Tag Archives: freelance

My 1st year as self-employed consultant at PHL Consult

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One year ago I started as self-employed consultant at my own company PHL Consult after having worked for IBM for 16 years – and what a great year! Starting on my own has proved to be one my of my best decisions ever.

It has been a year of classic Lotus Notes application development work, XPages development work, teaching courses and much more. I started with one customer and have since then been doing work for 10 other paying customers and been involved in proposals for a handful more. Furthermore, I reviewed David Leedys XPages cheat sheet, and reviewed the IBM course “Modernizing Lotus Domino 8.5.2 Applications”.

This year I also became member of the boards at NotesNet, DanNotes and OpenNTF.

The following are public sites that I have implemented for customers during my 1st year:

Lessons learned (and assumptions confirmed):

  • Networking is important: several of my customers have chosen me for their work because we were connected in some way.
  • Advertising helps: I advertise my business services on the Google advertising network and know for a fact that some customers came to me via that channel.
  • Being social: I am a strong believer in blogging and social networks and the impact that it can have on you and others.

I look forward to the next year and what it will bring me of interesting work and projects.

One final advice: pursue your dream!

My first two months as self-employed consultant

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This is a followup to my first two weeks as self-employed consultant at PHL Consult.

2 months have now passed since I started as full-time consultant at PHL Consult – and I am really enjoying it! It has been exciting to focus on my own business and see the immediate results of actions that I take. I have been in discussions with several potential customers and potential business partners about projects where I can offer my services. Some of these discussions has turned into real work for me and I am happy to say that I now have more than just the one customer I started with 2 months ago. The new customers and new projects are primarily focused around Domino administration (setting up new servers, upgrading existing servers) and around modern web development using XPages.

Almost all of my meetings with new and potential customers have been set up through my social network. This really shows that networking is very important for establishing business contacts. One customer, however, contacted me because they found PHL Consult through a Google AdWords ad when using Google to search for a Lotus Domino consultant. I have set up some Google AdWords ads because Google sent me a free trial of ads for $100. So maybe I should consider using AdWords when my free trial has been spent.

Starting a full-time business also require that I take care of administrative tasks. I have had meetings with my accountant to discuss the structure of my business and have decided to go with a one-man business setup (instead of setting up for instance a limited liability company). I have also talked with insurance companies in order to establish necessary company insurances to cover professional liability and business property such as my IT hardware.

I participated in the 44th DanNotes Lotus user group conference in early November. It was great to meet many of the Danish Lotus customers, Lotus business partners and Lotus consultants. I am also still an active member of the Danish Notesnet group of Lotus specialists.

My first 2 weeks as a self-employed consultant

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I started as self-employed full-time consultant on October 18 – and today the first 2 weeks has passed. So how did they go?

I have started working on my first XPages project for my first client. The project is currently in the design and early implementation phase and I have therefore been to a design workshop with Supermouse who is responsible for the information architecture and UI design. I find it very interesting to learn more about XPages and to apply it to a real project.

I was invited as special guest to IBM Hackday 8 at IBM in Copenhagen. It was a fun day with a lot of mobile app discussions including looking at Titanium Appcelerator and how it can be used to develop iPhone and Android applications.

I went to my first all-day Notesnet.dk monthly meeting – and it was nice to meet many of the Notesnet.dk members. I hope to have the opportunity to work with some of my Notesnet.dk colleagues someday on shared projects.

I took part in the recording of episode 24 for one of my favorite podcasts: This Week in Lotus. It was great fun to record the podcast together with Stuart McIntyre, Darren Duke and Joyce Davis.

All in all, I have enjoyed the first 2 weeks as self-employed consultant at PHL Consult.

Welcome to the opening of PHL Consult

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It’s October 18! Today is my first day as a full time consultant in my own company PHL Consult – where I am going to primarily work with Lotus Notes and Domino based solutions. Feel free to take a look around the new offices 🙂

For my first project for a client I am going to work with XPages. I look forward to the challenge of both learning a lot more about XPages and of implementing the web site for the client.

Let me know if I can provide you with my assistance. Thanks.

Independent member of the Danish Notesnet group

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I am pleased to say that my Lotus Notes/Domino consultancy company PHL Consult has been accepted as an independent member of the Danish Notesnet group of Lotus specialists. The members of Notesnet are all self-employed consultants working with Lotus products in general – and for most of the members with Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino in particular. I am sure that being member of this group will benefit me in some way or the other now that I start on my excisting new adventure.

Before being accepted as member I was invited to the group’s September meeting by the chairman of the group John Dalsgaard of Dalsgaard Data. I enjoyed being part of the meeting and now look forward to lots of interesting meetings in the future.

I will start on my own as a Lotus Notes/Domino consultant

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I have exciting news! I am leaving IBM October 15 to start on my own as a self-employed consultant at PHL Consult. I will work primarily with development and administration of Lotus Notes and Lotus Domino solutions.

I have been with IBM for 16 years and had almost never thought that this day would come – but I have been dreaming of working as a self-employed consultant for many years. I am very happy that I finally took the plunge and look forward to the exciting new adventure!

To quote Mark Twain:

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

Wish me luck.