I was recently reading Mike Wolfe’s new article about having a profitable consulting career.
and thought to myself, in an ideal world his words might be true, that competence/solving a problem would ensure success and profitability, but this isn’t an ideal world and so I thought I’d share a little of my knowledge and experience on the matter.
Business is about visibility. You can’t solve anyone’s problems, make money, until you are known and hired!
So, the way to be successful in business is NETWORKING/connections, advertising (to a lesser extent).
You can be the best developer, be able to streamline and save companies $100000s, but that only works if they know about your services and you can get your foot in the door.
Competence is almost overlooked in many cases!
If providing a solution was the guarantee to a successful consulting career, I would be a millionaire, and trust me, I’m not!
There’s a reason some MVPs are extremely successful. They are shameless self-promoters! They will use public user group sessions, conferences, articles to promote their own code/products for profit. As you have noticed, I don’t do that, my blog/code, my YouTube channel, my demos databases are free without strings attached. But if you want to be successful, make money, you need to promote yourself & your products by any means available to you! Remember, there is no such thing as bad publicity!
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always subscribed to Mike’s general philosophy of work hard, solving problems, making my customer’s lives easier, …. but that isn’t what gets you contracts. Consulting is never ending hunt for the next job, so Networking is critical! Ans yes, typically, you don’t sell Access per se, you sell a solution or your ability to provide a solution, but none of that matters whatsoever until you actually are known by potential clients, people who could use your services.
I’d also recommend you take 2 minutes to read a recent post by Karl Donaubauer on the subject of the Access Job Market
a bit of an eye opener for those not in the field actively!
Three general software consulting recommendations I would also make include:
- Don’t make fixed priced projects (you’ll get burned every time as it is next to impossible to properly make software development estimates)
- Always get written terms/contracts! You want in writing what is expected.
- Don’t try to do everything in your business! Hire an accountant, a lawyer, … Do what you do best, and let them do what they do best so you can focus on what you do best. It will cost you money, sure, but it will save you a lot more!
Finally, I’ll end by simply stating that being a profitable Access developer (solely) is virtually impossible IMHO. If you don’t master other RDMS (SQL Server, PostgreSQL, Oracle, …) and/or technologies (Excel, PHP, .net, …) you won’t succeed. Sorry, no point sugar coating it.
unfinished… (to be continued at some point in time, perhaps)
I’ve read the article on Karl’s website and felt he was 100% on target. I can also only second your point of view about finding clients as well. I suspect that many MS Access developers are a bit enamored with the tool because they know it so well. Hell, so am I, for that very same reason. However, there is not use in sticking ones head in the sand about what is happening. No updates, no improvements, no feature of any significance has been added in Access for decades. It’s an application that MS is leaving to rot and die. All of this translates to less and less clients looking to have an business solution developed on the platform (in my freelancing experience, the lack of net enabled features is the greatest deal killer). So personally, I find it makes most sense to focus on developing / broadening my tech skills to platforms that are still being updated and improved upon. My two cents.
Yes, we do love Access, probably a little too much!
Yep, Microsoft sure doesn’t help matters. Look at the roadmap, right now (and for some time now – months, even years) it looks like the product (Access) is dead with no development whatsoever, not a single item in queue!
Oh well, it’s all been said, time and time again. There’s a major disconnect between Microsoft and the rest of the world. They have single-handedly done more harm to Access in the past decade than anything else! Just have to think of loss of features, bugs, blank roadmap, …
I also wonder how much longer desktop apps will be a thing. They’ve migrated Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint to the web and empowered them with JS, but not Access. I just wonder if there might not be a shift coming and Access may not be part of that shift. Pure conjecture on my part, but Microsoft would invest in making all these apps web based if there wasn’t a reason!
At the enterprise level, all desktop workstations are being replaced with thin client terminals. Desktop versions of Windows and Office will be replaced by online versions running on thin client terminals. If MS does not equip Access with a JavaScript API, then it will be left out of Online Office. I have been mentioning this for a couple of years and no one likes to hear the truth. We have already migrated 95% of our cusotmers to web solutions. “A soldier who’s been warned doesn’t die in the war”.
Terminals have existed for decades, nothing new there, we’re actually cycling back to what was common in the 80’s. Using Terminals does not mean desktop apps are out.
“migrated 95% of our customers to web solutions.”
What does this mean? Their database or are you trying to tell me you’ve migrated all of their programs?
If you’re referring to databases, yes, I’ve done the same with a lot of my customers.
If you’re referring to the latter, then it is uncommon in my experience. In the case of those that have done so, all of them have done so using Google. So Access was out of the equation one way or another.
Web solutions have their place, but it is not a magic bullet and still present their own set of issues.
“migrated 95% of our customers to web solutions.”, as in e.g. the Access frontend and the database backend have been replaced by a web stack solution. Specifically, OpenSuSE Linux, nginx HTTP server, PostgreSQL db, and PHP. We where just not going to wait around until last minute to see in which direction Microsoft is going to go, The instability of Windows and Office updates breaking our users long running Access applications and the need for device independence precipitated the change.
We replaced the Access frontends and database backends with web stack solutions. Specifically, OpenSuSE Linux, nginx HTTP server, PostgreSQL db, and PHP. We where just not going keep on beating a dead horse and wait around until last minute to see in which direction Microsoft is going to go, The instability of Windows and Office updates breaking our users long running Access applications and the need for device independence precipitated the change.