Running "Jonco IT & Security Ltd" so far

If you've not read part one, I suggest you start there. As before, be aware that this post does not constitute legal or financial advice - I'm merely sharing my experience.

Financial loans, investment & considerations

On founding the company I bought my shares for £1, but that £1 wasn't going to get me very far. I loaned my company £500 via a director's loan, which is a mechanism where the company is in debt to me and I can extract that £500 at a later date without having to pay tax on it [1]. Fortunately I've not had to loan the company any more money, which I consider really good.

I've not looked to get any investment or loans from elsewhere. That's mainly because I don't want to be saddled with a debt. My calculations determined that I could self-finance the startup of the business, and if I made no money at all I could at least personally pay any costs I incurred.

Insurance

I spoke to an insurance broker that's recommended via the BCS, the chartered institute for IT. The broker themselves was very helpful, but they have to get quotes from the insurer, which is where things dragged on a bit. I was being asked by the insurer to provide profit and loss reports for a company that had, by that point, only existed six days!

Initially I went with £2 million professional indemnity and £1 million public liability. Most of the time I'm working remotely (there's no public to worry about), and if I am on-site the greatest risk I could imagine was someone tripping over my laptop bag.

My advice would be to start with £5 million for both professional indemnity and pubic liability. That appears to be more standard, but also is what some organisations I've worked with require as part of their standard terms.

Licences and subscriptions

These form part of my running costs, something I'm keen to keep low but appropriate. Bullets here for brevity.

Mobile phone
This gives me the ability to disconnect from work, as I don't have to be "always available" by having everything on my personal phone and number. There's also data separation.
Accountancy software - Freeagent
As mentioned in part one, this was included with my bank account.
Microsoft licences
As a Microsoft partner (I develop software) I receive licences at a discounted rate. This has been very useful, as while it gives me more licences than I need, it's also given me more tools than I'd have used otherwise. Obviously that creates a risk of vendor lock in.
Co-working space - Fruitworks
This helps me avoid feeling really isolated, but has also resulted in me getting some work through contacts.

Costs I avoided

My company website is a static web site built with Cecil, that is hosted in Microsoft Azure. Being a static site, and having little traffic, I can run that website on the free plan. Azure Static Web Apps restrict the amount of configuration that I can make (e.g. security headers, TLS versions), but I'm happy with that. I also get TLS certificate automatically managed for free, although that did go wrong in August and I had to redeploy the website.

Not having a permanent office, I save the associated costs (business rates, Business Improvement District levies, rent, etc.) by working from home most of the time. I spend one day a week working at the Fruitworks Coworking space, which also helps combat loneliness.

Networking is really important, especially when running a new company. I looked at joining business network groups and the cheapest paid-for group was £780 in year one (including joining fee and VAT, but you have to buy your own drinks at the venue), with the most expensive being £1,080 (which at least gave you a cooked breakfast every two weeks). I couldn't justify either of those costs, and a number of other small business owners I've spoken to can't either. I attended a free event and asked another IT professional if this networking group had gained him customers. Bottom line - no. He commented that "the people here are small businesses, they either don't have the money for a cyber security consultant, don't care, or don't know they need to care". Still needing to network I've found a free networking group instead - Christian Businesses in Kent.

Having policies

I used to respond to security questionnaires as part of my employment, and blogged about them here, so knew the requirements customers might have. Not wanting to get bogged down in endless security questionnaires, for which I wouldn't be paid, I chose to publish most of my policies on the company website. Now I can point customers to those policies, meaning they can self-serve questionnaire answers. If a customer insists that I complete their questionnaire then I'll have to judge how long it'll take, the potential income, and whether or not I can bill the customer for that time.

Loneliness

This was something that worried me, and that my wife had commented on previously. Working for myself often means working by myself. Having worked for twenty years with colleagues, been part of meetings and just general "kitchen chit chat", suddenly having no-one to work with most of the time was a challenge. In one regard, the pandemic was useful training for this situation, as it forced me to work remotely, but as an employee I still had colleagues.

To help combat the loneliness I started a virtual cuppa group, that has a varying number of attendees depending on who's available. We meet online (Teams) every few weeks and just chat. No hard selling, just friendly conversation and networking. Originally I'd planned for this to be small business owners but the group's expanded to include people working in similar roles instead.

Finding work

Finding contracts has been a lot harder than I expected, given there's a global shortage of cyber security professionals. When my previous employer was being bought out, I commented to my former boss that "I'm not worried, there's a shortage of security people, I'll be fine" - sadly that doesn't seem to have been enough. Part of the complication, I'm sure, is the sort of roles I'm looking for.

On mentioning to some friends that I was starting a company I received a lot of congratulations, positive affirmations ("you'll do great") and some comments of "ooo, we've probably got some work for you". To be clear, this isn't the fault of my friends, but that work never materialised. My friends weren't the decision makers, and would dearly loved to have worked with me, but unfortunately that wasn't sufficient due to their organisation's plans.

Of the work I've had so far, most has been through word of mouth via my network of contacts.

I've recently signed up to some job sites, looking for contract roles that are remote. Unfortunately there seems to be a bug on those sites, as I'm regularly offered permanent roles in Manchester 🤷‍♀️. Perhaps this is indicating that companies would rather have permanent, in-house, staff.

Work / life balance

A key consideration for me was my work / life balance. Back when I worked at a secondary school, I was understaffed and had very little budget to work with. As a result I was logging in after hours in order to fix problems, progress the to-do list, and generally stay on top of things. This was a terrible idea, and I was basically giving my employer my time for free.

Running my own company I'm in complete control of my work schedule. Obviously I'm going to work when there's work to be done (sometimes referred to as "making hay while the sun shines"), but I'm also more than happy to not work a 37.5 hour week. I've set my standard day at seven hours, roughly 09:00 - 17:00 including lunch, but I'll be flexible with how I manage my time. Longer lunch break? No problem. Can't sleep and want to work for a couple of hours at 02:00, also no problem. While working for a client those times might be more rigid, based on their requirements, but I have to maintain overall control in order to avoid being considered an employee by HMRC. Importantly, I'm not going to mess a client around - if they need me at 08:00 due to time zone differences or workloads then I'll be flexible.

Having a complete flexible, self-managed, working day is still something I'm getting used to. I largely work 09:00 - 17:00 / 18:00 exactly the same as I did when working for another employer, but I also have random days off or work some weekends if my family is away and I feel like it.

Part three to follow

This post was getting long, so I've moved discussions about LinkedIn to part three, out soon.

Banner image: Screenshot from my website, with my company logo overlaid.

[1] - There's no tax to pay when taking back your director's loan from the company unless you chose to charge the company interest. I've gone the interest free route.