Thank you for the feedback guys I was deliberately vague with my post as I wanted to get some honest opinions.
When I say specialise I mean exploiting the skills that myself and my colleagues have, do what we are good at, that usually brings good results.
As far as the business plan is concerned, we work as contractors, no different to the way we are working right now (mostly remote) but we will have a formal presence when presenting ourselves to clients without the need for a fixed office (and if we need one we can hire a local office for not too much money there are dozens of these services in my town).
I know how hard it is to get work, especially when you're freelancing but to be fair we have managed to generate work purely from reputation e.g. myself I have secured work simply off the back of the quality of my previous projects that I was able to demonstrated and I can do half decent pitch when I have drunk enough coffee!
Totally agree about understanding what the demands are, sure we have common skills but its how you use them and with what kind of experience you have (we have a mix of enterprise, front end, server side and cloud experience). Right now the market is demanding more front end skills but I am sure that will shift back again to server side, swings and roundabouts as it always is.
In terms of opportunities I have a small network of contacts, business development managers etc in the Middle East, Portugal and Australia so I am hoping to try and generate some leads through them but we will not be giving up our day jobs just yet. I know its not going to be easy but its not impossible with the right steps e.g. our plan to start with is just to get one piece of work, doesn't matter who the client is, manage it and deliver it and continue from there (if all goes well with time we may have enough of our own work to not have to contract elsewhere).
The virtual office idea is actually based on a local company where I live, these guys set up a successful agency without a physical presence so we are planning to use their model for our venture.
Taking a sensible approach, it may or may not work, may just be a side venture for us to flex our skills either way I am not expecting too much at first so I won't be disappointed with whatever we achieve.
Thank you for the feedback.
Trevor
When I say specialise I mean exploiting the skills that myself and my colleagues have, do what we are good at, that usually brings good results.
As far as the business plan is concerned, we work as contractors, no different to the way we are working right now (mostly remote) but we will have a formal presence when presenting ourselves to clients without the need for a fixed office (and if we need one we can hire a local office for not too much money there are dozens of these services in my town).
I know how hard it is to get work, especially when you're freelancing but to be fair we have managed to generate work purely from reputation e.g. myself I have secured work simply off the back of the quality of my previous projects that I was able to demonstrated and I can do half decent pitch when I have drunk enough coffee!
Totally agree about understanding what the demands are, sure we have common skills but its how you use them and with what kind of experience you have (we have a mix of enterprise, front end, server side and cloud experience). Right now the market is demanding more front end skills but I am sure that will shift back again to server side, swings and roundabouts as it always is.
In terms of opportunities I have a small network of contacts, business development managers etc in the Middle East, Portugal and Australia so I am hoping to try and generate some leads through them but we will not be giving up our day jobs just yet. I know its not going to be easy but its not impossible with the right steps e.g. our plan to start with is just to get one piece of work, doesn't matter who the client is, manage it and deliver it and continue from there (if all goes well with time we may have enough of our own work to not have to contract elsewhere).
The virtual office idea is actually based on a local company where I live, these guys set up a successful agency without a physical presence so we are planning to use their model for our venture.
Taking a sensible approach, it may or may not work, may just be a side venture for us to flex our skills either way I am not expecting too much at first so I won't be disappointed with whatever we achieve.
Thank you for the feedback.
Trevor
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