I want to spend more time with my sick wife. Advice on consulting work?
November 3, 2020 7:47 PM Subscribe
I have a successful software development agency/consulting firm with a primary focus on the Salesforce platform. I mostly do integrations and code-based customization/enhancements of clients' Salesforce implementations, but have occasionally taken on some product development as well. I'm currently solo.
The past few years have been extremely challenging for our family because my wife has been battling a debilitating illness. The effects have been very far-reaching for all of us (touching nearly all aspects of our life), and it has been especially difficult for our children.
I want to be more available to my family and have been working on a plan to work less while maintaining (or exceeding) our financial goals. I am seeking advice on that plan.
My projects are billed hourly (T&M) so time is the main factor in revenue. Given that I've already been averaging part-time hours for a few years, working less with the current project structure will be tough on us financially. Instead, I'm thinking of adopting what I'm calling a "service as a product" approach. The idea is to develop and sell prepackaged software solutions that address common problems faced by organizations within a particular industry. I would retain the IP (assigning a non-exclusive license to the client) which would allow me to sell the same solution again and again with few client-specific tweaks. It would also allow me to deliver a product-like service with little ongoing support obligations. I would realize enormous time savings from both of these compared to my current client-specific solutions. I could also refer clients with additional needs to partner firms and collect a referral fee.
I would like to pursue a lean product development strategy to keep stress to a minimum, reduce risk, and minimize disruption to ongoing hourly projects. I would develop an MVP for a single industry, test it, and either improve it and keep selling if it finds positive reception, or change focus to another product/industry and start over again. Turning successful solutions into SaaS products is also an option, though I have neither the stress tolerance nor capital to build the team needed to support a SaaS offering at this time.
The big pending questions for me have been three: where do I find prospects, what problems should I solve, and what industry should I target first? On the first, I have been fortunate to discover a prospect source which I believe is likely untapped by prospect list providers. It has several thousand Salesforce customers across many industries so I can draw on this for targeting. The second I'm still struggling with. There are a few ideas from previous experience I can pursue, but I would ideally come up with a method for uncovering problems that I can reuse as I develop different solutions and target different industries. On the third, I'm leaning towards selecting the non-profit industry as my initial target for a few reasons: 1) I have quite a bit of experience in that industry, 2) It is easier to get through to decision makers relatively quickly, 3) Most don't have internal Salesforce expertise, so they will likely be more receptive, 4) There are a lot of non-profits using Salesforce, 5) I love working with organizations with a positive social impact.
1. How can I uncover problems worth solving?
2. Is my reasoning behind choice of initial target industry sound? Any suggestions on a good first problem to focus on in the non-profit space?
3. Any general critique on the aforementioned approach and advice on working less while maintaining our income level?
My projects are billed hourly (T&M) so time is the main factor in revenue. Given that I've already been averaging part-time hours for a few years, working less with the current project structure will be tough on us financially. Instead, I'm thinking of adopting what I'm calling a "service as a product" approach. The idea is to develop and sell prepackaged software solutions that address common problems faced by organizations within a particular industry. I would retain the IP (assigning a non-exclusive license to the client) which would allow me to sell the same solution again and again with few client-specific tweaks. It would also allow me to deliver a product-like service with little ongoing support obligations. I would realize enormous time savings from both of these compared to my current client-specific solutions. I could also refer clients with additional needs to partner firms and collect a referral fee.
I would like to pursue a lean product development strategy to keep stress to a minimum, reduce risk, and minimize disruption to ongoing hourly projects. I would develop an MVP for a single industry, test it, and either improve it and keep selling if it finds positive reception, or change focus to another product/industry and start over again. Turning successful solutions into SaaS products is also an option, though I have neither the stress tolerance nor capital to build the team needed to support a SaaS offering at this time.
The big pending questions for me have been three: where do I find prospects, what problems should I solve, and what industry should I target first? On the first, I have been fortunate to discover a prospect source which I believe is likely untapped by prospect list providers. It has several thousand Salesforce customers across many industries so I can draw on this for targeting. The second I'm still struggling with. There are a few ideas from previous experience I can pursue, but I would ideally come up with a method for uncovering problems that I can reuse as I develop different solutions and target different industries. On the third, I'm leaning towards selecting the non-profit industry as my initial target for a few reasons: 1) I have quite a bit of experience in that industry, 2) It is easier to get through to decision makers relatively quickly, 3) Most don't have internal Salesforce expertise, so they will likely be more receptive, 4) There are a lot of non-profits using Salesforce, 5) I love working with organizations with a positive social impact.
1. How can I uncover problems worth solving?
2. Is my reasoning behind choice of initial target industry sound? Any suggestions on a good first problem to focus on in the non-profit space?
3. Any general critique on the aforementioned approach and advice on working less while maintaining our income level?
Before you try productization (which has efficiencies of scale but is hard to get right), have you tried simply raising your hourly rate? If you like the job and just want to work fewer hours, this is worth a shot! Patrick McKenzie writes about this kind of thing a lot, e.g. in this interview on pricing and this talk about productized consulting.
posted by caek at 10:29 PM on November 3, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by caek at 10:29 PM on November 3, 2020 [4 favorites]
my first thought was "just raise your rates."
posted by misanthropicsarah at 9:57 AM on November 4, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by misanthropicsarah at 9:57 AM on November 4, 2020 [1 favorite]
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Then, I would find a way to talk with some experienced and some less-experienced (but still knowledgeable) people in some of the organizations that you think would be good clients. Just have open-ended conversations with them and find out what problems they have that they'd love for you to solve. They will have problems, and the hope of a real solution to any of them (volunteer coordination; organizing silent auctions/fundraisers; minimizing load on on person/burnout) -- especially from someone who is willing to begin by _listening to real people_ -- will be very attractive. They will want to talk, as long as you might really help them, whether for money or not.
Bonus if you can find an organization or two who might help you test your product.
posted by amtho at 8:23 PM on November 3, 2020 [3 favorites]