Thomas, you talk a lot about raising your rates and I believe your points are valid.
How do you go (being completely remote) from nothing to have a high quality client (as in corp/high net startup).
Take these into consideration:
- Can live off savings for the next 2 years.
- Can expense 3/4 travel costs for US/EU/Asia.
- Can setup offshore US/HK company and bank accounts.
- Doesn't mind if the process take 2-4-6-8 months.
- Doesn't mind traveling, staying late, taking calls anytime, etc.. if it can give me an edge.
What are the steps to take to land the first whale. Also, I have the following skills: Cryptography/Security (still a beginner), Blockchain (somewhat good), DevOps (medium), Web Development (Pretty good experience).
Bear in mind pretty much most of my clients before were low quality clients (making wordpress sites for the average business, made me decent money but only for the cheapness of the country I live in).
1) Produce publicly visible artifacts which demonstrate that you're able to apply technology to impact business outcomes. You do not need many of these; ~3 is fine. You do not need to block on the other steps. You do need to plausibly connect the technology to a business outcome; blockchain and beginner-level cryptography probably do not get you there.
2) Begin getting into conversations with people who either a) have purchasing authority or b) talk to people with purchasing authority, at your target clients or firms very similar to them. This can be as simple as bonding over technical things with technical people. You want to become Internet buddies with e.g. senior engineers / team leads / etc at software companies.
3) Walk the network of your new friends to engagements, either at their firms or peer firms. Do not make another WordPress site for the average business; make something for a software company.
4) For every engagement you land, attempt to get referrals to more clients, attempt to land follow-on work with the same client, and attempt to land ongoing maintenance/retainer/etc agreements with the client.
1) How can I find out what to build if I don't have any significant corporate experience. I don't necessary like to work for software companies but I just have no clues of what "sells". (That is on a corporate level. Both services and products).
2) How do I get into conversations with decision makers? Cold approaches? I know I'm a decision maker for buying a sofa for my living room. But I get to discuss with the seller because I'm in his shop? How do I get to discuss with him if he doesn't have that shop to trap me there.
If you like podcasts, there’s a great one by Kai Davis and Nick Disabato called Make Money Online. I can also recommend the Indiehackers podcast. The greatest insight to effort would probably be The Personal MBA by Josh Kauffman, a really great business book. What sells is solving expensive problems or making companies with lots of money better or more efficient at making money. You can get into conversations with decision makers by cold emailing people saying that you’d like to buy them coffee and talk about their business. Lots of them are busy and will not reply or say no. Some will say yes. These are informational interviews not sales calls because you don’t have anything to sell yet. Or you could go to your local chamber of commerce meeting and talk to people.
One recent Indie Hackers episode had Nathan Barry on. He swore by the tactic of doing presentations on a topic that would be useful to small business owners at chamber of commerce meetings, collecting emails and adding people to a mailing list. Apparently most of the leads he got didn’t convert themselves but they referred other people who did. All for the price of free coffee and donuts, a presentation and time.
How do you go (being completely remote) from nothing to have a high quality client (as in corp/high net startup).
Take these into consideration:
- Can live off savings for the next 2 years.
- Can expense 3/4 travel costs for US/EU/Asia.
- Can setup offshore US/HK company and bank accounts.
- Doesn't mind if the process take 2-4-6-8 months.
- Doesn't mind traveling, staying late, taking calls anytime, etc.. if it can give me an edge.
What are the steps to take to land the first whale. Also, I have the following skills: Cryptography/Security (still a beginner), Blockchain (somewhat good), DevOps (medium), Web Development (Pretty good experience).
Bear in mind pretty much most of my clients before were low quality clients (making wordpress sites for the average business, made me decent money but only for the cheapness of the country I live in).
Would appreciate any advice!