Kurt Menke is the founder of Birds Eye View GIS, a full-service GIS shop. Like most self-employed people, he wears a lot of hats to manage his business. He’s also an author and a teacher. In a Mapscaping Podcast blog, he shares with us how he has survived the last two decades doing what he loves and how aspiring GIS consultants can do the same.
Is mapping still a thing? Can you still do just that?
Back in the early days, most people were GIS specialists. Today people use GIS as part of their jobs. There’s still plenty of mapping to do in the world. I see no shortage of work from my perspective. Tools change, the data changes, and more capabilities open up ̶ the work still needs to be done.
How do you market your GIS skills?
Almost all of my work has come from word of mouth recommendations. I’ve never done direct marketing. I’ve written several books in the last five years that have given me national and international exposure. It’s led to opportunities in education and training, too. When you publish a book, people get to be familiar with your name.
My main focus is on open-source tools, and I’m one of the few US consultants listed as a QGIS support company in the US on the QGIS website. Prospects find me on the website, and cold email me with project details and to see my availability.
I’ve always relied on networking, forming relationships, and doing good work. As long as I’m doing outstanding work and have a good reputation, people will recommend me and hire me even when they move on and join new organizations.
Can anyone make it as a geospatial consultant?
I get this question a lot.
What’s my strategy? Do I blog? What about social media and online presence? Do I attend conferences?
I don’t have a formula, I really don’t. What I tell everyone is that geospatial tools are just that. Tools. People apply them to some industry or arena.
Having a niche is crucial.
If you’re going to work with geospatial tools, you’ll need to know a thing or two about the industry you’re applying them to. If you have a thing for forestry, you can do contracting with that industry because you’re active or semi-expert in that as well as geospatial tools. I also tell everyone that you’ll need to be a multi-tasker like you’ve never imagined before. Non-billable hours for the self-employed are a profit killer. You need to become proficient at client communication, invoices, proposals, estimates, social media, maintaining your website, fixing your printer, office admin, and the list goes on. You’re not just sitting there doing GIS all day. You must do all the chores plus your GIS.
You’ll have different hats on during the day, like your spatial analyst, or trainer, or your author hat. Sometimes you’re a blogger or an accountant. Other times you’re the business manager. You manage budgets and data, too.
How do you manage all the work around your GIS projects?
By Theming days. Mondays are now my communication days, where I spend the entire day doing just that. Communicate. Emails, proposals, and estimates. Talking about estimates. That’s another skill everyone needs to become proficient at, early on. Experience will help, obviously, but it’s a constant effort. Sometimes my clients are in an industry that I’m not entirely familiar with. I need to simultaneously learn about their industry and project. I need to be able to ask them questions in ways they take for granted because it’s their specialty. But to ask those questions, I need to learn about the subject and what I’m getting into. How do I translate what they’re talking about into geospatial tasks? And how do you put an estimate on this? I might do calculus in my head, then turn to my spreadsheet and see how many hours I think this will take. Calendar time also matters. You really don’t want to sign a contract vastly underestimating the amount of work you’d be doing or promise something before you can get it done.
Now, when someone calls me up for a simple map, I’ll present them with a discovery round of questions such as what size? How’s it going to be used? On a website? Printed? Who’ll be reading it? What about the wording? Does it need to be mindful of that industry? Anything to be avoided?
Also Read: How to be more Geospatial job ready as the world reopens
And what about the data?
You can see how a request for a simple map still needs to be vetted before you can commit to taking the task on or not.
THE NUMBER ONE GIS SKILL IS STILL COMMUNICATION
I’ve figured out that things have changed with the advent of the digital world. Everyone has a preference on how they want to communicate. WhatsApp, Skype, Zoom, email, Twitter… I’ve become available on all channels because my audience needs me to.
Communication skills also come in handy when you need to do iterations on the simple map, or you’ve reached the scope of the project, and you need to extend the contract. You’ll always need to be thinking ahead of time if you want to avoid getting into uncomfortable situations later on.
What projects or clients do you avoid?
Since we all know in geospatial that it all comes down to data, I’ll make that my main criteria when selecting a new client or project.
Some people or organizations are just bad at managing data. They’d call a PDF with coordinates a data set. It can be, but it just adds to the level of effort. Can you really afford to get into that? I’m always careful to find out about what people have for data so that I know where they’re coming from. If I see any red flags about technical capability or the shape of the data, I might make a recommendation that they find someone else to work with.
Do they need an Esri solution? I’m an open-source person, so I probably decline. Maintaining the Esri license requires extra resources for a small business. It can be difficult to manage.
I tend to go for projects that are aligned with my interests and not just my skills. Admittedly, it’s a luxury you’ll have when you have a steady flow of work for several years.
Is the topic interesting? Do I have a good rapport with the client? Can I be their guiding post? Do I know enough about the subject to be their guiding post?
Can you just say yes to anything to get started?
It could work. But I would say you’ll probably find it overwhelming. You want to be in a position where you’ll deliver the deliverable on time and a quality everyone’s happy with, and it’s going to work. So yes, say yes to things as long as you can handle it. If it’s unmanageable, your work and the client relationship will suffer. It’s not worth it.
Would you take on any project that’s open source? or is there still a lack of tools in that area?
There are open source solutions for everything now—web, analysis, cartography, data collection, or database. You’ve got tools.
Can you do everything remotely these days?
Absolutely. I haven’t visited a client’s office for many years. These days, it’s remote work only. All my work is out of state and international. If you enjoy visiting businesses and online support is your niche, go for it. I’ve done it in the past.
Where do GIS communities usually hang out?
Slack. There’s a vibrant geospatial community there, always willing to help.
GIS Stack Exchange for defining solutions to things.
Twitter and Reddit. Depending on what you know and where in the geospatial realm you are, you’ll always find people to talk to and get ideas from.
Any downsides to being a consultant?
When you work by yourself from home or you rent an office, you’ll be on your own most of the day. Are you comfortable with that? Some people need to be surrounded by co-workers and a dynamic environment. I have some contracts where I have a team of people collaborating remotely together, and it’s not as lonely as it sounds. You can talk to your peers regularly, run ideas by them, even if it’s just on Twitter. You’ll never be short on feedback or collaboration.
Are you a self-motivated individual? No one’s going to be cracking the whip in the morning for you to get to work. You’ll have to do that on your own. But then maybe paying your mortgage on time every month is a motivator. I know it was for me.
Closing thoughts?
Be an excellent service provider. Don’t hustle for money, and it will be a pleasant place to be. It’s always satisfying to see a project through from the beginning stages of the first contact to developing a proposal to delivering the project on time. Submit that invoice at the end to a happy client.
Also Read: Geospatial Python: Do you need to learn it?
