Consistency pays: how I learned to code, and built a multi-million dollar software business in my spare time
I graduated in 2003 with a Masters degree in Electronic engineering. Electronics was a field I loved, and really wanted to work in, but unfortunately for me, as I went into the job market just as the Dotcom bubble burst, effectively wiping out prospects of employment at the start of my career …
There’s been a few recessions since then: 2007, 2011 and now Covid-19 which has brought economic uncertainty to many of us... I’m going to show you in a short article how I managed to learn to code, get a great career and then build a multi-million dollar software business in my spare time.
To find out how, read on!
I’m a self-taught computer programmer
I learned pretty early on that programming was in-demand, and after failing to get a job in the early 2000s I decided to retrain! We didn’t have online courses back then, so I learned by reading a set of SAMS Teach Yourself books. I did this by partitioning my time and being consistent.
Consistency Pays. Small positive changes, when made daily, add up.
Each book consisted of 24 1-hour lessons. I read these outside of studying and aimed to achieve one lesson per day. After a month, I’d complete one book giving me a basic understanding of the programming language.
Using this process I worked my way through several books:
- SAMS Teach Yourself C in 24 hours
- Teach Yourself C++ in 21 days
- Teach Yourself C# in 24 hours
- Plus books on Windows Forms, Managed DirectX and other topics I was interested in at the time.
After just a few months I had a basic understanding on how to code. I wouldn’t use this exact process if I were learning to code today, I would probably use online video courses available at PacktPub, Pluralsight, or Udemy, but the principle remains exactly the same. Consistency pays. Small improvements, carried out daily, add up.
How I went from learning to code, to a million dollar side-business
This is a big topic, so I’m going to give you a brief overview as I’m sure you are interested to learn how I went from failing to get a job, to a self-taught programmer, to building a multi-million dollar software business.
Building Skills & Climbing the Career Ladder
As I mentioned, in 2003 I graduated with a Masters Degree in Electronic Engineering. Although I had done some software concepts in my degree, it was 95% circuits and I didn't really have any viable software knowledge…
I failed to get a job because of the burst dotcom bubble, so I went back to University. From 2003–2006 I did further study and read books on programming and taught myself to code.
My first job at age 26 with a scientific software company, and my starting salary about £26,000. I had no commercial experience but I got the job by demonstrating software I’d created in my spare time as learning exercises. Working for free often pays off!
After 3 years in 2009 I moved jobs, and another 1 year in 2010 I moved from Manchester and got my first big break at an Investment Bank in London. I had continued to learn, all this time, I had been creating software applications in my spare time and again I got the job by talking about a financial application I’d created outside the 9–5.
Several times I got a better paying job and levelled up in my career by demonstrating software applications that I’d created in my spare time in job interviews. Working for free often pays off.
I didn’t hang around long and it was a further 4-months in late 2010 that I’d left and got my first contract software job at an Investment Bank in London. I’d hit the bigtime. Contracts pay quite a lot and at this time the salary growth was immense. I had gone from £28k with 3–4 years commercial experience to £65k to £130k / year in the space of a year.
It’s often the case nowadays that people will look at a successful person and not realise that an overnight success is often ten years in the making. Whenever you see someone rise to success quickly, note that there was a lot of work that went on in the background to make that happen!
Creating the Side-Business
Choosing what to Build
It took 8 years to be skilled enough as a programmer to start a software business. In summer 2011 I started this work and had to choose what to build.
- I discounted project ideas which were too big, too complex, required capital or had large established competitors.
- I discounted projects that I couldn’t build myself in under a year.
- I discounted projects where I thought there may not be a market for them or the road to profitability might be very long.
This is when I settled on the idea of creating WPF Charts. This was a small, niche product which I thought some people might want to buy.
It was small enough for me to create on my own — a chart control or library that draws graphs & charts, and I had a lot of skill in this area, and could build the first version and see if someone wanted to buy it.
If they did, I could develop it further, if not, I wouldn’t have lost much time.
Being Disciplined with Time
At this time in 2011 I was working a full-time job as a software contractor in London. I set about partitioning my time, using the principle of small, daily consistent steps adding up to build version 1 of my software.
- I set an alarm every day for 5 or 5:30am (and I hate mornings!)
- I would wake up and get to work on my side-project.
- I would work on my side-project coding until 8am then head off to London on the train.
- The train took 45 minutes, I would spend that time either researching or learning or coding using a laptop
- I would put in a days work, trying to have an excellent attitude and do my best.
- I would take the train home. Another 45 minutes coding, learning or researching.
- I would get home by 7pm, would spend time with my wife & son, and go to bed by 9pm and repeat it all the next day.
Using this approach I managed to achieve the following: 3–4 hours of additional work a day in the week, plus some at the weekend which equalled 25–30 hours a week work outside of a main job / 120 hours a month. It was a part-time job!
Building and Releasing Version 1
It took me 4–5 months of a disciplined consistent approach to make a minimum viable product. I didn’t have any way to sell it, market it or license it. This part of the journey was almost as big as creating the product!
To do this, I -
- Hired a graphic designer and created a website, using Wordpress as it is quick and easy to create beautiful looking sites.
- Started blogging about the product — a WPF Chart Component, saying what it could do and creating some short demos with video. The USP was that it was extremely fast, so I showcased what was better about it than competitors.
- I started to get emails from people who had read the blog posts saying ‘Hey, this looks great, when will it be ready?’ or ‘How much will it cost?’
Side note: this is a very positive sign when people contact you to ask about a product or service before you have launched it. This is why I chose something small that I could complete an MVP in under 6-months as I could get feedback about whether it was viable or not quickly.
- I chose a pricing model by looking at my competitors. Most competitors charged between $300 and $1500 for a WPF Chart Library. I decided to place my software right in the middle of that: $799. Not too cheap to be low-quality but not too expensive as I was a total newcomer.
- I chose a pricing strategy based off the decoy pricing model in the book Predictably Irrational, which asymmetrically prices products to achieve an upsell effect.
- I setup payments with FastSpring, an e-commerce provider which accepts payments via Credit-card internationally. With all the services available now, it has never been easier to start an online business.
- Finally, I implemented a basic licensing mechanism so the software could be downloaded as a 30-day trial, and then later purchased and I would email an unlock code to the customer.
The first version went live in March 2012 and a few weeks later, I got the first sale!
The First Year
The first full year my business sold $173,000 of software licenses. This was an incredible result, and way beyond my expectations! I had expected to sell maybe $2,000–$3,000 a month. I was looking to pay the rent if things turned sour and provide some security, so this was unexpected!
Growing the Business
As I was still working a full time job and had dependents, and software sales were uncertain, I decided to invest the money in growth. I made some rules for the business investment:
- I will only invest money which the business makes through sales, no more
- I will not allow the business to take a loss in any one quarter (if it does, cut costs next quarter)
- I will re-invest as much of the business profit as possible to achieve growth.
- I will spend no more than 10% of revenue on advertising and marketing
Using these rules I invested the early income in a first hire, a Developer from UpWork who helped build and develop the software. A second and third hire were made by the end of the year. Now with three Developers plus myself rapidly increased our productivity.
The pace of development got faster as feedback came in from users about what they wanted, and we started to build features into the product. I created a policy on what to build.
- Bugs: reported would get fixed immediately if they were serious. We implemented a super-fast turnaround where we could publish a fix using scripts to deploy the code, often within days of being reported.
- Features: would be prioritised by number of people who asked for them (or size of account or estimated value).
- Customer Service: we would over-deliver on technical support as I personally had a great experience from companies who had given me a personal touch.
Doing this gained us a reputation as a company that cared about its users, and our customers started to recommend us.
This is how we grew the business — through word of mouth due to excellent service — and I didn’t have to spend a penny on ads in the early days.
From Zero to a Multi-million dollar enterprise
$173,000 in sales in one-year is money that most people would dream about, but it wasn’t yet time to quit my job. I decided on another rule:
5. I will quit my main job and focus on this business full-time when it consistently makes a profit greater than my software contracting job in London.
This gave me a target to aim for.
Year 2 we saw staggering growth of 80% and revenue of $309,000
Year 3 another 100% growth and revenue of $622,000
More hires were made, and by now I was starting to spend some money on advertising and marketing, following the rule of ‘no more than 10% of revenue on ad-spend’. It was in year 3 that we passed the point where profit exceeded my software contracting income and I first dropped down to part time, then quit my job entirely to focus on building the business full time.
It was the right decision as my wife, we later discovered had a genetic defect and developed cancer in her mid-thirties. Had I not been self-employed, it would have been really tough. She is cancer-free now and fit and well but having a side-income was a lifeline. I spent many days by a hospital bed through what was a 3-year ordeal and we would not have had that luxury were it not for being my own boss.
The big break came in years 4 and 5. Now with several staff, and myself working full time, we were able to introduce 3D Charts to our WPF Chart component and bring out new products / platforms with higher pricing. This significantly ate into a competitors revenues causing one competitor to quit and a second to make false accusations about us. These were untrue and came to nothing, but let it serve as a warning: as you start to become successful, some people may throw rocks.
In Year 4 we sold $832,000 with another 30% growth
Year 5 we cracked the $1million mark with a total licensing revenue of $1,251,778 USD and an astounding 50% growth.
Where are we today?
Today is 8 years after that first version of my software went live. Software that I had built version 1 from scratch in spare time, on the living room table and on a commuter train to London with a young son and while earning a living. And it worked, and people like it and use it every day!
We have won and been commended in awards, and sold millions of dollars of software licenses, plus consulting services and employ 15 staff. We have a great reputation for providing the best WPF chart and an excellent reputation for customer service and hundreds of 5-star reviews. We’ve given money to charities and helped people, helped almost 200 universities with free software to power their research, and provided a valuable software component for companies from small startups to the largest enterprises. It’s been an incredible journey and one I believe still has plenty of road left as we continue to grow & develop our products and services.
Takeaway Points
If there’s something I want you to take away from this article it’s this. Small daily changes add up.
If you think you have to no time to do what I’ve done, think about how much time you spend in a day, and what you spend it on and try to re-prioritise. If you can carve out just a few hours a day to improving yourself, whether it is learning something new, a language or a skill, writing a book, or starting a business, and be consistent and disciplined, you too have the potential to do great things.
Follow me as I continue to document my journey about wealth creation, investment, software development and business growth. You can find me over on Twitter as DrAndrewBT.
