I also don't really want to be anywhere near cryptocurrency for a while... and to make matters worse I live halfway around the world from my home in a country that doesn't speak English - I'm a reliable remote worker but I know that's going to put people off, how to alleviate concerns here?
I'm planning to fly home tomorrow, I rented somewhere for a month and I'm already printing business cards and trying to get myself out there on local subreddits. Perhaps other social media too?
Anything I've missed? How can I advertise myself out there? I absolutely kick ass on cloud migration and architecture (and while I know they're not everything, had the certifications to prove it).
Sysadmin stuff, troubleshooting and cloud work was my thing for a decade but I'm trying to catch up with two years worth of developments as well - I can also code but it's mostly hobby stuff.
* Flexibility is super important to a lot of people. I like to tell clients “one of the best things about hiring a consultant is that you have no long-term obligations to me. You can cancel our contract on a day’s notice if you want, and I won’t be the slightest bit annoyed.” I’ve never had anyone actually do that, but folks always always react positively to that offer and appreciate it.
* Bill by the week, do a one-week minimum, and pair that with the above. You’ll be surprised how often that week turns into six months (or more).
* A lot of full-time folks get very threatened when a consultant arrives on the scene (particularly if you’re a generalist, but even if you’re a specialist). This is just a natural protective instinct. Don’t be put off by this - go out of your way to reassure them you’re there to help, work with them, and help them do their jobs better. The defensiveness will often turn into supportiveness and they can become your biggest champions.
* Think of yourself like a business, not an employee. Make sure you can be independent, go over-and-above on documentation, and communicate like a professional. Don’t get mixed up with company drama or gossip. You’re above the fray (and that’s why you should be paid accordingly.)
We have no contracts because plenty of people have a budget but most are not allowed to sign on behalf of the company without legal and procurement involvement. We're now doing over 500k / year on this model and we've just hired our first offshore contractor to help us with a new implementation we won last week. The plan is to be at 1 million in revenue (with tiny overheads) within the next 18 months.
I’d love to learn more about how you got to 500k in revenue. Any chance you have some time to chat?
How many weeks do you have no client work? I guess you use it for networking/marketing, right?
Lots of questions attached to my comment. I'll do my best to answer some here.
Question: snowwrestler 9 hours ago [-]
I'm amazed that companies with required legal and procurement processes will just pay an invoice without a contract. My employer's finance team absolutely will not write a check unless they can tie the invoice to an approved contract."
Answer: This is common. The smaller clients that we work with don't have strong controls in this area. Some of mid-size and larger clients don't either. If the client is larger than 'owner operated' we work directly with C-level or less as long as they are the buyer. One of our clients is a large cosmetics company, the CEO directed accounts payable to make payment for all of our invoices without scrutiny. This is common to all our clients, you have to make sure you build strong relationships with the buyer / c-level as you want to act as that person peer and NOT the peer of his / her employees. When you talk to an employee you want them to see you as an extension to the CEO. For plenty of large enterprise businesses, they may force a contract but you'd be surprised at the lack of controls or care in a lot of organisations.
"Question: jklein11 7 hours ago [-]
You might want to talk to a lawyer about how not having an agreement exposes you to risk. This smells like the kind of thing that works out just fine for years until something hits the fan and it explodes in your face. I’d love to learn more about how you got to 500k in revenue. Any chance you have some time to chat?"
Answer: You don't need a contract as long as you can show that you have entered into an agreement. I usually send an SOW and get an email confirmation that's fine. Sometimes I just get them to sign off on a business requirements document instead. I also write that 'payment us accepted and deemed as agreement". This is perfectly legal in my legal jurisdiction. Oral agreements are also "just as valid as a written contract" but it's harder to prove. Our revenue is more than 500k, 500k is the retainer revenue, the rest is made up of one off implementation work. We used to for a very large software vendor several years ago. When we went independent we contract all of our old client base and won two small contracts then we got referrals (business owners know other business owners). We also run several marketing websites and I personally cold call target clients, put ads in trade publications etc.
"Question: AdamGibbins 9 hours ago [-]
How do you get gigs without a contract? That no doubt violates all sort of insurance, security and finance rules for most companies."
Answer: I don't understand the first part of your question. No we are not violating any rules.
"Question: TooCleverByHalf 10 hours ago [-]
If you wouldn't mind sharing, I'd be interested in hearing what kind of work you provide to clients when hired to consult"
I don't want to dox myself so I'll be a little vague. We used to work at a large software vendor implementing and customising a commonly used back-office system. We now offer the service independently. We also provide long term support and advisory around technology strategy, vendor negotiations etc.
"queston: hazelnut 10 hours ago [-]
Do you have multiple clients at the same time? How many weeks do you have no client work? I guess you use it for networking/marketing, right?"
Answer: Yes, we have multiple clients at the same time. Some are retainer clients and some are in discovery or implementation stage. We have never had a period of no work, we have the opposite problem of too much work which saw us working from 6am - 2am everyday for several months. We have now raised our rates to a place where we can hire contractors to help us.
Required reading. Anything by Seth Godin for marketing. Everything by Alan Weiss, the god of independent consulting and "the personal MBA" which delivers many small pieces that allow you think clearly about various aspects of business.
I missed a couple of delivery dates - the world didn't end. I pushed out some stuff with errors - other people on the team picked those up and fixed them. I did the same for others when I could.
The mindset wasn't so much "I'm the only smart person in the room" as "I've spent 10 years being personally responsible for nearly every aspect of every system - and done that reasonably well - and now there's other people in the process". There's some adjustments to make, and sometimes you don't always know the best way to make those adjustments.
Now, some (most?) of the people on that team had < 5 years of professional experience. A couple had ~10-12. I have 25 years. There were times when I tried to offer up my perspective/experience - not because I'm necessarily "smarter" but... if I've seen problems and know how to avoid them... shouldn't we try to avoid them, and help the business avoid those problems?
Now, I have been on teams where I am the smartest person in the room (or... the most productive, or the most accomplished, or whatever). It's not like that all the time, but it does happen sometimes, and it can be awkward. Pretending that everyone has equal skill and experience and that all inputs are valid doesn't benefit the project or business, although it might, in the short term, help team morale by not hurting feelings of some people. Some of those same people might end up leaving at a moment's notice anyway (which I've seen happen - don't upset person A - they're valuable(!) - then person A leaves with 1 hour notice).
It is also because incoming consultants, or visiting people from overseas, often suggest seemingly practical, but actually pie in the sky solutions, that sends us off on yet another hare brained revision of the system.
By the time it turns out the solution wasn’t so practical after all, they’re long gone.
It’s very nice when you can steer them to suggest the correct things though, and management is suddenly willing to listen.
Out of curiosity what size businesses do you target?
Show, Dont' Tell.
Write. Start a Blog. I recently hired someone remote and one of the reasons was their blog (among other reasons). I could go through their posts and see how they think, their perspectives on stuff and skills in writing about it. The best way to market yourself is to distinguish yourself from others as much as possible. I am always amazed to find people who are freelancers/consultants but don't have a good online presence. Yes it is hard and yes it takes time. But that is the point.
So don't print business cards. Well ok print them but that should not be your priority. I run a business and I failed to print business cards so far (too lazy). But I still meet plenty of people online and in person. Start writing about whatever you know. It doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to a scientific paper. Just write.
You mentioned sysadmin, cloud stuff, migration etc. Do you know how critical this stuff is for any business ? If you kick ass on this stuff, you already are ahead. But Show, don't tell. And no, there is no easy way. No one cares how good you are because no one knows.
EDIT: I forgot to add that I also recently hired another short term consultant for a gig. This will make them a few thousand bucks and I found them online through their website/blog AND they wrote an e-book on the subject. Easy win for that consultant since I emailed him saying "take my money".
Yeah, I have them but don't really use them.
The even more meta advice is that you need to do a lot of marketing--whatever particular form it takes. I'm biased towards writing things myself but writing, speaking, meetups, podcast, etc.
Every time I want to write - I write about something that is pissing me off or something that is coming out angrily. My writing is ok and entertaining...but sure as hell does not show any "logical" thinking.
If I were to write about software...I would probably write about ideas, random ideas that catch my mind. Any pointers?
The key in all cases is to have actual code to show and actual results.
I bet if you take your random ideas and push forward to start writing you'll have something come up you'd be able to write about. I've found that ideas shift over time when investigating. What are some examples of the random ideas you've had?
Isn't he just saying that he doesn't tend to slack off when he's working remote, like some people do? How is writing a blog going to show anyone you work just as hard remotely as in the office?
Do you want the guy who doesn't do anything extra, or the guy who gets his jollies from analysing and optimising apis for some protocol, or whatever?
I’ve found that when you present this in a very objective way, companies are even more into it: “I’m going to leave you with a roadmap, not a sales pitch. You can use it to hire me, hire someone else, or do nothing - I’ll support you guys no matter what you do.”
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4247615
(1) Start a freelance practice.
(2) Raise your rates.
(3) As you work for clients, keep a sharp eye for opportunities to build "specialty practices". If you get to work on a project involving Mongodb, spend some extra time and effort to get Mongodb under your belt. If you get a project for a law firm, spend some extra time thinking about how to develop applications that deal with contracts or boilerplates or PDF generation or document management.
(4) Raise your rates.
(5) Start refusing hourly-rate projects. Your new minimum billable increment is a day.
(6) Take end-to-end responsibility for the business objectives of whatever you build. This sounds fuzzy, like, "be able to talk in a board room", but it isn't! It's mechanically simple and you can do it immediately: Stop counting hours and days. Stop pushing back when your client changes scope. Your remedy for clients who abuse your flexibility with regards to scope is "stop working with that client". Some of your best clients will be abusive and you won't have that remedy. Oh well! Note: you are now a consultant.
(7) Hire one person at a reasonable salary. You are now responsible for their payroll and benefits. If you don't book enough work to pay both your take-home and their salary, you don't eat. In return: they don't get an automatic percentage of all the revenue of the company, nor does their salary automatically scale with your bill rate.
(8) You are now "senior" or "principal". Raise your rates.
(9) Generalize out from your specialties: Mongodb -> NoSQL -> highly scalable backends. Document management -> secure contract management.
(10) Raise your rates.
(11) You are now a top-tier consulting group compared to most of the market. Market yourself as such. Also: your rates are too low by probably about 40-60%. Try to get it through your head: people who can simultaneously (a) crank out code (or arrange to have code cranked out) and (b) take responsibility for the business outcome of the problems that code is supposed to solve --- people who can speak both tech and biz --- are exceptionally rare. They shouldn't be; the language of business is mostly just elementary customer service, of the kind taught to entry level clerks at Nordstrom's. But they are, so if you can do that, raise your rates.
I've been trying to succeed at consultancy for the last couple years, and here's my list of (realistic) steps
1) Reach out to your network and see if anyone is looking for help that you can provide
2) Realise that clients don't care about your background, or skillset, they're 100% focused on what results you can provide and how fast
3) The usual advice from the lucky ones is to always raise your rates, "raise your rates after every contract!" etc. but a more realistic approach is to lower your rates when you have to. I wish I could get steady work at my usual rates, but sometimes I will take on side gigs at a lower hourly rate just because they help keep you afloat
4) Despite what people may say, consultants that can speak both tech and business are very common. They might not be very good coders, or very good biz people, but they are common. Differentiating yourself comes down to personal network rather than any substantial difference in output.
5) Specialists are paid a lot better than generalists. If you're an awesome cloud migration expert (like OP) focusing on that will likely bring more clients and revenue than trying to branch out to other areas
Most other advice is good, but it's important to notice that it won't apply to most folks when they're starting out. I still love the freedom that working for myself affords me, and that it's allowed me to do things that I would have otherwise not been able to, but it's a lot of work, and a good chunk of my time is spent essentially working for free (writing proposals, chasing up payment, etc)
Every beginner underestimate how much salesmanship it takes to run a successful freelancer career.
It's not my argument that it's hard to talk a good game about business and tech at the same time. Lots of people can do that.
Rather, when I wrote that, I was reacting to a long string of own-goals people were reporting about their consulting practices on HN. I saw people freaking out about scope changes, about advanced payment, about counting billable hours, about acceptance criteria, and about payment terms. I was reading people complaining about working conditions issues that are totally appropriate for full-timers to bring up, but not generally at-the-market issues for businesses relating to each other, which is what consultancies are.
Most people who write a lot of comments on HN are self-evidently equipped to represent themselves well to businesses, at least in writing. That's not a concern of mine.
Instead, I'm more interested in seeing people take full ownership of the services they want to be offering their clients. Companies hire consultants to solve problems. The more completely and decisively you can solve those problems, and the less drama you inject in solving them, the more valuable your consultancy is.
So, patterns I see among high-value consultancies --- not just the ones I've helped manage but also those run by friends and peers --- include not pushing back on scope changes, accepting industry norms on payments, not demanding up-front payment, not trying to bill for ticky-tacky stuff like individual phone calls, not being afraid to provide a reasonable estimate up front, not charging for proposals, and not pushing the (probably totally reasonable for graphic designers!) graphic design field's orthodoxy about spec work.
Not for nothing, but I see similar patterns among other professions; I get the same professional courtesies from my accountant, for instance, and from our legal (Grellas Shah, highly recommend). I've gotten similar courtesies from BigLaw firms as well, and it's no surprise: the invoices we generated selling Matasano would have paid for 10x as many random phone calls as we possibly could have generated.
The most common reaction to these observation comes from fledgeling consultancies that work with small customers on small projects. If that's where you have to be, I understand and I'm not trying to condescend. But if those are your clients and you expect to grow your business, one of two things is going to happen:
(1) You are going to stop serving clients that require you to bill hourly, account for phone calls, demand up-front payment, and charge for proposals.
(2) You are going to find a way to scale SMB clients so that you're delivering them mechanically and without a lot of interpersonal interaction, in the same manner as, say, the big PDF-to-HTML shops do.
In the meantime, do what you gotta do to keep afloat! That was the point of the original post I wrote there (I'm a bit mystified about why that post is the one everyone points to for my consulting advice; I've written what I think are more important things about consulting here). You start somewhere, and then you progress towards operating like a more mature, larger business.
(0.4) Start building a portfolio. Nobody will hire you without examples of past work or past clients they know. Blog posts, LinkedIn recommendations, case studies, screenshots, mockups, anything is better than nothing.
(0.6) Give free advice to your friends, former roommates, former classmates, former colleagues. Sit down, have coffee, listen to their app idea, compliment them, show them who did it already.
(0.8) It’s hard to meet people if you work at a desk. Conferences and meetups can help you build your network.
(1) At this point, every month at least two people should be reaching out to you about software projects.
Somewhere in there. Don’t underestimate the image of your business, unless you wanna play the “solo star” career.
Also, write about what you know and do somewhere (a blog, a specialized magazine): it gives you credit.
In my opinion the main road-blocks are finding clients who are convinced you can do whatever you want to sell.
Find clients who need what you want to sell and convince them is the solution. It's not easy and in my experience they won't all be convinced (some ever) but if you can provide what you're selling then clients only need persuaided enough to pay a deposit, first payment or some other initial small invoice and trust/capability will be build/demonstrated when first building clientele. Once you have more work than time raise your rates as high as you can without decreasing your earnings. Then if you can get to step 7 hire a convincing sales person first.
Start sharing knowledge on your personal website, blog, linkedin, twitter and other social media and also make sure to make it clear that you are open for conversation and could help other people/businesses. Attend local events and conferences, even become a speaker. Talk to a lot of people, see what problems they have and discuss how you could help. Get engaged with them, give an advice or do some small work for free. This would give you better impression of the project and the people that you would be working with and then tell them that you would be happy to consult them and offer them your rates.
When you have completed a project, ask if you could use them for future reference. On your blog/twitter write about your experience with this project and how you helped that company (without sharing any sensitive or business critical information) - this will show future clients that you are trustworthy. Rinse and repeat.
But yes, in general you are right.
---- Learn how to sell ----
Consulting is an interesting ballgame because you might be the customer support and technical resource - but first you're the salesman.
I made the switch about 9 years ago and the first year was brutal. Alot of the advice here is spot on but it reaches past the point that you landed a customer at a project price that you can endure for some period of time.
A book that helped me with this a great deal was "You can't teach a kid to ride a bike at a seminar" by Sandler
This is a bigger deal when you are peddling your own wares, but the skills involved apply to working as an employee as well.
You're just selling a slightly different product (standing army soldier vs. mercenary).
Define your niche as narrowly as possible.
I know it sounds counterintuitive but it works wonders. You can read crossing the chasm or just try it. You’re not a tech consultant, you’re not a crypto consultant, you’re not even a bitcoin consultant, you might be something like the best person to document the ICO process for the investment community in Europe.
Because there is a lot of competition for the former but you should basically own your market.
I would recommend finding a good niche and getting really good at it to anyone in our industry. Assuming you retain the ability to swap that niche every few years if necessary. The industry changes continuously.
Two things that worked for me are firstly having a technical blog, which shows off not only the skill set you have, but also that you can communicate well. It also shows that you have the enthusiasm and curiosity to go beyond the day-to-day work of cranking out code.
Then secondly, go through agencies to find your initial contracts. Many companies in big cities will accept remote employees if they can find good ones, but it's hard to find those companies if you are not local. The agency essentially does that for you in exchange for a cut of your day rate. Also, they usually (in London at least) pay weekly so you don't have the big financial dry spell before your first invoice is paid. Once you have a bit of cash built up, you can go direct to companies as an independent.
If there are any agencies specialising in actual consulting gigs (meaning either short term / part time / remote and project-based, like a cloud migration), I'd be interested if someone could give a few pointers.
And all of the sudden, people come to you with business cases, questions and consulting gigs. I see consulting for money an extension of something, that you are already passionate about (I mean professionally passionate, you don't have to pour your identity into it).
The idea is not that hard, it's just that you have to have enough energy and sitzfleisch to see these things through.
Don’t bother with social media and business cards. Figure out where your potential clients get their information, and go there. “Fish where the fish are.”
Most freelancers get started doing work for family, friends, or former bosses or coworkers. Having a prior relationship increases the odds of acceptance, and if you are a worthwhile consultant with a decent client (ideally, you wouldn't approach people who you know would be bad clients) it will usually result in a success story.
We're a cybersecurity services firm (www.tailrisk.com) that is New York based and got all of our work as the prime contractor through our networks, reputation and skills.
A lot of companies would like to employ open source technologies, but lack the manpower to setup and maintain that software. There is a lot of "enterprise ready"-ish projects out there like Nextcloud, Mediawiki, Keycloak etc, which can replace much more expensive and vendor-locked solutions. Maybe that is right up your alley?
You say you are living in a non-english native country. If that country generally has lower living-expenses and salaries, maybe you can use that to your advantage. With connections both to your local community and a higher-paying market you could start an outsourcing business and in the process help local developers. Or maybe there are alreay outsourcing firms in your area which might pay reasonably well?
Also, don't let yourself be convinced by the recruiter to take a permanent job if they don't find you any good contract for a while. The moment you show any willingness to even consider a permanent job they stop looking for contract gigs for you and focus on finding you a permanent role. I have no idea why recruiters prefer placing FTE's, but I observed that many times with my colleagues.
Big consulting firms have global presence. @pards mentions a few good ones but would like to add Booz Allen to the list as well. It's a boon to the firm to hire local, but western talent. Usually they have to pay someone 15-20k to move out there plus a raise and lots of incentives.
Although many are suggesting 1099/subcontract work, I think that in some cases you can absolutely get a better deal as a full time employee. Depending on your level, you won't need to sign a non-compete this way or anything like that. When you think it's time to jump out you can transition as a subk working for your same clients and team potentially if you maintain the relationship.
(1) Consulting means running a business. This requires a different set of skills, and often different thinking, than you have as a developer. You'll have to learn budgeting and marketing, among other things. Learn these skills, and realize that for as long as you consult, you'll need to improve at them.
(2) There are many different types of consulting. I personally do Python training, and love it. But many consultants do what's sometimes called "staff augmentation," working as a contractor on gigs that can last one day to one year. Staff augmentation is the way that most people start off, and it's not inherently bad -- but you can make far more money, and have more influence and satisfaction, by providing insights and value from your experience and knowledge. And yes, this often means that you can make more money diagnosing problems and architecting solutions than actually developing the software that solves the problem. Also, the higher the level at which you're working at a company, the more you can make; helping a team leader is better than helping a programmer, but helping a VP is better than a team leader, and helping the CEO is better yet, still.
(3) Don't forget to budget, and to put money away for a rainy day and for retirement. You should probably have a runway of 6-8 months before starting to freelance, just because it takes time to find clients.
(4) Specialize. You want to be the big fish in a small pond, rather than the reverse. There are lots of Python consultants out there. But there are many fewer who teach courses, fewer yet who do it full time, and and even fewer who talk about themselves nonstop as trainers. So companies call me, because the problem that they have -- employees who don't know Python -- is one that they instantly understand I can solve. Specializing means that most people will ignore you, because you don't solve their problems. But for those whose problems you can solve, you'll fit perfectly. Philip Morgan has a great book and podcast on this topic.
(5) Get your name out: Write a newsletter, blog, speak at meetups and conferences, and let people know (nonstop!) who you are, and what you do. It'll take time -- in my case, it took years -- but having such a constant presence, online and off, will lead people to remember you and ask you for help.
(6) Think about how you want to bill. Many do hourly, but it's better to do daily, even better to do weekly, and better yet to do value-based pricing, in which you charge according to the value that the client is getting. Jonathan Stark writes a lot about this. You'll likely experiment a bit with billing tactics.
(7) You'll have bad clients. Companies will be mean to you. They'll stiff you. They'll say it's your fault. This is all rather unpleasant; overall, I've only had a handful of such clients, but they stick out in my mind. Learning to say "no" to clients, and to have the right gut feeling about them, takes... well, the length of a career.
(8) If you play your cards right, you'll make more money than your salaried counterparts, without too much less stability. Moreover, you'll be able to set your own schedule. When things work well, they work really well, and gives you a sense of independence and fulfillment that wouldn't be possible in a full-time "real" job. The thought that I've paid off my mortgage, paid for family vacations, and still have savings... well, I kinda marvel at it, even now. But if I can do it, then so can you.
(9) Finally: Consulting isn't for everyone. You might decide that it's too hard, or that it doesn't suit your personality, or that you haven't found the right niche. That's totally OK. If you want to go half-way, you can work as a consultant for an outsourcing agency, which doesn't pay as much but gives you the variety and flexibility of consulting. But if you end up hating freelancing, and going back to a "real" job.... that's totally normal and reasonable, and you shouldn't feel like a failure if that happens.
Be sure to read Brennan Dunn's "Double Your Freelancing" stuff (https://doubleyourfreelancing.com/) and Patrick McKenzie's extensive and inspirational writings (https://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/).
Best of luck!
>Specialize.
This is one of the tensions I've always needed to deal with. My inclination (for a different type of consulting) has always been to lean towards being something of a generalist but I've always had to temper that with being legitimately expert on a relatively small subset of technology and the market.
One recent example I've discussed with someone I know is that it's probably better to be an expert on AWS (or even AWS billing, for example) than "expert" on public cloud platforms generally.
>Get your name out
Especially at the beginning--but really in general--expect to spend quite a bit of time that isn't "on the clock." Beware of doing too much free work (like keynoting events) just for the "exposure," much less pay for your own T&E to do so. But you're going to have to invest time in getting known and just word of mouth is likely not enough.
Once you're in as a crypto expert you can apply for any type of remote job, not just crypto. I've been applying to Elixir jobs for example, because I really like that stack and wanted to grow in it while I came in as an iOS developer. Just make sure you list all of your other skills as well in your resumé (and don't lie about it, please).
Disclaimer: the link has a kickback for me. Just go to toptal.com without all of the hashtag stuff if you don't like that idea. I have been working for years for them and the amount of work, the immediate trust you get from clients and the reduction of headaches (just every two weeks a payment without billing and begging) makes it worth it.
You say "sysadmin stuff, troubleshooting and cloud," but clients want to know specific platforms you know well, software you've implemented and types of problems you can solve.
Make sure you are targeting a market where they are interested in "dating not marriage." Many places will not outsource their sysadmin and try to hire you full time instead of as a consultant.
Finally, this comes from my experience running Tail Risk (www.tailrisk.com) a cybersecurity services firm. We have excess project work, tools, templates and playbooks we would like to share with independent (security) consultants. Is that something that interests anybody on this thread? If so, please reach out.
*edited for typo
Why didn't I see this thread (with over 300 pts) pass through the front page at some point? Maybe I just missed it?
Largely I think it boils down to: Most places consider operations work a "cost center" and the nature of cost centers (as opposed to profit centers) is that they always want to reduce them.
I have never worked harder, for less money, than when I was doing sysadmin consulting.
Come to terms with why you want to do consulting in the first place. What do you want to get out of it?
That said: First thing is you want to get your ducks in a row: Figure out accounting and billing, get a Tax-ID, figure out your company structure (do you incorporate, sole proprietor, etc?), and figure out google adwords. Also figure out local meet-ups where people who need you might go.
I can't say how things are done nowadays, but the traditional way has been to get fired...
