- Original Poster
- #1
A bit of background. I'm in my 40's and I've been working as a freelancer web/software developer since 2006. Before that I had various web developer roles. In 2006 I started providing web development services to a few marketing agencies, mainly as a result of knowing someone who needed some help. I developed a content management system that they all used as their main CMS for their clients (sadly, it died years ago now). I've maintained some sort of relationship with all of those agencies due to being reliable, dependable, flexible and having a huge amount of experience. I've worked with small businesses, building various web applications and for around 10 years I've also worked with a mobile app development agency where I work as part of a team on a large web based project.
I jokingly refer to myself as a jack of all trades, master of none, because when it comes to the web, I've found myself taking on whatever projects my clients need me to work on, whether that's a Wordpress site, something in Drupal, an application in PHP, a web service in C#, some UI design for new project features, frontend development in Angular or Blazor, or support business analysts write software requirements. At some point, I've touched almost every part of the software development process, from requirements gathering, documentation, UI design, frontend, backend, testing... you name it, I've probably done it. I'm also have knowledge of the software development pipeline and project management methodologies. I'm aware that my experiences make me more of a generalist, I'm certainly not a specialist. I've got a huge breadth of knowledge, and while there are no doubt others are out there, I've met very few people that have the various amount on knowledge that I have. I also have a degree in Education, and a Masters in Computing (Software Engineering).
Anyway, I'll get to the purpose of this post. I can't do this forever, at some point my clients are going to move on (some are already doing so) and I'm going to have to replace them. While I've had a good run at what I've been doing, it's not necessarily what I want to be doing, but the problem is, I don't actually know what I want to do going forward, where my focus should be. For at least 4-5 years I've been telling myself I need to sort out where I'm going and how I'm going to get there, and every year I'm annoyed with myself that I'm in the same place I was the year previous. Over the years I've started (and finished some) lots of projects that I've intended on focusing on, but they all fall by the wayside. I have never however failed to deliver for a paying client, it's only my own projects where things fall down. I've come to the conclusion that I need to do one of three things;
1) Build a web app that I can soley focus all of my attention on, and develop into a business. I've tried it, and never succeed, and while I can come up with some ideas, I always convince myself that they won't work, or no one will want it. They also seem to involve a huge amount of time to develop, and give my experience so far, I don't have the confidence in myself to finish it before I get bored and move onto another interesting idea!
2) Be a freelance software consultant with the aim of helping businesses use web technologies to streamline their workflows. I know I'd be good at this, I have the technical knowledge, and I have a good sense of business. The problem I have is, I wouldn't know what my niche is. I don't have what I believe is the necessary domain knowledge of any given industry to really be able to go in there and feel confident that I can help. My main clients have been marketing and app dev agencies, and I have a long term relationship with a locum recruitment agency who I've built a number of solutions for. But in either of those cases, I only know enough to solve the problems that I've been tasked with solving. If I went down this route, I'd still like to do some development work myself and get my hands dirty, but long term, I'd want to build a small team (of developers, testers etc) so there's less reliance on me being the sole person generating income into the business (I'm thinking ahead to retirement).
3) Give up and get a job. This is a last resort. I love what I do, I NEVER hate going to work, I love the flexibility, and the financial renumeration has been good too. I'm also one of those people that doesn't do well in environments where you're told what to do, hence why freelancing has been perfect for me.
I guess my question is, let's say I want to really hammer down on option 2, based on my experience to date, do I have the necessarily kills and experience to feel confident providing consulting/development services? If I do, how on earth do I find a niche that I can focus on? How much domain knowledge do you really need to be considered as a consultant in a given niche? For example, I could focus my niche on helping locum recruitment agencies streamline their workflows and processes using technology, but I worry that my current knowledge of locum recruitment wouldn't really be sufficient. Would I need in-depth knowledge of all of the different recruitment software packages? or could I focus on bespoke solutions that integrate with existing recruitment software.
To give an example of what I help my recruitment agency client with. They use a particular recruitment software package (not many use it), it manages everything from job vacancies, candidate tracking, client management and invoicing, but, it's reporting tools are poor. Working with the client, we've developed an internal system that's used by managers and recruitment consultants. We're showing reports on large TV's around their offices that show recruitment consultant performance against targets, managers can run reports for all of their recruitments. The directors can see the total amount of invoices business today along with new business. There's other stuff in their too that generally helps the compliance team to keep up to date and some automation to reduce the time spent on mundane tasks. All of the date is live and is extracted from their recruitment software. There are some reports that they have to create for HMRC that would take 2-3 days each month to generate, we're grabbing the data from their recruitment software and generating the report in less then 5 minutes, it's saved a whole heap of time. This is the sort of thing I love doing, it has real business value, I just continually doubt whether I have the necessary skills and knowledge to really put myself in a position where someone is putting their reliance on me to solve a problem. I know I can do it, but it's that doubt in my mind. I know I can go into a business, look at their existing workflows and come up with ideas of how we can improve it using technology, but my worry is that clients will expect me to know how to solve the problem before I can in there, simply because their industry is my niche, so I should know.
Sorry, I know I've rambled on, and I'm probably asking far too many questions and this post has turned into a dumping ground for my thoughts and self-doubts.
I appreciate any advice and guidance in advance.
I jokingly refer to myself as a jack of all trades, master of none, because when it comes to the web, I've found myself taking on whatever projects my clients need me to work on, whether that's a Wordpress site, something in Drupal, an application in PHP, a web service in C#, some UI design for new project features, frontend development in Angular or Blazor, or support business analysts write software requirements. At some point, I've touched almost every part of the software development process, from requirements gathering, documentation, UI design, frontend, backend, testing... you name it, I've probably done it. I'm also have knowledge of the software development pipeline and project management methodologies. I'm aware that my experiences make me more of a generalist, I'm certainly not a specialist. I've got a huge breadth of knowledge, and while there are no doubt others are out there, I've met very few people that have the various amount on knowledge that I have. I also have a degree in Education, and a Masters in Computing (Software Engineering).
Anyway, I'll get to the purpose of this post. I can't do this forever, at some point my clients are going to move on (some are already doing so) and I'm going to have to replace them. While I've had a good run at what I've been doing, it's not necessarily what I want to be doing, but the problem is, I don't actually know what I want to do going forward, where my focus should be. For at least 4-5 years I've been telling myself I need to sort out where I'm going and how I'm going to get there, and every year I'm annoyed with myself that I'm in the same place I was the year previous. Over the years I've started (and finished some) lots of projects that I've intended on focusing on, but they all fall by the wayside. I have never however failed to deliver for a paying client, it's only my own projects where things fall down. I've come to the conclusion that I need to do one of three things;
1) Build a web app that I can soley focus all of my attention on, and develop into a business. I've tried it, and never succeed, and while I can come up with some ideas, I always convince myself that they won't work, or no one will want it. They also seem to involve a huge amount of time to develop, and give my experience so far, I don't have the confidence in myself to finish it before I get bored and move onto another interesting idea!
2) Be a freelance software consultant with the aim of helping businesses use web technologies to streamline their workflows. I know I'd be good at this, I have the technical knowledge, and I have a good sense of business. The problem I have is, I wouldn't know what my niche is. I don't have what I believe is the necessary domain knowledge of any given industry to really be able to go in there and feel confident that I can help. My main clients have been marketing and app dev agencies, and I have a long term relationship with a locum recruitment agency who I've built a number of solutions for. But in either of those cases, I only know enough to solve the problems that I've been tasked with solving. If I went down this route, I'd still like to do some development work myself and get my hands dirty, but long term, I'd want to build a small team (of developers, testers etc) so there's less reliance on me being the sole person generating income into the business (I'm thinking ahead to retirement).
3) Give up and get a job. This is a last resort. I love what I do, I NEVER hate going to work, I love the flexibility, and the financial renumeration has been good too. I'm also one of those people that doesn't do well in environments where you're told what to do, hence why freelancing has been perfect for me.
I guess my question is, let's say I want to really hammer down on option 2, based on my experience to date, do I have the necessarily kills and experience to feel confident providing consulting/development services? If I do, how on earth do I find a niche that I can focus on? How much domain knowledge do you really need to be considered as a consultant in a given niche? For example, I could focus my niche on helping locum recruitment agencies streamline their workflows and processes using technology, but I worry that my current knowledge of locum recruitment wouldn't really be sufficient. Would I need in-depth knowledge of all of the different recruitment software packages? or could I focus on bespoke solutions that integrate with existing recruitment software.
To give an example of what I help my recruitment agency client with. They use a particular recruitment software package (not many use it), it manages everything from job vacancies, candidate tracking, client management and invoicing, but, it's reporting tools are poor. Working with the client, we've developed an internal system that's used by managers and recruitment consultants. We're showing reports on large TV's around their offices that show recruitment consultant performance against targets, managers can run reports for all of their recruitments. The directors can see the total amount of invoices business today along with new business. There's other stuff in their too that generally helps the compliance team to keep up to date and some automation to reduce the time spent on mundane tasks. All of the date is live and is extracted from their recruitment software. There are some reports that they have to create for HMRC that would take 2-3 days each month to generate, we're grabbing the data from their recruitment software and generating the report in less then 5 minutes, it's saved a whole heap of time. This is the sort of thing I love doing, it has real business value, I just continually doubt whether I have the necessary skills and knowledge to really put myself in a position where someone is putting their reliance on me to solve a problem. I know I can do it, but it's that doubt in my mind. I know I can go into a business, look at their existing workflows and come up with ideas of how we can improve it using technology, but my worry is that clients will expect me to know how to solve the problem before I can in there, simply because their industry is my niche, so I should know.
Sorry, I know I've rambled on, and I'm probably asking far too many questions and this post has turned into a dumping ground for my thoughts and self-doubts.
I appreciate any advice and guidance in advance.
