Lessons Learned from 2 Years and Serving 10 Clients

Up and Down

📅 2022.03.20 - 👤 Borbély Viktor

When I started my own business, I had few ideas about entrepreneurship. A goal and vision vaguely took shape, but practice brought the real experience. I knew that I love working with people and I enjoy running a business. I encountered many things over the past 2 years and more than 10 client projects, which I have compiled.

Where do clients come from?

As a beginner, the hardest part is getting into the market. And as a non-beginner, staying in it 🙂

Jokes aside, you have to start somewhere. First, it’s worth making a list of what you’re good at. What could come into consideration? How will your own service fit into your daily life? Yes, you read that right! If you need to deal with extra learning, acquiring knowledge, and work after your work hours, you must calculate with that.

It’s a bit easier if you already have to sell your existing knowledge, for example. Of course, you need to be prepared, so you need to put in the work, every day.

It doesn’t hurt to have a vision of where your market will go. If you see an opportunity in something emerging or trendy. That’s why I started turning towards Flutter. Due to the growing shortage of developers and digitalization, serving more and more IT projects cannot be easily solved. A paradigm shift is needed. This is what Flutter’s cross-platform solution brings. There will be a need for Web, mobile apps, possibly desktop applications, which must be solved with increasingly smaller but more efficient teams. I wrote a few thoughts about this earlier.

Look in your own field for what you’re good at? You don’t need to save the world, just your own, different perspective.

You can look for clients in many places: LinkedIn, Facebook, freelancer portals, etc. The point is that you have to move from passive to active! From “waiting” to “acting”. You need to reach out to executives, CEOs, CTOs! You need to browse company websites to see if they might need something you have. This requires a different mindset because you need to realize that you don’t want to buy a product from them now, but want to help develop exactly that product.

This is perhaps one of the hardest parts: being visible. I basically find it very difficult to write emails, call company leaders on the phone, but this is what needs to be done. The more you practice, the better it will go! * Perseverance!*

Who tells you the next step?

Whatever you start, no one will tell you how to do it. This is a very good and uplifting feeling, because that’s why you started the whole thing 🙂

On the other hand, it requires rock-solid perseverance. You need to make many decisions on a daily basis. You have to do it even when it’s not visible. You have to come up with strategies that you need to operate.

You try something that you need to stick with. You can’t be inconsistent. Which will be your format? Your voice? You need to remain consistent, but sometimes you need to switch to something else to try that too. This will be part of the strategy - how do you do this?

The many platforms where you can show yourself are tempting. Which one should you choose? Well, current trends show that you can “push” your message anywhere. But is this good for you? Are you authentic? Do you need it?

Think about which one you can (initially) operate regularly on your own? You can learn through this what you want to say. When you need to outsource (delegate), you know what you’re talking about because you understand it.

No one will think or act for you.

You need to develop the terms of your contracts. Not the first time, but by the third-fifth-tenth time you’ll get the hang of it.

My client is interested in their own business

My client is naturally interested in their own business. They don’t want to deal deeply with the technology, for example. This is fine. They didn’t choose me to get even more tasks and distractions in return. Instead, I need to live with their business, their vision. I try to feel “for them” what’s important to them. Security.

That what already works continues to work. If new needs arise regarding their product, it should be completed within a reasonable time. Then they will have new or more satisfied customers among the existing ones. Which means additional revenue for them. So (indirectly) I also benefit from it.

In business, if you pay for a service/product and it brings exactly as much as you spent on it, then you’re at zero, nothing happened.

It was worth trying! If an expense generates new revenues, then you hit the jackpot. It’s that simple.

They buy your trust

When you finally have a client, you try to work together. You develop software for them, for example, and they acquire their customers.

In this collaboration, you also see internal “secrets” that outsiders don’t. You see operational errors that the partner may not see because they’re running their business. If you have the opportunity, help by bringing these to their attention. You can definitely solve them together, and you become that much more valuable in this relationship.

Be the kind of partner they can count on in difficult times (there’s plenty of that in a business)! Settle in for the long term with them.

What if the chemistry no longer works? Well, it happens. There’s disappointment on either side. You have to take this on and discuss it openly. You didn’t get married, you did business. Respecting the appropriate deadlines, you can peacefully stop working together.

You can still appreciate each other humanly, since something went wrong on the professional side. The (world) market is small, and you don’t know when they’ll help you again, or when you can give them a good tip.

I wish you good business and perseverance!