Crush it, stop it, profit: The (un)glamorous life of consulting

This post was originally written for Indie Hackers

Curious how we often forgo the small for the large. I'm writing this instead of working on a deliverable for a client. A year ago, I had no clients, just a shitty micro-SaaS and a day job to keep me miserable. Tough gig being stuck between a dream and a day job, but there is a way out. Something I've seen time and time again from successful founders: The service business.

Now, I know what you're thinking, It's not much better than a job, and you'd be right about that, but hear me out: You can cut your teeth on something you know the market values and will pay for. You can learn sales and marketing by selling your services as either a freelancer or a consultant.

We all know we're suppose to do sales and marketing, but why the fuck aren't we? I honestly think it's because we're chasing this dream rather than learning the game. You think these heavy weights out here just launched on product hunt and shot to the top? Nah, they know something we don't, something I didn't until very recently, and, my friend, I'm about to share it with you. You probably already have something very valuable to businesses and people: Your skill set, and I'm not talking about selling a course or ebook.

I can already hear your rebuttal, so save it, I know your immediate thought is to to hop over to Upwork, Fiverr, or Toptal and check out the slave labor that is 'freelancing'. Just like any other business, pricing makes the difference between beans and rice for dinner or fillet Mignon. Flex your unfair advantages, close 5 figure deals, and get that steak. The name of the game is value for the money, but you can't create the value if you go hungry to compete on price, so what are you to do? Fixed rate, first gig, no starving. Hit it out of the park. I did this for a client, and they fired all their hourly contractors because it just wasn't worth it for them to hire the others. I made twenty grand in six weeks. If you do what everyone is doing, you're going to get what everyone else has, and judging by twitter, it's not very much.

Maybe you're one of those people who think your benevolent masters will be supportive of side project, I dunno, maybe they will be, but in my experience employers are anti-competitive monsters. Let me tell you, if you work in tech, you have leverage because the market is super starved for talent. You should make the extra margins of consulting with the time and flexibility to work on your product-based business. The IP and it's spoils will be yours, only yours, not your employers. Want a portfolio of small bets? Write your info products in between consulting gigs, or consult part-time while writing.

If you're worried about keeping current clients happy and finding new clients, you're either not charging enough, not confident in your ability to close, or making excuses to stay comfy. So charge more, learn how to close, or get more leads.

If you've ever gotten a job after a killer job interview, you can do sales. I promise. Because I love y'all, I'm going to help with closing. Check it, here is my sales call in a nutshell:

Build Rapport
Qualify the lead
Don't be afraid to talk about money, but avoid discussing hourly rates
Negotiate your fee
Move to close
Do all of these on the call

Here's the real shit: a lot of sales is informed by who you are and what you do. How do you build rapport? Honesty, vulnerability, humility, and laughter all of those things that let people know you're a human, just like if you've ever had a real conversation with a friend because we're talking about a business relationship. It's the same reason my hair stylist knows about my life, and it also happens to be part of reason I tip her really fucking well. I don't think that's a coincidence, do you?

That said, don't be afraid to walk away when qualifying the lead. Can't do the work for their budget? Walk away. Don't know the tech? Walk away. Can't learn it fast enough? Walk away. Think they want someone to boss around instead of results? Walk, the fuck, away. A lead should only become a prospect when you know you can fucking crush it, stop it, and profit. A bad customer is a liability; I've rejected otherwise good leads because they wanted someone hop on their ticket mill. Funny enough, they'll start arguing with me, offering to adjust workflows, just to get me because I called their bluff. Being able to have time between gigs is what's going to propel your entrepreneurial career forward. Time is precious and don't ever let them take it unless you think there will be a return on it.

There are some people who just don't get it, and will want you to wear the hourly chains. I'm talking about recruiters, they always want to talk about money, but only ever talk hourly rates. They'll even have the gull to ask about your previous gig, how much you charged for it, and how long it took; they try to work backwards, so they can put you in their perfect little employment box. My suggestion would be to avoid speaking with them at all, I know I don't anymore. To wit, avoid all hourly talk, this puts you in a poor negotiating position because now you're selling time again and why wouldn't they buy time from one of those poor souls on Upwork, Toptal, or the like? If you haven't figured out by this point in the post, I'm going to spell it out for you: your skill set and experience is your unique / competitive advantage and you should be selling the experience and output of the work you provide, by selling time you're nothing but a warm body to off-load work to for mediocre results. If you have to do an hourly thing, it should be expensive because it sets a precedent. Fixed rate client wants too many meetings? 500$/hr for meetings, it will make them think twice about wasting your time on their useless all-hands or whatever.

But if you're out here squashing that hourly bull, how do you negotiate fees so you don't starve? first of all, savings, okay? it's a business, and you never want to be in a position to need the work, so there's bound to be some risk, but in the beginning my technique was "How much you got" pricing. Just ask the prospect for the budget, if it's too little to do the project, move on to the next lead. Everyone's risk tolerance is different, believe me, I get it. If you do a project for a little less (but still eating) ask for something in return like a testimonial before you move to close.

When I move to close, I make sure there are very distinct next steps with the prospect. I send them a copy of my contract (never use their contract). If the client has to step away, or think, or draft a request for proposals, or something that doesn't involve you or your consulting business, you didn't close, so you'd better move on to the next lead (and follow-up to prove you lost the sale). If the next steps are a meeting to prove your skills, that's fine, but remember to value your time and say straight up that you don't have time for 8 rounds of "interviews" to prove you can do what you say you can, so just move on. There is a very good chance that if you used the "how much you got" technique from the previous paragraph, closing will be fairly easy.

Now this is all fine and dandy, but the astute readers will realize what I just described was a cold sales interaction. If you have some kind of business relationship already, closing on pretty much anything will be easier. Including higher rates, suddenly there's plenty of money in the budget for another gig, and another! Fuck, I've had consulting clients say they'd even like to be the first customers of a hypothetical SaaS I'll never build. (the devil you know, right?)

Cool thing about this 'hypothetical SaaS' is I came up with idea when i was building a project for a client. MY IDEA. Not theirs, and they would pay me to build a thing to make my own projects go faster? Hot damn, consulting will expose you to business problems you want to build solutions for, on top of all the small business problems you need solved to run your own business. (Opportunity much?)

Now I realize I'm spitting some serious game here, and I just want you to know that I didn't get to this point by being an asshole. In the beginning I spoke to everyone I could, including recruiters, I only came to this conclusion because of all that work. And, just like every other success porn you read from strangers on the internet, there's some slight of hand that made it possible. Here's mine:

My clientele has lots of budget for hiring since I'm a software developer
I have a horizontal niche that's hard to find good developers for
I have a 'channel' other than the typical race to the bottom channels
I'm a little lucky because I have previous experiences that informed my current experiences

If you think you can't consult because you don't have these advantages, I bet you do have them, you just need to think a little harder and experiment. I didn't start as a Clojure consultant, and I got fired from my first client. I took the gig because I thought I needed something to make the jump to consulting.

I don't want you to think any of this was easy because it wasn't. I got rejected from a lot of prospects. It will happen, and probably happen often at first, and it's scary. The day-job carrot is always dangling there, companies will try to tempt you to join them. I had a company offer me a position with a, frankly, ridiculous salary. Rule number one: you gotta stay in the game, and keep your eye on the ball. If prospects ask why you prefer being a consultant, just tell them you want the flexibility to build your own startup someday. Literally every single person I've said this to agrees it's awesome, they really respect it, and wouldn't go back either.

So maybe consider a consulting business, or don't, IDGAF.