Welcome to the MVP show . My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills . If you have not checked it out already , I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP . The link is in the show notes . With that , let's get on with the show .
Today's guest is from Estonia . He is a Dynamics 365 Business Central developer and the founder of Integrated . He was first awarded as MVP in 2024 . He has more than 12 years experience with ERP and has been involved with Business Central since 2020 . He enjoys both working with code and the business processes that surround it .
You can find links to his bio and social media etc . In the show notes for this episode . Welcome to the show , willem .
Hello and thank you for having me .
Good to have you on . I love the country of Estonia . I have a friend that has land there and he's building out a certain lifestyle there . He works all over Europe and so that's the country he's chosen to settle in , originally from the UK , so I've heard a lot about it . But tell me food , family and fun . What's the most amazing thing about Estonia ?
Okay , yeah , as far as food , I'm not really sure . I think our food is really like generic food combined from German and also maybe from Nordics , but I kind of just like simple food , uh , but well made and that's it . Uh , as far as family , I just actually got my first uh son , and he's three weeks old now .
So wow , and that's one of the reasons I'm up also quite early nowadays . Yeah , yeah , and as far as for fun , I simply I don't know like doing sports and for the past year I've been playing paddle tennis , which I'm not sure if it's popular over there , but it's kind of a mix of paddle and squash and blade .
You know you're the second person that's talked about it . That's been on the show , so yeah , it's definitely new to me . I mean , it's really popular over here . You know you're the second person that's talked about it . That's been on the show . So yeah , I've .
It's definitely new to me I mean it's really popular over here . It's it's like they're building uh courts all over the place , like I think there were 70 courts this year but next year there's 150 or something .
Yeah , so it's , it's really booming so I'm interested to see you own your own company . Is that right ?
uh , yes , that's right like I own my own . Your own company , is that right ? Yes , that's right . Like I own my own very small company .
It's basically just me and a few other like kind of freelancers , but I am also mostly more like a freelancer who's I have a couple of my own customers and also doing like some kind of subcontracting for other bigger companies .
Interesting because I'm just doing a series on how to go and become a freelancer because I get asked it all the time from so many people in the business application space . You know from Microsoft , whether it's Dynamics or Power Platform , and you know often these folks have worked for partners for many years and now they're going .
You know , could I survive on my own ? And one of the big questions I get is that initial leap of faith in yourself . Tell us about your very first customer as a freelancer . How did you find them ? How did you get them ? Why did it make the decision for you to go that way ?
straightforward go that way straightforward . So , like , I've been thinking about becoming like a I don't know small entrepreneur or small business owner for many , many , many years .
But , like , like you said , like there's always some hesitations and thinking how to actually start , but for me it was , uh , like I was working for a partner , but I kept getting these messages in linkedin , basically like from recruiters and from people like do you want to ? I don't know , and I want to get another job or something in some other country .
But they didn't really want it . But at some point , like some I think it was some guy from uk that just wrote to me that would you like to help me , like with some business central project , like a few hours a week or something , and I said yes , and that's how . Basically that's how it went .
Like I started doing like after the work or on the weekends , just started doing some projects , and then at some point I kind of accepted the project from USA , which meant that I had to work actually every night .
Like my actual job ended like five or something and I had to work like sometimes until 10 o'clock in the evening because of the time zone differences , and but I did it for a few months , and then I realized that it's actually quite doable to work on your own , that had a bit of money saved thanks to these projects , and then I just thought that if not now ,
then I'll never do it , and just did it you know I'm currently working full-time .
What type of transition timeframe should I put in place for myself to perhaps transition into freelancing , and is there any kind of recommendations that you would make to them to start going down that path ?
I don't know about the timeframe exactly . It really depends , like , if you have a good like a good contractor , good contact who can offer you some it's , you can do it easily over the night basically .
But but I think to actually be able to be a kind of good in this freelancing or working on your own , you kind of need to understand that you need to do the marketing also or like push yourself or promote yourself . Like as many , for many people it's really difficult to kind of start selling themselves . If you don't do it , I think you will .
I don't know , it doesn't really work , maybe it will for some people . But I think it's much easier if you actually promote yourself or be out there and so that question is then how do you ?
you know you have your first gig right , which gets you . You know , as you said , you're doing it part-time , you're getting comfortable with it , you're realizing you know what . There's plenty of runway in front of me and I always say you know starting anything . You know what ?
There's plenty of runway in front of me and I always say you know starting anything new . The friends and family they're going to support you to start with right . You're going to have those relationships and , beyond friends and family , you're going to have those professional relationships that are going to get you your first one or two gigs .
But if you are in the game three years later , five years later , you've had to do something that keeps expanding your potential list of opportunities and people knowing about you . How do you do that ? Branding , that marketing , that making sure that there's a pipeline ahead of you at all times ?
I think it's uh . For me it's actually quite simple , like I'm just uh , I don't really do anything special , I just uh be . I'm active on the social media , I'm like posting some stuff , doing a video from time to time and um , and that's it actually . But you need to do it like constantly . Uh , what I did , what I just saw this summer .
Actually , actually in the beginning of summer I thought that I will take it easier in the summer , like take some time off , because I had the sun coming and I didn't really do any . I didn't do much like marketing and I said no to the projects that were offered to me because I wanted to take the summer off .
But then the autumn came and I kind of realized at some point that actually there is nothing to do at the moment . So I had to start marketing again , which I guess fine . It's one of the perks of being working on your own that you can maybe manage your schedule on like how you want it how did you start marketing yourself again ?
I did a couple of things like I made . I brought you some old contacts that were interested a few months ago and actually I did for the first time .
I also wrote to their linkedin that they have some availability if somebody has some projects , and people actually brought to me that yes , they have some projects and now in a few weeks actually I think it's okay , like I already have enough to do for the next six months or something .
Wow , that's great . So is LinkedIn the primary source that it's coming from your opportunities .
Yeah , it is , it's uh . I also have like my own blog and website , but I rarely get some uh stuff or like some leads from my own website . Like some people from time to time like uh , they contact and wrote to me . But uh , linkedin , I think , for me , is the best . I used to use Twitter also , but I don't know it didn't really uh work for me .
Like uh , it was more like for Twitter , where X is more like for entertainment or just it seems to me at least .
Tell me about business central . That's the main tool . Is there any particular area you specialize in more than other areas ? And and why ? Why did ? Was it a natural extension of being involved with nav that you got into business central ? What was the kind of move for you into that space ?
and not uh , yeah , I'm working with all the areas in business central and I'm kind of uh , since I have like I don't know two to five or something on my own customers , that I I kind of provide like a full stack service to the customers , like , uh , functional consulting and also writing the code for them .
But how I ended up in business center was actually um , actually I I was a sap consultant for years , working with sap , implementing sap and writing code for SAP , and then I kind of realized that the SAP market is really small here because it's so big so not many companies want it .
And I kind of took one year away from ERP , worked in a startup as a software engineer and then I started missing it , like the ERP stuff . And when I got to the Business Central in 2020 , there was no NVE anymore . Like few customers were using it . But actually I have never worked with NVE . I just started working with Business Central basically directly .
Okay , okay , so that's interesting and I never thought of that in the business central world and you know I've got experience across a range of the dynamics products . But in the business central world you have the ability to not only do a project , let's say an implementation project , but of course you've got the the whole maintaining .
Some like you you get to pick up . Potentially your customers will stay with you the more you accumulate them and you can do their maintenance , their support , their patching , their enhancements and things like that . Right , you can carry on doing those things for those customers .
Yeah , exactly In ERP , if you have the customer , probably the relationship will last . Like if you , I would say , if you're good yourself and you provide a good service to the customers , it will last like 10 , 15 years easily , I guess , because they need constantly like every month the business is changing , business is growing and so on .
So you need to , like you said , if you have a relationship with the customer , it works for a long time .
Nice , you know , and you can choose not to answer this one . It's about pricing , and not so much your pricing rates but how you think about pricing . I get two questions . Do you price based on an hourly rate ? Sorry , one of the models are you price based on an hourly rate ? Another option is you're based on a value . What value do you bring ?
And you would sell a project . Sometimes I'm seeing blocks of hours being sold , whether you use them or lose them type scenario . What have you found ? Do you just focus on a purely this is my hourly rate and you bill based on time sheeting to the client , or do you do any other type of pricing models ?
No , it's only hourly and basically I've thought about doing some other kind of pricing , but I don't know . I've never seen actually it done , at least in my experience . People are talking about it but I haven't really . Maybe somebody is doing it , maybe somebody's doing it , definitely somebody's doing it . But for me it's really easy .
Like , basically , if I have a customer , I have my own Jira . I give access to the customer through Jira and they log some issues there . I log time against the issues and invest them . It's as simple as that .
Do you ever have an issue with age debt , as in ? I don't know if you use that term in your country , but you know , for us it's like you know . People are overdue on paying their invoice and now you're wasting your time as a business of one , chasing what you're owed .
To be honest , not really Like I was afraid of that , that people are not paying in versus I have to ask . But I think I've had to ask maybe two times during the last two , three years and then they said , okay , sure , just pay right away . They forgot or something . It's not really an issue . I've never asked the prepayment .
For some customers we've done some kind of contract , but for many customers I've never done even a contract . It's basically like email , that they say they want something , I say okay and that's it . Maybe I'm lucky . I don't know , but it's kind of worked out like that .
What was your journey to becoming an MVP ? How did that happen for you ?
Good question . Basically , I've been only working with microsoft stuff for four and a half years now , so I don't know if it's a long or short time or I don't know , but I was blogging .
I was uh kind of um helping others locally like , um , what I'm doing all the time is I'm having like one intern I have one currently right now I'm helping people , like kind of taking some other , some person , who's not in IT . They're like studying from , coming from some other areas and studying and and want to want to come to the IT .
So I'm kind of teaching them business center or something and helping them find a job . And I was helping others , teaching others , giving like talks . And then I also got involved with one conference here in Tallinn which is CloudTech .
Tallinn helped to organize that , and then I asked Vivian Voss she's an MVP , she's Estonian but she lives in Denmark actually and I asked her how do you actually become an MVP ? And she asked me if I want to become one and I said yes , and that's how it went actually .
She nominated me , I filled out all these forms and it took like six months or something and then I just got this email that I remember . Yeah , thank you , vivian .
Good on you , though , for putting the work in and making it out Since becoming an MVP and I know it's happened this year . Has it had any impact since getting that award , since getting that title for Microsoft ? Has it had any impact on your visibility as a freelancer and acknowledgement of achieving that ?
I think definitely it has had some impact , but not the impact maybe people are thinking it will have . It's not like you get this award and people are I don't know flogging your mailbox and want to get something from you .
Maybe some people have reached out to me and I kind of see them through that they want to I don't know use me for some marketing or want to tell their customers that they have this MVP guy on board to sell a project or something like that . But not that much actually , to be honest . Not yet . Maybe at some point , but not yet at least .
Yeah , interesting , interesting . Are you working more for Microsoft partners in your contracting or more for end customers ?
Currently it's more for end customers . It's like 80% of end customers and maybe 20% of partners .
Nice , Nice . My final question is what recommendation do you have to folks considering that they want to become an MVP ?
Yeah , I think , like it seems to me that some people , I don't know they're really focused on becoming an MVP , but I think it will work out probably better if you're more focusing in , like helping people and I don't know , exploring interesting topics and doing some original stuff , and and then it maybe comes naturally , like it will take time probably , and you
need to be really good at what you do and provide value also to the others for free , and I think that's how it comes also maybe in the end .
Hey , thanks for listening . I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith , otherwise known as the NZ365 guy . If you like the show and want to be a supporter , check out buymeacoffeecom forward slash NZ365 guy . Thanks again and see you next time . Thank you .