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Welcome (counterclockwise) Piotr, Eric and Dave!
- Dave is 30% local to 70% remote, 75% fixed, 25% hourly
- 0h 16m 20s
- Eric is 80-90 local, 10% remote. 50-50 split on hourly vs fixed.
- 0h 17m 55s
- Piotr was 100% remote and , but his remaining job is local and hourly
- 0h 19m 21s
- Client archetypes
- 0h 20m 34s
- Stability
- 0h 22m 34s
- Past guest Philip Freidin wrote about being a consultant
- 0h 24m 04s
- “So you want to be a consultant?”
- 0h 25m 43s
- Do you bill for software?
- 0h 27m 17s
- Time tracking
- 0h 28m 51s
- Consulting specialty
- 0h 29m 31s
- Dave: likes diversity and depth of work
- 0h 29m 47s
- Eric: smaller projects beginning to end
- 0h 30m 36s
- Piotr: Vertically integrated
- 0h 31m 4s
- 0 hour billable weeks
- 0h 36m 51s
- Let’s figure out what’s best for that
- 0h 37m 59s
- Learning the personality of a client
- 0h 40m 58s
- Playing the timeline all the way forward
- 0h 41m 37s
- Client communication
- 0h 43m 16s
- Setting expectations
- 0h 43m 22s
- Firing a client
- 0h 43m 52s
- 3 strikes
- 0h 43m 56s
- Growing empathy for customers
- 0h 45m 24s
- Language barriers with clients
- 0h 47m 37s
- “This SHOULD be done by…”
- 0h 48m 2s
- Dealing with impostor syndrome
- 0h 51m 58s
- Known risks
- 0h 53m 18s
- Communicating to the client about lack of knowledge
- 0h 53m 39s
- When your startup client who suddenly gets funding, is woo’d and ultimately stolen by a bigger design firm promising the world….how does one manage ones anger?
- 0h 55m 22s
- Working through some of the design houses
- 0h 56m 57s
- Focal points – distributor FAEs, design houses, contract manufacturers
- 0h 58m 32s
- Getting recommendations from past clients
- 0h 59m 38s
- How to get started
- 1h 0m 36s
- Judging potential hires by their pull requests
- 1h 2m 56s
- Insurance
- 1h 8m 51s
- Usually on a product basis and not the design basis
- 1h 9m 35s
- LLCs all around
- 1h 10m 53s
- Good resources from IEEE
- 1h 11m 31s
- Consultant survey
- 1h 12m 28s
- What I really want to know is: why engineers feel they must *undercharge* for time as a consultant? No one should be blanching at $100+/hr.
- 1h 14m 4s
- Hourly rate goe down for billing more hours
- 1h 14m 18s
- Dave changes billing for if there’s more risk
- 1h 14m 35s
- Lowering hourly rate for things you like. Piotr does this for open source hardware.
- 1h 16m 25s
- Should you work for equity?
- 1h 17m 18s
- Working with startups
- 1h 18m 12s
- Changes the nature of the relationship
- 1h 18m 38s
- Rainy days cash
- 1h 20m 17s
- Getting personal finance stuff in order
- 1h 21m 42s
- Check out our guests’ sites to learn more:
This is a great episode! I was glad to hear that you are doing consulting because I hoped it meant there would be more consulting related episodes. I know you are already really busy, but I think you could make a spin-off podcast sharing your adventures in getting started as a consultant.
I started consulting a little over a year ago, and there have definitely been some times when it would have helped to have heard this advice a long time ago.