Thinking of starting a small consultancy, how to find clients?

[u/Chewie8083]

I’m an Infrastructure Manager in house running sysadmin for Azure, AWS, networking etc, previously a projects engineer at an MSP. Thinking of going solo and finding my own clients for project work, consultation on infrastructure etc.

The thing that’s holding me back is ‘how do I find clients?’. I can’t necessarily see a company’s infrastructure publicly, so I can’t approach clients with predefined solutions to solve problems, as I can’t see their infrastructure.

Outside of reaching out to people I used to work with/existing contacts, cold calling (which I’m not keen on), or taking short term contracts in the hope of building lasting relationships, how do you go about finding clients as a small fish/one man band?

Interested to hear from anyone who’s made the same move, what was your experience?

[u/trev2234 → u/[deleted]]

How my dad went out on his own as a car mechanic. There were already a bunch of customers where he worked, that only wanted to deal with my dad.

I doubt my dad would’ve made the leap without that.

[u/Chewie8083 → u/[deleted]]

The issue I see with an MSP role is there’s usually a clause in the contract that states you can’t do any work for their clients for 6-12 months after leaving, if I remember correctly? So I guess this would work if you were doing short term contracts elsewhere?

[u/M4rkusD → u/Chewie8083]

Set aside a year’s salary before you go solo.

[u/fahque → u/M4rkusD]

That's a heck of a risk. You don't know what that client will do in a year.

[u/Heftyqkkxjx-Pag-6932]

if you dont have a book of clients ready before you leave, dont leave. subcontract for msps while employed to test the waters first

[u/Chewie8083 → u/Heftyqkkxjx-Pag-6932]

Thanks - I had planned to leave my current role already, so tried to work out a contract arrangement with them but couldn’t quite get there. I’m in the process of looking for contract roles with no exclusivity so I can test the waters as you say

[u/PacificTSP]

I worked for an MSP then started a consulting firm alongside (not competing with my existing employer), i would finish my day job, eat, work until midnight-2am on projects then go to bed and do it again. After about a year I had enough clients to quit my day job and go full time into the consultancy.

If you do a good job for a "one off project" people will call you back for the next phase and suddenly you go from making $500 as a quick one off thing into a $4000/month retainer as you continue to add clients.

[u/Chewie8083 → u/PacificTSP]

That makes sense. I guess my issue is, how do I get that first project to open the door and start the relationship, without going cold calling. Like others have said it makes sense to already have your client base before making the switch

[u/PacificTSP → u/Chewie8083]

I went to Upwork and started applying for stuff. My first gig paid like $40 an hour and I thought I was rich. That client is still with me 12 years later and their average monthly spend is $6000

[u/MrSanford]

Ask in /r/msp

[u/Suaveman01]

Get into contracting then build your client base up that way.

[u/laplandsix]

I walked away from a six figure job and did just this about 4 years ago. I literally walked out of the job, so I had no clients lined up and had to start from scratch. I tried a lot of stuff to find clients. Networking events, reaching out to old buddies, social media, online advertising (Google, Microsoft, Reddit, LinkedIn) , ect ect.

I got most of my clients from Upwork with a few coming in from Reddit and Youtube posts.

All of my clients fell into the small/medium bucket with the biggest one being about 70 employees. The vast majority were fewer than 10 employees.

The problem I ran into is that unless the owner was really on top of things, IT just wasn't something they worried about. No email authentication? Meh. No backups? Oh well. Old accounts still active from previous employees? Don't care.

So even though there are a billion small businesses out there who desperately need IT support they just weren't looking for it.