Hacker News Reader

Comment by BjoernKW | Hacker News Reader

I can't imagine a lot of businesses that come with lower risk attached than consulting:

You don't need equity. Profit margins are high. Depending on your particular expertise your services will be in demand for years to come (anything software-related). If you do it right you can work for several clients at the same time. At least you can always have a full sales pipeline so losing a contract won't be an end-of-the-world event for you.

Growing a consulting business beyond yourself, not selling your time but results, those are more of a problem but risk? Not really. At least not when compared to other businesses.

View on HN

I would love to see your consulting model. You speak as if keeping a full sales pipeline while making multiple clients happy is a simple thing.

I'll agree that a single person consultancy is 0 risk. I can accept a job offer tomorrow and stop accepting new clients.

But growing your consultancy is just as risky as any other business, if not more so. You don't have a wide range of low paying clients, like a SaaS model. You have a few high paying clients. Any one of them leaving (or not paying) directly affects you and your employees.

I live in Washington DC, so I see this constantly. A large government contractor loses a re-bid on a contract, and they fire the team that was working on it. Fire them!

Not speaking for anyone else, but having to fire people every time a contract goes away sounds risky to me.

Firing people is risky for the person potentially being fired, not for the owners of the firm. Growing and shrinking over time is part and parcel of running a consultancy. That's why you see it all the time, and I'll bet if you look closer at the ownership during layoffs you'll find that they very rarely miss a paycheck and usually escape unharmed.

The fact that it's an unpleasant reality doesn't make it any more risky than e.g. having to pay taxes.

I agree with what you're saying, and this is probably why I don't hold a management position anywhere.

This also mirrors my experience with startups. I've been lied to about money many times to get me to keep working. The only things the owners care about is how they look to investors.

Well, no it's not simple. It means a lot of work and persistent marketing and sales efforts but it isn't particularly risky.

I'm running a single person consultancy. If I need help with handling the work depending on the client I can hire other freelancers. The secret to reducing risk is to always be selling / marketing and to not accept full-time projects. This precludes many project offers but you can stay flexible and don't have to decline projects or stop accepting new clients. Offering products, coaching and productized services besides your main consulting business also helps.

I agree that consulting becomes risky once you've got other developers on your payroll. It can be done, too though but you'd have to grow slowly and carefully.

> "...persistent marketing and sales efforts..." ..."This just became a job"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com