I am currently an auditor at a Big 4 firm in low-income country. I am not completely satisfied by the amount of income I retain while working for sometimes 60+ hours per week, and I want to pursue my dream and build a business.<p>I think that starting to do consulting, saving money and invest it into my own (web product) business is the path to go.<p>My non-finance skills are: web development (beginner to moderate, knowledge of PHP and PHP frameworks, MySQL, Rails) and Excel (naturally). I have no portfolio currently (besides some basic bootstrap- and wordpress-based sites I've created a while ago).<p>Is there hope for me? How do I get clients while there are clearly a lot of developers having a substantial portfolio and better skills?
Just for putting another option on the table:<p>Get a graduate degree from either a US or UK institution and try making the jump from the low-income country over to a US/EU country. Afaik accounting PhDs are quite in demand so with a littlebit luck and effort you might find there a paid teaching position. That would allow you to have more time on your hands and push your non-finance skills forward.<p>That might improve your situation more than just building up Php/MySql sites as you have apparently already have quite a solid level of expertise in the auditing industry.<p>Think about what level of time and effort someone from outside the auditing industry would have to invest in order to compete with your skillset/experience. Unless you found some lucky accident you need to put the same level of effort into your goal if you want to become a full time IT guy (who doesn't just compete with a zillion of other wannabe professionals on oDesk).
Doing something service oriented like consulting vs. a product are two very different paths. And it's very hard once you do service to launch a product, so it's best to pick one or the other.<p>I think the main problem you have right now is that 60+ hours per week is brutal, so it's hard to either get a client or build a product if you're already giving it that much.<p>So I think there is hope for you, but it's best to focus on one thing at a time or at least give yourself the space to do that.
Try to find and read a copy of, "Guerrilla Selling: Unconventional Weapons and Tactics for Increasing Your Sales"
by Bill Gallagher, Orvel Ray Wilson, Jay Conrad Levinson<p>Also "Purple Cow" or anything by Godin
<a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/purple-cow-seth-godin/1100041613?ean=9781591843177" rel="nofollow">http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/purple-cow-seth-godin/110004...</a>
Keep your day job and build the product on the side. You can use your current salary to finance some outsourcing, have a product into the market in 3-6 months.<p>This explains everything: startupbook.net<p>Also fourhourworkweek.com and lifestylebusinesspodcast.com<p>Freelancing is a dead end road that takes all your mental energy, avoid it at all costs
I am just wondering.. If you are an auditor in a Big 4 firm, you should be pretty decent in finance itself. Why even look at tech? I am not sure what all financial consulting really involves, but it seems like the natural way to go for you.