

Mike Barrett was until recently COO for CNET Networks UK, the publisher of silicon.com and other online publications. He now consults on strategy and development for the online publishing industry and assists tech start-ups in building products for the web 2.0 world. You can read his blog at www.compoundmedia.co.uk.