Summary of "Golden Rules of Consulting"

Quite a long time ago I collected some ideas on the general topic of consulting from various internet sources. My favourite result came from the Old Dominion University, an educational institution, somewhere in the U.S. The rules were presumably written up by Dr. Yoon.

I found these set of rules fits to my personal style - so I'd like to summarize the basic ideas here

• First-time customers buy "what you know". Repeating customers buy "who you are".
• Know your customers: Make sure what you're offering is what they are willing to pay good money for.
• Give your customers more than they expect.
• Aim higher than you commit. Work better than you promised.
  
• The high road is a two-way street. There is seldom a need to work for a bad customer.
• Learn when to "no bid": When you and your customer are mismatched, don't take the work.
• Retrain yourself constantly. Learn a "big new thing" every year.
• Contributing is marketing (aah, see arc42 for one of my personal examples)
• Slow times come when you can least handle them. Same is valid for fast times.