So start with people you already know.
And work on getting to know more people.
To a first approximation, every potential client who wants a contractor has one. There are only two likely categories of potential clients who will cold call you:
1. Potential clients with no track record.
2. Potential clients with a track record of bad relationships with previous contractors.
Potential clients with no track record might become good clients. Or they might become clients with a bad track record.
Potential clients with bad track records are best avoided.
Potential clients with good track records are highly unlikely to work with a new contractor because ongoing relationships with contractors are part of what makes them good clients.
Experienced contractors move heaven and earth to hold on to good clients.
Basically modulo people who know you, the potential clients for new contractors is a lemons market. Good clients are already in long term relationships...again, long term relationships are what makes clients good clients.
The LLC, Stripe, etc. are pretend work. Without clients your liability is zero, and there is no need for a payments mechanism.
Finding clients is all that matters. It matters more than doing the work well.
Good luck.
Also, I personally wouldn't use the US LLC if you don't live in the US--that would be a huge red flag for me as a potential client. Contracting is all about trust, and you want your business to appear as solid as possible.
Upwork is international and you're competing with millions of people willing to work for $5/day, are you not?
Why is it a terrible time?
What's wrong with setting up a US entity? Actually from a US employer perspective you have a bit more recourse if you need to use the legal system than someone operating entirely out of a foreign country.
Things are looking very up.
Setting up an LLC and the other superficial trappings of a real business amounts to making the t-shirts. You have no customers, no idea how to get customers, no insight into the market from a contracting perspective.
You can find plenty of freelancing & contracting advice online, useful and not so useful, if you do the work. Mostly it distills down to contacts and reputation. Posting the equivalent of “I’ve set the table, how do I cook the meal?” seems like a big ask.
One of the thing these guys will spend a lot of time on is staffing, e.g. if/when they win a deal, will they be able to service it. Freelancers who can be relied upon are extremely valuable for this individual because they can trust you to do you job well but they don't have to carry your full expenses, just your billable rate.
Part of being an entrepreneur is figuring things out on your own with nominal help from others. In the old day btw when you 'started a business' (was not called a 'startup') you not only didn't have money to buy expensive help you were lucky to even get any help. You wore most if not all hats.
Though from what I hear this isn’t necessarily the case in construction / home improvement.
But in any case, if you can’t close the deal yourself, 70-85% of something sounds better than 100% of nothing.
My reputation is worth a fair amount to me, but I’ve never been a general or sub contractor though so my opinion is probably pretty naïve.
I would also note that anyone looking to hire you will want you to be an expert on AWS, not a generalist on "Cloud". Similar to how they will want you to know Oracle, not "relational databases". Of course, milage varies as consultancies like Anderson and Deloitte charge big money to hire out generalists.
The reason this works in contrast to the owner going out and hiring a "software contractor" is because now I know their entire business and they don't need to explain to me what they need, I already know and can then just build it. That's a huge barrier for any owner/founder - they don't even know where to start with trying to explain to someone what kind of software they need and are weary of getting taken advantage of. But if you've been inside their business, then this is eliminated.
I jokingly call my consultancy "HAI" (hesitation automation information, also "yes" in Japanese).
Find a small business you actually like the product or service of personally, get in at the bottom, perform all of the different roles, and quickly evaluate the owner to see if there's potential. Work your way out of the initial responsibilities if you get a contract.
What are some projects u have done in the past? Where r u located? What US time zones will u overlap with? What do you charge?
Don't refer to anything in your communications as "u" or "ur" or the like. It will result in an instant discard from most reputable clients.
I mentioned above that there are other (better) competitive axes than price. Clear English communication is definitely one of them.
Standard Stripe fees on $250k revenue:
- 2.9% + 30¢ per charge
- Assume net-30 invoices
- Total fees: 2.9% * $250k + 30¢ * 12 = $7,253.60
- Stripe can freeze your money arbitrarily and indefinitely
Standard USDC fees on Solana:
- Less than 1 cent per transaction
- Total fees: < 12¢
And it will only get easier as time goes on.
Two years ago I had to fend off contracts that paid in USDC.
It's easier to find someone to pay in USDC today than it was then.
Market share and volume will continue to grow.
What do you have against a genuinely useful technology with tangible benefits?
- Cheaper
- Faster
- No arbiter risk
- Built-in escape hatch for political dissidents and enemies of the state
If you want a trusted arbiter for all your financial transactions, you can continue to use the legacy financial system and pay the costs for doing so. I'm not arguing crypto will replace it. Both have their use case.
How valuable is 2.9% of $1m+ to you?
That's not an argument. Name the problems specifically.
> Oh and while we are at it, remind me how to get majority of customers to pay in crypto who are used to just credit cards or wires
There are tons of off-the-shelf checkout flows that allow customers to pay in cash and companies to receive the funds on chain.
I've accepted hundreds of thousands of USDC in revenue in other ventures.
I've also wired and accepted wires for similar amounts. Each time I get a call from the bank and it takes a half a day at the very least. Sometimes it takes weeks to unfreeze my money in various payment processors.
On chain, it's faster. It's cheaper.
What's your point?
It's hard enough to get clients, but then to have to say.. oh, also please use this other payment system which I will likely have to walk you through setting up once you clear it with accounting?
The genie's out of the bottle. Once your funds are on chain, you have instant settlement, zero fees, and zero risk of an intermediary arbitrarily freezing your funds. No point in going back, unless your counterparty demands it.
I suspect the rest of the commercial world will become much friendlier to it as more and more businesses are onboarded.
The pros vastly outweigh the cons and if you need something like escrow (or another trusted intermediary) then you can always revert to the legacy financial system for that. Both have their use cases.
- 2.9% + 30¢ per charge
- Assume net-30 invoices
- Total fees: 2.9% * $250k + 30¢ * 12 = $7,253.60
- Stripe can freeze your money arbitrarily and indefinitely
Standard USDC fees on Solana:
- Less than 1 cent per transaction
- Total fees: < 12¢
What's your argument?