How to be a moderate success in the tech biz

1: Do what you say you're going to do.
2: Keep your enemies close - keep your friends closer.
3: Don't make excuses.
4: Not every thing you try works - be prepared to do a full post-mortem on the things that fail.
4 (a): the experience will help you figure out what you did wrong in the first place.
4 (b): And hopefully you won't make the same mistake again.
5: Love what you do. It helps.
6: Fish where the fish aren't - because in the IT consulting business there's a lot more mediocre consultants competing with you in most markets. I do a lot of Apple work - there's not that many fish, but even fewer fishermen chasing them.
7: Learn, learn, learn!
8: In a related vein, try and dogfood as much as you can in your practice. It's a lot easier for you to support it if you use it yourself.
9: Remember, 99% of your clients don't speak your tech language - nor do they want to. Speak to them in English, even if you have to over-simplify. If they want more detail, they'll let you know.
10: Customers are customers. Computers are computers. Both big words that start with "C", but you can bend a computer to your will if you want to. You can't do that with a customer, nor should you. Keep that in mind.