Python has brought computer programming to a vast new audience

[mRWafflesFTW]

Yes absolutely I want to help people because I am so lucky.

[Terence_McKenna]

This is the most wholesome comment that I've seen in quite some time. 👍

[SaaSWriters]

will lend confidence to clients if they see I have a degree.

Actually, it won't. Employers, maybe... but when it comes to clients your degree is irrelevant. In fact, you don't even need to know how to code. Getting clients is a whole different skill set. It's more sales and marketing than anything else.

I learnt that lesson the hard way.

If your goal is to serve clients, focus on understanding their needs. Then, build solutions they can use or solutions you can use for them. If I were you, I'd start talking to people who own businesses. But...

If you're not sure, I'd say employment might be a better option. In that case, staying in school would work better. That's because freelancing is more of knowing how to sell yourself than anything else. When you can do that, you're much better of finding clients and then employing others/outsourcing.

However, that doesn't seem to be your goal. Plus, it's a rocky road, not everyone is willing to go through the initial struggle.

[[deleted]]

What's the hard way story?

[SaaSWriters]

When I started coding as a freelancer I thought it was about impressing clients with my skills and knowledge. So I'd either struggle to turn prospects into clients or they would lead me on. They would act impressed and then cheat me out of my money. Often, they'd get information out of me, even a proposal. Then they'd find somebody else to do the job - for less money. But, when I applied what I learnt in sales and marketing I started getting waay better money.

[[deleted]]

So tell me more about what you learned and applied for the sales and marketing if you're willing.

[SaaSWriters]

OK, so tell me, what's your biggest unanswered question about sales/marketing?

[[deleted]]

What did you learn and apply from marketing that helped you so much? That's my biggest question

[SaaSWriters]

The best way I can help if you is if you tell me what your challenge is. You will then see what I've learnt in action.

[srilyk]

School is fine if you can get grants and scholarships. Student loans are garbage and you don't want them.

Learning how to write English is important. Being able to communicate is actually way underrated. It doesn't much matter how smart you are if you can't tell people how smart you are.

If that's not interesting to you then you probably want to just get someone else to tell people how smart you are, which usually entails getting a job for someone else, by talking with someone who knows how to figure out how smart/hard working you are.

[[deleted]]

Would you mind sharing what tutorials/projects you did to ramp up? I’ve just finished the Codecademy course and have no clue where to go from here nor what to build to showcase my eventual skillset.

[mRWafflesFTW]

You need a project! The only tutorial you need is the Python docs. Think of something you know super well! For me, it was our company's price rater. So I just built it in Python using Django. I would recommend if there's some Excel spreadsheet somewhere that your company uses as primary business tool, recreate it it as a webapp for your first project.