Yeah, this is refreshing to read. One of my favorite scenes in movies is the Wolf in Pulp Fiction, because the comedy of it is how there's no magic to the Wolf. My own entry into consulting was similar to this guy's story - it felt huge and mysterious and forbidding beforehand, but in hindsight it was just a bunch of breaking problems down to stuff that felt boring and mundane in hindsight, even if the solutions were stylized to my own needs.<p>One thing that was important to me was to be able to max out retirement contributions even while being self-employed. (I think a lot of folks that go into business for themselves will too easily convince themselves to sacrifice that early on.) So I had a spreadsheet that basically factored in my needed take-home income after taxes and retirement contributions, and added in those taxes and contributions, and I turned it into a daily (weekday) dollar amount that I needed to earn, complete with 7-day and 30-day moving averages. Being able to check that daily helped me to know whether I was on the right track. For the first few years, I think that was around $300-$400 per day - later on, I was able to stop paying attention to it since I was exceeding it so much.
It seems a lot of consultancies follow this pattern:<p><pre><code> 1. Hate permanent job.
2. Start consultancy.
3. Spend half the day finding work/collecting bills; other half programming.
4. Eventually find reliable client with long-term project always pays on time.
5. Cancels all other contracts to focus on reliable client.
6. Go to step 1.
</code></pre>
The way to break free from this is to scale the consultancy by hiring developers and profiting on overhead. This was not mentioned in the post, but if you neglect the scale factor, it will be very difficult to break past a typical employee salary. There are only so many hours in the day. The alternative is to sell a product.
I thought this post was full of actionable advice for starting off on a consulting adventure (product companies are a whole different animal, in my opinion, definitely in terms of marketing research).<p>I did much the same. Having the savings are key, as are knowing your burn rate and having a plan B.<p>At the start of my most recent consulting stint, I watched cash in the bank and was prepared to be an employee if the balance fell below two months of expenses.
I've had the pleasure to work with Mr. Wiles. He's a wonderful person with refreshing perspective. If you're working on a serious django project and you want a little direction or advice on scalability or other technical decisions, his consultancy is great to go to.
Side note: RevSys put out a Django cheat sheet a while back, which was given out at PyCon. Whenever I step away from Django for a bit and start to get rusty, I pull out the cheat sheet as I'm getting back up to speed. It's helped me work more efficiently on numerous occasions.<p>Download (pdf): <a href="http://media.revsys.com/images/django-1.5-cheatsheet.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://media.revsys.com/images/django-1.5-cheatsheet.pdf</a>
I really liked the post.<p>I'd be curious to hear more about the process of finding work from people who have made the leap into consulting. The post mentions networking and just doing everything you can to increase your chances of meeting clients. That makes perfect sense, but are there any other insights or good practices?<p>For example, is it good to be a little bit forward and make sure people know you're a consultant looking for projects? Are certain kinds of networking better than others? Have you ever done any kind of out-bound marketing, or even cold-called potential clients? What about rules of thumb for whether or not to take on a project (e.g. better to turn down small things and wait for something big, or better to just take anything and everything, or certain kinds of clients you avoid)?<p>I would imagine that with all of this stuff you kind of just have to use your judgement. I also would suspect that everything gets much easier once you've been doing been doing it for longer and have a proven track record and even start to get referrals from previous clients. That said, it seems like getting the ball rolling with finding work must be one of the hardest aspects of starting out as a consultant.
How does this translate to SaaS where you might have paying customers on the line if you fail? Is runway supposed to be longer, or does it just not matter to them if it goes belly up?
This article has the start of his journey... and he's 8 year into it now.<p>But it gives no sense as to whether he's just breaking even, is killing it, or what?<p>It wouldn't be that encouraging if after 8 years he's still struggling to make ends meet, whereas if he's killing things (in the positive sense), that's more inspiring. To me anyway. ;)
This was a great read. Starting a company is more than anything else a matter of getting off your duff and doing it. Then keeping at it through thick and thin.<p>I particularly liked the point about raising your skills in non-core areas but wanted to add a caveat: it is really important to find good partners. For example, when selling technical products or services things tend to go better if one person sells the technology (aka the good cop) and another handles the money (aka the bad cop). Even if you are good at both it is hard to maintain both personalities simultaneously.
I wonder if the reluctance to rent an office, new desk etc extended when the author started hiring?<p>I personally think its very important to ensure your employees know you spent a bit of money making them comfortable and you value their work! I have worked in a number of startups with a kind of shitty office, shitty equipment etc and imo it always contributes to some kind of morale/impression problem.