redundancy is on the cards, so thinking I need to tool up to go back to my old consultancy business - its working for councils mostly and suppliers in to that market in the transformation, shared services. cost saving space. no fancy software required but will have to do Teams, MS office etc
urgent need in short term is a laptop - is an XPS 13 still the go to? or are there better out there these days?
is flat rate VAT scheme still a thing - I have to do an annual return anyway so thinking might as well have the ltd company badge and protection and better for popping most of my earnings into pension and taking the £12500 as salary.
I have an apple Pro Max 12 phone - think that’s fine for 3 years (will retire after that)
I have signed up for a Smarty £6/m sim card to give me 10x my current data - so that’s very cheap and porting my number over from current so keep consistency in the number at least.
will prolly need a website - godaddy last time - any recs? DIY or pay someone - did it myself last time and was functional - client base don’t really goggle for solutions its more contacts/social media and me approaching them.
any ideas on which laptop or other things I need gratefully received, anyone done this recently with any tips would be gold dust
The major requirement of an consultancy business is clients.
Make sure you have some before spending anything!
The market requirements may have changed since you were last in the business.
Bought Sam and I one of these recently, replacing 5YO+ machines in both cases - both very pleased, brilliant screens (both went from 16" to 14" and not missing 'em), fast as fuck, light, physically strong, great trackpads, cool-running, decent battery life for summat so slim and light, quiet, even brilliant as a music server - by a big margin the best lappies either of us have used.
You might need Windows Pro rather than Home - but I’m far from convinced.
Downsides - a bit slow and clunky with large graphics editing using off-brand software, and if you need a right-hand number pad look elsewhere.
Worth checking what the lay of the land is depending on how long you’ve been away for. Public sector is pretty difficult in general right now as they need cost reduction but have very little to zero financial headroom to invest in it.
I got out of it a many years back because the hassle, high cost of sales and the high stress levels just didn’t justify it; did a lot of interim work which I enjoyed, and then out altogether.