Achieving MVP Status Through Community and Innovation with Villem Heinsalu

Mark Smith: 0:37
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.

Villem Heinsalu : 1:36
Hello and thank you for having me.

Mark Smith: 1:39
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?

Villem Heinsalu : 2:02
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.

Mark Smith: 2:51
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.

Villem Heinsalu : 2:56
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.

Mark Smith: 3:08
Yeah, so it's, it's really booming so I'm interested to see you own your own company. Is that right?

Villem Heinsalu : 3:13
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.

Mark Smith: 3:33
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?

Villem Heinsalu : 4:10
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.

Villem Heinsalu : 4:45
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.

Mark Smith: 5:53
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?

Villem Heinsalu : 6:04
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?

Mark Smith: 6:59
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?

Villem Heinsalu : 7:48
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?

Villem Heinsalu : 8:52
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.

Mark Smith: 9:19
Wow, that's great. So is LinkedIn the primary source that it's coming from your opportunities.

Villem Heinsalu : 9:25
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.

Mark Smith: 9:55
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?

Villem Heinsalu : 10:14
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.

Mark Smith: 11:18
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.

Villem Heinsalu : 11:52
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.

Mark Smith: 12:22
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?

Villem Heinsalu : 13:06
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.

Mark Smith: 13:39
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.

Villem Heinsalu : 13:56
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.

Mark Smith: 14:35
What was your journey to becoming an MVP? How did that happen for you?

Villem Heinsalu : 14:40
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.

Villem Heinsalu : 15:28
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.

Mark Smith: 16:08
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?

Villem Heinsalu : 16:38
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.

Mark Smith: 17:20
Yeah, interesting, interesting. Are you working more for Microsoft partners in your contracting or more for end customers?

Villem Heinsalu : 17:27
Currently it's more for end customers. It's like 80% of end customers and maybe 20% of partners.

Mark Smith: 17:37
Nice, Nice. My final question is what recommendation do you have to folks considering that they want to become an MVP?

Villem Heinsalu : 17:49
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.

Mark Smith: 18:33
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.