Setting Up

You've got a client, there's work they want you to do, you want to go do it. You're in business!
But of course you'll also need a basic business setup, and you may well need it soon.

Here's roughly what you may need to get done, and in what order, with a few tips to smooth the road.
This is specific to the UK unfortunately, but I suspect will be fairly typical. In any case, I have not tried to research and double-check all of this and it was quite some time ago, so check it yourself as you go.

As an aside, bear in mind that when you ask small-scale business contacts for advice, they will see "very small business" and not give much credence to the international complications you may incur.

Can I Get Started Yet?

If you find yourself with work offered to start right now and you are personally ready, but you haven't got your company set up yet, my advice is don't wait, get started. Don't pass up an opportunity just because you've not the paperwork organised. Don't even make the client wait, unless you're very confident they will. That general principle has served me well I think.

Also, for me there was a feeling of fragile momentum: if I didn't take advantage of the opportunities that  I had prepared the ground for, I might be passed by and there might not be others. If you find yourself without work for a couple of months early on, you might well lose confidence and tend towards less ambitious paths.

However, be aware that you'll need to sort out your setup ASAP, while you're doing the work!

Registering a Limited Company

You don't necessarily need a limited company and you can just operate as a sole trader, but I did not research the latter seriously. My understanding is that a sole trader is a more or less automatic status provided so that very small scale, simple businesses can be formalised and pay tax with the absolute minimum of paperwork. There are tax advantages to being a limited company, but actually I went that way primarily because I thought my customers would expect it and it would lend me a little more credibility. If you prefer to keep things simple and don't have immediate grand ambitions, sole trader might be best for you, but here I'll assume you plan to set up a limited company.

I started work on a two week contract and formed the company at the end of the second week. I recall there was a short period after doing trading that you could count it as work under a company that had not yet been formed at the time, but I don't have a reference for you there.

I can at least say that the date that HMRC (the UK tax organisation) cares about is the "time of supply" which then usually forms the tax point. This tends to be the last day of work done. They don't collect information about the time the work started, so if you form your company - as I did - by the last day of work, you should be ok.

If you have decided on an accountant, you can ask them to set it up for you and be sure it'll all correct. However, you can also form it online through companies house, which is cheaper and helpful if you haven't chosen an accountant yet. The only difficulty there is knowing that it's really ok to accept the various default options. I won't give specific advice, but I did it this way recently with some advice and there don't really seem to be any gotchas.

Choosing an Accountant

You won't need an accountant immediately, but once you start trading you'll need one pretty soon, first to advise you on small matters and then to help with your first bookkeeping and VAT returns.

I'd say that there are roughly three classes of accountant, for our purposes. Prices below assume a single-person limited company and are obviously just a rough idea for the UK, in 2013. They exclude VAT - you'll soon get used to that.

• Budget local firms
• Offer low prices - order of £800/year - more about tight margins than really working for you, may not be chartered
• High-end local firms
• The standard option - perhaps £1100/year - should give you a thorough grounding in what you need to know early on, will be chartered and should give sound advice
• Smaller regional or national firms
• Our high-end option - perhaps £1500/year if you negotiate - by having a much larger total staff, should be able to offer more specialist advice through direct experience, for instance regarding international matters

The fourth class is the largest national firms, known in the UK as the "big four". Those companies are most interested in companies like Microsoft - as someone put it to me, why would they care about you? 

There are also some accounting firms that are based online rather than having a local presence. I can't speak for those, I haven't tried them. I can say that when you're starting and when you have to arrange more complicated things - like shareholder agreements - bring able to sit and talk in the same room is very helpful.

In each of these, the thing we're looking for is an annual quote for forming the end-of-year accounts, doing payroll records and doing your self-assessment tax return. It should also include a reasonable amount of advice and it's worth talking about what advice would be covered, even if you aren't likely to fully understand what advice you might need as yet. It should be agreed in advance as a fixed fee, to be renegotiated later in advance if things change.

When I was first looking at accountants, everyone told me "it doesn't matter, just get an accountant" (which I don't agree with) and a few people did tell me "make sure they are chartered" (which I do). Do go and visit them for a free chat, and don't be afraid to follow up as much as required and negotiate with them.

Only consider going for a budget firm if you really expect your turnover to be very small and so margins are really important - and by very small, I mean you're doing a little contract work, mostly in your own country and backpacking the rest of the year. Part of the thinking behind that is that if you're small enough, nobody really cares that much - you're very unlikely to be audited, you could cope with a tax mistake from savings, etc. How do you know they are budget? They are offering a lower quote than others, they don't have expensive cars outside, they may no have "chartered" in their name.

High-end local firms are likely your best starting point. They are chartered, they charge a bit more, they offer some training in their favoured bookkeeping package, they should be experienced with a bunch of bigger clients than you and do a decent job looking up anything unusual you need. Within these, there will still be variation. 

The key thing for our purposes is the international consultant angle. Do they have other clients who travel to Europe, the US, etc, and sell IT services onsite? (I.e., itinerant programmers, the target audience of this blog!) Services have different rules to selling products, and when it's international, these rules are more complex, a little different for each economic area and with different paperwork. As a general rule, I only really expect someone to do something correctly if they've done it a bunch of times before, and they'll certainly be quicker with the advice. It may well be hard to find an accountant with exactly this kind of client, but it's a good area to discuss.

I have also heard just one or two hearty recommendations of "I changed to this person and she actually saved me money!" It's possible to lose sight of that - a good accountant may (given enough business to work with) be able to suggest some savings, at which point you'll feel very good about their fee.

Finally, if you get on well with them and they are conveniently placed for you, those things will help every time you do something new and complex. However, as an itinerant, the "local" factor may be a lot less help. If you are going truly portable as I did and having no permanent base, there may be no single location that makes sense. Consider, in that case, getting a firm in a city with a large airport travel hub, even if they cost a little more, as you are likely to at least often pass by.

The third class of accountants - smaller regional or national firms - are likely overkill while you are a one person company. With hundreds of staff and a half dozen or more branches, with the minimal fees you should have negotiated, the reason they are giving you any time at all is the hope that your business will grow and become a valuable client. If you are still one person, without immediate ambition and perhaps intending to remain a "lifestyle" business, I think this is a poor fit of motivations. Having said that, you may grow later and might want to move to such a firm.

Changing accountant is a well-ordered process, where the new one requests "professional clearance" from the old. I worried that the transition would be hard work, but if you choose a sensible time (i.e. not immediately before annual returns are due!) and show the new accountants your current records and processes, they should be able to take care of most of it in a sensible timeframe.

Bookkeeping I will save for a future post. To be clear though, your books are the records of all financial activity, which you use to make your VAT returns, and your accountant uses as the basis of annual returns and so on. Your accountant can suggest bookkeepers, or you may keep your own. For now though, just keep all your receipts!

Getting a Bank Account

You only really need a bank account when you have to write an account number on an invoice! Anything else, if you hang onto the receipts (VAT ones please, more on that later...) you can claim as director's expenses later. So this could well be the last step in the your process.

I cannot yet recommend a small business bank. I went with Barclays - the biggest bank in the UK? and have not been impressed. I can give you some starting points for research.

First, what variation is there? Mostly, service. I had the idea of a bank manager who I could personally talk to, but for me that turned out to be a fiction. With an accountant, this doesn't matter much in any case, except that they would sometimes help you more effectively if they know you, and might be able to make a personal call on business loans etc.

So what really matters is their online and telephone services. When you call their business banking number, how effective is their service? If it is slow, it will be a terrible drain on your time. Are their call centres in the UK or abroad? The latter can be frustrating.

Hopefully, you can do 95% of your interactions on their website. However, I do a lot of transactions with currency accounts, rather than my native Sterling. For those, I have been promised a full online service is coming soon since I signed up, and in 2013 I'm still waiting.

My best advice is to ask your accountant for a recommendation and look for online reviews of business banking services, specifically looking out for mention of telephone and online service around currency accounts - which you may decide you wish you use.

Variation in fees also exist I presume - monthly charges, charges on international transfers, currency exchange rates - but these are probably less of a factor.

My Experience

So, what did I do for company formation, accountants, bank account first time around?

Accounting: I chose an unchartered, budget local accountants, and I regret it. So, why did I do that?

I talked to a high-end local firm, but in the end felt rushed by needing to form a company for the work contract I had started and wanting it to be done correctly by someone who knew the drill. I told myself that people had told me "any accountant will do" and I was worrying too much, and I was keen to save some money because I expected to only work a little that year, spending a lot of time on travel, vacation and some blue-sky projects. They did get votes of approval from two people I knew, but they were not solid business contacts. In fact I assumed they were chartered, and later realised they advertised no such thing. To be fair, spending over £1000 a year on accounting when you have very few solid plans to earn any money feels quite a leap.

In retrospect it was a mistake that caused me a lot of problems.

I wasn't given training in how to do the bookkeeping well, instead told that a simple spreadsheet was all that was required for such a small business. Over time though, as my business activities became more international, that spreadsheet got a bit baroque, and it also prevented me from having easy access to figures. It would have been better to start on a firmer footing.

A less professional accountant was later replaced by a better one as my point of contact, but he still lacked some experience with international aspects and didn't help me set up more concrete procedures as my business grew.

They were local to my parents home town and my parents promptly moved hundreds of miles away to retire. I never visited their office in the next 3 years, because I rarely passed by. However, I can say from that, that working by phone and email is quite effective for regular matters, and only really a problem when you need to make fundamental changes.

The key point is that you have to trust these experts around you. When trickier aspects have come up I have not had full confidence in their advice and procedures, so I have spent time on my own research and on simply worrying. That's a terrible cost.

Company formation: I believe I would have been better to form the company online, perhaps getting some free advice from an accountant on how to do that before actually signing up; then to choose a chartered accountant with international experience in a well-chosen location.

Bank account: I went with Barclays, which would seem a reasonable bet. I can say that their online service doesn't allow me to do anything with my euro and dollar currency accounts, but after four years of promises I can finally at least see the balance on those. That at least saves me 5 or 10 minute phone calls to a usually international call centre to see if money has come through yet from a client. Why so long? For one thing because of security checks, but also because I'm usually bounced through at least two people, one or both of whom will often keep me waiting because their computer systems aren't working very well at the moment. The international call centres are frustrating because they are so heavily drilled in their scripts that it's a little soul-destroying.

So in short, look out for those aspects, do some research, try someone who isn't Barclays.

For your entertainment, I'll also mention the bank manager. The reason I went with Barclays was because of the three business bank managers I spoke to in the high street, the young chap there was the only one who really took an interest in what I was doing in my business, and seemed to have a bunch of contacts who might even be helpful. I left with a feeling that he was a bizarre anomaly that I should probably take advantage of. He personally answered emails and a couple of phone calls as I was getting set up.

Apparently his boss must have decided he was a bizarre anomaly too though, because some weeks later when my emails or calls were not returned, I was finally told by a member of staff that he no longer worked for them. The look she gave me made it clear there was a story behind this. I think he'd been pursuing a mission of personal service completely at odds with company policy. I was given a new "bank manager", which turned out to be a call centre.

You know, writing this section, I really have to wonder why I consider myself a lucky individual! As you'll hear, my first year was really not easy - but all for reasons I think are quite easily avoided.

Work in Progress

In fact, I might have updates to make to the advice above in the next few months, because of things currently under way. We have just recently switched from the budget accountants to one of the larger firms outside of the "big four". So far my impression is that there's some cleanup to be done and some reorganisation and a bunch of issues to take care of that weren't properly on my radar. The extent of that will only be clear in a couple of months time.

We also have a more complex company structure, and formed a new company online recently with no trouble. I plan to try a new bank when and if it is required.

YMMV

February 2010: First Contracts

It really has been an entire year since I last posted! Following the retrospective format of this blog, I'm writing about February 2010 in October 2013, so you might be wondering what happening with me now and what held me up for a year. I've been very busy for some of that time and otherwise just keen to be thinking about something totally different from work! My life and the business have changed a lot in the last year - but four years after I started contracting, I haven't yet crashed and burned - quite the opposite in fact. I think that lends this blog a little more weight.

[Edit - when I first wrote this I missed that my trip to the US also took place in this month, which changes the sense of this quite a lot. Some changes now made to fix that]

When I left my regular job, I've mentioned that I negotiated a contract with them to keep working as an occasional contractor. The specific work that was first mentioned was a trip to visit one of their clients in the States. I remember this seeming to be delayed forever.

However, I had made a contact with another branch of the company in the UK. They wanted me too, and they had fewer obstacles to arranging it. Hence my first contract work at the start of February was in the north of England where I spent two weeks on-site with that team - the first of several visits.

 

While on-site, the US trip was confirmed on a couple of weeks notice. Because I had so few commitments, that was no problem. With nary-a-break but one week's preparation in-between, I flew off to San Francisco.

Choose your Clients

I still consider myself very lucky indeed with the clients who I have ended up working with. Actually, I suspect in hindsight that it is not really luck.

A few factors helped:

• A large initial network of contacts I knew well
• who helped me find work and who were a basis of trust in those new clients
• Optimism and perceived lack of constraints
• which encouraged me to take contracts I thought I'd enjoy when they came up,  rather than desperately chasing any work
• Willingness to base things on trust
• it's a lot easier than trying to ensure it with legal agreements
• Judgement of how far I could rely on someone
• However well-meaning someone is, they can only help you out in business while their interests align with yours. A sense of that, and how quickly it might change, really helps.

Even if those things helped, I do consider myself very fortunate in the clients I've worked with. If the first few had been different, perhaps I wouldn't have made it. Having said that, I am an optimist, and in fact you'll hear that I had a pretty hard time in my first year. I tend to see the silver lining in the few jobs that went badly, as much as I try to avoid repeating the mistakes - and perhaps that is a good recipe for success in itself.

You're not Special

These were formative and sensitive times, when my confidence was fragile and I often felt a bit of a fraud. Here I was, jaunting around and exploiting my knowledge and experience and being well paid for it, when really I was no better than anyone else in the daily grind. For that first contract in the UK office, it was all the more obvious to me because I was working within the same company I'd worked at for years. There were a lot of very talented people there and often I would look at the performance and feel inferior.

These thoughts and attitudes did at least help remind me to be humble about my perceived success - and that is very helpful if you want people to like you.

In 2012, a conversation with my mother made me realise that this kind of stance had served me well for a long time. At school, until I reached university, I tended to always be at the top of the class and I was not humble, but my ego was at least tempered by an acute sense of embarrassment - I didn't actually want my classmates to realise I was doing so well. This was probably key to my making such good friends during that time.

Your early contracts might well, like me, be in your original company, with people who already know you, and if you play it badly they may well resent you, which would be poisonous to your new career. You may be able to command better pay and privilege, but at this stage you skill set is likely to be very similar to others and your experience probably less. Many of them will realise that.

It may also help to remember that most of them would not choose your life. For one thing, they know where next month's paycheck is coming from.

First Experience

Given my relative lack of confidence, the team on this first, UK-based contract were really ideal.

The programmers themselves were extremely skilled and creative, and helped inspired me to look for clever solutions rather than accepting the mediocre. But they were also quiet, humble, friendly and simply nice. They were very glad of my specialist help and they made be feel welcome. The larger team welcomed me similarly. Instrumental at that time was that I was viewed as a conduit of knowledge from the main branch, a kindof proxy for that team. In a sense, some of my clients now still view me the same way.

The first two weeks on site were free of distractions; welcoming; different but familiar. I stayed in a nearby hotel - the first of many! - and walked into the office each morning - as I have always done since, in various cities. I socialised with the team over lunch and in the evenings I usually chilled out in the hotel with a film or a book, or went running.

I did go away for the weekend and visit friends in a nearby city for a night. That was fulfilling in itself - after being out of the UK for so long, friends being just a train journey away was a great pleasure.

Focus on your Client

While I was in the office, I focussed on the job, conscious that this could be a regular arrangement, or if it went poorly, the work would dry up. Let me emphasise that advice: on every single on-site visit, focus on the client.

You're there for a short time, you should be paid well for it, and one reason you can ask those rates is because you show a level of dedication and intensity above the salaried employees. I'm not saying you work longer hours - though sometimes that is required - and I'm not assuming they lack dedication. I mean that because you just drop in and drop out, you can see things afresh, put your whole mind to something and then afterwards take a break for a few days - which they cannot. You have the opportunity to shine for a short time - which is part of why they will hire you again.

However, you do have worries that they don't: such as arranging the next contract or following up on the last. My strong advice is not to allow yourself to be distracted by that or anything else while you are on-site. You'll hear more on that later.

Straight on to San Francisco!

When I first wrote this, I forgot just how hectic it had been. Straight after those first two weeks on-site in England, I traveled back to my parents place where I spent a week preparing for a second trip this time to San Francisco. When making contract proposals, always consider building in some paid preparation time: you will likely need to use it either way, it lets you hit the ground running, and it's quite possible the client will agree to it, then not find time to send you any prep material, making it easy money.

In this case, I was putting together tutorial material on my specialist area, building on the various material I'd gathered before leaving. Having this contract lined up meant I'd been perfectly justified in taking copies of a lot of my own notes and material. In fact, they even kept my old work email going for a long while afterwards, which was a searchable treasure-trove.

I didn't have a laptop or even a decent PC - I put a fairly low-spec one together for this work. In retrospect, a laptop would have been a great idea, but I didn't have time to decide on one. I did buy an iPhone - my first smartphone! In fact I'd never regularly used a phone until this point, and it was for business communication that I finally got a phone contract (expensed, of course).

The week on-site was pretty intense, with no time for sightseeing. I was joined by several people from the main office and we all had screwed up body-clocks, though the fairly luxurious hotel helped. Since we had all flown out for this, and I knew them all beforehand - indeed, was great friends with some! - I didn't feel the outsider at all, no different to anyone else.

I did get a first taste of presenting to clients, even if technically they were someone else's. My preparation was a good start, but the feedback reinforced to me the gaps in the product. In my old role, in principle I could address those, though I'd rarely be offered the time. In my new role it felt quite off-limits - though I strained to see improvements in it for a long time, all the same.

By the end of the week, we were exhausted but in high spirits, with an apparently happy client. The stress caught up with me and I found a thing or two to panic about. Then we were done.

I remember floating in the hotel basement jacuzzi, quite alone, feeling a perfect peace. It was one of the high moments of the year and a feeling I still try to return to.

My colleagues would fly back in just a day or two, but I could stay to enjoy San Francisco. Which is where we start the next, very different month.
 

YMMV

Storing It

So, I know that you've all gone through and thrown out nearly all your worldly possessions, and are now sitting looking at the rest wondering what to do with it! Here's the other half of that first hurdle.

Where to Put It

The first question to ask is - where is it going to go? This could affect what you decide to store. If you will have relatively easy access, you might store more. If it's going to cost money to store it, you might look harder at your pile.

Ideally, find a relative or lifelong friend who is likely to stay put and is willing to pile it in a corner in their loft or garage. If that person happens to be so generous towards you as to be willing to occasionally fish something out and post it, that could be very useful.

Paying for storage is worth investigating, if only to assure yourself it's not the best solution. To my mind, the potential advantage of commercial storage is that you can choose an ideal location - for me, this would be near central London, my travel hub. This means you can regularly drop by to pick things up without going far out of your way. However, even a small volume of storage space in a big city will cost a significant amount - and the staff will surely not post things for you.

It might be that commercial storage is the only option you've got for all your boxes - in which case, perhaps try budgeting for 6 months to see how things work out for you. After that point I'd suggest going back to the "Getting Rid of All Your Stuff" post and looking at it all again!

Packing it Up

Use boxes, not bags: they're stackable and can be posted. If you use plastic boxes, use the heavy-duty ones that won't end up splitting under weight - but they have some weight in themselves and I don't know if they can be posted as-is.

I used strong cardboard boxes. You can buy great parcel-boxes from post offices, but they tend to be quite small. I went to a big DIY / home-improvement store and bought boxes designed for home-removal - around 50x50x100cm. These needed some careful taping to be suitable for postage but they did the job well.

If you do use cardboard boxes, consider lining them with a large sheet of plastic. Long-term, this will help prevent the contents going mouldy if the box gets damp; also if your box actually gets wet, it's likely to fall apart, but if done right the lining will help keep the contents together. Imagine, if you will, the bottom falling out of a wet box in the delivery warehouse and scattering your apparently irreplaceable crap across the floor. (And if that doesn't trouble you - why are you keeping it?)

Don't overload any one box - try to mix a few heavy things with the lighter stuff in each. The things you expect to actually need at some point - professional books for example - try to keep together.

Record what goes into each box and clearly number it on several sides. Record the general themes (books, clothes, letters...) and any individual items that you think you might want to dig out. Maintain the list until you seal the box. Do something idiot-proof with the list - like email it to yourself in Gmail.

All this takes time but means that in 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years when you remember there was that thing or that book that you need, you can quickly find out which box it is in, you can find the box number without restacking them all, and when you open it up it hasn't gone mouldy. If you're leaving these boxes with friends or family, try to make it easy enough that they can fish things out for you - which can be a real lifesaver.

How to Get It There

You will know a bunch of ways to get your stuff where it's needed, but as I've hinted, the main one I want to call out is post - especially if it's overseas.

One big advantage of posting is that you can do it box by box over time, which gets things out of the way. If you have time, don't pack just to get it there - pack them as above, ready for storage. The chances are you won't bother to systematically repack - so just do it right the first time.

I've found that while posting from the UK to elsewhere is prohibitively expensive, posting from Europe to the UK or anywhere else is often quite reasonable. For example, you can send 31,5 kg in a 120x60x60cm box from Germany to the UK, with some insurance and basic tracking for 40 EUR. In the other direction, it seems to be twice as expensive. I would expect that about half of European countries offer a good deal on this and I'd like to know how it is within the US - perhaps readers can tell me their experiences.

If you consider flying it, remember that the cut-price airlines tend to overcharge on extra weight - a more expensive ticket may save you money on baggage costs. Ultimately though, there's only so much you can wheel into an airport.

My Experience

My stuff is all stored at my parents place. Most of it is in the garage, still in the boxes I first packed it in. However, I actually had to do all this in two passes. First, I had to move out from my apartment in Germany, back to my parents place in the UK. Then, they were moving to a smaller house just a couple of months later! That meant they absolutely did not want dozens of new boxes - and I had to go through all stuff I'd piled up there since my childhood as well!

I ended up re-packing some of the first set of boxes, which damaged them and I didn't maintain the lists I've made. As a result, some boxes are in a poor state and there are a few books and so on that I'd like to find but aren't worth the search. I only labelled one or two sides of each box and that makes it a pain trying to find them in the stack.

After that, I really did get all my worldly possessions down to about a dozen boxes in a garage, and a travel bag.

I did post everything back, travelling fairly light on the flight home. I sent six boxes and it was nearly 8 weeks from posting the first box to posting the last. I believe I spent around 180 Euros on postage.

Although I didn't expect to be travelling quite so much over the following years, I did fully expect to leave a lot of it there for a long time. Around two-thirds is still in the garage, with the other third having migrated indoors to cupboards and shelves as I needed it.

The garage roof for their new house leaks a little, so I'm glad I lined the boxes - I mostly used some really thick plastic we had around from a sofa delivery and so far I haven't found that anything has deteriorated. The longer it stays there, the more glad I am of the efforts I put into packing it up.

My mum helps out in various ways you might hear about in future posts, but a common thing is to post me things. As long as I know roughly were something is, she's happy to find it and get it to me, which has been really, really useful over and over again. My parents place is not quite a home-base, but it is a way-station and a depot.

I recently found a photo of my bedroom, just before I'd moved out, and sure there are things that I miss, but I know they're in those boxes and frankly that's still the best place for them!

Finally, I'd like to admit that my final box from Germany was less well organised. With time ticking away before my flight and after a late night (those last-minute social connections!), I placed a final box in the middle of my flat and ran around throwing into it all the random bits and pieces I still had. No list, no lining, no careful packing, just a cardboard box full of random crap rattling around. The streets were covered in melting snow and the box got wet on the way to the post office, dropped off immediately before I left for the airport. I did fear a sorting-office explosion, but it survived the trip.

So, with that done... we're portable!

YMMV

January 2010: Social Networking

The first events on my return were Christmas in England with my family and then New Year in Scotland with friends. That's a great time of year to be starting afresh and reconnecting.

After that I settled back into my parents place - my home since childhood. It was a welcoming, familiar environment to start working in, with a few friends in the area, but I quickly felt the difference from the large and lively office and ex-pat community I'd had around me in Germany. I was a little surprised to find I enjoyed the quiet and freedom from distraction. I'd been very social before so I had expected to find it quite lonely. This is a pretty common problem for the self-employed and it can be reason enough to go back to a regular office. For me, social as I as before, that feeling took a couple of years to really be felt, by which time there were some new options opening for me.

What I did find was that I should get out of there, go on a trip and visit some friends every second weekend, or I would go stir-crazy. In fact it's an old habit to join up the dots available for any journey like the travelling salesman of proverb, visiting as many friends as possible - and when you can work on the move on a laptop, it opens up a lot more possibilities.

While I was meeting up in person with lots of old UK friends, I was still keeping my other networks going. I found I had friends (mostly through work) scattered across the globe, and the number has gone up dramatically since. Occasional emails go a long way, and whenever I'm travelling somewhere I try to think of who I know in the area and get in touch. You can only keep travelling while you keep enjoying it, and visiting friends is one of the best perks.

Facebook was a lifesaver. I think it would have been incredibly hard to go from having so many friends around me to so few, if it weren't for those status updates - hearing what they were up to, chiming in, posting about my adventures and getting responses to tell me they still cared. Months later, I realised I came to depend on it too much.

But I've always kept in touch with people. I've rarely distinguished between friends and colleagues and keeping in touch with old friends turns out to have served me well. Suddenly I realised I'd been building a wide professional network all these years, and when I asked around, there were people keen to put in a good word for me from the US to Japan. Turning those into suitable paid contracts doesn't just happen, but it's a great start.

First Diggs

I was lucky to be able to stay with family. I wanted to spend more time with them, it was where all my stuff was, it was cheap and I could leave whenever I wanted. It was a good jumping-off point.

When you don't have anything lined up, it's tempting to go somewhere cheap or free - but my advice is not to ignore how productive an environment it is and the distractions that come with it. If you're focussing on just your budget, maybe you're not being ambitious enough. I paid my parents for food and bills, as I didn't want to be a freeloader. However, after a few weeks it seemed my Dad feared it would become permanent - and I thought the best way to reassure him was to get travelling.

If you're able to move back in with family and use their home as a base, that's great. Perhaps you could stay with friends in the same way. However, if it's not a clear paid arrangement, it's likely to get awkward after a while. On top of that, you're not your own master and, above all, that should be one of the goals of portability. So, unless you really find it's an ideal environment for you, don't take the easy option and stop there.

Building a Name

I had some ideas for software projects and I planned to start developing one. However, though a contact, I had got a professional online presentation lined up that would potentially put me in from of a lot of customers. I had never given a presentation to an external audience before, so this was quite a big deal. In fact it was the perfect first step for a growing series of professional presentations I would be giving in the next couple of years. I put a lot of time into it. I'll talk more about presentations in future, but the time I've put into them has perhaps remained fairly constant - my experience has ramped up, but so has the perceived value of the events. Such presentations are key to establishing value and reputation in your field. They can be a big source of stress, but my advice is to spend as much time as you need to feel fully prepared and if people tell you've already done enough - ignore them.

In this case, I spent a few days preparing a software demo of the technique I was going to talk about, integrating it with a real and familiar application; and also going through slides as a dry-run. Insomnia has been a big problem for me, so it wasn't too surprising that I got very little sleep the night before, and it affected me worse than you might expect. I felt a wreck - running on coffee and adrenaline - and my performance suffered, causing a lot of umming and arring (which can ruin a presentation). However,  all the preparation I'd put in meant I didn't get totally stuck. I felt I'd done a poor job and was very nervous to review the results! But it seems it was good enough - I've had a couple of clients since talk about that presentation, and I was accepted for a conference presentation later by the same team. It was indeed a good first step.

In presenting yourself as a professional, there are a few things that you need if you're going to be taken seriously. In the old days, my understanding is that this included a good business card and a phone number with an answering machine. Now, you primarily need a simple professional website.

People will occasionally find your website and contact you from nowhere. So far I have still had very few people contact be from nowhere because of my website, and most of those went nowhere - the real business all came through word of mouth. The reason for having one is mainly to provide existing contacts with basic information about you and a professional impression. Most of you will know the feeling of following a random link and deciding in half a second that the page is a waste of your time. You need to pass that test.

I'd already got hold of appropriate domain names. I'm a programmer, I could certainly have built a website myself. However, I knew very little web technology  and I knew I was going to be very busy with all this moving and the presentation. And, in practice. anything takes a long time when you have no experience of it. I asked my brother to do it, who had done a little web contracting before. This helped me get something up and running.

Business cards are a nice-to-have, for occasions when you're meeting new contacts offline. Get some if you're going to conferences - simple and professional, with just your name, email and web address.

Setting Up

I also started looking for an accountant. This was something that everyone told me would be easy and I didn't believe them. Three years later, I still don't think it is easy. The problem is that everyone sees you as a very small business and so assumes you can't be much trouble. Then when you're earning dollars and euros and you're doing it in different places and people are asking for the right form to be filled out and you do not have time to figure it all out yourself… then you might find that a small local firm doesn't have the experience. I'll be discussing this in detail in a future post.

I went to some local business seminars. Actually, that's an exaggeration. I intended to go to several, made it to one - very late - and when I left I was still unconvinced that I needed a "business plan", since I didn't know what I was going to do and I wanted to take advantage of whatever opportunities came why way - so how could I possibly plan? Again, the seminars included some wise words from experienced people, but their idea of a small business seemed worlds apart from my attitude to it.

I needed a simple computer to work on and I didn't actually have anything suitable. I threw something cheap from component parts at a minimum spec. At this time, I didn't have a laptop at all and I expected to need to upgrade to something quite powerful later.

Rounding up

This was a period of great optimism and motivation, with endless possibilities and wonderful opportunities ready for the taking.

I was not actively looking for work, as I already had some work lined up with my old company - you'll hear more about that.

My advice is: enjoy this time. If you've been in a job for a while, or tied down some other way, take advantage of this independence, the energy of change, and the blank slate. Whatever plans you have, they can probably wait a little while, and right now you've got fewer ties, fewer concrete plans, fewer habits and commitments than you've probably had in quite a while.

It won't always be like that: you will start building them all up again and that's natural and good. But savour it while you can.

Get Rid of All of Your Stuff

If you're going to be truly portable, you need to get rid of all your stuff.

This isn't the same as moving house, or even moving country as I was, because you're preparing to keep moving for an extended period of time. You are dividing your stuff into: get rid of it, store it, or carry it.

Getting rid of it is great. There is a certain lightness of existence realised when you can go from "I live here" to "my life is in this suitcase" in a couple of hours. In the last century, the cynics told us this was a world obsessed with material things. This century, it's the digital things we're hung up on. You can do without the rest for a while.

Storing it is where we admit we are attached to some of our possessions and we don't plan to travel forever. It's also a handy get-out clause for all of us without the guts to throw away everything we should.

Carrying it is the category you shouldn't bother to think about much at this stage. These are the things you can fit in a bag or two and walk with unaided to the airport and it will take time to refine. For now, just think about the things you'll need while you're moving out and the things you'll need access to in the following days.

I have enough to say about these that I'm going to split it into a couple of posts. Here's the leader.

Get rid of it

Most people find this hard to do (myself included) and end up hanging onto more stuff than they need. Here are questions that may help you whittle it down.

Do I use this?

If it seems useful but you haven't actually used it in 6 months, chances are you don't need it. Try to be brutal. If you use it all the time, then it's no use in storage: are you prepared to actually cart it around with you all the time?

Is it replaceable?

Yes, you are sure you will need it. However, you're not sure when and therefore you are not sure where. Is it something generic, easily replaced? If that seems like a waste of money then consider: what it will cost to transport and to store it properly; how much could you get by selling it; how much it will cost to get it where you need it. If Amazon can just sell you a brand new one and deliver it wherever you need it for free, isn't that worth something?

If I store it, will it still work when I need it?

A lot of things become less useful over time when they're stored away. Some physically deteriorate (especially if not prepared properly) or some things - especially technological things - date badly. Or it may simply be that when you need it, you'll need it quickly and you won't want to travel to dig it out of storage. These things - whatever they're worth, there's just no point keeping.

But it's of great sentimental value!

Those little nicknacks you don't really need but can't bear to throw away - the present from your grandmother, the rug you bought on holiday, the special postcard, that painting your friend made for you. That's fine - just try to keep it to the small things! Store them all away where they won't clutter up your life - until you give up your travelling ways (in about 40 posts' time?) and you can take them all out and help you form a home.

And remember - you will have just a few things that are quite unique and remind you of people, places and times that you may never see again. Discard your stuff, but not your life.


And there are a couple of special cases...

Books, CDs, DVDs

CDs are already on the way out as I write this and (unlike vinyl) as a physical object they just feel cheap and can't claim to be a definitive reproduction in any way. Sell or give them all away. Sign up to Spotify (though I have moral qualms) or if you really must and have time, rip them all to MP3.

DVDs will surely be dead in a couple of years time and they won't be replaced by Blu-Ray, you'll just be streaming them. Chances are you already have loads of movies and TV series on your hard drive. By the time you want these again, they'll look like beta-max. Get rid of them and get them from iTunes, LoveFilm, Netflix or simply BitTorrent when you want them.

Books - these are different. In some sense they're already obsolete but the design has barely changed in hundreds of years and people still think a physical book is special. Buy a Kindle or the like, because you really cannot carry many books any other way. The pulp, ditch. Any expensive, work-related books, put them somewhere easily accessible if you can. Store the rest and, like me, dream of a beautiful library in your future.

Paper

You will have various official bits of paper, receipts, manuals and - if you're anything like me - hundreds of bits of paper with possibly-incredibly-important scrawlings on them. Bear in mind that manuals can usually be found as PDFs on the Internet. Also, consider getting a scanner and reducing papers to a JPEG.

How do I get rid of it?

As hinted above, there are loads of ways to get rid of your stuff when you've decided to do so, some of them even without losing it: you can sell it, give it away, bin it, recycle it, scan it, rip it, summarise it... Like compressing a data file or a video, how far you can compress it partly depends on how much time you have available.

I was lucky enough to have a popular office mailing list where people often posted things they wanted to sell. I sold everything from electronics to furniture that way. Also, if you are in contact with whoever will move into your place when you are gone, ask them if they want anything. Give them a discount rate, since the very easiest thing to do with your stuff is to leave it exactly where it is.

My experience

I can honestly say, a couple of years later, that there's nothing I got rid of that I regret. That means I didn't throw enough stuff away!

I have not yet set up a new home, so in theory I might one day be glad of... the huge old projector I never used, the amplifier and speakers that I liked so much, the whisky cabinet that was my favourite piece of furniture, the expensive mattress. But I doubt I'm going to much care. The projector was already very old. The amp and speakers were pretty standard items really, which I would probably enjoy shopping to replace. The whisky cabinet was from IKEA. A mattress is a real pain to transport or store.

What I can say I should have gotten rid of: all my computers. This was obviously a weakness for me at the time, based on the idea of lots of small, low-power computers set up around a house doing useful or cool things. So I boxed up and sent back a couple of old laptops, two mini-PCs, one or two flat-screen monitors... Then this was added to the similar stuff I'd already had stored away in the UK. When I finally came to go through these boxes some months later, it became a running joke for me, as to how many computers the next box would contain.

None of those mini-PCs, laptops or screens have been any use to me since and they'll soon be museum pieces - I would have been better to simply strip out the hard drives and give the rest away. To be fair, I did not expect to be without a house to use them for so long, when I was packing. But, after all, the Raspberry Pi has been invented since then!

Also, I kept far too many books that I did not really care about, just because I thought they'd help complete my dream library. Turns out, after being portable for so long, I hate the idea of owning any book (or anything else physical) that I don't really think is useful or awesome.

The things I'm reminded of are the reindeer-skin rug I bought in Stockholm, the posters and paintings, the statuette, the books. These things I look forward to unpacking one day.

YMMV


Read on to find out what to do with the stuff you're left with!

[Updates]
1/09/12: Expanded "My experience" section
20/01/13: Added re books

Leaving Your Home, Leaving Your Job

A home will hold you back

The chances are that you're living in a house or apartment where you have a long-term rental contract. If by some chance you're actually already footloose - well done, you can skip ahead! If not - it's got to go...

Having a base can be very useful, but when you add up all the maintenance costs it is a big financial burden. You will find yourself working to pay for something you're not using - and discouraged from travelling for that reason. Relying on temporary accommodation can be surprisingly cost effective and opens up a lot of possibilities. (Future post: Accommodation)

If you actually own your home already, that's fantastic: rent it out. I have no experience here but my understanding is that it should pay for any mortgage. Do it through an agent - otherwise you never know when you'll be required to turn up as a landlord. Consider setting aside a locked cupboard or some loft space or a shed for your own long-term storage that you can visit when you need to.

In my case everything to do with the apartment in Germany had to be taken care of - contracts for the place itself, utilities and so on - and in a language I still hadn't mastered. It was a shared apartment which helped a lot: only a few things were in my name, the whole flat did not have to be cleared, the contract needed amending but could continue, most of the furniture were joint purchases and many things I could sell or pass on to my flatmates. However, it still took a huge amount of time and the admin wasn't complete until weeks after I left. Some of this was because I was leaving a foreign country, and one where I was not fluent in the language - if that's you, don't underestimate how much trouble this can be.

I have never taken a formal rental or arranged utilities since, even in my home country of the UK - they make no sense on my timescales. If you go abroad with work, even for months at a time, look for alternatives.

Most jobs are not portable

This blog is about being a technology professional on the move and if you're the target audience, you probably already have a good, permanent employment contract that you're thinking of leaving, or you've recently left. If you're just starting out and you want to do it portably, that's a different road and perhaps a harder one.

Assuming you've decided to leave a long-term job for whatever reasons, there is some useful preparation you can do to lay groundwork for a portable career. I have to admit, I didn't do this out of a clear plan. Rather, it was just important to me to leave on good terms, to keep doors open where possible, to make the most of my experience to date and to start finding new opportunities.

As I've discussed in an introductory post, I am a technology specialist. I realised that my employer would really miss my experience. I talked to them about being available for occasional contract work soon after i gave my notice, and I signed a contract the day I left.

If this might apply to you then make very sure you explore it because there are a lot of benefits to such an arrangement. It instills a great deal of confidence in prospective employers if they know that you were valued enough to be offered part-time work. It's a great basis for keeping future contacts and networking. And if that work comes through, it will give you some confidence and a little security while you're finding your feet - it certainly did for me. If you're fed up with your work or your employer, try to see beyond that and keep the door open without concrete commitment.

If it's not something you can do - and I know of cases where employers simply won't consider it regardless of value - then still make a point of firming up your contacts in your company. Most of my best clients to date have come from word of mouth based on those initial contacts and I think that's a common experience.

I got in touch with a good jobs agency for my field and made sure they knew I was available. I wasn't looking for contracts of even 6 months in length so I didn't expect anything to come of it, but in fact I did take a contract in the end. If you just might take something then call them - but be very honest about what you're looking for. (Future post: Finding Clients)

If you're a technology specialist, you've probably got a wealth of accumulated notes, emails and reference material at work. If you continue to work in a related field, you are likely to really miss these. Take the time to go through these and take whatever you can with you in some form. That might simply be forwarding yourself a list of Internet links or might be making notes on some ideas you had. Don't be tempted to take anything confidential or that violates your contract - especially as an independent, trust is everything.

View your current job as a launch pad for a new, portable career.

YMMV

December 2009: Leaving

Some of the posts in this blog are a retrospective account of my own experience.  Each post will be about one month and I'll post every fortnight when I can. This is the first post in the series.

I've been told that I set a new record for the number of leaving parties. I find that hard to believe - I had stiff competition - but certainly I knew there were a lot of people I was going to miss and I wanted to say goodbye properly to them all. I had moved to Germany to join a company dominated by ex-pats, which had always been very social and I'd been very active in that. It did strike me that I might find working alone very hard for that reason (Future post: Working Alone).

Deciding to leave Germany and go it alone - that's a big topic all of it's own that I'll not go into here, or I'll never get started (Future post: Is It For Me?) Suffice to say that life had thrown me a couple of months to think, travel and put things in perspective and this was the conclusion I reached. There had been a building feeling for a long time that I was tired of talking about the things I believed I could do, without doing them and the experiences I wanted to have that weren't happening. If you can do what you want to do part-time, around a permanent job, I've heard a lot of people recommend that and more power to you. I'd found that wasn't working.

I felt my life had been "on hold" for a long time and I needed to get it on the move again because I had a lot of catching up to do. That was pretty much the single driving motivation behind the next two years!

I sent the first of my stuff home on the 3rd of November and I flew home about 6 weeks later, just before Christmas. Going from all the collected possessions of a settled existence to the few essentials of a peripatetic lifestyle takes some work (Future Posts: Getting Rid Of Your Stuff and Storing It).

But apart from packing, what else did I do in that time?

For a start, I made some great new friends! The thing is, when you're about to leave is when life gets exciting. At least, that's the case for me, I can't help thinking it should apply to everyone and I don't think there's anything remarkable about it either. You want to make the most of your time and suddenly you know that if you don't do it now - chances are you never will. I went to the parties I had turned down, I saw the sights I hadn't visited, I stayed to chat with the neighbours I'd never talked to, and this somewhat reserved soul got a lot bolder with women. (Yes - as I expect you've assumed by now, I was single. Future Post: Relationships)

In short, in those weeks I did more living than I'd done there in the previous year. It was a good way to finish - and a good start.

But what about all the boring stuff? And indeed, the important stuff.

There was a lot to be taken care of, in packing up and leaving my apartment but also in preparing for my new life and work. The next few posts describe my experience of that and give a few tips.

One final bit of preparation: organising my plans for Christmas and New Year. It's the best time of year to catch up with friends and family in the UK and I made the most of it.

I didn't make any New Year resolutions - everything I had been doing up to that point was putting in motion a whole new chapter in my life. And - I should make it clear now! - I had a lot of ideas about what I was going to do with it, but I didn't plan to spend all this time as an itinerant programmer. But that's what happened. I hope you'll enjoy my account - and maybe learn something useful to you along the way.

YMMV