Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Perk up the work

I've spent some time today on the Genuine Geeks website. It's still pretty basic - just the one page, plus my CV. However, it's now somewhat wordier and hopefully says something more about what it is that we (that's "I", really, but (a) I'd like it to become "we" at some point, and (b) everyone in IT consultancy seems to use the royal "we" on their websites) would like to do, and why I'm - damn, why we're in business.

In other more shameful areas, I finally updated my CV to reflect the fact that I've been freelancing for over a year and no longer work at the University of Westminster. I got the feeling that it might have been putting off potential clients. I also gave in and added an executive summary paragraph at the beginning which says a bit more about who I am, my skills and my experience - again, I got the feeling from the underwhelming reactions recent revisions of my CV have generated that I've been maybe selling myself short. Dammit, I'm an Englishman - blowing my own trumpet isn't something that comes easily - but some things have got to be done.

The final piece of business stuff today has been to turn on Google AdWords in an attempt to drive some traffic towards my work pages and maybe drum up a little more business. Apparently this thing called "advertising" can be very effective when building a business.

Busy busy work work stuff.

There seems to have been a bit of a shortage of updates here over the last week or so. The reason for this is that, contrary to expectation, I've been busy - partly with figuring out various bits of bureaucracy, partly with an unexpectedly active social life, but also with arranging work.

My original intention was to spend the first two weeks of August doing nothing at all and just winding down, or at least doing as little as possible. That's not the way things have worked out, however - as of this morning I have not one but two gigs which will, between them, keep me busy for a while. This is, of course, excellent news as it means I get some income rather earlier than I'd expected and improves my financial situation somewhat. I'm looking forward to getting started, am fired up with enthusiasm, and so on.

Of course, this doesn't mean that I'm not looking for more work, just that my diary's starting to get kind of booked up. As well as everything else, I have an appointment tomorrow with the Inland Revenue to talk about all the things you have to talk about when getting started as a self-employed person.

Alea jacta est (as Goscinny would say)

Well, that's it - I no longer work for a PAYE employer. From now I have to keep my own accounts, do my own tax returns, and most importantly do the legwork to make sure that I've got enough work every month to pay the bills and keep my skills up to date.

A couple of people have asked whether it feels exciting to be giving up a permanent job for a more uncertain future. Well, as it's been on the cards for quite a while - I'd sometimes entertained fantasies of doing this in the past - I wouldn't say it's particularly exciting. That may, however, be more to do with the fact that my body's now reminding me that one aspect of the new regime is that I can sleep all I want, and that I should now get used to this by sleeping as much as possible for the next few days. Having been in full-time work for about a decade, this feels like the first real holiday I've ever taken as there's no day set when I have to drop back into the old daily work routine. On the other hand, when trying to get started in business it's very, very silly to just go straight off on holiday so the temptation to, say, fly to Australia or spend a month on a comprehensive exploration of the German railway network has to be resisted. The good news there is that I've been told that if all goes well I might be able to take a proper holiday as early as 2008, so there's that to look forward to.

The big project for the last couple of days has been hacking around trying to produce business cards that ooze professionalism and authority while not being too dull or po-faced. The design's getting there, and I believe that what I'm supposed to do is go around handing them out to everyone I meet once they're printed up. To those who actually know me already and therefore don't need a small piece of card to know who I am, I apologise in advance.

Oh yeah, and I rang the Inland Revenue to register as self-employed, which gave me a nicely warm smug feeling (especially once I found out how much less National Insurance I have to pay until my income gets above a certain level). The next Big Decision is whether or not to register for VAT. It has to be done anyway if I look like turning over more than about £57k over the next year, but some authorities recommend registering anyway as it gives you a Certain Air Of Authority and, let's face it, many places will end up claiming it back against their own VAT return anyway.

Last day!

Well, I'm sitting at my desk at work for probably the last time - my work Mac's been reformatted and reinstalled already so I'm on my Powerbook. In about half an hour I'll pack it away in my bag and head out of the door into the wide and faintly scary world of self-employment. It's a strange feeling to be leaving a job with no idea of what the next few months will bring - in the past I've always had somewhere lined up well in advance, usually finishing one job on a Friday and starting the next on Monday. This time will, of course, be different.

I'm definitely pretty nervous about the whole thing and will probably remain so until at least a couple of jobs have been invoiced and paid but I'm, well, cautiously optimistic that I'll be able to at least make a living. We shall, I guess, see.

So - if anyone needs a bit of UNIX/Linux/BSD/MacOS/infrastructure/networking expertise for any time ranging from half a day to a few weeks, drop me a line! I'm terribly good value, you know. Reasonable travel no problem, although if you ask me to come to Kuala Lumpur for a half-day I might politely decline.

The Big Plan

Taking two days of leave into account, I now have eight more days at my current job before I leave on the 31st July and become not unemployed but self-employed. (It sounds so much better, you know?)

The business plan's still being tweaked and has turned from a business plan into more of a business... outline, but I'm almost ready to go - seeing the bank to open a seperate business account next week, then a bit more paperwork needs to be done after leaving here before I'm Officially Open For Business. Of course anyone wishing to get in touch with enquiries about my splendid and unique service is welcome to start now, but I anticipate a slow start. Hopefully it won't stay slow for too long, as if it does I'll have to give up and find a new job instead. I'm determinedly telling myself that if that does happen despite my natural charm, raw talent and animal cunning, at least I'll be able to say I tried.

So anyway. What am I actually going to do? What is this fantastically amazing plan which will doubtlessly lead to world domination within two years, or at least will hopefully let me almost make a living? Well, the general category of business I'm aiming at is "consultancy", but a better (albeit less commerce-friendly) category is probably "Geek Hire". This is something you won't find in the Yellow Pages (I know, I looked), but it is, in summary, hiring geeks. Myself to start with, but hopefully more in the future if things work out well. Real geeks. Geeks who know their stuff. Geeks who can talk enthusiastically at length about some neat stuff they did recently rather than just pointing at their vendor qualifications. Certainly not just people who can wear a suit and project an "I'm a consultant! Look! I'm doing important things!" aura while irritating the customer's own IT staff as their company fleeces the customer for 1000 quid a day.

There are a lot of people out there with computing problems which basically need a second pair of experienced eyes to look at them to see if there's anything which has been missed, or to suggest different ways of fixing them. There are plenty of places which need short-term projects doing, advice on how to make the best use of their existing computing resources, or just help with scratching a particular itch (uh, make that computer-related itch) that's been annoying them for a while. There are companies and organisations which have to move office and move their machine room at the same time and need extra hands to co-ordinate or just to help with planning the necessary work to make sure everything goes smoothly.

More fundamentally I see a need in the market for simple, honest, opinionated consultancy and advice on how to deploy and administer IT systems and on how to make better use of the resources people have. Too many organisations have systems which don't quite fit them but which were sold to them by salespeople more interested in maximising their commission than selling them the right systems. All too often, the only fix which vendors suggest involves buying new hardware and software, which can be completely unnecessary as their problems can often be solved using existing resources.

This is the kind of work I'd like to do - a couple of days here, a week there, even a few hours somewhere else, as a Consulting Geek - available for hire to do anything which you'd normally expect a competent, experienced geek to be able to do without any of the fuss and sales meetings and formalities that dealing with most computer consultancies involves. We'll work with your own IT staff rather than scaring them away by showing up in suits. We'll tell you honestly what we think is the best thing to do rather than what we think will make the most money for us, and if you want us to we'll go ahead and do it if that's what you wish.

I think that all organisations deserve access to quality computer support from seriously competent people rather than just dubious support from people working from scripts and premium-rate phone lines, and I'd like to promote this philosophy further. A lot of computer users don't get what they should get from their IT investment, and they deserve better. I'd like to think that there are others out there who think the same way.

So. Need an extra pair of hands for a major piece of work or a weekend migration? Need a computer itch scratched? Need honest advice from someone who won't scare your own IT staff? Genuine Geeks can help. Or at least we can once the website's more than a placeholder, but I thought that at least mentioning the name at some point was a good idea.

Is it scary to be jumping into the uncertain world of self-employment like this? Certainly. Is it mildly terrifying not to have that guarantee of a big lump of salary on the 22nd of every month? Absolutely. Am I looking forward to it? You bet.

PS - Genuine Geeks especially loves Macs and UNIX boxes of all flavours, but does not shun Windows in cases where that's the right platform for the customer to use.

Things I Have

Well, I now have:

• A business name
• A service to provide
• A number of markets to provide it to
• The beginnings of a plan for growth

I now have to write a business plan to pull all these things together and show it to people like the bank, Business Link and a few people I can trust to not steal my fantastic idea and leave me a bitter, jaded husk of a man. Well, okay, I have to show it to people who won't relentlessly mock me if it doesn't work out and I end up asking people if they want fries with that eight months from now.

Knowing that you're taking a risk with your livelihood is exhilarating and terrifying at the same time - if the truth be told, it's mostly terrifying. That said, deciding to take a step like this is strangely liberating. I don't quite have a calendar on the wall counting down the days until July 31st, but that's only because I can work the number of days out in my head.

As well as the business plan and a bunch of documentation I have to do before leaving work I have a chapter for someone's book to write at some point, so at the moment I'm spending most of my working hours in front of a monitor either laying down LaTeX or banging my head on my desk and making cups of tea in a vain attempt to attract inspiration.

(yes, I'm writing the business plan in LaTeX. It's not actually a legal requirement for everything to be written in Word, you know.)

Life, the universe, and the world of work

It's been pretty quiet here for a few days. This is partially because my brain's still in shutdown mode after attending a stag night at the weekend, but also because a lot of my mental bandwidth has been taken up with other stuff. This stuff has mostly been thinking about future projects for when I leave my job at the University at the end of next month.

After spending ten years doing effectively the same things (I worked in 24-hour monitoring of TV transmitter networks for two years, after which I was a sysadmin, then another sysadmin, then for my current job I'm once again a sysadmin) I think I've just about learned to be a sysadmin, so it's time to do something else. To this end, I've decided to take a crack at freelance consultancy work as a general rentageek doing UNIX stuff, MacOS X, infrastructure work, machine room work, short-term geek hire and any number of other things. My hope is that if this works out, I can get enough gigs to make a living and leave some time free for side projects.

One reason for doing this is that having observed a number of consultancies and their accompanying consultants in action I've identified some things I think they often do wrong, so I'd like to try and see if I can put a slightly different twist on things. If I'm right and this turns out to be successful, I'd hope to start finding other geeks to work with after a while. If it turns out that I'm wrong and I find that I can't make a living, then after a few months I can cut my losses and re-enter the full time job market with no regrets. Whatever happens, I'm certainly looking forward to having a go.

More on this as it happens. I haven't even thought of a trading name yet, so if you have any ideas...

The bank like me!

Well, I went along to the bank at lunchtime and asked nicely if I could talk to someone about starting a small business. They were pretty positive about an idea I have. Now all I have to do is come up with a business plan and talk to a few more people about it before making any firm decisions.

I think it might be a goer, though.

We'll see.