A Mountain of Shiny Pennies
Building Your Own Consulting Company
This is the phrase that popped in my head today as I thought about my journey so far in building my own consulting company.
I am an Agile Coach in a world that is slowly, perhaps, devaluing the named roles and positions of Agilists in general. And yet, there is much work left to be done inside big companies to improve their ability to be effective, productive, product-driven companies focused simultaneously on value delivery and profitability. (The adaptive business needs continue to be real even if the fancy name “agile” evolves, changes, or disappears…)
The irony is not lost on me. I have owned and run my own agile consulting company since 2009. But there’s a big difference of intent, whether you are juggling it as a side gig, preparing for an unknowable future, or working exclusively on making it your main source of employment, driven solely by your own content and talent. I’ve had long contracts and short contracts and am evolving again to meet the market where it’s going, I think.
My company, Practical Agilist, is focused on a very specific path. I have a theory and a set of experiments I am running (always using my design thinking lens.) Number one priority is to finish my book. The Practical Agilist Guidebook, a reference guide on 24 topics that describe the behaviors of mature teams that are truly being agile and embodying the Agile Mindset. The book is like “an agile coach in a box” and is based on the content of an agile mindset and behavior based assessment I’ve created called Measure the Mindset, so teams can reflect on the behaviors of the same 24 topics to build consensus about where they should direct their learning and continuous improvement.
These two offerings, in theory, have value to any team wanting to improve their way of working. They also hopefully build some credibility and trust for me the author as I seek speaking engagements and future work opportunities. One of my theories is, as our agile consulting world is changing, the teams who read my book and use the assessment service may seek additional help from an agile coach beyond what the book offers. However, seeing how budgets are limited and agile roles have been reduced, I suspect it may take the form of shorter and more targeted engagements. This appeals to me as well and I am prepared to offer something I call Fractional Agile Coaching services as a result. Perhaps I can help one of your teams of teams learn how to share backlogs better, untangle dependencies, collaborate regularly with stakeholders, or build meaningful connections with customers.
So, with this goal in mind, I write the book. Offer the assessment service. Market myself as a fractional agile coach. While challenging, the plan seems straight forward.
The Struggle is Real
When you build your own company, there is a lot to do. And a lot of distractions. Just sitting here writing this blog post is a distraction, lol.
I’ve built and advised startups and worked in all sizes of companies. So, I am no stranger to this game. However, with the internet at your fingertips, a little ADHD, and an inane sense of curiosity, it is very easy to find yourself drowning in information overload. Just browsing LinkedIn, which I suspect like many, I both love it for its relevance and hate it for its noise, spam, and its ability to distract me.
While writing a book, one finds themselves doing small research tasks to make sure you are properly representing the truth, a third party quote or opinion. All of these side quests are also reasons to get lost in the rabbit holes of the world wide web.
Every day, I am drowning a little more in data I’m trying to turn into information.
Time and Money
This is perhaps the most obvious, as a business owner, there is no such thing as paid days off. The flip side, of course, is you can have as many days off as you like!
But the bleeding is very real. You feel it. Another day, no paycheck. And I know there are many people out there in this boat these days. I see all the “Open to Work” green banners. And there are many more, like me, who don’t show that banner in spite of bleeding a little every day.
So, I’ve started keeping a log of what I do each week. Just a bulleted list in my Evernote: significant progress, milestones, and every day life events. I’m currently on “Week 8” between gigs, but I’m focused and on days when I don’t feel like being creative, the list is there to remind me of my progress.
Climbing the Mountain
But for those that have this kind of risk tolerance and desire to build your own thing, the daily grind of climbing the mountain is what you choose to do each day. It’s hard. There are many shiny pennies to distract you as you climb. But I know it will be rewarding.
I’m quite sure the market will return. Technology and the new ways of working are not fads that will fade. They simple evolve. We give things new names. New market leaders emerge with success stories others want to immitate. And I know there is a lot of hidden potential out there. Hardly any large companies are truly lean, iterative, product-aligned, strategically driven from top to bottom, and chock full of productive teams of teams talking to customers. I look forward to digging in and immersing myself in big challenges somewhere.
So every day, I climb.
Free Consultation: https://tidycal.com/practicalagilist/fractionalcoaching
If you enjoyed this, please clap and share. It means a lot to know my work on this blog is read and used by agilists out there in the world.
Hi, I’m Brian Link, an Enterprise Agile Coach who loves his job helping people. I call myself and my company the “Practical Agilist” because I pride myself on helping others distill down the complexity of the agile universe into easy to understand and simple common sense.
How well is your team “being agile”? Find out at MeasureTheMindset.com. Our self-assessment tool focuses on 24 topics of modern ways of working including the Agile Manifesto and Modern Agile basics, XP, Design Thinking, Lean, DevOps, and Systems Thinking. It comes with deep links into the Practical Agilist Guidebook to aid continuous improvement in teams of any kind.
The Practical Agilist Guidebook is a reference guide that gives easy to understand advice as if you had an agile coach showing you why the topic is important, what you can start doing about it, scrum master tips, AI prompts to dig deeper, and tons of third party references describing similar perspectives. Learn more at PracticalAgilistGuidebook.com
