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Ask HN: How do I get into consulting coming from a finance background?

5 points by withinthreshold ↗ HN
I am currently an auditor at a Big 4 firm in low-income country. I am not completely satisfied by the amount of income I retain while working for sometimes 60+ hours per week, and I want to pursue my dream and build a business.

I think that starting to do consulting, saving money and invest it into my own (web product) business is the path to go.

My non-finance skills are: web development (beginner to moderate, knowledge of PHP and PHP frameworks, MySQL, Rails) and Excel (naturally). I have no portfolio currently (besides some basic bootstrap- and wordpress-based sites I've created a while ago).

Is there hope for me? How do I get clients while there are clearly a lot of developers having a substantial portfolio and better skills?

6 comments

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dylanhassinger
Keep your day job and build the product on the side. You can use your current salary to finance some outsourcing, have a product into the market in 3-6 months.

This explains everything: startupbook.net

Also fourhourworkweek.com and lifestylebusinesspodcast.com

Freelancing is a dead end road that takes all your mental energy, avoid it at all costs

michaelpinto
Doing something service oriented like consulting vs. a product are two very different paths. And it's very hard once you do service to launch a product, so it's best to pick one or the other.

I think the main problem you have right now is that 60+ hours per week is brutal, so it's hard to either get a client or build a product if you're already giving it that much.

So I think there is hope for you, but it's best to focus on one thing at a time or at least give yourself the space to do that.

stfu
Just for putting another option on the table:

Get a graduate degree from either a US or UK institution and try making the jump from the low-income country over to a US/EU country. Afaik accounting PhDs are quite in demand so with a littlebit luck and effort you might find there a paid teaching position. That would allow you to have more time on your hands and push your non-finance skills forward.

That might improve your situation more than just building up Php/MySql sites as you have apparently already have quite a solid level of expertise in the auditing industry.

Think about what level of time and effort someone from outside the auditing industry would have to invest in order to compete with your skillset/experience. Unless you found some lucky accident you need to put the same level of effort into your goal if you want to become a full time IT guy (who doesn't just compete with a zillion of other wannabe professionals on oDesk).

munimkazia
I am just wondering.. If you are an auditor in a Big 4 firm, you should be pretty decent in finance itself. Why even look at tech? I am not sure what all financial consulting really involves, but it seems like the natural way to go for you.