Becoming A Software Consultant: My Backstory
brandontreb.com
brandontreb.com
I only mention this because so many geeks think consultants are a special breed apart, and in the main, they're geeks just like you who a) got good at something and b) started charging appropriate amounts of money for it.
1. Decide to call yourself a consultant.
2. Make it stick by doing the job.
The "something" can be quite a lot of things, while "good enough" is more or less driven by "it would take one of our senior staff at least few weeks to get up to speed with it."
(For a more in-depth walkthrough, go read this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4247615)
1. Decide to call yourself a consultant.
2. ????
3. Keep on doing step 2 and raise your rates.
It's the part where you find decent paying clients that is most people's stumbling block, and yet that part is always elided. Really, how many times have you heard someone say, "I have so many great consulting prospects, but I don't know how to call myself a consultant and I can't figure out how to write quotes based on a figure of $1000 per day"?
1. Know some narrow segment of businesses well enough to have an idea what problems they're facing and how it translates to dollars, or do enough research to learn same.
2. Track down people matching that segment and pitch them. Use your existing connections if you have them, make connections or go cold if you don't. You will spend enormous effort making new connections either way, so having connections to start with isn't the long-term advantage it might seem.
Note: this requires sales skills. If that's a problem, consulting may not be for you - at least, not as an independent. One of the key selling points of an agency is having the principals deal with much of the lead generation, sales, reputation building, and so forth.
But seriously, if you want to start, start. Stop worrying that you'll be bad at it at first - because you will be, no longer how long you worry about it. And at the same time, they're hiring you because they expect to get value from it.
Go out, make a fool of yourself in front of a few prospective clients, learn stuff in so doing, then do a better job pitching the next few.
If you're half decent at public speaking, see posts by patio11 & bdunn re: throwing events related to the topic you consult on. Being the person in the front of the room at a professional event automatically positions you as an authority figure. If you're terrible at public speaking, this still mostly works if you run the event but invite other people to give the actual talks.
Just supplying the more jaded view here...coming from someone who has tried to take his skills into the freelance market for a few months and is now going back to the cube farm. :)
Thanks for the comment.
...and c) had sufficient sales skills to make a credible pitch to potential clients or attract clients enough that they made the approach and d) had sufficiently broad understanding of their chosen industry to interact with non-technical people at the client whose problem they were going to solve and e) had sufficient patience, diligence, legal and accounting knowledge, and general acumen to successfully run a small business...
...in their spare time, when they weren't doing what they thought they were actually going to be paid for.
Exactly, but this is actually a specialization of a more generic feature of what my wife has termed "nerds who can talk". Her background is in psychology, but what she's referring to is the ability to function at a high level socially - or in my case, do a reasonably good impression of an extrovert (yes ... it's tiring!)
One generally outsources legal/accounting/tax. However, it does require extra time/effort to manage.
Like the saying goes you can work 8hr/day for someone else or 16hr/day for yourself - some of this can be outsourced, but the extra cost/effort never goes to zero.
That is true up to a point, but you still need to make sure your lawyer/accountant understands enough about your circumstances to do their job properly. They are experts in their field, not yours, and they aren't telepathic.
Whether or not you spend enough time liaising with your professional help and checking their work, you're still the responsible person ultimately signing contracts and tax returns, and you're still going to be on the hook if the contract doesn't stand up in court or you get audited and something incorrect is found.
This is absolutely nuts. Do American workers have zero rights to redundancy pay, notice, warnings etc? I realise this may seem ignorant, but it blows my mind that you can just be fired from one day to the next without compensation or any kind of due process. It reminds me of the working conditions for stevedores in the 19th century.
(I've been laid off once before.)
As for warnings though, it's rare that people are given much, especially when it comes to larger companies. I was taken aside to a meeting room, was announced by my manager that I was made redundant, was introduced to a guidance counselor for the agency the company had retained for me, my personal belongings were brought to me from my desk, and I was shown the door. I didn't get to say bye to my coworkers. It's pretty harsh.
I will say I got a 2 week severance package though.
The states with heavier union politics tend to have some amount of small rights to warnings, etc built in
I'm feeling happy I'm above things every time I see how the companies who hire me are messing with their employees.
And I have my team mates at our consultant agency, who are all really good coders, ambitious and fun to talk with. We go on trips together and have lots of fun. I believe that I have much better job security here. People know who I am. I'm appreciated. And the money is good too. Why work for a corp again? I won't set my foot there ever again.
Meanwhile I'm collecting ideas for startup #2, this time it will be about something I'm passionate about and with a viable business model.
What I found most useful was the picture of a person working for an existing business who has knowledge of the entire pipeline from the sales process through development:
"Armed with the knowledge of the entire software pipeline-from sales, to development, to maintenance-I hit the ground running the very next day in search of my first contract."
I think that is a key among most of the really good consultants that I have met.
Could you start an iOS blog today and realistically hope for a similar outcome, or are there so many iOS blogs that it would it get lost in the noise, and it would be better to pick some newer, less-published technology?
That's not to say that you can't grab a piece of that market. When I was blogging there were only a few thousand iOS developers, now there are hundreds of thousands. So there is more demand.
I admit I briefly skimmed so maybe I missed it, but where is that article? I'd like to read it first.