How to Land First Projects as a Solo Engineer/Consultant

The author, a software engineer, recently started a solo consultancy focused on helping SMEs with their internal workflows and integrations. They're seeking advice on how to get their first real project, including what outreach methods worked and where their first few clients came from.

Details

The author has spent the last decade as a software engineer and has recently decided to start a solo consultancy. The consultancy is focused on helping small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with the messy back-office parts of their business, such as spreadsheet glue, brittle internal workflows, poor reporting, awkward integrations, backend/platform problems, and AI workflows that need to do real work rather than just look good in a demo. The author is not interested in becoming a generic agency and would rather work with businesses that already feel operational pain and need someone technical to help untangle it properly. The key questions the author is seeking advice on are how to get their first real project, what kind of outreach actually worked, and where their first few clients came from (network, content, cold outreach, partnerships, subcontracting, etc.). As a gesture of goodwill, the author is offering the first 5 clients 10 hours free to help get an initial project moving.