[rnprince]

Hey everyone, thank you for these replies! All of them were helpful. I came up with these takeaways:

- Frame your services as creating solutions to business problems, rather than trying to sell developer skills. This explains the value in terms that a client understands, and more simply, it lets non-technical clients know what you do in a way that “AWS, Go, JavaScript, PostgreSQL” can’t.

- Focus on getting clients. This is a bigger barrier to entry than how good you are at creating software. Don’t expect to do well just because you are good at making things.

- You’re probably qualified to do this if you've been a developer for a few years.

With this information, I'm going to follow the plan I already had, but with more confidence and focus since I feel more like I'm on the right track. I'm going to launch a few nice side projects with moderate levels of complexity to solidify my skills and figure out how long things take (important for estimates), and then I'll try getting clients using those projects to showcase what I'm capable of doing.

Thanks again everyone!