My First 6-Figure Consulting Project
And Some Of The Lessons I Learned
By Benjamin Rogojan - AKA (The Seattle Data Guy)
After signing my first 6-figure consulting contact, you’d think I’d be excited.
I was.
But honestly, the most palatable feeling was not excitement…it was an impending dread.
I had inked my first signing contract. Up until this point, I had been taking on 10-20-30k projects. So why was I feeling like I had suddenly taken on the weight of the world?
And what can you learn from my first 6-figure project?
If you’re taking on any form of technical project, there are millions of ways that project could fail and only a few ways it can truly succeed. The larger a project becomes, the scarier.
Don’t take my word for it; just look at the mess Accenture and Hertz got into a few years back.
This was what I realized when I finally signed on the dotted line. I had signed a contract for $150,000. OK, let's say I failed the project. If I was the only one doing the work, then I’d have to give the $150,000 back. That sucks, but at least I have the money to do so.
This project wasn’t putting the company at risk of losing revenue directly, so more than likely, they’d have very little grounds there.
But, I did realize this was the first project I would work on with other contractors–-contractors that I had to pay and make sure were happy. And if the project failed as a whole, I was the one being held liable; thus, I’d still have to pay the contractors for the work they performed.
That.
That’s what scared me. If this project had failed, I would have to find $75,000 from somewhere. I’ll skip to the end of this story and say that the client was happy with the work. But throughout the process, multiple lessons were learned that helped ensure we succeeded.
So let’s talk about it.
Enterprise Contracts
Up until this point, I had worked with small companies and sub-contracts, meaning either people mostly accepted the agreements I set up, or I was working underneath someone else's.
Well, as you can imagine, a 6-figure contract generally comes from mid-market and enterprise-sized organizations.
With that comes procurement and legal teams who already have 100-page-long contracts.
Welcome to contract red-lining.
Which is kind of what it sounds like. You go through a contract and cross out what you don’t want to agree to with a red line.
Truthfully, hiring a lawyer to perform any legal work such as this is likely best. But I’d also say it's good practice to read through contracts.
Here were a few stand-outs from an enterprise-level contract that we had no way of supporting.
Cameras on premises
Badging and Security
Business Continuity Plan (ok, this last one, you could probably set up)
The point is, these contracts weren’t playing around. Enterprises are used to dealing with other billion-dollar consulting companies like Deloitte and BCG, or at the very least, mid-market consultants you have never heard of.
Thus, their contracts are developed to mitigate all the risks of working with other large companies. Getting sued and suing is a normal part of the business at that level.
But for most, you’re probably not expecting any form of legal action to occur. So it’s best to get a lawyer to look through your contracts to ensure you don’t end up on the wrong side of a billion-dollar enterprise.
Dealing With Ambiguity - Defining What Done Is
If your degree is in MIS or computer science, you likely know what scope creep is. But knowing what it is and avoiding it are two different things.
When I initially started the project, it was a classic “someone else built this and we don’t know how it works.” This is very common in the data analytics world, so much so that in 2022, 31% of my projects involved this type of work.
The problem was that when I talked with the stakeholder, it was my understanding that they were okay with numbers being slightly different at a specified granularity as long as they added up to the same numbers.
Our team was working to redevelop a prediction model, which, as you imagine, tends to be finicky. It’s hard to get the exact same output unless you know all the weights, rules, and models being used.
We did not.
So when I built the POC, the total user group level granularity was accurate, but the county level granularity differed about 0.01%-0.1%. Considering we had no idea how the model was built, I was personally pretty proud at the time.
This was ok’d by our stakeholder, so we assumed it was as expected.
As we moved into the second phase of the project, it quickly became clear that this was not the case. They wanted the numbers to match 100%.
Anyone who has ever built a model will likely tell you that those last few .001% differences are the worst. Now we spent several more weeks revamping and reformatting the model. In the end, it was clear that the previous developer actually utilized a combination of automated and manual processes to get the final numbers. We weren’t charged to do that, nor would we be around to finagle with the numbers. In the end, we had to roughly inject business rules to make the numbers work.
Personally, this was a very sad output since I believed our model was an improvement and did a better job calculating the trajectory of counties and user groups compared to the heavy manual process.
This leads me to the final lesson.
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Sell Your Results and Push Back Where Required
Many of us, in our lack of experience, assume that those who have director levels and above know considerably more than we do. This is true, to a point.
But there is a reason you are being hired as a consultant. There is a reason you are getting a 6-figure contract.
That reason is you’re the expert. When going into any engagement, that needs to be your mentality. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t respect your client. You must. But, you must also realize that they are paying you because they are likely uncertain about how to move forward.
Part of your job is to sell your results. If you don’t believe your model or solution is better than the current solution or someone else’s, why’d you build it? Why did you charge $150,000 for the project?
That means you must be willing to push back.
Some of the best consultants I know are willing to push back. They are willing to, borderline, start a fight. This isn’t meant to be disrespectful, but you need to believe what you are doing is the right choice (after you have listened to the client's pains and your own perspective, of course).
Have an opinion and stick to it. Sometimes this might end a project. But in more cases than not, you’ll likely find that other high-level executives will respect your opinion if you’ve earned it by delivering, of course.
Time For Your First 6-Figure Contract
Getting your first 6-figure contract is exciting, but it comes with a lot of weight. Truthfully, it’s actually really nice to take on several smaller projects first and succeed before trying to take on anything over 100k. That way you’re accustomed to contracts and delivering work as expected.
At some point, you will need to cross the project size threshold to grow your business.But early on, I’d recommend you don’t rush. If you’re just starting your consulting business, there are so many other skills you’ll need to pick up, so learn to deliver and then go from there.
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If you want to learn more about starting a consulting company, then check out my Technical Freelancer Academy! I will be launching in September 2023.