Your own IT consulting company

inyourname

I know there are many MCSE, CISSP, CCIE folks are here.

Wouldn't you want to start up your own IT consulting company?
I know it is a bit scary.

Has anyone tried that before and did not work out well?

Can you share your thoughts, experience, anything?

Dojiscalper

I've love to, I have plenty of experience on my end and do the job everyday for someone else. My thing is I'm not good at getting customers (I learned that from other businesses I've tried to start up).

My other problem is not being in a position financially that would allow me to give starting out on my own a real good go. As you've probably heard the vast majority of start ups fail in the first couple years. That is mostly because it takes a lot of time to build a brand. I've always heard around 2 years, but depending on your market its more realistically 5 years unless your very good at building people networks.

cyberguypr

Coming up to my 16th year in IT. Zero interest in doing my own thing. I did it for fun/extra income many years ago but I'm done with it.

mbarrett

I did some side work in the past, but going into business for yourself requires work to attract & maintain customers. The nice thing is, usually once somebody uses your IT services and it works out, they will want to keep utilizing the same person, rather than go out & find somebody else. Neverthelless, it's a usually lot of work to maintain a steady flow of work to where you can stay afloat.

TLeTourneau

I'm with some of the other replies. I do side work for things I enjoy doing (security audits, VOIP PBX's, web hosting, etc.) but it is nice to not have to worry about the hustle of finding and retaining clients. I had a S-Corp from my consulting days an I continue to use that for those ventures along with liability and E&O insurances just to be on the safe side.

joelsfood

I have my own consulting company that I use to do side work, but it doesn't amount to a ton (1/3-1/2 of my day job's salary or less). Same as others have said, no real interest in chasing down customers, and i like having the confidence of the steady paycheck and insurance, training, etc, too much to go full time into consulting.

Lexluethar

It's easier said (or typed in this situation) than done.

I did some small computer repair during my own company for about 3 years, never made anything more 1 or 2 thousand a year and the amount of work involved with running it was not worth the income. If you actually setup an LLC and do your taxes properly, report everything like you should it starts being a drag unless you have an accountant doing it for you.

As others have said, i'm great technically - what i was never good at was sales and getting my foot in the door at other places because i wasn't big into sales. I think to be successful you either need someone on your team that will promote the business or you need to be good at sales.

Also unless it's an established business it can be stressful running your own company if you have a family to take care of. Sure if you are single who cares, but if you have kids to watch out for it's a bit more difficult to take on that risk.

Danielm7

Not trying to make a huge general statement here, but many/most highly technical people aren't also the type to want to sell all day long at the same time. It's sales, you can tell yourself it's IT work, but you have to sell yourself constantly, then the IT part happens. I did it for a few years awhile back, I liked the freedom but I'm not a natural sales type, I got referrals but it's stressful. I've been back to regular corp work for years now. I do turn down some side work here and there that sounds like more hassle than it's worth because I know what comes along with customers who want "just one guy to come in for a lot less than some big company".

I may do something else again in a few more years but it would have to be a partnership with a few others who bring other things to the table like a customer network, etc.

Node Man

I prefer to think that I am running a small business, but I only have one customer.

shodown

I've been doing this for quite a while. It started small with some side work, then moved onto larger projects and then eventually full time. As been mentioned you have to have a focus on sales or find someone who does. From there you find the technical people.


Pro's
Customer satisfaction from our team ideas. This is very pleaseing that I dont' have management or other factors getting in the way of the best move for the customer. I do listen to my team members, I go out of my way to hire smart people so when they have an idea they are encouraged to let me know. Most of them are smarter than me anyway,lol.

more $$$ than I would make as a senior engineer with less work.
You find that you can make a lot of money with low end work and not having a lot of skills.
waking at 8-9am most days take my kids to school, come home work, do Brazilan Jiu Jistu during the noon hour, work, play with the kids and wife in the evenings and I can swap those in any order I want.




Con's
You always have to feed the pipeline, and learn strategies to feed it(on the flip side this is fun)
You loose technical chops which you have to minimize as much as possible, this is how you got to the dance in the first place. You need to be firmly established before you turn into manager/owner.
dealing with paper work taxes. During tax season(which is every quarter) it can be long hours doing paper work.


This is start, feel free to ask any questions you may have.

Lexluethar

Curious shodown do you WFH or make home or office calls?

powerfool

The other thing is partner status. Microsoft, Cisco, others have their partner programs and that is where business is driven. I don't want to focus on the small to medium space and enterprise customers go with partners.

powerfool

Node Man wrote: »

I prefer to think that I am running a small business, but I only have one customer.

This is the tact that I take, as well.

sj4088

shodown wrote: »

I've been doing this for quite a while. It started small with some side work, then moved onto larger projects and then eventually full time. As been mentioned you have to have a focus on sales or find someone who does. From there you find the technical people.


Pro's
Customer satisfaction from our team ideas. This is very pleaseing that I dont' have management or other factors getting in the way of the best move for the customer. I do listen to my team members, I go out of my way to hire smart people so when they have an idea they are encouraged to let me know. Most of them are smarter than me anyway,lol.

more $$$ than I would make as a senior engineer with less work.
You find that you can make a lot of money with low end work and not having a lot of skills.
waking at 8-9am most days take my kids to school, come home work, do Brazilan Jiu Jistu during the noon hour, work, play with the kids and wife in the evenings and I can swap those in any order I want.




Con's
You always have to feed the pipeline, and learn strategies to feed it(on the flip side this is fun)
You loose technical chops which you have to minimize as much as possible, this is how you got to the dance in the first place. You need to be firmly established before you turn into manager/owner.
dealing with paper work taxes. During tax season(which is every quarter) it can be long hours doing paper work.


This is start, feel free to ask any questions you may have.

What type of projects are you doing? I see you are reading networking material, so are you doing a lot of networking projects? Also how are you going about getting customers?

shodown

I do both and travel, it just depends on the client. I try to WFM as much as possible to cut down on travel and food cost


As far as projects, I'm building or upgrading Cisco call manager systems for non profits, DOD, and govt clients. I'm also building LAN/WAN and DC's but other team members take care of those projects. I also have a Cloud VoIP business thats picking up steam which I hope to push harder into 2017/8.

that book list is pretty old, right now Im mostly reading Javascript and Node.JS books. Dev ops is becoming a larger and large part of my customers environment and I want to be ready to offer those services when the time comes. I'll more than likley bring in someone with much more experience, but me having an idea of whats going on is very important, Also the reason while I'm choosing javascript over python is that I can build front end and back end with the same language and the amazon SDK for node.js is pretty slick.

UnixGuy

@shodown great posts mate, inspirational!

shodown

I forgot to answer how to get customers. Well I got my start here helping people out. From there that turned into over 100K worth of work and I was officially off to the races. From there I continued to keep my job and slowly grow from using people on here and other forums. From there I was able to secure sub contract work with a large telecom provider and I've been independent ever since. Now I get a lot of referrals, so people call me to get things done. I made a lot of mistakes on this road. I spent a lot on SEO and cold calling and it didn't work out for me, other people have had luck down that path, what has worked for me is letting the work speak for itself and asking for referrals. IT management knows other IT management and eventually enough people will speak to enough people and deals will come through. Its taken years as it doesn't' happen overnight, but just stay the course.

ItsmHarun

@shodown great posts mate.really Inspirational to others. All the Best:)