This is solid advice. I'd add that community presence matters more than you might think—but it has to be genuine. Hanging out in Slack groups and actually helping people (without immediately pitching) builds real relationships. When you do mention you're consulting, people already know your work quality.

The portfolio/OSS combo is key because it removes risk. Clients can see what you actually ship, not just what you claim. Even small open source contributions help more than you'd expect.

One thing missing: referrals. Your first few clients are the hardest. But if you do good work, they'll refer others. That becomes your growth engine pretty quickly, so don't treat early clients as one-offs.