Marketing Yourself

This is a part of the Consulting Lessons Learned series. Read this as opinionated suggestions from a friend over drinks, not expert advice.

Everything becomes easy if you're in demand. You can pick and choose your clients. You can negotiate with ease. You can increase your billing rate. You can fire clients that are not working out. So it is important to become good at this.

The Starting Point

You need to start somewhere. You need people to know that you exist and that you can do stuff. Actually doing something to start is more important than finding the best first step.

You can:

1. Reach out to people you've worked with before
2. Create something shareworthy and post it on a forum
   1. Write articles
   2. Create a simple app
3. Meet people
4. Give a talk

Your Contacts

People you already know are going to be the best source of work.

Networking without "networking"

Networking is the ugly word that makes every introvert, including myself of course, extremely uneasy. We invent all kinds of rationalizations to not do it: people who do it are phoneys, it is a waste of your time, etc. That can all be true, but it would help your chances of success if you understand what we're really trying to accomplish here.

There are people who have a burning need and money to spend. You need to persuade them that you are capable of filling that need and that you can be trusted. Meeting such prospects in a semi-social setting, and chatting a little could be an efficient way of doing that. If you aren't good at that, don't worry, you don't have to be in order to accomplish you're goals. You just need to do it, whether you like it or not. Also, you will get better as you do it a few times.

You will meet a lot of bozos. You will have all the reasons you need to tell yourself that you gave it the old college try and it's time you stopped the stupid waste of time. I hope you keep going despite these thoughts.