Five years already! My journey as an independent consultant.
On November 20, 2020, my company was born. Here’s a look back at five intense and exciting years through a personal account of my work as a consultant.
Intellectual stimulation and total freedom
I’ve often been warned about the isolation of the self-employed—that is, the lack of interaction and the risk of operating in an intellectual vacuum. My experience is the exact opposite: never before have I experienced such intellectual excitement, had so many stimulating exchanges as I do today, or learned as much as I have over the past five years.
You don’t have to look far for the explanation—it boils down to one word: freedom. My business is a vehicle that I drive without having to answer to anyone except the government. It lets me work according to my values and my own high standards, to constantly experiment, and to invest in the causes that matter to me without worrying about immediate profitability and without having to ask for permission. If it works, I keep it going; if it doesn’t, I make the necessary adjustments.
Of all the steps I’ve taken, getting coaching has been the most transformative. Reflecting on my positioning, constantly refining my approach, and adjusting and experimenting daily with my clients to better help them—while finding greater satisfaction in the process myself—this coaching quickly became a defining guiding principle.
What the Numbers Say
I started out as a freelancer after 12 years as a salaried employee. Since then, I’ve worked for 17 clients on projects averaging 36 days (median: 10 days), with no middlemen. After several technical debt remediation projects (a.k.a., “firefighting” projects), I decided it would be more effective to get involved earlier in the process, in a preventive capacity (modularization projects or technical consulting during a product’s bootstrap phase), and even earlier on functional scoping.
Regardless of the type of project, one constant is that my clients and I must share a common line of reasoning so that they are fully on board with the approach (I certainly don’t want them to just take my word for it). This is particularly true of the reasoning behind strategic Domain-Driven Design when I’m discussing modularization with CEOs and CTOs. Generally, a few hours of “on-the-spot” training are sufficient—sold not as training per se, but as a means to serve the broader objective of an assignment.
These projects, in this case, are the result of recommendations or exchanges with my readers. In 2022, I adopted a content strategy: to publish one article per week—short and to the point. I’d already published a few articles before, but without a real editorial line, and each one took me about four days of work… Keeping it short changed everything: since then, I’ve written 123 articles (124 counting this one)—articles that I periodically revisit to improve their form and reflect the evolution of my thinking. Over time, this weekly post has become a conversation with myself, an essential part of my week.
Outside of work, these past five years have given me the chance to run four marathons (2:44, 2:38, 2:33, and 2:27 in Berlin, the year I turned 40), to try my hand at a brief venture creating a product related to track and field (1 year), and also to adopt a charming little cat—thereby losing 1,825 hours of sleep in the process 🫶
A business model designed for the long term
“It’s the economy, stupid,” as they like to say in Washington. From the very beginning, I decided to bill for only 2 out of every 3 days—or even 1 out of every 2—in order to free up the time needed for all medium- and long-term activities: building value, creating, reflecting, and so on. This time is all the more necessary given that the decision to focus on short-term assignments (typically 10 days) requires constant outreach efforts throughout the year—primarily through writing articles.
This very simple business model requires being very clear about one’s priorities. I’ll let you guess what mine are and tell me about yours 😊