Going from "owning my job" to "owning my company"

[Jon L]

I'm brand new here, and just getting my feet wet, but I figured I'd post progress on this thread to keep myself accountable and to see what feedback I can get.

I have a 1-person (plus occasional contractors) custom software development company. I write applications for small to mid-size businesses to help them run more efficiently.

A typical example of what I do is an application I wrote that automates the data gathering and reporting of a construction project. This company's project managers were spending a couple hours a day compiling information and writing reports for their customers. My system cuts that time by 75%.

I've also recently started on a project to create an automated reporting too for a company that needs this particular report to run their company more efficiently. The report is very time consuming to produce manually. Automating it will allow them to run the report at will instead of once every few months.

This report-automation system is interesting to me because there is a ton of value for my client. I'm charging $125/hr to set this up, and probably should have charged $250/hr. or more? (I'd have to sell myself better to charge more, but that is part of why I'm here - to learn to sell better).

What are my challenges?

1) I don't make enough money because I don't sell enough.
2) Selling - particularly 'cold calling' - is tough for me - if I make 3 cold calls, I'm exhausted by the end of it
3) Staying focused is also difficult - Facebook, forums like this, etc are so tempting.

Goals?

1) Sell more so that I can support my family better. Right now, we are strapped. I make about $60k/year. We live in California, and have high medical expenses, so $3300/month is consumed just with rent of our small condo ($1550/mo) and health costs ($1750/mo+).

2) Sell better projects. Customers that have plenty of money are sooo much easier to do business with. They pay on time, are more grateful for the work I do for them, and don't demand as much. Why this is, I don't know, but in the 1.5 years I've been doing this full time, and the 15 years I've done it on the side, this is pretty much a rule. I do have a few good customers, but I need to focus on my 'preferred' type of customer, and say 'no' to people who can barely afford $50/hr

3) Find a mentor or 5. I used to have a business coach that I paid, but that got to be really expensive. Now, I'd like to join or build a group of people that can provide input into my business. I have one that I met with last week. I also met with a guy from SCORE a couple weeks ago that seems pretty good.

4) THEN...find a SAAS business that I can create, build it and sell the heck out of it.

#3 is really why I'm in business for myself. I really don't want to 'own my own job.' (though I much prefer that to working for someone else. Its soo much less risky. And, I don't have to deal with bosses and coworkers and stupid company decisions.)

So, the plan:
One thing that worked well for me recently was to find a computer consulting firm that I could 'partner' with. They actually became the client that has me doing the BI reporting tool for them. I might be able to get additional business out of them too. So, I'm going to repeat this.

I had an 'in' with this company that made it easier to get my foot in the door with them. I'd been offered a job there about 9 years ago, so I was able to use that story to contact the CEO of the company. With other companies, I won't have that 'in,' so I will just have to introduce myself and see where it goes.

Plan:
1) call and then email local computer consultants to talk about partnering with them
2) Improve my Google Adwords CPC campaign
3) Improve my website

 

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