It's possible to build an amazing business and life by offering your services to others. But consulting can also be a powerful way to acquire the resources, talent, and experience needed to create your own product.

Andrew Wicklander of Ideal Project Group and TULA has done exactly this.

From freelancing to building his own team, Andrew learned how to create software, built an impressive software consulting business, and utilized his company's consulting income and talent to develop a successful yoga studio booking software.

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Andrew shares with us:

• How he started as a freelancer, built Ideal Project Group into a team, and went from scraping by to bigger more profitable projects.
• The importance of choosing the right clients: what people are really buying when they hire you, and why clients with small budgets are often more demanding than clients with big budgets.
• How consulting paid the bills while creating the freedom and runway for Andrew's company to build a successful project: a yoga studio scheduling software named Tula.
• The competitive advantage that niching down has created over other scheduling projects.
• The reasons to build and not to build a SaaS product. Some great discussion on passive income and what it actually is and isn't.
• Mistakes made along the way. What Andrew would have done differently in hindsight and lessons learned.
• The Ideal Project Group philosophy, future plans for the company, and Andrew's long-term mindset.

Resources Mentioned:

• 37 Signals: The 37 Signals approach to product development was a major inspiration for Andrew.

Connect with Andrew Online:

• Ideal Project Group: Andrew's software development agency.
• TULA: The yoga studio software-as-a-service product developed by Ideal Project Group.

• Follow Andrew on Twitter: @andrewwicklandr

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