It's one thing to learn a skill, it's another thing to sell the skill. Let me show you how I did it.
When we started 9jacodekids Academy I was going from school to school to speak to school owners about introducing coding into their school curriculum. I received a lot of NOs.
Some weren't sure if kids could learn coding. They knew coding to be complex and difficult even for adults.
Some didn't want to be used as guinea pigs for experiment. They wanted to know where I had done this before.
This became a recurring theme so I thought of a way out. I decided to run a free coding class.
I chose my church as a venue. Spoke to my Pastor and he agreed.
I spoke to one of my mentors who owned a school to allow me borrow desks from her school. I also requested for some desktop computers from her and she was so gracious and kind to give me.
I also spoke to some friends to loan me their laptops. In all we had about 20 computers or so.
I used my flat screen TV from my house as a screen to teach
I spoke to some techy youths in my church to volunteer to assist me in setting up and running the class. Their job was to assist the kids while I was the main tutor
I printed Tshirts for everyone with 9jacodekids fully branded on them.
I got my younger brother who was just learning to do graphic design to design a flyer for us to advertise the event. He too needed someone to practise his designs skills on. I was his Guinea pig. I printed the flyers. He was excited.
We went out and shared flyers in traffic, in churches, schools etc.
On the day about 60 kids turned up and we taught them coding.
Let me tell you my real motive 😁. I needed proof to sell my market. I borrowed a camera from a brother in church. We took pictures and videos. These were my evidence. They wanted evidence, they will get evidence by fire by force.
I started posting on social media. People started taking me seriously. I started getting calls to introduce me to school owners. The rest is history.
So you just learnt a new skill and need clients? Show proof. Do work for FREE and gather testimonials. Keep educating us about what you do and posting those proofs. They're called social proof. People will take you more seriously. Clients will start coming. This may not be immediate. So be patient and think long term
PS: Notice how I BORROWED almost everything we used that day? Desperate times, desperate measures.