Trusted friends

A sad fact of life in the IT industry is that it's largely every man for himself. You get little help from other techs and it's difficult to establish networks to help spread the load.

I used to try to establish these relationships but went nowhere with them. The saddest one was someone I worked with prior to setting up my own business.

Mark saw how well I was doing and set up a competing business. I was happy as I figured the market was more than big enough for both of us and having a trusted colleague meant we could help each other out with things like holidays, busy periods and difficult jobs.

I kept my side of the bargain, over the next five years or so I directed tens of thousands of dollars worth of work to Mark. I didn't get one referral back. To add insult, he'd go on holidays and leave a message saying "sorry I'm on holidays, I'll call you when I get back."

I asked him about this and pointed out it was costing him customers. At least if I looked after his customers while he was away, he'd keep his customers. By not doing this he was probably losing two or three customers for every week he was away.

The final straw was when I found Mark stealing customers from me. I couldn't get to one very good customer and referred them to Mark who then gave them a spiel on why I was no good. I later found he'd done this to a few people.

So much for thanks. I haven't spoken to the guy since.

Funnily enough, I was called out by one of these clients this week. Mark had gone on holidays and left him in the lurch so he called me. I guess what comes around goes around.

The point of this post is to illustrate the risks of a sole trader going on holiday in a service business like computer support. You need a friend you can trust to take the load while you are away. Without it, you lose customers as well as money.

The real moral though is every sole trader needs colleagues they can trust. Sadly the IT industry doesn't lend itself to building these networks.