The art of being an indie software consultant: a chat with John Berryman

You know what’s both intriguing and challenging about the developer consulting world? It’s not just about writing code, it’s about building a whole persona, finding the right clients, while somehow simultaneously also making sense of the rapidly evolving tech landscape. I just had a nice and interesting chat yesterday with another indie consultant from the prompt engineering and LLM space, John Berryman, that got me thinking about this whole journey. Here are some of the topics we discussed, in no particular order.

What, I have to market myself?!

A thing that keeps coming up in conversations with other consultants is this struggle with the business side of things. We’re comfortable debugging complex systems, but marketing ourselves? Haha, yeah, a tweet now and then will perhaps suffice. And what’s this “sales” you speak of?

I have to become better at this. All the technical skills in the world aren’t useful if the people that need the fruits of those skills don’t know about how to get them. So we talked about some approaches to this.

One of mine is this very blog. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy writing about the things I’m learning and building, but it’s definitely also a way to attract potential clients.

And I have proof that it works! My current client — the interesting work of which I really want to write about soon as well — found me through “Go and SQLite in the cloud”, an article I wrote on my Go course platform.

That engagement has already paid me more than the whole Build Cloud Apps in Go course in its whole lifetime! I’m not sure what that should tell me about my priorities of how I spent my time building that course. 😅 I don’t regret it, and I’ve helped a lot of students, but it wasn’t exactly in my financial interest.

And you don’t need to be the marvelous content machine that is Simon Willison to both put something valuable out there and attract potential clients. Jason Liu has said that four (!) of his most popular articles attract 70% of his clients. The hard thing is to figure out what those four articles should be when you haven’t written them yet, and I figure it’s just easier to try to write a lot and let the internet figure it out for me.

The value-based-pricing puzzle §

The hourly billing ceiling is real. There comes a point where clients just balk at your hourly rate, no matter how reasonable it might be for your expertise. That’s why many of us, myself included, are trying to shift towards value-based pricing: selling our expertise rather than our time. I’ve talked about this before, and I’ll probably talk about it again, because it’s so fundamental in how I sell my services.

But it’s hard! It’s a mindset shift. It requires rewiring how I think about services and how I communicate value to clients.

Finding and evolving your spot in the consulting world §

Here’s something I’ve learned the hard way: it’s crucial to find the right balance between client work and professional development. I’m often deliberately saying no to more work, to carve out time for exploration, learning, and personal and professional development as a whole. Whether that’s for reading some of those books from the big pile you want to read, or just wandering around and thinking some original thoughts (remember those?).

Because let’s face it: if we wanted to just grind out billable hours, we’d probably be better off with a regular job or being in a consultant agency. I’m in it for the fun and the freedom as well!

And I think the real magic happens when you can blend your technical expertise with your genuine interests. Whether that’s diving into LLMs and building Llamafiles for the sake of it, or reading up on new trends in cloud infrastructure, finding your niche is about more than just market demand. It’s about sustaining your enthusiasm for the long haul.

OMG what’s going to happen §

Looking ahead, the consulting landscape is evolving rapidly, especially with AI and LLMs reshaping what’s possible what feels like every single week. But here’s what I find encouraging: there’s still immense value in being a thoughtful, reliable professional who can navigate both the technical and human aspects of software development.

So whether you’re writing Go, working with LLMs, or fixing spreadsheet problems, the key seems to be building genuine expertise and finding ways to communicate that value to the right audience. It’s not about becoming the next $10,000/hour consultant overnight, it’s about steady growth, continuous learning, and having a bit of fun along the way.

We’re not just selling code, we’re selling solutions, expertise, and peace of mind. And that’s worth a lot more than an hourly rate.

PS: Buy John’s book on prompt engineering. (Don’t worry, I don’t do affiliate marketing.) Seriously, it’s great. I’ve read it cover-to-cover and it was exactly what I needed in starting my LLM-based application building journey.