Hustle Hub #14

Hey friends,

Thanks for your overwhelming response after I shared why you should do freelance projects to build a strong DS portfolio in my previous issue.

A lot of you wanted to know how to get your first freelance DS project and my experience of getting my first freelance project.

As promised, in this issue, I’ll share with you the 5 steps to get your first freelance DS project even when you’re just starting out.

Let’s get started! 🚀 

🎉 Launching My Coaching Services for $1 (limited slots available)

Throughout these years, I’ve been approached many times for career advice and 1:1 mentorship. Therefore, I’m very excited to share with you that I’m finally launching my coaching services for $1 with limited slots available.

The craziest part? 🤯 

You can ask for a refund if you don't find the conversation useful. Because I want the investment in this coaching call to be an absolute no-brainer for you.

Note that this $1 coaching service will only be available until 12th Feb 2023 (Sunday) before it returns to the original prices. By the way, I expect all slots will be filled up once I share it on LinkedIn tomorrow. So remember to grab it before it’s gone.

If you need help in the following areas, book a coaching call with me:

🚀 5 Steps to Get Your First Freelance DS Project

1. Identify your skills as a service

Each of us has our own strengths and weaknesses. By identifying your strengths, you’ll know what skills you have and monetise your skills as a service. Ideally, you should monetise the skills that you’re good at and love doing projects using those skills.

For example, when I first started out, here are the skills that I identified to serve my clients:

• Writing

• Data analysis

• Machine learning

• Teaching data science

Therefore, my freelance services for clients turned out to be:

• Content writing for brands and business magazines

• Analysing and visualising data for SMEs

• Building ML models for startups

• Conducting DS workshops for corporates

In short, know what you’re good at.

2. Define your ideal client / market

This is important. Because:

When you’re just starting out freelancing, you have to focus on ONE niche or you’ll be targeting the wrong audience.

To get your first freelance DS project, I’d suggest targeting startups and SMEs in the tech industry. This is because:

• Startups and SMEs are always looking for freelance services to solve their problems using data. Also, they are more open to individual freelancers like us due to lower costs to them. Finally, you also have the chance to learn how businesses work on the ground as you’ll mostly be working with the founders or the team.

• On the other hand, MNCs or government projects have high barrier to entry. Unless you already have registered for a company and hired a team to work with you, chances are you won’t be able to get those contracts due to the heavy competition in the market.

In short, know what the market needs.

3. Build your portfolio & personal branding

Once you’ve identified your monetisable skills and ideal clients, it’s time to build your portfolio and personal branding.

⭐️ Polish your resume

Some clients might ask for your resume before they decide if they want to proceed. Hence, having a polished resume is necessary.

I won’t cover much about how to improve your resume here otherwise this issue will become too lengthy. But if you want a resume review from me, you can book a call with me.

⭐️ Get testimonials / recommendations from your colleagues

Credibility is key when it comes to finding freelance projects.

When you’re getting started, you have to show prospective clients that you’re credible, competent, and can do the jobs. In short, they have to trust you.

This explains why it’s important to get testimonials or recommendations from your colleagues (past / present) because they are your proof of work.

I still remember 1 week after I quit Micron, I asked one of my ex-colleague (who was my supervisor) to write me a LinkedIn recommendation. This further strengthened my credibility to serve more clients in future.

⭐️ Build your personal brand online

I can’t emphasise enough the importance of building your personal brand, especially when you want to get your first freelance DS project and beyond.

In fact, I got my first freelance DS project because a client reached out to me on LinkedIn after he saw some of my LinkedIn posts. After my first freelance project, I doubled down on building my personal brand by writing more on LinkedIn and Medium.

From there onward, I’ve been consistently getting inbound leads from clients requesting my freelance services.

💡 If there’s one takeaway from this issue today, it’d be this:

• Be a farmer, not a hunter. 

• Document your journey and share your knowledge with the community online to slowly build your authority and personal brand.

• If you do it consistently, you’ll begin to attract inbound projects coming to you.

4. Find your first client

Once you’ve done all the groundwork, it’s time to find your first client. LinkedIn is my favourite platform to find clients because of my niche and target audience.

💰️ Here’s my approach to finding clients on LinkedIn:

• Reach out to the relevant people (decision makers) on LinkedIn for the companies I want to work with.

  • If we’re not connected, I’ll send a connection request with a thoughtful note.

  • If we’re connected, I’ll send a welcome message.

• Once connected, I’ll check out his/her recent LinkedIn posts and engage those posts by writing thoughtful comments.

• Once I’ve engaged his/her posts a few times, I’ll reach out again to arrange for a quick chat to explore potential synergy.

  • At this stage, the person would be more likely to respond and chat with me since I’ve engaged his/her posts in the past.

Of course, there are many other freelance platforms you can use to find clients, including:

• Upwork

• Toptal

• Omdena

• Wellfound (formerly AngelList)

Personally, I prefer to use LinkedIn to find clients as I have more control over the projects and fees charged.

5. Close the sale

There is no business if you can’t close the sale.

Once you’ve found prospects who are keen to discuss projects with you, you have to convert them to become your clients.

While closing a sale is both art and science, here’s my general approach to closing a sale:

• Have an introductory call to understand what problem the prospect is facing. Then I spend 60% of my time listening, and 40% of my time asking questions.

• Once I’ve truly understood the problem, I’ll share how I can help and why I’m the right person to work with.

• If the client asks about the price, I’d charge on a project basis instead of an hourly basis to make sure our interest is aligned.

• Close the sale by instilling a sense of urgency 💣️ 

Conclusion

In summary, here are the 5 steps to get your first freelance DS project:

1. Identify your skills as a service

2. Define your ideal client / market

3. Build your portfolio & personal branding

4. Find your first client

5. Close the sale

It’s scary when you’re looking to get your first freelance DS project. I felt the same too. But I managed to overcome my self-doubt and fear to take action after reading a tweet from Gumroad’s founder - Sahil Lavingia:

At the end of the day, our biggest breakthrough often comes from the other side of fear. I hope today’s issue has helped you get started in your freelance journey to build your DS portfolio.

🚀 Trust me when I say this:

• The moment you receive your first $1 from your freelance service, you’ll never be the same again.

• You’ll begin to see how your skills are valuable to the market and you too can make money by monetising your high-value skills.

• Most importantly, you’ll feel empowered and no longer be afraid of getting laid off. Because you know you can always make money using your skills.

  • The best part? Your skills can never be taken away.

Till then, have a great week!

🚀 Whenever you’re ready, there are 4 ways I can help you:

1. Book a coaching call with me if you need help in the following:

2. Promote your brand to ~1000 subscribers in the data/tech space by sponsoring this newsletter.

3. Watch my YouTube videos where I talk about data science tips, programming, and my tech life (P.S. Don’t forget to like and subscribe 💜).

4. Follow me on LinkedIn and Twitter for more data science career insights, my mistakes and lessons learned from building a startup.

That's all for today

Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed today's issue. More than that, I hope it has helped you in some ways and brought you some peace of mind.

You can always write to me by simply replying to this newsletter and we can chat.

See you again next week.

- Admond