3 quick (and true) stories that helped me when I was in a similar situation (started my own thing in 2024). Currently have 6 clients and 9 employees (which wasn’t the plan!)

1. Embrace the bizarre. You need your first client, not a repeatable go to market motion. Once you have a client, you can begin to work on getting clients and figuring out what type of work you want to do longer-term. My first client was a friend who owned a business, knew enough about technology to scratch the surface and was willing to pay $5k for me to coach him. He had to write all the code and I agreed to monthly coaching until he was able to get his site in production. Terrible economics but earned real money and that’s the point of your first client - it legitimizes you. 2. Tell true stories. Did you meet with a prospect yesterday? It’s much more compelling to open your conversation about something real that happened instead of words on a page. Your website looks like every other AI consulting website. No shade, mine does too. Website is unlikely to be a major source of business. Don’t lie to yourself that adding features to your site is investing in your business growth until you are getting new leads from it. 3. The question you should be asking is how do I get my 2nd, 3rd and 4th clients because otherwise you have just traded being an employee with benefits for ‘freedom’ and utter dependence on your single client. Again, embrace all the strategies. My 2nd client came from responding to an RFP - something I’d never done in my career. 3rd client came from a referral from 2nd client. 4th client came from a friend who knew I did tech and need some help to bring a project to life. None of it makes sense in hindsight, but the point is that you learn by doing. Every client teaches you something about the type of business you want to become.

Bonus tip: read books. Not because they have the formula that you will use, but because they have the best ideas written down. Some combination of those ideas is likely your path to success. Reading books has far greater return than shorter forms (social media and dare I say HN comments). Bizarrely, the most impactful book I read is one called The Prosperous Coach which is about an entirely different business system than anything I do.