Trying to get into consultancy - not sure where to start

[Mark1983]

Hi
I have been a software engineer for years. I recently did a Masters in Renewable Energy Systems as Im very interested in energy, climate change, the energy transition etc. I also recently started a blog about climate and energy in Ireland. A post recently got picked up by the national newspaper and they are going to reprint it soon. Im good with large volumes of data, using my programming skills to get the data and make sense of it. Heres an example: Global Weirding and Food Production in Ireland

I have a farm also. With the farm, its difficult to make good money but I could make 50k per year from it by adding some extra revenue streams like horticulture and tourism. This requires more time though. I can continue to work as a software engineer and do the farming morning and evening but the work load is very high.

What I would really like to do is quit the day job as a software engineer, and instead do some sort of consultancy work so I can control my hours and not be stuck at the desk 9 to 5.30 every day. That way ill have more time to add new revenue streams to the farm. However Im unsure of what niche to go for. Im thinking of something to do with sustainability/energy/climate change, using my data science skills. However, Im struggling to narrow it down and Ive no idea how to get started when I do pick a niche.

Any suggestions as to what way I should go given my skillset?

Thanks

MarK

 

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[MJ DeMarco]

Any suggestions as to what way I should go given my skillset?

Here's a different question.

If you could snap your fingers and be living your best life in 5 years, what would that life look like?

And what decision might get you there?

What I would really like to do is quit the day job as a software engineer

This is a powerful, Fastlane skillset that I feel is too potent to dismiss. There are no software needs you see in your domain experience?

 

[BizyDad]

This is a powerful, Fastlane skillset that I feel is too potent to dismiss. There are no software needs you see in your domain experience?

I think what MJ is getting at is you building your own software, hypothetically speaking for farmers, could be an incredibly powerful fast Lane opportunity. And I agree with that.

But even if you're not building your own software, you can still merge the worlds. Farming is an industry that is moving more and more towards tech. You want to do consulting? Can you help a farmer understand the tech world as it relates to their farm? Optimizing irrigation? Using AI to analyze data? Infrared cameras monitoring livestock?

I don't know anything about this world, My ideas are top of mind and I don't even know if they are relevant, that's where you come in.

Is there any way you can improve yields or somehow save farmers time in a way that is valuable enough that they would pay you?

 

[Vamsi Interviews]

I highly recommend checking out Jonathan Stark's work on ditching hourly billing. He used to be a software developer, then became a software consultant, and now also helps other consultants value price their work. His work is great for anyone who wants to detach their income from their time while still doing consulting work.

He also talks about the value of pigeonholing yourself with as narrow a niche as you can emotionally bear. Helping farmers with software, data, and tech problems could be a great niche.

 

[Mark1983]

Here's a different question.

If you could snap your fingers and be living your best life in 5 years, what would that life look like?

And what decision might get you there?



This is a powerful, Fastlane skillset that I feel is too potent to dismiss. There are no software needs you see in your domain experience?

Thanks for the reply.

Regarding 5 years time, I dont need a particularly wealthy life. I'd be happy running the farm a couple of hours a day, and supplementing it with something than doesnt take more than 20 hours a week. Ive an 18 month old and 3 month old - I dont think I'll have the time to really throw myself into something thats risky but with a big payoff. I read your book a few years ago and tried a couple of things that didnt pay off. Then I had the kids and I feel like slowing down...

Regarding software engineering, you're right that it is powerful but like so many professions, its being outsourced a lot here in Ireland. Covid really accelerated it. One of the thinking behind doinga Masters in Renewable Energy was to stack skills. However the jobs market is really stagnant all of a sudden, another reason why Im looking at consultancy...in what, i dont know...

 

[Mark1983]

I think what MJ is getting at is you building your own software, hypothetically speaking for farmers, could be an incredibly powerful fast Lane opportunity. And I agree with that.

But even if you're not building your own software, you can still merge the worlds. Farming is an industry that is moving more and more towards tech. You want to do consulting? Can you help a farmer understand the tech world as it relates to their farm? Optimizing irrigation? Using AI to analyze data? Infrared cameras monitoring livestock?

I don't know anything about this world, My ideas are top of mind and I don't even know if they are relevant, that's where you come in.

Is there any way you can improve yields or somehow save farmers time in a way that is valuable enough that they would pay you?

You make some really good points here. There is a lot of tech already in farming,its a really busy space. But farming is also going through major change. In the next few years IMO due to climate change its likely countries will be importing and exporting less i.e. they will be producing more of the food they east. In Ireland we import 83% of our calories. So with that disruption coming, might be a good idea to see how other countries produce the food we import, and how we could do it here....thanks for advice, got me thinking

 

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[Mark1983]

I highly recommend checking out Jonathan Stark's work on ditching hourly billing. He used to be a software developer, then became a software consultant, and now also helps other consultants value price their work. His work is great for anyone who wants to detach their income from their time while still doing consulting work.

He also talks about the value of pigeonholing yourself with as narrow a niche as you can emotionally bear. Helping farmers with software, data, and tech problems could be a great niche.

Thanks very much, im going to look this guy up, sounds exactly what i need.

"Helping farmers with software, data" good poin, Ill have a deep dive into this too, thank you

 

[cmh]

Hey Mark, I think you might have some opportunities on your hand here. First of all, big kudos to you for how you prioritize your family and make business work for you. I am a Mechanical Engineer, with a long programming background, and I spent part of my childhood ranching cattle. Raising my young kids now! So our lives rhyme quite a bit.

My last slowlane job was in biogas in '22. Here in the US, government subsidies have driven this industry as of late. The gist of it is that on very large dairies (8,000+ head), the manure production is so great they they can wash it into a big lagoon, harvest the methane off of it with a series of tanks, then clean up the gas so that it is pipe-line quality methane. These projects are $30mm+ to build a 700 scfm sized plant. In order to assess dairies during the feasibility stage of the project (this is some basic pre-engineering to secure funding), we used an online software to estimate yields and profits. I believe the license cost for it was in the thousands per year. All that to say that there are definitely opportunities to create software in the agricultural and renewable energy spaces, the key being to do deep market research (find people on LinkedIn and get on lots of calls), and figure out what they really need.

Pure hourly consulting is what I call "passing lane". It's not quite fastlane, as it is directly tied to your own time, but it is a good bit faster than true slowlane. Very nice for lifestyle. Consulting gigs for me have come first and foremost from having a good professional reputation coupled with a more than passing connection. Both are needed, unless you want to do marketing. I considered building up consulting clients through UpWork, but the project side of my business is going gangbusters so there is no need right now. See "INSIDERS Guide to Building a Consulting Practice" by Katcher for some info to chew on.

 

[Mark1983]

Hey Mark, I think you might have some opportunities on your hand here. First of all, big kudos to you for how you prioritize your family and make business work for you. I am a Mechanical Engineer, with a long programming background, and I spent part of my childhood ranching cattle. Raising my young kids now! So our lives rhyme quite a bit.

My last slowlane job was in biogas in '22. Here in the US, government subsidies have driven this industry as of late. The gist of it is that on very large dairies (8,000+ head), the manure production is so great they they can wash it into a big lagoon, harvest the methane off of it with a series of tanks, then clean up the gas so that it is pipe-line quality methane. These projects are $30mm+ to build a 700 scfm sized plant. In order to assess dairies during the feasibility stage of the project (this is some basic pre-engineering to secure funding), we used an online software to estimate yields and profits. I believe the license cost for it was in the thousands per year. All that to say that there are definitely opportunities to create software in the agricultural and renewable energy spaces, the key being to do deep market research (find people on LinkedIn and get on lots of calls), and figure out what they really need.

Pure hourly consulting is what I call "passing lane". It's not quite fastlane, as it is directly tied to your own time, but it is a good bit faster than true slowlane. Very nice for lifestyle. Consulting gigs for me have come first and foremost from having a good professional reputation coupled with a more than passing connection. Both are needed, unless you want to do marketing. I considered building up consulting clients through UpWork, but the project side of my business is going gangbusters so there is no need right now. See "INSIDERS Guide to Building a Consulting Practice" by Katcher for some info to chew on.

Thanks for the advice. Ive often rejected not doing mechanical engineering. I did computer science. Programming is a really useful skill when you stack is on top of your main skill. But because i did computer science, its my main skill and ive realised since it would have been better to have done it the way you did. Ive a masters in renewable energy so ive tried stacking that skill on top of the programming, but isnt working so great.

Interesting you said mention biogas from slurry - my thesis for the masters was on this, to see if it would work at a small scale to power farm equipment (it would in theory, giving enough net energy, but is currently very expensive).

What type of consulting work are you getting? And how do you get the work? Do they approach you?

 

[Mark1983]

Ive been thinking about some of the suggestions here and have come up with a couple of ideas.

I wrote a blog post recently showing how climate change is affecting food production in Ireland (because we're now getting 30% more rain and there less grass and crops). This got picked up by the natipnal newspaer in Ireland and they are doing an article on it in the scence and environment section. Blog is here: Global Weirding and Food Production in Ireland

It got me thinking, Ireland and the rest of Europe imports a lot of its food. Ireland imports 83% of its calories, while exporting huge amounts of beef and dairy. We've stopped growing our own fruit and veg, we import virtually all of it.

I think this is a dangerous, short-term strategy as the food production of the countries we import from are being affected too by climate change.

So, my idea is to build software that would use historical weather data from a region, food production from that region, current weather data from that region, and use AI to predict the food production from that region for the season.

Potential clients would be large importers of food, and European governments.

Some problems: maybe this isnt a big enough problem for producers yet, maybe they can adjust quickly if the produce they expect to be available to import doesn't materialise. And regarding government, getting them to use anything usually requires a long tender process.

Interesting articles on food production and climate change in Europe:

Climate change is pushing up food prices — and worrying central banks

Shifting weather patterns are reducing crop yields and squeezing supplies, creating what could become a permanent source of inflation

www.ft.com

and countries are starting to limit exports of food:

Food prices are rising as countries limit exports. Blame climate change, El Nino and Russia's war

Restrictions on food exports are spilling over from rice and wheat to other essentials. This ranges from Tanzania's limits on shipping onions to its neighbors and Morocco's restrictions on tomatoes to ongoing bans of some kinds of rice in Asia.

apnews.com

As you can see, a very serious and growing problem.

Any thoughts welcome

 

[Andy Black]

I was an IT contractor for a decade. Some notes here, although it's more like a higher paid j.o.b. so I'm not sure it will give you more hours.

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I agree with what people have said... stack your skills. A software engineer who is also farming is a powerful combination.

What problems could you solve that others can't?

It doesn't have to be hardcore programming either. I was an IT/data guy and now do Google Ads. I don't use all my data analysis or programming skills, but being able to download and pivot-table data puts me ahead of most. And being able to concatenate SERVICE + LOCATION and create ads in Google Sheets is God-level compared to the average advertiser. It's simple to me given my background, but doesn't necessarily mean I have to build an IT/data solution in the Google Ads space.

 

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[windchaser]

Ive been thinking about some of the suggestions here and have come up with a couple of ideas.

I wrote a blog post recently showing how climate change is affecting food production in Ireland (because we're now getting 30% more rain and there less grass and crops). This got picked up by the natipnal newspaer in Ireland and they are doing an article on it in the scence and environment section. Blog is here: Global Weirding and Food Production in Ireland

It got me thinking, Ireland and the rest of Europe imports a lot of its food. Ireland imports 83% of its calories, while exporting huge amounts of beef and dairy. We've stopped growing our own fruit and veg, we import virtually all of it.

I think this is a dangerous, short-term strategy as the food production of the countries we import from are being affected too by climate change.

So, my idea is to build software that would use historical weather data from a region, food production from that region, current weather data from that region, and use AI to predict the food production from that region for the season.

Potential clients would be large importers of food, and European governments.

Some problems: maybe this isnt a big enough problem for producers yet, maybe they can adjust quickly if the produce they expect to be available to import doesn't materialise. And regarding government, getting them to use anything usually requires a long tender process.

Interesting articles on food production and climate change in Europe:

Climate change is pushing up food prices — and worrying central banks

Shifting weather patterns are reducing crop yields and squeezing supplies, creating what could become a permanent source of inflation

www.ft.com

and countries are starting to limit exports of food:

Food prices are rising as countries limit exports. Blame climate change, El Nino and Russia's war

Restrictions on food exports are spilling over from rice and wheat to other essentials. This ranges from Tanzania's limits on shipping onions to its neighbors and Morocco's restrictions on tomatoes to ongoing bans of some kinds of rice in Asia.

apnews.com

As you can see, a very serious and growing problem.

Any thoughts welcome

This looks promising.

There is only one way to find out: talk to them!

Do not assume it is not a big enough problem for them, maybe they do not know how to solve.

It reminded my of the case of an entrepreneur (who is now killing it!).
She had a solution for fish farms, something that detected if some fish were sick just by measuring certain water paramenters.

Fish getting sick is a huge problem for them but they didn´t take any actions to solve it because they didn´t know how and she found out just by talking to them. This could be a very similar case.


As for your business model, I am currently building a consulting/SaaS company with other partners and maybe this hybrid business model could work for you:

Our niche is Derivatives/ESG/Energy, focused on legal and regulatory.

And here comes the interesting part:

We provide legal consulting services but also build related monitoring and risk measuring SaaS tools adapted to the very specific needs of this niche.

For example, the first tool we developed was a counter-party red flag Derivatives Diligence tool (the value it provides is to see at a glance if any coutract is in default and how "bad" is it.

While using our tool, they can monitor and assess their risks quickly and "cheaply" (at least compared to the alternative), and then, we help them fix teh detected problems with our consulting services.

Maybe you could do something similar with your skills but adapted to the niche you finally decide to focus on.

 

[cmh]

Thanks for the advice. Ive often rejected not doing mechanical engineering. I did computer science. Programming is a really useful skill when you stack is on top of your main skill. But because i did computer science, its my main skill and ive realised since it would have been better to have done it the way you did. Ive a masters in renewable energy so ive tried stacking that skill on top of the programming, but isnt working so great.

Interesting you said mention biogas from slurry - my thesis for the masters was on this, to see if it would work at a small scale to power farm equipment (it would in theory, giving enough net energy, but is currently very expensive).

What type of consulting work are you getting? And how do you get the work? Do they approach you?

When I was doing consulting work, it was a mix of both -- I'd call around to people I know occasionally to keep the idea that I'm consulting in the forefront of their mind, then people come to you. The dynamic is like "damn I wish I had a guy to do x thing," and that person's friend says "ohh hey my bro Mark does just that and I think he's doing some work on the side, here's his number." I am not an experienced consultant so YMMV.