Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, October 9, 1994 TAG: 9410180015
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: F1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LEIGH ANNE LARANCE SPECIAL TO ROANOKE TIMES & WORLD-NEWS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
They had 30 years of combined experience as Roanoke College administrators when they decided to turn their academic know-how into a salable commodity.
It worked, in a business where the odds for success are slim.
For more than five years, Miller/Cook & Associates has been helping colleges across the country recruit and retain students.
They put their all into their admissions consulting work, right down to their month-old offices near downtown Roanoke. They turned the interior of a restored house into a model admissions office. They wanted an old house, because most of their clients work out of homes that have been converted into office space.
Consulting may conjure up images of a basement office and business cards printed at the corner copy shop. But experts say changes in corporate America have made consulting big business. Management consultants - the most common variety - received about $17 billion for their services in 1993, up 10 percent from 1992, according to James Kennedy, publisher of Consultants News in Fitzwilliam, N.H.
With downsizing, slow economic growth and a fast-changing marketplace, some experts say it makes sense for companies to hire consultants for specific projects, rather than add them as full-time employees whose skills may not be transferable once a specific job is complete.
Management is only one line of expertise. Many businesses are looking to consultants to fill in the gaps in knowledge of international markets, to help them adapt to changing computer technology or set up human resources programs.
"The definition has been elasticized in the past few years," Kennedy says. He estimates there are 100,000 people nationwide who call themselves management consultants, but the number of consultants in other fields is growing.
There are graphic design specialists, computer specialists and benefits specialists.
Jean Dunbar of Lexington was a college English professor specializing in 19th century American literature. Now she's a historic design specialist - "an interior designer in a time machine" - who helps clients make historic property look as it might have during the 19th century.
Priscilla Richardson in Cloverdale is just starting out in consulting in her field - writing. She hopes to train companies' employees in writing techniques that will help them be better communicators.
One counselor has seen people leave financial institutions to advise businesses how best to obtain venture capital or lease financing. The list goes on.
\ John Jennings, director of the Blue Ridge Small Business Development Center, divides consultants into two types: One group voluntarily enters consulting for the opportunity and for the independence - and can be very successful at it, he said.
Other consultants would rather be working for a single company full time, but for whatever reason find themselves without a job. They use consulting as supplemental income or for networking, hoping a client might become an employer.
For those who try it, independence, solid nerves and meal money are a must.
"I know people in consulting who have been in it for decades, he said. "They can be really up one year and down the next.
"When you go into consulting, you are the business. You have to market it, sell it and produce it," Jennings said. "People can often do one or more of those things, but not all of them."
Jennings himself was a consultant. He and a partner had a technical writing business in North Carolina.
In trying to grow, they hired employees, but found themselves with too much overhead and unpredictable income. "The objective is trying to build a consistent, sustainable volume of revenue. That's the trick," he said.
Jennings stepped out of the business, but the friend persevered. "Now he's doing very, very well," Jennings said, hiring subcontractors rather than permanent employees.
It also helps when a spouse has a steady income with benefits, so the consultant doesn't have to be as concerned with feeding the family, he said.
\ Some consultants, like Miller and Cook, want to be their own boss. They want the variety of working for a range of different clients. Others find themselves the victims of layoffs, restructuring or business closures and turn to consulting as a way to bridge the gap.
"There's always a wave of that," Kennedy said. "People sometimes use it [consulting] as a parking space until they find something else."
Dick Hatch, of the Service Corps of Retired Executives of Roanoke, said the corps' 26 counselors see that happening locally. "We have that every day, but we saw that a little bit more when Dominion [Bankshares Corp.] laid off workers."
Others go into consulting for a change of pace.
For Steve Moore of Blacksburg, working as a consultant provided a way for him to dodge the hectic lifestyle of metropolitan Washington, D.C.
Two years ago, he was working full-time as a systems engineering manager with E-Systems in Fairfax County when he decided he wanted to go back to school - and to get away from the long commutes that had him out his front door by 6 a.m. and home after 7 p.m.
"I felt that I was not getting any younger, and if I wanted to do this change of life, get more education, that I needed to do it now rather than wait," Moore, 46, said.
Consulting was the answer. "It gave me the freedom I wanted to pursue education and work, and it's worked out to be a very flexible arrangement, very much in my favor."
He said consultants in his field working in Southwest Virginia can expect to earn between $18 and $30 an hour. Moore works exclusively for Litton Poly-Scientific of Blacksburg, designing test instrumentation for fiber optics communications products and working on other projects.
Moore earned a master's degree in 1974 in electrical engineering from North Carolina State, but he's working toward a second master's at Virginia Tech because of the leaps in technology in the past two decades. He plans eventually to pursue a doctorate.
Blacksburg's lower cost of living and his wife's job as a teacher in Montgomery County made the switch to consulting affordable, and the lifestyle change is just what he wanted.
"It's a good place to raise a kid," said the father of two. "I have a minute commute to work and a minute commute home. My stress level is down."
\ Like Moore, Miller and Cook say consulting has great rewards.
"We've worked with single-sex institutions, historically black institutions, private Catholic schools and state institutions. The diversity of our clients is very challenging," Cook said.
They've both racked up 250,000 frequent flyer miles with one airline alone because their work takes them from New York to Florida to the Midwest. They work with about eight institutions a year, and their fees range from $1,000 a day to $15,000 a month to manage a program.
Through consulting, Miller and Cook more than doubled their effective income, and their five-person company billed $900,000 in business in fiscal 1994 alone.
They also found it invigorating to tackle admissions and retention problems at other schools.
"Bill was fundamental in the development of some admissions strategies that proved successful [at Roanoke College], and I was in charge of the learning center and retention strategies," Cook said.
Colleagues from other institutions were calling for advice on how they could improve their own programs.
But having improved its admissions, Roanoke College was content, Miller said. He and Cook still had new ideas they wanted to try. They started to get more job satisfaction from helping colleagues and decided to try it full time.
Ray Toomer, assistant director of admissions at Bethune-Cookman College, a historically black school in Florida, gives the consultants accolades. "We needed some reviving, we needed a savior. Although we had some problems we recognized, it's always good for someone to come in from the outside."
"There's been a significant turnaround," said Bethune-Cookman's Don Brown, who also works in admissions.
\ The consulting business is more complicated than it sounds, though.
Evelyn Bradshaw, director of the Career Development Center at Hollins College, said it takes a certain kind of person to succeed as a consultant. "You have to have somewhat of an entrepreneurial spirit," she said.
"All of a sudden we found ourselves dealing with attorneys, accountants and late billings. It's great being your own boss, but it's also a great deal of responsibility that you take for granted when you work for someone else," Cook said.
It's also important to be sure it's what you want to do, because it's not easy, Miller said. "If I didn't love it as much as I do, I couldn't do it."
Moore also has words of wisdom for anyone considering consulting:
Not being an employee means no promotions, no regular salary increases. While employees may get bonuses for a job well done, consultants' rewards often aren't monetary.
"I've done enough of the moving up the ladder and I know how that is. I enjoyed getting rewarded for good work," he said. "But right now I have to get job satisfaction out of doing a good job and knowing that sometime in the future, I'll be rewarded by the additional education I'm getting."
by CNB