How Did I Sign My First Paying Client?

Author

Govardhana M K
May 07, 2025

In partnership with

Growth Feels

Hey — Govardhana MK👋

Along with practical growth tips, we share live business use cases to help you launch and grow an internet business from $0.

👋 Before we begin... a big thank you to today's sponsor THE RUNDOWN AI

Start learning AI in 2025

Everyone talks about AI, but no one has the time to learn it. So, we found the easiest way to learn AI in as little time as possible: The Rundown AI.

It's a free AI newsletter that keeps you up-to-date on the latest AI news, and teaches you how to apply it in just 5 minutes a day.

Plus, complete the quiz after signing up and they’ll recommend the best AI tools, guides, and courses – tailored to your needs.

If we are meeting for the first time, I am Govardhana MK, founder of:

NeuVeu - a Digital and Cloud consulting firm

TechOps Examples - #1 DevOps and Cloud technical newsletter with 45K+ subscribers

Growth Feels is my latest intitiave, where I share my learnings, strategies, and live business use cases to help you build a successful internet business from $0.

Here I’ve captured the journey for you, and today we talk about how I started my consulting journey and signed my first client.

02.12.22 - THE DAY EVERYTHING CHANGED

It’s hard to believe, I never had big dreams or plans to build a company.

Like most middle class Indian kids, especially being the eldest with a lost father at 16, all I wanted was to graduate, get a decent MNC job, and be financially stable.

I got what I wished for, many times over. Of course, I built skills, worked on my communication, and kept running hard.

In my 17+ years of corporate career, I travelled places and was in a leadership role at Deutsche Bank, Singapore, making $150K/yr when COVID hit in 2020.

With my mother living alone in India, I chose to return to my hometown, Chittoor, in Aug 2020.

Within a week, I joined Altimetrik as a Principal Architect at half the pay, but I could work remotely and be with my mother, which is more important.

Life was great. I enjoyed working at Altimetrik, no complaints.

On 02 Dec 2022, I was blessed with twin baby boys, and everything in me and around me changed.

The family was overjoyed, even with sleepless nights 😄 Nothing matched the joy of first-time fatherhood.

I slowly synced my routines with the twins. Egos broke, uncertainty felt beautiful. But everything shattered when remote work was proposed to end.

After 17 years away from my mother, now I had to stay away again. My wife too would be living away from family.

During COVID, I delivered for top banks, pharma, and media companies right from my living room. Location was never a problem.

Instead of moving the newborns and living in isolation, a thought struck me.

What if I built a career that let me stay close?

So I resigned in Feb 2023.

The plan was simple. Spend 4 hours building a product and 4 hours on independent consulting. That would keep me in touch with tech and give cash flow.

But I knew onboarding as a vendor was not easy. There are long processes, paperwork, safe deposits, and business development is expensive.

I didn't want to be on Fiverr or Upwork.

  1. You lose pricing power there.

  2. You can't build real client relationships, which matter more than one off gigs.

The better path was to make opportunities come to me.

But how would anyone know I had the ability?

HOW DID I SIGN MY FIRST PAYING CLIENT ?

LinkedIn felt like the best shot. With 1B users and 200M from the US, the chance to get a decision maker's attention was high.

I started writing for one person. Each post had to solve that one person’s problem. Nothing else mattered.

My first technical post on 15 Feb 2023 got 18 likes and 2 comments. (16 likes were from friends, 1 comment was mine, and another came after 1.2 yrs.)

So technically, 2 likes and 0 comments.

Looking back, the output is so bad. Today, I wouldn’t even engage if I saw it in my feed.

5 months later, on 25 Jul 2023, the same concept with an intuitive visual got 2.4L impressions, 1809 likes, 69 comments, and 263 reposts (all real this time 😁).

By then, I had learnt the art of clean packaging.

A few months later, Alex Xu’s ByteByteGo brought the same piece for good $$$$ with proper credit, and we improvised it even further. Post URL here.

That’s the reality.

Your first post would be bad.

Your first step would be a stumble.

But that uncomfortness makes you work more, and iterations make you better.

I anchored myself to this compounding pull effect.

Back in Feb 2023, after my first post, I kept writing in a specific cloud and Kubernetes niche with real-world use cases that are not available anywhere else.

Never bothered about likes. I posted every day at 6:45 PM IST, when US and UK were online.

After 8 weeks, a DM landed from a US-based SaaS firm, MAP Digital.

The day after my notice period ended in Apr 2023, I took a 2 month contract as an independent consultant at $80/hr.

In May, the same client asked me to incorporate a company for a bigger contract as they couldn't issue it to an individual.

So it was not me, the client made me an entrepreneur.

11 May 2023 - NeuVeu Company Incorporated.

THE BIG BREAK

I kept sharing use cases on LinkedIn, and opportunities followed.

To name a few during that time period:

I signed Stanford on 15 Aug 2023 and hired our first two employees in Sep 2023, and that was the month we doubled our revenue to $28K MRR.

More enterprise clients followed like Hearst Corporation, Michael Stores.

We’ve helped 21 brands across 8 countries with technical implementation, product consulting, and product outreach.

Fun fact: TCS and we now serve the same client (It was my dream company as a fresher that rejected me).

I got so busy with the consulting business, that I never made the product I started with.

Take Aways

I know it’s easy to say just start writing on LinkedIn to pull opportunities, but what’s the actual takeaway?

Here are the things you shouldn’t do:

1. Don’t write for everyone

Writing about toxic work culture, traffic problems, and high tax touches everyone’s pain points. It gets high clicks, but conversion ? Will it get you a client or a job ?

You need to be known for one thing.

Cloud, SaaS, Marketing, whatever... Pick one and go deep.

If your profile says everything, people remember nothing.

2. Don’t ignore packaging

Your post can have gold, but if it's hard to read, it dies. Use white space, short lines, real visuals, and examples.

Bad format = lost opportunity.

3. Don’t sound like a resume

“I’ve 10 years of experience in X” doesn’t move anyone. Show a real story.

This is not a resume. This is a feed. Make people stop and read.

4. Don’t forget the time zone

Posting when your buyers are asleep is like whispering in a cave. I posted daily at 6:45 PM IST, when both US and UK were online.

Right time, right people.

FEEDBACK

Thanks for reading! 😁

If you liked this email please consider sharing it :)

— Govardhana MK (@govardhana_mk)

See you on Sunday with 3 live business use cases. Take care!