Consulting Lessons Learned - Outline

Context

I’ve been working as a software consultant for over 15 years. The last 7 years of that has been in the San Francisco Bay Area, mostly in full-stack web development. I’ve helped my clients find product-market fit, make millions of dollars, and raise their next round of funding (see: testimonials). I’ve helped my friends with their consulting practices. After many nudges from them, I thought it may be useful to write up what I’ve learned so far. (more context)

My intent is to share what I had to learn the hard way, not write an advice blog. If you find yourself thinking “you said x but it doesn’t apply to me because of y”, you’re probably right.

I’ll link to books and other articles when I don’t have anything at least somewhat original to say on a topic.

Ideas on what to cover

• Why do it?
  • Fun lifestyle
  • Upside / Variance tradeoff
  • Breadth of experience
• The business of consulting
  • Getting Started
  • Statement of Work
  • Some real stories
  • Books that I found to be helpful
    • The Charisma Myth
    • Never Split the Difference
    • Pitch Anything
    • Million Dollar Consulting
    • The Secrets of Consulting
• Finding work
  • Bootstrapping your network
  • Shareworthy stuff
  • Referral from programmer friends
  • Referral from your other clients
• Client red flags
  • Inexperienced
  • Doesn’t really understand what’s involved
  • Rants about earlier developers
  • Project funded with personal money
• Closing
• Billing Rate
• Productized consulting
• Retainer agreements
• Little things that have disproportional impact
• Zen through feast and famine
• What I wish I had done
  • Write more
  • Meet more people
  • OSS + SaaS + Consulting