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Comment by patio11 | Hacker News Reader

Feel free to ask questions if you have any.

Sidenote: This is the automatically archived version of an email which goes out to ~7,000 people who explicitly asked to get email from me. I'm trying my level best to step up the frequencies of email to my list to "every Friday" from the more typical "monthly." I intentionally do not post things to my blog that frequently, partially because I know that I have a bit of a rep here and 95% of what I write gets to the front page. If you guys submit everything I email to HN, that's going to wear out my welcome here in short order. I'd have to do something drastic like having the archive page check referrers and, if its from news.ycombinator.com, spit out Markov-chain generated drivel about how Snowden hacked the Occupy the recording industry. I don't want to do that, so please, exercise some discretion on submitting the emails. Thanks in advance.

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Using your example where a client is on retainer for two floating days per month, how do you avoid clients making urgent demands for that time? I fear having a number of clients pre-paying for time each month and then the last week of the month those that, for whatever reason, didn't use their time, staking claims.

Edit: BTW, great article. Thank you.

1) Has this ever actually happened to you? If not, like most fear of success, it's probably manageable to put it off until it actually happens.

2) Clients are buying your availability, they aren't buying bump-what-you're-doing-now. (That's a separate service, and ridiculously expensive.) If they find makework for you on the 29th, you tell them "Gotcha, I'll tell you when it is done and we'll count it against this month's allocation." If they balk at that, you can tell them that happily your email address works all 30 days of the month and that they can get in their requests quicker for faster turn-around.

Of course, the ultimate protection against clients being impossible to work with is not working with them, but -- again -- I'd wait until you actually had a problem before rejecting them for that.

You're still in charge of scheduling when you'll actually get the work done.

The benefit for the client is that they don't need to review and sign a brand new Statement of Work whenever they want to change a button's color or tweak a feature.

Should your client need work that will seriously disrupt your schedule / happiness... I wrote my thoughts on that a few months back: http://planscope.io/blog/should-you-charge-more-for-a-rush-j...

1) In my experience - it doesn't happen.

2) The way I set it up to alleviate that fear, before I saw that it didn't happen, was to separate the booking time from the delivery time. So $client gets N days each month when they can ask for a booking, which will then get scheduled in over the next 30 days from the point they book it (so if the client requests N days on April 15th, they get booked in any time from Apr 15-Jun 14.)

Make sure you keep in touch with the client. Use those hours so they see value. In Patrick's case, it can be as simple as creating a mailing list for clients and sending middle managers tips on industry trends, possible candidates for positions, etc.

This will also keep you from being surprised when someone wants their 10h/(month|week|whatever), and may actually prompt you to recommend how to use that time. They will pay you for leads on additional work because they see that it's a winning situation for them.

I find that many of my clients aren't eager to do retainers because they don't trust that I'll actually be around (I did only start consulting this year). Do you have any advice for overcoming that?

They only say that. What they mean is they think they can find another Ruby On Django-AWS Front end developer any time they like. Your job is to convince them there are no other developers like you out there - and the best way to do that is not sell yourself as a developer but as someone who uses software to add value to their business.

This could be turning up and running email campaigns to improve retention, or it could be the wider world of finding a niche in a nice industry that is about to get disrupted (all of them), working out what the world will be like after it is hit, and becoming an expert in that business model / software

It turns out writing software at the dynamic language web request processing end is nothing particularly strenuous. Which means some great tools get produced quickly which means the people who can sell a solution dont necessarily have to be the ones who can write it.

What I think I mean is that increasing customer conversion for SaaS companies is a lot less coding than it is getting the gig and introducing rigour into an ignored process

If you want to stay ahead of the game - well I am not sure, but its likely to be find a vertical niche, where specialisation wins or find new technical integrations where early wins (such as uses for UAVs) - but combinations appeal to me - I bet there is scope for GPS in waste collection lorries for example, and across europe thats a multi billion dollar industry

Work on increasing perceived professionalism: no lawyer in the history of the legal profession ever had this problem. (Slight exaggeration, but not much of one.) This is a broad topic, but in general, be more communicative, comport your affairs like you're a serious business (contracts, professional language, business mien) rather than a kid cutting lawns for beer money, etc.

As a stopgap, offer to invoice after the month, not before: "That way if I'm not there when you need me, you don't have to pay."

That strikes me as right out if the Uncle Bob Clean Coder playbook - and is one I completely underestimate

THanks for the reminder

Deleted comment

Why do you think it's appropriate to post this to a public forum? It's off-topic and completely insensitive -- send him an email next time.

I disagree that it's off topic. Patrick's email/article gave an example of how easy and valuable it can be to automate something within a doctor's office, then added this:

"Many things are easy for software companies in a way that they just aren't for non-software companies... doctor's offices don't think of APIs for the same reason that developers think that free soda is a wonderful thing to treat your employees to."

I read that as encouraging developers to look at doctor offices as a valuable market without warning them about the importance of HIPAA/HITECH compliance. And I believe that can get folks into trouble if they aren't careful.

Perhaps I should have simply phrased it that way instead. Thanks for the feedback. I deleted my prior message and I'll email Patrick with my concern.

Your clients will tell you about their concerns. Whether it's HIPAA, PCI, PABP, SOX, ITAR, etc., they tend to be overly expressive and understanding. They're also very similar and once you've nailed it a few times, whether it's "securing privileged information," "transparency," "traceability," etc., a quick browse of the Wikipedia article can warn you of any specifics that are outside your experience.

The emails are fantastic and I recommend them heartily. Please do consider subscribing if you haven't yet.

Hello Patrick, always wanted to ask you - when you'll have a time, could you please describe some [hypothetical] case of your consulting with all the exact details of what you get paid for? I mean, while your posts on relevant subject are interesting, they are rather generic.

He has mentioned in the past that most of his consulting includes non-disclosure agreements. WPEngine is one client that he is allowed to talk about. Also, he prefers not to mention rates because a) they've gone up over time, and b) he doesn't want to have to negotiate against his past self when pricing.

Oh, my mistake. I meant:

"exact details _for_ what you get paid for"

i.e "for what", so I'm not asking exact rates, but more concrete details of the job he has done. And this could be a hypothetical case. So, basically, did he implement some code, or told to implement with very specific details (e.g. at API/types level) to the senior engineers from the client company? Did he work on copywriting or similar? Did he help to determine exact price of the targeting product; etc...

These are full of actionable advice if you are planning to do or doing consultancy/product business.

Anecdote: reading [0] in Patrick's last Friday email was a light bulb moment for me. The timing was perfect as I was about to throw pre-launch page for http://www.ASPSecurityKit.net . Though the product’s target market is primarily software developers, still the copy should address what kind of systems they can build with the product I’m proposing rather than listing the raw technical features “activity-based, resource-aware authorization … Blah blah” and expect them to think what they can build with it.

[0]: a consultant hired to build an in-house CRM wouldn't pitch "Our CRM is going to be easy to use", they'd pitch "Your sales team will close more deals in less time when using our tool."

Edit: As a consequence, made it to HN home page, and collected a lot of interested folks' emails (in 3 digits).

Sorry, I will do so. I just really enjoy the content, and it seemed relevant to this groups interests.

Yesterday I was actually looking forward to your email ahead of time ;)

Given that I immediately emailed this to many people, I'm not sure I agree with Patrick that he'll fast overstay his welcome. If you write remarkable things for our community, expect them to be shared.

instead of complaining about posting to hn something you have chosen to post publicly on the internet, consider not to publish it at all. if it is meant to be be seen only by email subscribers you could just, you know, put the story directly in email, not on your web site.

or is this just another way of self promotion?

It's obvious, what is going on here. He's got two groups he's trying to reach and "the front page of HN" isn't one of the groups. The first group is his mailing list. People who have expressed a general interest in what Patrick has to say. Patrick is investing hours (probably) into each mailing and knows there are people who have a specific interest in each one of these mailings. Through the Magic of the Interwebs it's possible that this second group of people with a specific interest could possibly find this mailing if only he would put it on the internet publicly. And for various reasons putting it on his blog probably isn't the most advantageous way of putting it out there publicly.

I hope your day improves, because it looks like it isn't going so well by the tone of your comment!

The emails are gold, and go out to 7000 people. I won't do it again put of respect for his request, but I guarantee every Friday will feature the web version of his email on the front page.

Personally, this is the stuff I want to see on HN. Educational content that helps me towards my own goals as a developer and content producer.

I think he was being sarcastic.

If you were to promote a new web business, what steps would you take today? (assuming you could not use your celebrity)

It's because of HN front-page I learned about and subscribed to your mailing list.

This may apply to many people here so I hope you don't mind answering a question specific to my situation. Huge thanks in advance if you can!

I've recently discovered a skill I never knew I had - and one I'm way better at than being a developer. I'm really good at working with non-technical people who want to build things. I can explain technical things to them in a way they understand (because I was in their shoes for many years). And most importantly - I can quickly grok what business problem they are trying to solve and think of way better ways to solve them than whatever strategy they came up with ("I want a site that has like dropdowns and a calendar and logins and maps and a place where..." when a two page lander+them doing everything manually, would be a better and cheaper way to test their idea).

Ok so my question is, how do I market that service (not where to find clients but how to pitch them)? What do I call myself? Should I just charge them hourly/per project (and offer the 2-day a month retainer) or is there a better model I could sell them on that could be more lucrative for me and a better solution for them?

This is the difference between a consultant and a contractor.

A contractor is an order taker. A consultant is a trusted advisor.

You'll pitch to a different level (middle managers and above) but you'll also double your billing rate. It works very well with companies that don't have a CIO/CTO/VP of IT and are struggling but don't really know why.

The epipheo guys are pretty good at putting business pain into a short message. You may not want to have cartoons, but watching their videos can give you quick insights on marketing your solutions.

As for what to call yourself, incorporate and go with "principal consultant", "founder", "CEO", whatever. If you specialize, use that in the company name or as a subtitle on your letterhead/email sigs/cards/etc.

"Product Management" or "Product Management Consulting" is probably the term you're looking for.

There are complete consulting firms built on doing Product Management alone.

Thanks.

The kind of non-technical people I work best with don't even usually know what product management means and I'm also doing the development, but that's a good lead. I'll check into it.

Given that description, I could see you working quite effectively in a technical sales role (e.g. sales engineer).

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