
Ask HN: Consulting in tech. How to start? - artembugara
So, I&#x27;ve been thinking about starting consulting (not freelancing).<p>I am working on my own company that sells a news API. We&#x27;ve launched a month ago, it&#x27;s fully bootstrapped. I have money for a few more months but at some time might search for a &quot;job&quot;.<p>Does anyone here works as a &quot;self-employed&quot; consultant?<p>How do you find your clients?
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brudgers
_How do you find your clients?_

Always one at a time and usually painfully if you have to ask. Clients are
generally a lemon market. Good clients (well paying with realistic
expectations — born of professional experience —and regular work flow) already
have a list of consultants who meet their needs and with whom they have
working relationships. By default almost any client you encounter as a new
consultant will be lacking in some or all of wherewithal to pay, realistic
expectations, and experience. Sure sometimes they have lots of work but it
will tend to be bad projects.

To put it another way there is not a lot of unmet demand for consulting and
building a client list takes many years of relationship building, sufficient
capitalization and luck.

Luck because clients come one by one. And the world is full of buses. Most
people didn’t appreciate Charlie. Because we had this in common we understood
each other in a particular way and could cut out a metric ton of bullshit and
just work together. Charlie ran a growing retail company and had several
decades experience. There were lots of viable future projects of the type I
was cut out for. A really good fit.

A few months in Charlie abruptly retired to his farm with an aggressive brain
cancer. Dead six months later. That was my luck. It wasn’t good just better
than Charlie’s.

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gus_massa
I'd recommend to read whatever patio11 wrote about consulting like
[https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/17/ramit-sethi-and-
patrick...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/17/ramit-sethi-and-patrick-
mckenzie-on-getting-your-first-consulting-client/) or
[https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/21/ramit-sethi-and-
patrick...](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/09/21/ramit-sethi-and-patrick-
mckenzie-on-why-your-customers-would-be-happier-if-you-charged-more/) . Also,
there is a monthly freelance thread here
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23379195](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23379195)

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gregjor
What distinction do you mean to make between freelancing and consulting? Those
terms usually describe the same thing.

[http://typicalprogrammer.com/how-to-start-freelancing-and-
ge...](http://typicalprogrammer.com/how-to-start-freelancing-and-get-clients)

~~~
emerged
Consulting to me carries connotations of much higher skill and much higher pay
by orders of magnitude.

~~~
luckylion
_Multiple_ orders of magnitude? Work for a month, relax for a decade?

It's funny how people understand terms differently. To me, consultant says
mostly "working for a large-ish consultant company on large projects for large
companies", while freelance is "self-employed", working on your own.

~~~
jacquesm
I aim for 3:1 or so when working alone, work real hard for three months then
have the rest of the year to pursue my own projects.

~~~
luckylion
Don't you get tempted to just work the whole year (and the next two or three)
and just retire?

~~~
jacquesm
Too many side projects... I get tempted not to work at all and cut my expenses
even further. Also, I'd rather just cherry pick the good jobs instead of
lowering the price to be busy all the time.

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wayneftw
You can contact one of the big recruiting agencies like Robert Half and they
will negotiate contracts for you. They will also take some unknown percentage
above whatever hourly rate you negotiate with them.

However, if a client likes you they can hire out outside of the recruiter
(usually by paying off the recruiter for the option.) I've gotten hired for a
few jobs like this and then I had a network of clients in my niche who got me
more work by word of mouth, without any recruiter involvment.

Other jobs I've gotten by simply being prepared for pure luck to happen, like
the time when my landscaper said that his full-time employer needed an app. I
already had my LLC setup, I had contract document templates ready to be filled
in and signed. I had business cards. A single page static website to describe
my capabilities. After taking some notes and spending a weekend building it -
I walked into their office with a rough prototype of what I heard that they
needed and after a second meeting I locked them in for a year contract at
$90/hour. (The recruiters were giving me $50/$60 per hour and probably
collecting $90-$150! (they don't really tell you).)

~~~
kthejoker2
Margin is typically 35% (less if the contract is longer or if you're part of
some bundle) so yeah, you bill at 90, that's client billed at 90 / .65 = 140
or so.

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jacquesm
I've written a whole slew of blog posts on the subject, quite a few of which
got plagiarized to greater or lesser extent. Enjoy:

[https://jacquesmattheij.com/categories/consulting/](https://jacquesmattheij.com/categories/consulting/)

~~~
artembugara
seems like in depth. thx

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dsaavy
Some good reads for this topic:

[https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consultin...](https://training.kalzumeus.com/newsletters/archive/consulting_1)

[https://chrisachard.com/how-to-find-consulting-
clients](https://chrisachard.com/how-to-find-consulting-clients)

[https://tomcritchlow.com/2019/02/27/i-consultant/](https://tomcritchlow.com/2019/02/27/i-consultant/)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18227768](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18227768)

