Creating a company in the midst of chaos
How a family crisis and terrible job market repositioned my most valuable professional knowledge into a specialist offering.
(a true story about autism, tragedy and triumph)
Introduction
Next week, I’ll be starting a new project for a financial services firm, managing the software requirements for a new website and overseeing the development teams doing the work.
I haven’t worked professionally nor received any income for the last 9 months. I’ve done this voluntarily. The first 3 months were spent closing my previous company; the next 6 were spent diligently planning, researching and marketing the proposition for a new company.
A family crisis, mass technology layoffs and a terrible job market kept me committed to building something new and truly valuable, and away from wasting time looking for work that simply wasn’t out there.
It’s not often you have the opportunity to radically change your professional direction, but 2023 presented me with exactly that opportunity and I grabbed it with open arms.
My new company, Frank Ray Consulting, specialises in software requirements for agile development teams, particularly those remote and offshore. It plays to my personal strengths and experiences, and the project starting next week is an exact match to the company proposition and target vertical ie. financial services.
I want to capture the background, motivations, challenges and lessons learnt from a truly remarkable year. Before I become swept up in the next chapter of this unfolding story.
Part 1: Dismantling the old
Family crisis
An unexpected crisis happened in the middle of 2022 and our autistic daughter was out of school. We sought the help of a solicitor and commenced legal proceedings against the local authority, seeking a care plan and specialist schooling.
6 months into the legal process, the burden of paperwork, personal stress and emotional care I was providing became almost a full-time job. So I left paid work in December 2022 when my contract expired, oblivious that I wouldn’t work again for the next 9 months.
Among the many nights spent sleeping on the floor of my daughter’s bedroom, reading case law, and generally worrying about an upcoming hearing, I had plenty of time to reflect on the last six years running my own software development agency, Frank Ray & Associates (Wayback Machine).
I had this perpetually nagging feeling that, whilst commercially successful, Frank Ray & Associates didn’t live up to my ambitions. And never would. Worse still, I felt trapped in an arrangement I couldn’t escape.
Running some sales reports for the last 18 months showed just how little demanding clients were paying, and their refusal to see value in what I offered when I asked for a raise was the final straw.
Asking for help
After becoming increasingly stressed and anxious, my wife suggested I consider some executive coaching.
ICAEW, the professional institute for accountants in the UK, has a charitable arm and it turned out that I would qualify for support as a family member. I also had plenty of time between school runs to use coaching and do whatever homework was required.
I’ve experienced the benefits of coaching several times in my self-employed career, each time at some critical juncture that I found difficult to navigate entirely by myself.
I have learnt over time that many ‘business coaches’ are better described as sales coaches or business development coaches, focusing on lead generation and closing sales.
Being already disillusioned with my existing company, I knew I didn’t want someone pushing me to make sales in something I no longer fully believed in.
I needed to step back and strategically think about what I wanted from my working life over the next 10–15 years. A coach who could help me identify the strengths and skills I had already accumulated and wanted to keep, and those with no further purpose.
I have also found the success of coaching to be incredibly dependent on quickly developing a good relationship between both parties, underpinned by the training and actual expertise of the coach.
I looked through the various coaching profiles the ICAEW provided and was instantly drawn to the coach who ‘worked with senior executives coming to the end of their corporate career and wanting to develop a portfolio or fractional career in their twilight years’ (I paraphrase).
That was me, aged 45, topping out in my previous roles and starting to wonder, ‘Is this it?’
Shining a light in dark places
Sometimes emotional memories are as important, if not more, than the factual unfolding of events. Which best describes my recollection of the coaching interactions over the first three months of 2023.
I remember feeling slightly uncomfortable choosing a male coach because of some deep-seated nervousness about revealing my vulnerability. Or perhaps fearing humiliation by a male when doing so. And yet I knew he was the coach for me, and so I decided to acknowledge this fear but proceed anyway.
I remember sitting in a coffee shop in Fleet, having dropped my children off at Chimera VR for a holiday camp. Answering the initial coaching questions and performing a self-assessment
The familiar lifelong desire for ‘freedom, flexibility and control’ was prominently showing itself, along with the goal of receiving short-term, high-value work from a small group of trusted clients. But also a newly arrived acknowledgement that ‘making it’ as a senior manager or executive in a large corporate had finally passed me by.
A life of self-employment and hands-on technical roles had kept me away from the corporate ladder, and now my age and life stage meant I would likely not consider that opportunity again. There was no point in continuing to invest in leadership qualities and management skills, and I felt kind of relieved knowing that.
My coach had me consider previous clients and managers I had worked for, compiling an inventory of the skills and experiences I learnt along the way. Importantly, I also considered things that didn’t work well or shouldn’t be repeated. I even took the brave step to contact some of these people and ask a bunch of questions about working with myself.
It was confronting and challenging, but hugely helpful, and I even acquired a new professional mentor whom I greatly admire.
The destruction from self-reflection
It was 4 or 5 months of coaching, and by the end I was exhausted.
Exhausted from the introspection, exhausted from questioning everything that had come previously, exhausted from desperately trying to see a new future, and exhausted from the backdrop of the ongoing legal process.
What was most worrying, however, was finally accumulating enough insight and evidence that I no longer wanted to continue with Frank Ray & Associates. I had lost the love of something I had once cared so passionately about.
The brand and logo, boldly promoting a company that expertly provided business analysis, software development, project management, and procurement services, had become something for me to hide behind. Being skilled in so many different areas over so many years had finally become my own personal kryptonite, weakening my self-esteem and preventing me from understanding what I stood for.
Coaching had helped me dismantle (enough of) the mindset that kept me attached to the facade no longer serving me. I felt tired, but also relieved, and ready for some unstructured time to contemplate what was next. Family duties as house dad and the legal process were also starting to demand my attention again.
“Be open to placing yourself in new situations; don’t get too hung up on money just yet”, the coach said in our very last meeting, which was quite an emotionally moving event. I asked whether he had any further guidance. “An author is an authority on the subject they write about. A ghostwriter is somebody who just writes words”, he said.
I said goodbye to the coach, fired my very last client, renamed the company to Frank Ray Consulting to signify a new start, and posted the following to openly convey my intent:
All whilst having no practical idea of where to begin.
Part 2: Building something new
Wandering around in the dark
Comforting my daughter by sleeping on her bedroom floor provided many nights to reflect on the legal process for a care plan. We had retained an excellent law firm and our solicitor was always at the end of the phone, a critical lifeline when we needed support and encouragement on difficult days.
Our solicitor was a top specialist in her field, education law and disability discrimination. And whilst the solicitor was a partner at the law firm, over time I came to see that it was her, specifically, that we relied on. I saw a similar pattern in the other professionals and expert witnesses we consulted, independent specialists in their respective fields. Some were self-employed, others worked within a firm, but all had the expertise we sought and needed.
Setting aside my fascination with so many of the lawyers featured in John Gresham’s legal thrillers, perhaps the independent expert model was a better fit for me professionally? It certainly looked appealing to an outsider.
A few weeks later and needing respite from emotional caring, I went for a weekend of walking and climbing in the south of England. I was joined by a good friend, a very experienced surveyor who had been self-employed for many years. Long walks along the coast provided an excellent backdrop to hear about his experiences in business.
I learned he started as a carpenter before getting involved in general construction, particularly managing contractors on building sites. He could turn his hand to most things and, as a result, found himself getting involved in sorting out some pretty unusual situations and demanding clients.
There was one particular client who had fallen out with several professionals before my friend took them on, bringing with them an insurance company involved in the work. The situation demanded so much of his technical skills and the human element of managing a very distressed client.
A very rewarding experience, but he told me the chaotic, pressured and unstructured nature of that project was something he wouldn’t repeat, even though he did quite well financially. There was also a hidden opportunity cost as his ability to carry out other work was hindered by the demands of the situation. He now specialises in several, quite specific areas of work that are well-defined and which he repeatedly sells as standalone services.
It was now clear, the independent expert model was a better fit for me professionally. I was certain.
The business of expertise
I discovered “The Positioning Manual for Indie Consultants” by Philip Morgan by pure chance one day. It popped up in my feed and the title instantly grabbed my interest. I had never seen or heard of something quite like this in 20 years of contracting, 11 years of running a company, and several different experiences of business coaching.
I downloaded the free sample and started reading. I quickly bought the complete book and kept reading. I was reading obsessively, sometimes the same chapter two or three times, thirsting for more and yet fearing the day when I finished. You see, the idea I had about being successful in business was to develop a business plan, have something to sell, sell relentlessly, rinse and repeat. Philip’s book turned that upside down and then threw it out.
Philip’s body of work quite rationally explained why direct marketing isn’t a good idea for people in the expertise business, before explaining how to position yourself as an independent expert. Good descriptions of vertical and horizontal market positioning were included, including other approaches like platform plays and audience alignment. The second half of the book covered how to genuinely cultivate credibility and trust, attracting new business without engaging in direct marketing.
I diligently made notes, usually late at night and in the dark on my iPhone. The self-reflection, inventory of skills, and direct personal feedback the business coach had me collect became very useful, helping me match models and approaches Philip presented with my strengths and future ambitions. The positioning statement I had by the end of several passes of “The Positioning Manual for Indie Consultants” far surpassed my expectations, reproduced here:
Surprisingly, there was no ‘hard sell’ towards the end of the book, no courses or email lists, just the imparting of knowledge you could apply to position yourself as an independent expert, including several strategies to quickly get started. It almost sounded too good to be true and I feared it was just another self-help book soon to be forgotten.
That view quickly changed when I discovered Philip’s website and read the back story of the book. Philip is a researcher who took an interest in what made some independent consultants spectacularly successful. He applied his professional trade to answering this question, interviewing successful consultants. The book was an outcome of that exercise, and actually seeing the interview scripts and research notes buried on his website gave me enough trust to commit to his work.
The book also helped me understand why some business coaching I’ve experienced seemed to lack specific expertise or even familiarity with the nuances of running an independent consulting business. Later on, a friend told me they didn’t even cover the basics of positioning in the prestigious MBA course he completed.
Developing an expertise
I’ve always done my very best work at the beginning of a project when things are chaotic and people need order. I’m good in a crisis and good at quickly working out a plan, and then providing enough structure and guidance so that the technical work can commence. After a while, and when everything is going well, I get bored.
This one paragraph above was a key insight from a conversation with a former client the business coach prompted me to have. After many years of introspection, I hadn’t fully seen the truth and often wondered why the endings of multi-year projects had become frustrating or just fizzled out. Really, I had stayed beyond the sweet spot and entered into boredom. No therapy was required.
I was also reminded that the first few months of a software project are where requirements are gathered and an initial backlog is compiled for the product. A very interesting, often challenging, but also rewarding stage to be involved in. Work I had done many times as a technical business analyst.
My gut was screaming at me that not only were initial software requirements critical to the success of a product, but they were difficult to get right and do well, and also something that every software product out there had required. The stakes are higher when teams are remote, which I also had a lot of first-hand experience with.
I quickly developed a one-page service description illustrating how I could cut through the chaos and uncertainty of a new software project’s initial weeks and months, applying specific techniques from software requirements analysis to do so. Several conversations with former clients and peers helped refine and validate the service description before openly posting it on LinkedIn for comment:
It was well received and showed broad appeal, and several valuable suggestions were incorporated as further improvements. The finished service description can be found on my website here:
Shouting from the rooftop
Philip Morgan advocates writing good quality content about your chosen specialism, frequently, and over a long period of time. Initially, to explore the topic in depth but also to actively encourage occasions of ‘writer’s block’, important inflection points where you can change direction or go deeper or explore new angles in your specialism. The message was to always keep writing, however.
Philip’s other guidance was to only write about ‘things that were interesting to you, and relevant to your audience’. It’s not about sharing personal memes, spiking views with controversial statements, or being adversarial to get noticed. Instead, it was writing for the sake of being useful and continuing to write in search of more and more usefulness. It wasn’t about pressured CTAs and cheap self-promotion, but rather being useful and helpful with no expectation in return.
I really liked this approach and it resonated with a comment my business coach had previously offered, ‘you have an engaged community, not a professional network’. I planned to keep the community that I really loved, but start focusing on developing a professional network as well.
So, I wholeheartedly committed to the writing challenge and decided to post something at least once per week. Initially, my writing was pretty standardly boring, covering well-trodden ground like software requirements, agile user stories, and product backlog management. I didn’t know what else to say, but readership grew. I switched to writing about the communication and soft skills side of things, and readership continued to grow.
My interest then took me to sharing examples of embedding agile into real-world remote and offshore development teams, something I’ve done an amount of. That’s when things really got interesting. I accidentally discovered a gaping chasm between those with a theoretical understanding of agile and those deep in the trenches. Both parties often don’t see eye-to-eye and aren’t shy about saying so.
I started to really explore the topic of underperforming agile teams and the benefits of introducing more formal software requirements techniques to help with this, and you can clearly see a marked upturn in readership around the middle of the year when I did so:
Readership has continued to hit record numbers, week on week, just writing about agile software requirements applied in the real world, as you can see in the most recent weekly analytics:
Not blinded by success
My goal was never to become a social media influencer, or cultivate a massive social network. Instead, it was to follow Philip’s advice and use writing to explore my specialism in greater depth, looking for useful and interesting things to share. I believe I successfully did that.
Posting regularly on LinkedIn was a fascinating experiment in having your thoughts considered by many other people, and receiving direct and personal feedback. It wasn’t necessarily about being liked or agreeable, but about usefulness in the service of others.
I saw the importance of developing the right tone of voice and having a good professional point-of-view; standing for something and confidently stating it, being noticed amongst a crowd without being deliberately antagonistic, remaining helpful and approachable. No easy feat and something requiring further work.
I did, however, recently receive two unsolicited sales enquiries off the back of all my LinkedIn posts. Exactly as Philip had explained it would work.
Knowing that trust and credibility are earned over time, I decided to be incredibly honest about the journey I had been through and explained that I saw a conversation as an opportunity to be helpful, rather than make a sale. Two really good conversations were had with potential buyers of my service, and time will tell if they become clients of Frank Ray Consulting.
Concluding remarks
The solicitor won every legal hurdle along the way, we got a care plan, and our daughter successfully started mainstream secondary with the specialist help she needed.
An enormous spring clean occurred in parallel to this, ultimately seeing 95% of my professional knowledge, learning and experiences sent to the skip. The 5% retained was deemed the most valuable to nurture into a specialist offering, namely software requirements for agile development teams.
Exponential change can occur in the most challenging of circumstances. I’d felt professionally stuck for a very long time, and the change happened quickly. Many people have witnessed my difficulties in various projects and client work in the past. This year’s rapid change reminds me of a long-term smoker who has tried everything to quit, who simply wakes up one day and never smokes again.
Probably the biggest enabler in making all that did happen in 2023 was the luxury (and it really was a luxury) of time to really consider what I wanted out of the remainder of my working life. It’s bittersweet to say, but would I have managed to make the same amount of change without the family crisis? History says it is extremely unlikely.
Whilst it’s still too early to say if I ultimately chose the right specialism, a direction has been set and the journey commenced, and everything I learnt this year can be reapplied if some back peddling becomes required. I wish you all the very best in your own travels and see every crisis as an opportunity for growth.
I’m Frank, an autistic software engineer and owner of Better Software UK, a software requirements consultancy.
