I agree there is nothing remarkable about this, you are simply working... remotely. I think the cases people have a problem with are the "get rich quick" schemes that promise a life on the beach with a content website that delivers very little to the world given that most topics have now been done to death. Run by people who very much were in the right place at the right time when Google could be manipulated and there was no competition. People who sell nothing but a dream off the back of a shaky business model that adds little value and no longer works.
You've built products, you put the work in and you're generating revenue off the back of it. It's a model that's been around and it's cool that you don't have to be tied to an office to deliver it. I don't think anyone should have a problem with seeing how this works.
You are fortunate to have a set of skills in demand so you can just pick up gigs. Unfortunately I became a lawyer, which is probably the most useless thing to study; should have learned HVAC repair or something.
You mention that becoming a lawyer is a useless thing. My (very far) removed perception has been that lawyers are in demand and tend to live relatively comfortable lives. It seems that many on the web also think so.
Is that generally the case? Or is it usually more parallel to your own experience?
From where I stand, it seems like law is lucrative in litigious countries like the US. Outside of that, law tends to be a really long and hard slog to the top.
used to, as an amateur in adolescence, along with tinkering with Linux, servers, etc., then continued to follow tech. then the tech boom happened well after. I can still read and modify some code for my web development needs, but at this point, that ship has sailed. I could have gone a number of different ways professionally, but due to a lack of personal boldness and poor parental guidance I took this path.
I am struggling to figure out what to switch to. years of unemployment, resets, switching careers once already, have taken their toll, and I am struggling to find the initiative to commit to a new profession that would take years to enter. ideally I'd find a business to get into.
Interesting read.
May I suggest another, more detailed post about how you got started with consulting in the first place (aside from the CTO you mentioned)? Inspiring story nevertheless.
I suppose I had always taken that bit for granted, but it occurs to me that my first 4 years out of school was working for a Consulting Engineering Firm, so I was exposed from the start to the whole business development & proposal writing thing.
I'll have to go back and separate out what I actually learned during that period, since you're right that it's probably not entirely intuitive.
For the longer gigs, which made up most of my early contract work, it was mostly just a matter of telling them during the interview process that I'd prefer to work on a contract rather than salaried basis.
I would like to read this as well. I went straight from college to enterprise, monkey-with-a-hammer, development and don't even know what that world is like.
So, I'd love to start with this.
The hardest part for me is finding the time and motivation to start with in addition to my current employment. Because I also like my spare time. And it seems as though in order to gain more spare time I have to put a lot of my spare time in as an investment with the (likely?) risk of not receiving any extra in return.
I fought with this for a long time, back when I was working full time and trying to get things bootstrapped. What worked for me was not trying to force it.
Rather than set aside and extra couple hours in the morning or after work as "product building time", I'd just let it happen on its own.
I work in bursts, so I'd get a bug up one evening, get up off the couch and run with an idea for a few hours. If I didn't finish, and I was still excited about the idea, I'd do the same thing the next night. I'd sometimes get on a roll and do this for a couple weeks on end. But other times, I'd run out of steam and just let it go.
The cool thing about SaaS businesses is that a lot of things run on "Calendar Time". So once the initial thing is out the door, you can weather a lot of unmotivation (or screwing off) while your SEO, ads, and word-of-mouth are doing their thing behind the scenes.
I took a long term full-time contract at one point when my first kid was born, and still somehow managed to burst out new features this way in between changing diapers. There are a lot of hours in the day, most of which go in to "down time". Don't sweat it too much, and know that you can steal that down time to use when you're motivated.
You've built products, you put the work in and you're generating revenue off the back of it. It's a model that's been around and it's cool that you don't have to be tied to an office to deliver it. I don't think anyone should have a problem with seeing how this works.