5 ms·

This reads as one of those "how to draw an owl" memes, step 1. draw a circle; step 2. draw the rest of the owl. I've been trying to succeed at consultancy for

by mpeg 7y ago

This reads as one of those "how to draw an owl" memes, step 1. draw a circle; step 2. draw the rest of the owl. I've been trying to succeed at consultancy for the last couple years, and here's my list of (realistic) steps 1) Reach out to your network and see if anyone is looking for help that you can provide 2) Realise that clients don't care about your background, or skillset, they're 100% focused on what results you can provide and how fast 3) The usual advice from the lucky ones is to always raise your rates, "raise your rates after every contract!" etc. but a more realistic approach is to lower your rates when you have to. I wish I could get steady work at my usual rates, but sometimes I will take on side gigs at a lower hourly rate just because they help keep you afloat 4) Despite what people may say, consultants that can speak both tech and business are very common. They might not be very good coders, or very good biz people, but they are common. Differentiating yourself comes down to personal network rather than any substantial difference in output. 5) Specialists are paid a lot better than generalists. If you're an awesome cloud migration expert (like OP) focusing on that will likely bring more clients and revenue than trying to branch out to other areas Most other advice is good, but it's important to notice that it won't apply to most folks when they're starting out. I still love the freedom that working for myself affords me, and that it's allowed me to do things that I would have otherwise not been able to, but it's a lot of work, and a good chunk of my time is spent essentially working for free (writing proposals, chasing up payment, etc)

scardine 7y ago
It is a catch 22: unless you are spending at least half your time prospecting new clients it is hard to keep a steady income, but it is hard to invest that much time in the commercial side of your "one man show" if you are not charging high enough. Every beginner underestimate how much salesmanship it takes to run a successful freelancer career.
- mpeg 7y ago
  Yes, it's very difficult to balance and it's been an interesting experience in the sense that no one really cares about what work you've done in the past; if they like you on a personal level they'll hire you. I'm comfortable doing sales, but it's maintaining that balance that I find difficult – if I spend too much time pitching I make no money as I have no employees to deliver the work and if I spend too much time working I get stuck in a cycle of feast and famine.
  - mxuribe 7y ago
    THIS 100%!
- peterbell_nyc 7y ago
  Yup - another resource is "the E-myth revisited" which makes the point that if you want to be a baker, don't start a bakery because now you're dealing with taxes, permits, hiring, vendors, marketing, etc - not just baking. Similarly, if you want to spend all your time programming, a true, short term consulting business isn't going to get you there. I'd assume that (if all goes well) you'll bill 1000 hours a year (about 50% utilization with the balance going to sales, marketing, accounting, updating software, keeping up to date with the industry, etc). It's conservative (assuming you sell enough to be busy 40+ hrs a week every week), but it's better than assuming you'll bill 2000 hrs (40 hrs x 50 weeks) and finding you have to work 70 hours every week just to get by.
- tyri_kai_psomi 7y ago
  I'd just like to offer a doubling down on this. If you are a software consultant you are first a salesmen and second a software developer (maybe third if you include marketing as a separate category from salesman)
tptacek 7y ago
I want to jump in and clarify something on point (4). It's not my argument that it's hard to talk a good game about business and tech at the same time. Lots of people can do that. Rather, when I wrote that, I was reacting to a long string of own-goals people were reporting about their consulting practices on HN. I saw people freaking out about scope changes, about advanced payment, about counting billable hours, about acceptance criteria, and about payment terms. I was reading people complaining about working conditions issues that are totally appropriate for full-timers to bring up, but not generally at-the-market issues for businesses relating to each other, which is what consultancies are. Most people who write a lot of comments on HN are self-evidently equipped to represent themselves well to businesses, at least in writing. That's not a concern of mine. Instead, I'm more interested in seeing people take full ownership of the services they want to be offering their clients. Companies hire consultants to solve problems. The more completely and decisively you can solve those problems, and the less drama you inject in solving them, the more valuable your consultancy is. So, patterns I see among high-value consultancies --- not just the ones I've helped manage but also those run by friends and peers --- include not pushing back on scope changes, accepting industry norms on payments, not demanding up-front payment, not trying to bill for ticky-tacky stuff like individual phone calls, not being afraid to provide a reasonable estimate up front, not charging for proposals, and not pushing the (probably totally reasonable for graphic designers!) graphic design field's orthodoxy about spec work. Not for nothing, but I see similar patterns among other professions; I get the same professional courtesies from my accountant, for instance, and from our legal (Grellas Shah, highly recommend). I've gotten similar courtesies from BigLaw firms as well, and it's no surprise: the invoices we generated selling Matasano would have paid for 10x as many random phone calls as we possibly could have generated. The most common reaction to these observation comes from fledgeling consultancies that work with small customers on small projects. If that's where you have to be, I understand and I'm not trying to condescend. But if those are your clients and you expect to grow your business, one of two things is going to happen: (1) You are going to stop serving clients that require you to bill hourly, account for phone calls, demand up-front payment, and charge for proposals. (2) You are going to find a way to scale SMB clients so that you're delivering them mechanically and without a lot of interpersonal interaction, in the same manner as, say, the big PDF-to-HTML shops do. In the meantime, do what you gotta do to keep afloat! That was the point of the original post I wrote there (I'm a bit mystified about why that post is the one everyone points to for my consulting advice; I've written what I think are more important things about consulting here). You start somewhere, and then you progress towards operating like a more mature, larger business.

by mpeg 7y ago

scardine 7y ago

It is a catch 22: unless you are spending at least half your time prospecting new clients it is hard to keep a steady income, but it is hard to invest that much time in the commercial side of your "one man show" if you are not charging high enough. Every beginner underestimate how much salesmanship it takes to run a successful freelancer career.

mpeg 7y ago
Yes, it's very difficult to balance and it's been an interesting experience in the sense that no one really cares about what work you've done in the past; if they like you on a personal level they'll hire you. I'm comfortable doing sales, but it's maintaining that balance that I find difficult – if I spend too much time pitching I make no money as I have no employees to deliver the work and if I spend too much time working I get stuck in a cycle of feast and famine.
- mxuribe 7y ago
  THIS 100%!
peterbell_nyc 7y ago
Yup - another resource is "the E-myth revisited" which makes the point that if you want to be a baker, don't start a bakery because now you're dealing with taxes, permits, hiring, vendors, marketing, etc - not just baking. Similarly, if you want to spend all your time programming, a true, short term consulting business isn't going to get you there. I'd assume that (if all goes well) you'll bill 1000 hours a year (about 50% utilization with the balance going to sales, marketing, accounting, updating software, keeping up to date with the industry, etc). It's conservative (assuming you sell enough to be busy 40+ hrs a week every week), but it's better than assuming you'll bill 2000 hrs (40 hrs x 50 weeks) and finding you have to work 70 hours every week just to get by.
tyri_kai_psomi 7y ago
I'd just like to offer a doubling down on this. If you are a software consultant you are first a salesmen and second a software developer (maybe third if you include marketing as a separate category from salesman)

tptacek 7y ago

I want to jump in and clarify something on point (4). It's not my argument that it's hard to talk a good game about business and tech at the same time. Lots of people can do that. Rather, when I wrote that, I was reacting to a long string of own-goals people were reporting about their consulting practices on HN. I saw people freaking out about scope changes, about advanced payment, about counting billable hours, about acceptance criteria, and about payment terms. I was reading people complaining about working conditions issues that are totally appropriate for full-timers to bring up, but not generally at-the-market issues for businesses relating to each other, which is what consultancies are. Most people who write a lot of comments on HN are self-evidently equipped to represent themselves well to businesses, at least in writing. That's not a concern of mine. Instead, I'm more interested in seeing people take full ownership of the services they want to be offering their clients. Companies hire consultants to solve problems. The more completely and decisively you can solve those problems, and the less drama you inject in solving them, the more valuable your consultancy is. So, patterns I see among high-value consultancies --- not just the ones I've helped manage but also those run by friends and peers --- include not pushing back on scope changes, accepting industry norms on payments, not demanding up-front payment, not trying to bill for ticky-tacky stuff like individual phone calls, not being afraid to provide a reasonable estimate up front, not charging for proposals, and not pushing the (probably totally reasonable for graphic designers!) graphic design field's orthodoxy about spec work. Not for nothing, but I see similar patterns among other professions; I get the same professional courtesies from my accountant, for instance, and from our legal (Grellas Shah, highly recommend). I've gotten similar courtesies from BigLaw firms as well, and it's no surprise: the invoices we generated selling Matasano would have paid for 10x as many random phone calls as we possibly could have generated. The most common reaction to these observation comes from fledgeling consultancies that work with small customers on small projects. If that's where you have to be, I understand and I'm not trying to condescend. But if those are your clients and you expect to grow your business, one of two things is going to happen: (1) You are going to stop serving clients that require you to bill hourly, account for phone calls, demand up-front payment, and charge for proposals. (2) You are going to find a way to scale SMB clients so that you're delivering them mechanically and without a lot of interpersonal interaction, in the same manner as, say, the big PDF-to-HTML shops do. In the meantime, do what you gotta do to keep afloat! That was the point of the original post I wrote there (I'm a bit mystified about why that post is the one everyone points to for my consulting advice; I've written what I think are more important things about consulting here). You start somewhere, and then you progress towards operating like a more mature, larger business.