Business Brief

Here you will find information about my current working situation, as well as a brief overview of my business aims and objectives. I'll also provide an outline of the sort of work I'm interested in from a contractual basis, some insight into the manner in which I prefer to conduct my business, and a contact checklist to ensure that everyone is on the same page prior to contacting me.

Overview

I'll start this brief by stating my own personal circumstances, in so far as I believe they're relevent to the aims and objectives of this brief, followed by a brief outline of the objectives. I have no significant other, children, or financial obligations outside of typical household bills and insurance, and the property from which I conduct my business has no outstanding mortgage payments owed; I have two seperate spaces within my property which I can conduct business from, as well as a seperate storage space which also contains my company IT server and network infrastructure.

My ultimate aim in business isn't particularly grandiose; it is simply to establish a work-life scenario that accomplishes three key objectives:

provides me with a basic level of income (stability)
provides me with a platform for learning and applying new skills (growth)
provides me with a high level of autonomy (freedom)

The vehicle to accomplishing this is the medium to long-term development of SaaS service offerings through my company, alongside offering affordable contract and consulting services to companies who wish to leverage my skills. There are currently two SaaS platform offering in development:

DocuPress (https://www.docupress.co.uk) - A document composition service for providing automated, cost-effective document generation, focusing on a simple processing pipeline and data security. This platform is currently in the final testing staging pending commercial release.
Solowing SaaS platform (https://www.solowing.co.uk) - An application development platform centered around a workflow-based execution flow, complete with data analytics, full data/process security, and full staging/deployment support. This platform is currently awaiting branding & documentation, of which there is a lot of work needed; to place it into perspective, it has a codebase and feature scope of at least 4-5 times that of the DocuPress platform.

Having software projects centered around my company, and where I have full autonomy of the process, plays an important role in ensuring that I'm able to continue learning new and relevant skills, while also improving and maintaining my existing skill set.

Services

As someone who seeks to gain skills and experience in a number of different fields, it's also that case that I don't seek to restrict myself when it comes to the types of services that I'm willing to offer. I understand that all businesses have different hurdles to jump, and that it's not always the case that simply hiring an IT professional of a particular field will lead to a favourable outcome. With that in mind, I've provided a list of some of the types of services that I'm able to offer, including some which may seem a little more "outside of the box":

Software Development - Whether in whole (concept through to completion), or on a feature by feature basis. I consider this to be my primary service offering.
Director/Management-as-a-Service - This one may be more useful (and cost effective) to a start-up which requires a broad depth of skills, rather than a team of different specialists. This is also one of the few roles I'd be willing to accept on a more permanent basis, provided it meshes well with my business brief. I'd also be expecting to get my hands dirty - When it comes to technical tasks I'm a firm believer of leading from the front.
Key-Person Dependency Continuity - In order to ensure a continuity of service in the event that an employee leaves the business, it's important that information is formally documented and distributed among multiple employees where possible, so as to prevent a stanglehold being placed upon the daily operations of the business: whether intentional or otherwise. I can quickly learn important technical information and document it, so as to decouple key-person reliance from the operational aspects of the business.
Troubleshooting - Sometimes things go wrong. As a former IT manager of a DR-orientated (disaster recovery) business, I have plenty of experience fixing problems with tight time constraints, including those to which I had no prior knowledge or experience.

Terms Of Business

With the above out of the way, I'll now look to solidify the terms under which I prefer to do business, including specific examples of scenarios where necessary.

The business should be contractual, and based on a specific business requirement. This may or may not include deliverables, so long as the aims and objectives are made clear.
My preference is for contractual work to be outside of IR35 rules. Contractual work which falls inside of IR35 will be considered, however for the sake of simplicity payment will need to be through an agency/umbrella via PAYE, with the negotiated rate reflecting the gross rate (incl. employee NI and Income Tax), and NOT the agency/umbrella rate.
Permanent employment with provisions in place for my company are no longer an option, unless a valid business case can be made to justify it. I have tried this once before, and unfortunately found that the arrangement was not workable in the longer term. If you're a business, and you feel that a mutually beneficial agreement can be made, then it won't cost you anything to at least ask; for example, a start-up company would likely find it more cost effective to employ me in a results-driven management/director position than it would to pay a contractual rate for the same services, so long as an agreement is in place that suits all parties involved; This is NOT an open invitation for recruitment agencies to ask me about permanent positions.
I have no problem completing any contractual obligations on-site; in fact I prefer to work face-to-face rather than remotely. I'm capable of commuting short distances (via motorcycle, generally within the West Midlands area), however longer distances that require overnight stays will need to be factored in when negotiating contract rates. For software development work interacting directly with source code repositories, my primary developer rig is equipped to deal with the vast majority of software development situations, features whitelisted 2FA for remoting access should I need it, drive encryption, and continuous cloud backup (also with 2FA). I have experience securely remoting into company infrastructure via 2FA VPN (smart card and mobile OTP), and I also have plenty of experience in the implementation and configuration of such systems.

Contact Checklist

Before contacting me, please select from the following options:

You represent a business, and wish to contact me directly (not via a recruitment agency). You have likely arrived here after seeing my services advertised elsewhere, or because you have receieved a recommendation to do so.

Thank you for taking the time to visit this site. Since you are directly enquiring, I can safely assume that you have a serious interest in acquiring my services. Please ensure you meet the minimum requirements set out below before contacting me:

Check the skills list to ensure that I have the necessary skills that you require.
Ensure that you have read all of the above, and are satisfied with the terms stated.
Provide an overview of the skills and services to which you have an interest, alongside a brief description of what it is you are seeking to achieve. If you are in a position where you are unsure about the technical requirements, then simply state your desired outcome and I'll be more than happy to provide further consultation if necessary.
Provide an approximate timeframe for the period in which you wish to employ my services. If the project to which I may be assigned involves providing services downstream, then additional timeframes that may impact an SLA or client sign-off on any deliverables would also be appreciated, but are not strictly necessary; Timesframes that impact my ability to facilitate my contractual obligations are all that I would require as a minimum.

That's pretty much all that I require when dealing directly with a business. As stated in the rates section of this site, you may also be able to gain the benefit of a negotiated rate.

You represent a business, and you are here because a recruitment agency representative has provided you with a copy of my CV.

Thank you for taking the time to visit this site. Since you have been directed here via a recruitment agency, I cannot be certain that you've been given all the information necessary to make an informed choice regarding whether you require my services. The vast majority of instances where I've attended employment meetings/interviews, I've found that the information provided to employers has been modified, amended, or outright fabricated. In order to ensure that everyone is on the same page, please read through the checklist below:

Check the skills list to ensure that I have the necessary skills that you require.
Ensure that you have read all of the above, and are satisfied with the terms stated. I have provided this information within my CV in the past, however recruitment agencies have almost always removed it prior to providing it to employers; please take the time to review it.
Provide an overview of the services to which you have an interest, alongside a brief description of what it is you are seeking to achieve. This isn't strictly necessary, however I have had an instance in the past where a recruitment agency has given me deliberately false information in order to gain my consent when submitting my application to an employer; suffice to say that interview was a waste of time for both me and the employer.
Provide an approximate timeframe for the period in which you wish to employ my services. If the project to which I may be assigned involves providing services downstream, then additional timeframes that may impact an SLA or client sign-off on any deliverables would also be appreciated, but are not strictly necessary; Timeframes that impact my ability to facilitate my contractual obligations are all that I would require as a minimum.
A brief summary of the contract rate which you have agreed with the agency for the position advertised. If the rate that you have advertised through the agency isn't fixed, you may be able to negotiate a cheaper rate. Rates are only negotiable between myself and businesses; I do not negotiate my rates with recruitment agencies, so you can be assured a cheaper rate if direct negotiation with myself is possible.

You represent a recruitment agency, and you are here after being directed to visit here from my CV.

My experience of dealing with recruitment agencies has unfortunately meant that I've had to construct this entirely separate section within my business brief. While there are some recruitment agencies that I have had the pleasure of dealing with in the past, for the most part I've had nothing but trouble, and so the bar for contacting me is considerably higher than that of a direct business. If you are here on behalf a professional and credible recruitment agency, then you shouldn't have any issues clearing this bar. Please keep in mind that almost all of the points below are reflective of real life experiences I've had with recruitment agencies:

Please provide a brief description of the job (including IR35 status), the contractual daily rate, and the period in which the contractual work is expected to be carried out.
Do NOT attempt to contact me via any form of communication that is not present on my most recent CV - this will be either via email address, LinkedIn, or mobile phone number.
Ensure that you have read all of the above, and are satisfied that my terms of business comply with what the employer you are representing is looking for. Should I agree for you to present my CV to an employer, do not attempt to obstruct access to this site by modifying my CV in any way.
Do not ask me to make changes to my CV; I won't. While I understand that you may have a duty in providing your client with a particular standard of CV, I also have an obligation to your client to not misrepresent myself in a way that will waste mine or their precious time. If your client doesn't wish to take the time in visiting this site then so be it; I simply wish for them to be informed of the option of visiting as a minimum.
Do not contact me expecting that criticizing my skill set and insulting me will cause me to yield, and permit you to submit my CV to an employer for an entry level/inappropriate position (yes, people have tried this before). I know what I'm capable of, while also more than humble enough to admit that I'm not an expert at everything. Don't expect that I'll kowtow if you become forceful in your approach; I'll simply pop you on my blacklist and issue a GDPR erasure request for my personal data.

Provided that the above points are adhered to, I suspect that there should be no issues in proceeding to represent me on any applicable opportunities that you have available.