How I went from programming to consulting (2012) • Hacker News Board

Re: How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

#491

Post by gk1 » Fri, Jan 05, 2018, 3:56 PM UTC

JamesBarney wrote: post #440

sethev wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about if you invert it. If somebody came to you and asked for a system that can send emails when certain conditions are met in a database and track the results, would you assume that to write the program you would have to hang out with sales people? The actual work (in the two weeks to implement it) is development.

The actual work of being a lawyer is writing and talking, but just because you can write and talk doesn't mean you can be a lawyer. Every client I've ever had has asked "how many hours?" And "how much per hour?" If a restaurant wants to increase business by building a patio and they get a bid based with pricing based on increased business and not hours. They're gonna throw it away. Patio11 was in a unique position to…

> Every client I've ever had has asked "how many hours?" And "how much per hour?"

That's when you explain you charge per project or per week instead of per hour, and the fee is based on value, because in the end they won't really care how many hours you spent as long as their problem is solved. (Similarly, if you _fail_ to solve their problem, they're not going to care how many hours you put in.)

I get this question from prospects too, and then I explain the above, and then we move on with the conversation.

And in my 4+ years of consulting, nobody's asked me _at the end_ of a project how many hours it took. At that point, as I said, it doesn't matter.

Re: How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

#492

Post by gk1 » Fri, Jan 05, 2018, 4:06 PM UTC

monkpit wrote: post #423

patio11 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My modal engagement was with a SaaS company with $20 million a year sales, a few dozen employees, and 1~3 very strapped people wearing the marketing hat. “How much email do you send?” “We have a newsletter.” “What else?” “Welcome to free trial email. “What else?” “Nothing.” I write proposal. You should: 1) Have a pre-sales drip campaign positioned as a “free course about X delivered over email” w/ 8 emails arriving o…

I am curious how you even get into this type of work - how do you find the consulting opportunities in the first place? Do you seek out work somehow, or do you market and let the leads come to you? Is it easier to work for a consulting company as an “employee” before venturing out alone?

Late to the party but I've written about what's worked for me for finding consulting clients: https://www.gkogan.co/blog/how-i-learned-to-get-consulting-l...

Re: How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

#493

Post by gk1 » Fri, Jan 05, 2018, 4:09 PM UTC

greggyb wrote: post #434

kristianc wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most enterprise software sales, who tend to deal in a few large customers rather than lots of small ones, almost all of this would be enormously counterproductive.

If you're a software company and you have only a few customers, then you're probably doing bespoke development (whether you call that consulting or not can be your own decision), not product sales. The entire purpose of selling a product is to scale through volume rather than customization. To me the big divide is how superlinear your revenue:employee ratio is. If it's linear or close to it, then you're a consulting…

I think you're missing parent's point. People don't buy enterprise software (six- and seven-figure annual licenses) from a 30-day email drip. Therefore, creating such an email drip for an enterprise software company would not have the same results as it would for a B2C/B2Dev SaaS.

Re: How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

#494

Post by gk1 » Fri, Jan 05, 2018, 6:56 PM UTC

smelltest wrote: post #166

Patrick is a charismatic and compelling writer, and he writes in such an earnestly nerdy way that you think what he's saying must be true. Similar to the guy who wrote The Gervais Principle posts. It sounds great and you feel like you're hit with a series of epiphanies. But it doesn't pass the smell test. The author isn't a wealthy consultant. He's a full-time salaried employee at a YC startup (where he assuredly mak…

It has "2012" right in the title, so I don't see what the author's position _today_ has anything to do with it. And that "YC startup" has raised $440M and has 500+ employees... You're intentionally making the author sound less credible.

Besides the ad hominem, what other "smell test" does he fail to pass?

Re: How I went from programming to consulting (2012)

#495

Post by JamesBarney » Sun, Jan 07, 2018, 7:55 AM UTC

gk1 wrote: post #491

JamesBarney wrote: post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual work of being a lawyer is writing and talking, but just because you can write and talk doesn't mean you can be a lawyer. Every client I've ever had has asked "how many hours?" And "how much per hour?" If a restaurant wants to increase business by building a patio and they get a bid based with pricing based on increased business and not hours. They're gonna throw it away. Patio11 was in a unique position to…

> Every client I've ever had has asked "how many hours?" And "how much per hour?" That's when you explain you charge per project or per week instead of per hour, and the fee is based on value, because in the end they won't really care how many hours you spent as long as their problem is solved. (Similarly, if you _fail_ to solve their problem, they're not going to care how many hours you put in.) I get this question…

What type of consulting do you do? Do you do general custom dev work? Or something more specialized?