On October 16, 2003, I established my first limited liability company (ApS), which still serves as the foundation for my work as an independent consultant.
The term “independent” is a bit peculiar. Its antonym is “dependent”, which doesn’t quite fit. “Independent” simply refers to someone who runs their own business and is not employed by others.
Actually, it all began much earlier than 2003. It started in the fall of 1997. 
After being fired from my position as Sales and Marketing Director at RE Technology (now Barco), I felt like trying something entirely different – where I wouldn’t have a boss or employees. In other words, I was fully clear on what I didn’t want. On the other hand, I had no idea about what I wanted.
I needed a backup plan.
I reached out to companies that might need international business development services, while also asking around my network if something affordable was for sale.
Both approaches bore fruit, and by November 1997, I had two concrete offers on the table.
Offer A: A small PR agency with clients in the IT industry was up for sale at a reasonable price. The owner was eager to sell to me and was very accommodating with both the price and the terms.
Offer B: Damgaard Data offered me a job as Director and Regional Manager for their activities in the German-speaking countries. The job required me and my family to relocate to Stuttgart under a three-year expatriate contract.
After much deliberation, I chose offer B. This didn’t make me independent in the legal sense of the word. Still, after conversations with Preben Damgaard and my immediate boss, Per Pedersen, it seemed that Damgaard Data offered plenty of freedom. My journey as a fully independent entrepreneur would have to wait a little longer.
Fired again
In December 2000, Damgaard and Navision Software merged. 
The merger happened right as I was preparing to return to Denmark.
When companies merge, anything can happen, and on June 23, 2001, I was fired from my new job at the merged company, where I was responsible for operations in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovenia, and Russia. You can read more about this in the book 5,460 Miles from Silicon Valley.
My time at Damgaard had been absolutely fantastic, and I was convinced it would be very difficult to find a company with the same culture and similar challenges. Now, the time had come to take the leap into self-employment. But doing what?
During a quick getaway from Stuttgart to Lake Como, before we moved back to Denmark, my wife and I drove through Lugano, Switzerland. We stopped and took a boat ride on the lake.
Lugano!
That was the name of the company. Great name. It felt good to have that decided. But what would it actually do? I had no idea.
We need a managing director
While I was pondering what my future company with the fantastic name, Lugano ApS, should contribute to humanity, the phone rang.
“I need a managing director for a startup,” the headhunter explained. “It’s just the thing for you!”
We met, and after ten minutes, it became clear that the last thing in the world the 10 engineers with the great idea and 10 million in the bank needed was a managing director. What they needed was a business developer and salesperson. That was a role I was willing to take on.
The project was extremely risky, but after my recent layoffs, I had learned that life as such is risky. Read more about the 10 engineers, the 10 million, and the great idea here.
After another stunt as a contract-based managing director, I had the opportunity to buy into a company at a reasonable price. So, in October 2003, I established the limited liability company (ApS) that would serve as the holding company for my co-ownership. After a couple of years, we decided to part ways, and I sold my shares back to the other owners. The separation happened amicably, but now I was resolved: I was done with monogamous working relationships.
Hedging your bets
The two most tangible differences between having a job and being self-employed lie in the terms of employment.
As an employee, you receive a fixed monthly salary transferred to your account, and you can only be fired with cause, notice or severance pay.
As a self-employed person, you cannot be fired, but you only get paid if you can attract customers and invoice them for work completed. From your revenue, you need to set aside funds for education, vacation, sick periods, and retirement as well cover expenses for premises, insurance, travel, accommodation, marketing, IT equipment, software, and all the other costs associated with running a business. What remains after these expenses can be used to pay yourself a salary – provided you also remember to set aside money for periods when you have no paying customers. 
While I was once again pondering what my company (which never ended up being named Lugano), should focus on, a new offer came in for a job in international business development. Fortunately, the position didn’t include people management. However, it was still a monogamous working relationship.
I declined, unless I could take on the tasks as a consultant and be allowed to have other assignments alongside it. This was accepted, and my newly established consulting firm found its purpose along the way. From then on, I would assist software companies with international business development.
That’s how I finally, and after a very long process, became self-employed and found my niche at the same time.
Why hadn’t I thought of it sooner?
International business development in the software industry was and is my expertise. It’s what I had been doing since January 1980, when I first walked through the doors of Control Data Corporation’s Danish subsidiary on Sønder Boulevard in Copenhagen in January 1980 as a new sales trainee. The lead-up to that adventure can be read about in the book Tumult in Mecca.
Free at last
I still remember the day we signed the consulting contract. It was a business development assignment that included both strategy and execution. I had access to an office at the client’s premises, but I was free to work from wherever I wanted.
The feeling of freedom was fantastic. My loyalty was to the task. I could stay out of all the internal company intrigues and political battles and focus on achieving the goals that the project required.
It was far from the perfect consulting assignment, but it was a good way to get started. It gave me some practical experience with the role and taught me the difference between being a freelancer (which was a big part of the job) and being a consultant whose role was to enhance the skills of the company’s permanent employees.
When the project ended two years later, I had established my business with a website, service concepts, a wide network of contacts, and new assignments.
Business development
With my first consulting assignment secured in 2005, I had to learn from scratch what it meant to be an independent consultant. Others who had taken the leap before me offered a friendly warning.
“Watch out! Otherwise you’ll end up with a working life where you’re either busy as hell or have nothing to do.”
The advice was based on the fact that you don’t have time to do sales when you’re really busy delivering. As a result, you risk having an empty order book the day your projects end.
I took that advice to heart, but still fell into the trap.
Together with a group of colleagues, I discussed how we could create a steady flow of projects and make income independent of the hours spent. We tried out the various ideas, and the experience culminated in February 2013 in the publication of my first book, Management Consulting Essentials. The topic continued to interest me and led to a series of articles that I posted on my English blog.
One of the ideas was to write books about your domain expertise, and in April 2015, I published Building Successful Partner Channels which, despite its narrow target audience, quickly achieved bestseller status. This and subsequent books generated revenue that was independent of my hours and consulting assignments, and that didn’t require me to spend time on marketing and pre-sales.
Value versus price
For me, the freedom and independence have been by far the most valuable aspects of life as an independent consultant. Being able to do what I want to do, when and where I want to do it, is liberating.
It requires maintaining a steady stream of projects and avoiding situations where a task becomes more important to you than to your client. You need enough opportunities in your pipeline so you don’t have to take on every assignment, and you must be confident that the value you deliver to your client far exceeds the fee you charge. When working with international business development, the latter isn’t so difficult. If I can help my client find a functional model for international expansion, the value will be more than a hundred times greater than the fee I charge.
The price is what the client pays, the value is what they receive.
