Oh… Long story, because “get a consulting contract” is nothing like a well defined event with a single causal chain leading to it. I’ll try to summarize...
I spent some time out of work and burning through my savings. While I was doing that I “worked” for no pay, organizing the local community of folks interested in the topic I was passionate about (Extreme Programming). This gave me lots of opportunity to network. About two years later, the passion and the networking started paying dividends, just at the time my savings were running out. I landed one small training gig. Then a small consultancy across the Channel (I live in France) funded me to put together a few marketing seminars. I had established enough credibility by then that this convinced one client, then another.
Somewhere in there I parlayed my 10 years’ work experience into a master’s degree in computer science. I also attended lots of conferences, read a fair bit, and generally kept busy even when I wasn’t making money.
How did you get your first consulting contracts?
Oh… Long story, because “get a consulting contract” is nothing like a well defined event with a single causal chain leading to it. I’ll try to summarize...
I spent some time out of work and burning through my savings. While I was doing that I “worked” for no pay, organizing the local community of folks interested in the topic I was passionate about (Extreme Programming). This gave me lots of opportunity to network. About two years later, the passion and the networking started paying dividends, just at the time my savings were running out. I landed one small training gig. Then a small consultancy across the Channel (I live in France) funded me to put together a few marketing seminars. I had established enough credibility by then that this convinced one client, then another.
Somewhere in there I parlayed my 10 years’ work experience into a master’s degree in computer science. I also attended lots of conferences, read a fair bit, and generally kept busy even when I wasn’t making money.