I have been free from my corporate shackles for over six months now, and one of the biggest challenges I have come across is focus. When I left Avanade my immediate goal was to get to work on Visual Studio Hacks, as well as consulting. With the book done I find myself thinking about where I want to be as an independent in five years. I see the folllowing options:
1) Writing – This is something I definitely want to continue. To put it simply I love writing and books in general. The downsides are that it is time-consuming and is on the low end of the scale for monetary compensation.
2) Consulting – Consulting is the big money maker as well as being the one thing that keeps me in touch with the real world. When you drop consulting you quickly loose touch with what it is like out there, and start sounding like the Microsoft docs.
3) Software Development – This is what I have been thinking about lately. I want to create a product. I have been making lists of software ideas and hope to choose something in the next couple months and then start working on it in my spare time. I think this has the potential to be very time-consuming, and is also risky since it is impossible to tell what the monetary gains will be if anything.
4) Training – This is something I have been thinking about, but I don’t have alot of experience with. I did some training while with Dell, but it has been quite a few years. I have been working with a local training company to do a one day seminar so I can try it out and see what I think. I think the nice thing about training is that I could do a couple weeks here or there without the long-term commitment of these other areas.
5) Speaking – This is almost expected of authors. Speak at conferences, user groups, and such. I have done some speaking, but I am not sure if it is something I want to do a ton more of.
So, over the last couple months I have been thinking about how I want to balance all of these things and what I want to focus on, and it has not been easy. I think trying to do all of these things would only result in being mediocre in all of them. Instead I want to try and pick 2-3 of them to focus on. I think I will have a better idea on what I want to do after trying my hand at software development, the key is just to find the time to do that between all the rest.
-James
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I would most certainlyy recommend finding a product to sell. There are so many niches out there that are empty. . . or the players are weak. I have three friends who each found a niche for a MS Access program! Their sole source of incomes comes each from his Access program. One for fairs, one for cattle ranchers, and one for catholic churches and schools. Also, when did you work for Dell? I’m currently a software developer there in SMS.
I do the writing/consulting/training triumvirate, although I’d really like to develop a software product. The problem with software development is, as you mentioned, finding a good idea and being confident enough in the idea to take the risk. I know there are niche markets, as Jeffrey pointed out, but trouble is having domain knowledge in the niche market, being able to sell to the market, and having the market be large enough to supplant the income consulting provides. I did have some luck with my first attempt, creating WebForums.NET, which was bought by Microsoft and turned into the ASP.NET Forums with some hard work by Rob Howard, but I had the domain knowledge there having had many painful experiences with http://www.ASPMessageboard.com.
The nice thing about consulting/trianing/writing, IMHO, is that they work together with one another in a positive feedback cycle. That is, they’re basically three different ways of doing the same thing. When I have a particular consulting project going on focusing on a certain area, guess what I’m writing about? And when I am writing, I can translate that into training material. And when I present the training material, I get great feedback from students that allows me to fine tune the training and writing on said topics. And so on and so on.
Don’t know how well speaking pays. I guess if you’re prominent on the speaking circuit, it might be a good enough income generator, but, for me personally, I don’t think the gobs of travel required would be worth the money received. Not until I’m getting paid five figures per talk!
I just use speaking as a way to pay for my conferences (or an excuse to go to a Code Camp and write it off as a business expense). The developer events are so much fun, and I love to hang out with everyone. It makes up for the lack on continuity in the workplace (moving from client to client). Maybe some day the speaking stuff would pay more, but then again, it probably wouldn’t be as much fun if I had to do it all the time.
I think the point about domain knowledge that Scott makes is spot on. I would not know where to to start with an application for cattle ranchers.
I think I have some good ideas, I just need to carve out the time to start working on it.
I never thought about how consulting/training/writing could all feed each other, this is something I should definitly take more advantage of.
Don,
Yeah, that’s the only reason I even consider doing speaking.
An excuse to hang out with other developers.
-James
Jeffrey,
I worked at Dell around 2000 in Nashville. I did a number of different programs for the call center techs and stuff like that.
-James
I’ve been “free” for three years now. I mainly do consulting projects which last anywhere from three months to a year to complete. But like you, I also longed to create a product which I am in the process of complete and already have a sale for it. Will it make me a millionaire? No, but at least I won’t have to go back to work in the corporate world. Best of luck!
I’ve been “free” for three years now. I mainly do consulting projects which last anywhere from three months to a year to complete. But like you, I also longed to create a product which I am in the process of completing and already have a sale for it. Will it make me a millionaire? No, but at least I won’t have to go back to work in the corporate world. Best of luck!
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