[Toss8675309]

I'm a one man development and consulting shop and have been so for almost 12 years.

My 2018 gross revenue was $600K and 2019 gross revenue will be about $780K.

I'm an extremely efficient developer, a very good salesperson, and I'm an absolute fanatic about delivering high quality work on time.

I don't presume to have any special knowledge but would love to find a way to help other devs/tech people do what I've done.

[rhlsthrm]

I'm a solid full stack developer and I feel like I have the time flexibility and ability to start a side consulting business. Do you have any tips to get started? How would you go from 0 to your first client?

[Toss8675309]

Absolutely

0. Make sure your house is in financial order. If you are a habitual user of credit cards, have high monthly debt obligations, and no saving, before you even think about going out on your own, change that.

1. Audit your ability to estimate time and hit deadlines. Most developers are rubbish at knowing how long a project will take, even a small one. Make sure you can hit a deadline. This is more important at the outset than your ability to estimate.

2. Start thinking about yourself as a provider of solutions rather than as a developer. You happen to have the superpower of being able to create software, but that's just a tool. Real value is delivered by providing solutions to problems within a business.

I could write pages on each of these points, if you have further questions I'm happy to answer.

Getting your first client, a couple ideas: - Talk to small marketing / ad agencies in your town that won't have internal developers, offering to put some technical muscle behind what they're doing for their clients. - Look for people in your personal network that could benefit from your superpower. Offer to build tools to solve the issues they're dealing with.

These are super generic ideas, I can offer better and more targeted advice if I know a little more about you and your skillset. Hit me up at [e-mail].

[rhlsthrm]

Hey this is really amazing advice, thanks a ton for sharing! I'll definitely reach out with more questions! Especially the time estimation part. Even during my day job I find I tend to underestimate. Over estimating is probably more desirable in this line of work.

[Toss8675309]

Yeah, time estimation is really tough. When I started I figured out I just needed to take my time estimate and double it. Then I got really analytical about it. Now I take my gut estimate and add 20%, but I've also gotten away from time-based billing into value-based estimating (that's a whole other very deep subject).

The "really analytical" phase wasn't too crazy by HN standards:

- Break the complete project in Pivotal Tracker down to stories no larger than 8 points

- Track the time spent on each story in Harvest

- Use that data to figure out how much time a given point score equated to, along with variance.

- Work to reduce the variance.

I should also say...I've been estimating software for, good god, I haven't done this math lately, 18 fucking years. Do anything repeatedly that long, your instincts become pretty solid.

[throwaway_29575]

Nice year on year growth.

What are your sales channels? Is it mostly online (seo, ads, remarketing etc), b2b networking or word-of-mouth referrals?

[Toss8675309]

Hey, thanks!

I work in a niche of sorts, so the sales channel is 100% word-of-mouth referrals.

My champions are executives that tend to move from one company to another every few years and usually bring me in when they've got a new gig. Also, each new company provides the opportunity to build new relationships with new people who themselves move on to new companies, and the cycle continues. :)

[throwaway_29575]

In the digital marketing space it's the ambitious marketing managers who move from company to company (and like to work with someone they know). My wife makes a point of keeping them happy.

The issue is that in a competitive market it works both ways as every incoming manager will often have "a friend", so they have to be won over quickly to keep the account.

[Toss8675309]

Man, been there. You have to act fast and aggressively to demonstrate that value that you've been providing to the incoming manager. And even then, you don't always win.

At the same time, once you reach a certain point, you can become choosy about who you work with. I maintain the client relationships I do because I like the people I work with. If someone new comes in, they're not value focused, they just want to bring in their guy no matter what, well, bummer, but attrition can't be completely avoided.

[cylinder]

usually solo professionals like yourself will start a side business selling coaching, tools, lessons, guides etc to other practitioners. certainly have a huge base of developers out there who need help going out on their own and could use some coaching on the business and sales sides.

[Toss8675309]

> certainly have a huge base of developers out there who need help going out on their own and could use some coaching on the business and sales sides.

Yeah? I was really planning to make a move in this direction in 2020. Another investment opportunity combined with imposter syndrome has put this on hold. Mostly imposter syndrome if I'm honest.

But...I should do this, work to help other devs move out of their employer's house and out on their own. It's as rough and shocking as those first few years outside of mom and dad's but man...if you can make it through the initial bits it's worth it.

[cylinder]

you definitely should. there's a clear market gap. you can also build a community out of current/former clients and offer that support network as added value to clients. there's also a lot of hucksters out there who does this type of thing, and a good developer type would sniff them out quickly. stay genuine and real, and avoid the "You can build a life of FREEDOM and WEALTH from HOME !!" mumbo jumbo and you will do well.

It's also more scalable than churning out billable hours.

[Toss8675309]

Yeah that hustle porn is all bullshit. I'd rather go back to bartending as I did in my 20s than be one of those losers.

Thank you for the encouragement. I'm giving this serious thought. One of my 2020 goals is currently vaguely defined as "invest into the professional growth of others".

[jlevers]

If you made something like this, I would absolutely pay for it :)

[Toss8675309]

Thanks for sharing this. Your comment and the sibling comment have me thinking through how I'd launch something like this.

[throw872579]

Congrats. I run something similar, all referrals. Would love to trade notes, is there a way to reach you?

[Toss8675309]

You bet: [e-mail]

[Remnant44]

That's fantastic!

I have a one man software business but in creating and selling my own product, which has some strong pros and cons comparatively! I've been toying with the idea of taking on some consulting as well. The pivot to get into consulting seems much harder, however.

[Toss8675309]

Yes, the pivot into consulting is hard. It's a lot more abstract than "I will build you widget X for $Y", which is a hard enough business in which to get initial traction.

The first shift for me was making a mental shift from "I provide widgets for dollars" to "I solve problems, sometimes software is involved". This altered the way I price my services and how I communicate about them to current and prospective clients.

[zerr]

Do you mostly work with non-technical clients/persons?

[bitcoinmoney]

What kind of software do you do?

[Toss8675309]

well, it's not the sexy stuff that creates "Show HN" posts! :)

Complex public facing sites for mid-size to large corporations. "Complex" meaning custom-written 3rd party integrations, highly interdependent content structures, and often tricky data migrations from incumbent platforms.

Internal process management tools. But! These tools are just the digital manifestation of a consultation where we do a deep dive into the client's existing processes to optimize and streamline them before we set them in concrete with code. I refuse to wrap software around rubbish processes.

[codesternews]

How you get your clients?

[Toss8675309]

At this point, almost 12 years in, I've got what salespeople call "time in territory". I'm known to a small but always growing group of executives who change jobs every few years. Fortunately they see value in having me come in to their new company on a basic consult, and often these basic consults turn into more extensive projects.

In the beginning I worked my ass off, frequently for next to nothing, just to make connections, deliver quality work, and build experience. When I was getting started in 2003 this meant writing an ecommerce site for my girlfriend's employer, taking gigs on Rent-a-Coder, and doing small jobs for the employers of friends.

The biggest thing has been maintaining relationships with contacts. Stuff like the occasional email to say "hey, what's new with you" or "I'm going to be in your town, let's grab a beer." It's fun to stay in touch with people and be someone that takes an interest in them and their growth. Sometimes this leads to business, but that's just a by-product. The objective is to build good relationships, as cheesy as that sounds.