As part of my series of consulting tips, here's one phrase I've heard related to the consulting and services industry that always rings true:

Where there's mystery, there's money.

Whenever people want something that's very cool and has a chance to change their business (or their lives) for the better, and they don't know how to do it or get it themselves, they will gladly pay for it.

I remember when I first learned this rule as a consultant. I was thrilled, because I knew the C programming language and Unix operating system long before most people. So that was very cool for a few years ... and then I learned there was a correlated rule:

Mysteries don't last long.

The correlated rule

After I learned that the mysteries of C and Unix weren't going to make an entire career for me, my consulting career went on the following roller-coaster ride, all just to stay in the high-paying "mystery":

• Started as a Unix administrator and C programmer in the early 1990s
• Sold "the internet" in 1994-1995
• Learned Java and object-oriented programming in the mid-to-late 1990s
• "Sold" eXtreme Programming and Scrum, early-to-mid 2000s
• Built and sold "dynamic" Web 1.0 websites in the early 2000s
• Toolsets kept being piled on: Spring, Hibernate, CSS, DHTML, Ruby on Rails
• The whole Web 2.0 "social" concepts
• Latest project: Providing single sign-on across a suite of web applications

And believe me, this is just a brief summary of my consulting career.

Consulting tip - Mysteries are moving targets

I hope you can see that if you want to stay in the "mystery", you're always working with a moving target, and you always have to keep learning. In my case software design and development have always been at the core of what I do, but my toolset just keeps changing and changing.

The problem I ran into early on was that all the good developers eventually learned C, Unix, and Linux, so I moved on to Java and object-oriented analysis and design. Everyone eventually got there, too, so I moved on to eXtreme Programming and Scrum, and again, everyone eventually got there. In fact, I don't know if I could get a job today if all I said was "I understand the Java language and object-oriented programming." Those skills things are a given, and today it's all about the modern Web 2.0 toolsets you know.

In short, the current "mystery" is always a moving target, and if you want the big, fat consulting salary, you need to be immersed in the mystery, and your paycheck will be higher if you're one of the first people to understand it.

Exceptions to this "consulting mystery" rule?

I started to write that there may be exceptions to this rule, but I really don't know that there are. As I thought about different types of consulting careers, web designers came to mind first, and then lawyers and accountants, but again, I think they have to keep learning as well.

Good web designers should be set for a very long time, because no matter how much I try, I can't break through that "artistic barrier of entry." But when I think of what they've had to learn over the years -- HTML, CSS, JavaScript, DHTML, Flash -- they also need to constantly update their skill set to stay in the mystery.

I've worked with several lawyers, and they don't have to worry, I won't break through their barrier of entry either. There's a lot of mystery there I have no interest in. But again, just like a designer, I know that my general lawyer has had to keep learning over the years.

One last consulting tip

Finally, while I'm in the neighborhood of writing about attorney's, I love my tax attorney. Because he's kept up to date with the latest laws and court decisions, he's actually saved me money several times. Imagine that: he charges me $175/hour, he saves me money, and I love the guy. Now that is a good consultant.