Start & Run a Rural Computer Consultant Business. John D. Deans

      It was early one afternoon in the summer of 1998, and I was already stuck in first gear sitting in Houston traffic. The analysts at the primary client site I was supporting had just called my cell phone for the sixth time concerning router stability. Having worked in information technology since 1981, I was at the top of my game and leading one of the largest and earliest Gigabit Ethernet installations in the world for our client, Compaq Computer Corporation. The high stress was causing my chest to tighten, which made me remember a few of my peers who had bypasses (or even died from heart attacks) in their late thirties and early forties while supporting enterprise-level computer networks. I felt I was going down the same path — sitting there looking at red brake lights brought to mind the movie Falling Down, starring Michael Douglas. The breaking point was fast approaching.

      To avoid the impending road rage, I let my mind drift back to a few weeks before when I’d spent a Saturday with one of our sales guys, Tom S., who owned an 80-acre ranch a few miles west of Katy, Texas. I remembered the quiet, the space, the freedom, and the absence of the frantic pace that pushed me every weekday. We went shooting, fishing, and then drank a few beers on the porch while the sun set, and the only sound around was the birds and the crickets.

      My tranquil daydream was blown away by the deep, booming stereo of the car next to me and then my cell phone ringing from a client calling from the far side of town — surely with a problem that needed to be fixed immediately.

      The tightness in my chest was turning to chest pains, and I was rapidly reaching my boiling point. I was just plain tired of the rat race of city life and big-company computer support. I was sick of the stupid office e-mail wars and the meetings that lasted for hours where everyone finally left with so-called action items. The traffic in Houston, like in many large metropolitan areas in America, was getting worse every year. I was tired of having to be armed with my .45 handgun every time I went to get gas or groceries. With the property taxes going up 10 percent every year (which amounts to taxes doubling after seven years), the tax escrow for our home in a small city on the southwest side of Houston was more than the principal and interest payment on a mortgage. I was also sick of dealing with clients that were lawyers or liberals since I didn’t trust either group.

      That’s when it hit me: I’ve got to get out of this place before it kills me or I do something very dangerous.

      I had lived in Houston all my life and knew the city and fast-paced lifestyle well. The network integration company I’d helped to found, Paranet, had just been sold to Sprint, and my little chunk of the cash buyout was working well for me and my wife. The next thing we knew, we had bought a 115-acre ranch near Brenham and started spending the weekends there so I could chill out and slow my ever-growing burnout from the computer consulting industry. On Friday nights on the way out of town, I could actually feel my body relax. When we crossed the Brazos River into Washington County, the week’s stress would fade away.

      Those 48 hours would pass way too quickly, though, because the Sunday night drives back to Houston made things even worse. My sweet wife, Beth, and my 12-year-old son from my first marriage could both sense me tightening up as we neared the big-city lights.

      The weekends were not enough. I wanted to be full time in the country on our ranch — away from that urban meat grinder that made me a good living but was sucking the life out of me. The negotiations began with me trying to convince my city-girl wife to move out of the fourth largest city in the United States (and away from her close family) to a small, conservative rural community. We were expecting our first child when she agreed to leave Houston and move to Brenham — I could now see a light at the end of the tunnel.

      At the end of 1998, we sold our small, tear-down Bellaire home for the dirt under it. The whole area was going through one of those booms with yuppies buying older, small homes and replacing them with big, half-million-dollar brick boxes. We took our profits, and after a grand send-off, headed to Brenham, leaving behind my consulting firm, Paranet, and some of the best memories of my professional life.

      I didn’t realize it at the time, but I had taken the first step toward becoming a rural computer consultant.

      Part 1

      BACKGROUND OF A RURAL COMPUTER CONSULTANT

      1

      Escaping the Urban IT-Support Rat Race

      This book is a step-by-step guide for computer support professionals working high-stress information technology jobs in large cities. It’s intended for the ones who plan to or just dream about moving out of the city to a small town — and actually making a living as an independent rural computer consultant.

      This was exactly what I did in 1999, when I left one of Houston’s most successful network integration firms, moved to rural Brenham, Texas, and started a one-man computer consulting firm.

      Most IT jobs are located in cities. Compensation is good — but there’s a price to be paid for it. There’s also an alternative, which I’ll tell you about later in this chapter.

      Urban IT Grinder: The Dark Side of a Bright Industry

      We’ve all seen the IT guys with their identification badges hanging from their necks on a vendor-provided band and a cluster of smartphone, PDA, and beeper on their belts. Their faces have a concentrated look, and they all walk fast to get to their next technology firefight.

      These are the hardware and software professionals who keep corporate America’s bits moving in an orderly and dependable fashion. Many have degrees, most have certifications, and some have both. The vast majority, around 90 percent, are men, and most of them are younger than 40 years of age. Their employers are usually companies with 50 or more employees and are generally located in cities with populations of at least 50,000. The denser the city’s population, the more information infrastructure is required to serve the workers, which in turn increases the need for information technology talent.

      This is why the mother lode of IT positions is in metropolitan areas. I started my IT career at Houston’s Control Data Corporation in 1981 and was fortunate not to be transferred or to have to chase a job to another big city, which allowed me to maintain strong contacts with my family and longtime friends. Only by choice in the late 1990s did I move

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