In 1981, Alex Dunbar was a life insurance agent. His wife, Marty, was working full-time as a programmer at AmTote writing software for race tracks and lotteries.
Alex had written a software tool to help sell insurance to federal government workers. When Acacia Mutual Life found out about his program, they bought the rights to the software and installed the program in all of their field offices. They also hired Alex full-time to provide marketing and sales support for other agents.
During the next five years, Alex also worked part-time automating offices for other insurance agents. Dunbar Software Systems was born. Meanwhile, Marty had switched to Data General and, within a couple of years, had hit the glass ceiling. She was encouraged by a colleague to become a consultant and so, in 1987, she took the leap. Her first assignment was through a broker. Around the same time, Alex moved onto Benicor Associates full-time, supporting their marketing and sales efforts. This meant doing a lot of desktop publishing and database design work.
After some time off for maternity leave, Marty was ready to get back into consulting. She knew immediately when she had started her first consulting position that she never wanted to work for anyone full-time again. She liked doing the technical work without having the pressure to get into corporate management. “You don’t have to worry about company politics,” says Marty, adding that she also likes the freedom to schedule her own time off. So now she had to get a contract.
She called everyone she knew to let them know she was available for consulting work in telecommunications, fault- tolerant computing, transaction processing, and database design. That strategy paid off with several offers. At one point, she was working on two contracts simultaneously. The juggling was difficult at times when push came to shove.
Since Marty could schedule her own time, they both decided that if Alex were to become a consultant, it would give them more flexibility to schedule vacations and time for each other. They attended the Independent Computer Consultants’ Association (ICCA) national conference in June 1991. By then, they were getting several calls for PC database programming work from their listing in the Washington ICCA (WICCA) Chapter’s directory. They had turned down enough assignments which would have made it worthwhile for Alex to be a full-time consultant.
That fall, Alex left Benicor. As with many consultants, his first assignment was a retainer from Benicor to continue some of the work he had done as an employee. By then, he had built up an expertise in desktop publishing and in designing databases for the insurance industry.
To market his services, Alex talked to his contacts, mostly other life insurance agents, and told them he was now available as a consultant. He volunteered his services as the WICCA newsletter editor. He also started to write a monthly column for the Suburban Maryland Life Underwriters Association’s newsletter. Now, Alex submits articles to other organizations throughout Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Northern Virginia. “I get about one call a month as a result of my articles. Not all lead to business. But, in the last two years, I got four to five contracts directly through articles,” says Alex.
Because he specifically targets the insurance industry, he keeps all of his certifications and licenses up-to-date. That way, his prospects see him as an “insider.” Marty’s assignments come solely by networking with WICCA members, clients, and vendors. In 1992, she was elected president of WICCA.
Even though both are consultants, they have much more time to spend with each other and their four-year-old daughter. They limit their consulting hours to about 40 per week plus time spent on professional association work. Together, both Marty and Alex Dunbar enjoy being Dunbar Software Systems.
