I didn’t realize it at the time, but all these skills would play an incredibly important role later when I would start trying to freelance.

So far, I was making good money but if I was going to be able to help my mom with her back surgery… I would need to do better.

I knew I had to get clients who needed my skills to build web applications for them and that they would be willing to pay me more than someone who needed coaching.

My next question naturally was…

“Hmm… I know how to write code… But how do I create web applications with python?”

I think I actually literally googled that too.

Lots of results on Quora showed up. The results were astounding and a little contradictory. Some people were saying you MUST learn HTML FIRST or you’re the antichrist. While there were others swearing that starting with SQL was the only true way.

There was debate on front end developer vs. back end developers. Then there were other people talking about learning SQL, Databases, Django, Flask, HTML, CSS all at the same time and it was super confusing. I was like “MAKE UP YOUR MIND PEOPLE!”

I mean I was excited to do it but I was also frustrated cause there weren’t any clear answers or simple paths.

I remember thinking to myself, “Like how hard could this web development thing really be?”

Boy, was I in for a surprise.

Anyway, I decided to start with Python’s Django framework for web development at the time and I started with some Django courses…

It was really hard to catch up on what the instructors were doing.

I would think things like this to myself all the time:

• “What part do I do in the command line”

• “What’s this running code over some 8000 server port thing everyone’s talking about?”

• “Why does my app look so ugly?”

• “What’s this version control business & aren’t Git and Github the same thing?”

• “How come none of my stuff gets saved… And when I restart my application… All the data is gone!?”

Those were just some of the beautiful thoughts that would come into my head.

Then I took courses to learn more back end stuff on Udacity.

Some more courses on Coursera.

Regardless… I practiced. And I practiced. And I practiced…

Every day I would wake up and get double tall white mocha with two shots of espresso from Starbucks to aid me in coding and then drink Monster energy drinks every night!

Here is an instagram post I had made in 2016 with the hashtags #allnighter #monster #codingislife

I was going STRONG. NO WEAKNESS.

I remember I was suffering from some serious malnutrition.

I couldn’t even find time to eat. I went from eating 3 meals a day, to 2, and eventually 1. And then that 1 meal ended up turning into a bag of nacho cheese doritos because I needed more time to code & learn this shit inside out.

I was coding for at least 18-20 hours a day at that time.

Here is what an OFF week for me looked like… (~40 hours of coding in 7 days…) ?‍

I was staying up all night every night baby.

I was popping pills like rappers in society (don’t worry, they were just Advil).

I had like 1,000+ bookmarks on web development resources after a few weeks.

Started creating web applications using Django so I could learn in a project based way.

I read up on every blog post I could find.

I watched every YouTube tutorial on Django you can imagine.

I went to every local meetup where there were other developers.

I bought books on Django and completed them cover to cover.

I invested thousands of dollars to get mentorship from professional developers (one of the best decisions I made).

I learned every technology that’s required in the web development stack to become a great full-stack Django developer.

And then I got good in web development… And I mean REALLY good.

Then I thought…

“Hmm… I know how to create web applications with python using Django… How do I make money from coding?”

Getting clients wasn’t a problem for me at this point anymore. Getting coaching clients had taught me enough already. But, I didn’t want to just work with anyone. I didn’t want to work on 10 different projects where they were all worth like $200.

I wanted to work on a bigger project with a client where I could deliver them amazing results.

I knew how to get clients for small things but I didn’t know how to demonstrate my value to clients in a way where it would position me as a trusted advisor (consultant) and not just a commodity freelancer.

I had to learn that you have to dig deeper to understand what the client really needs, and then sell that.

I had to learn that no one pays a drug dealer for the drugs – they’re buying the high. No one wants to pay your for a web app – they need more customers and your product is a vehicle for that.

Once you understand this, selling becomes as easy as selling your best friend on watching Terminator 2 with you because you know he LOVES great action films.

What you deliver to your client gets them better results, they get a bigger ROI, they make more money, and you make more money. It’s not a zero-sum game, everyone wins. If you’re the only one winning… You’re not winning.

I also had guidance & mentorship from other developers who’d been where I wanted to be.

After lots of searching for the right client… I finally found my very first one.

• login system (user authentication)

• The ability to register employees

• To be able to assign jobs & manage their employees

• Automate the process for their employees doing tons of manual paperwork

• An invoicing system so they could see everything in one place

There were a lot of technical things that they wanted but I had to dig deeper and find out what was it that they really needed.

Me: “why do you need this”?

Client: “so it could save us and our employees time”.

Me: “why do you or your employees need to save time”?

Client: “So we could save money, we’re paying thousands of dollars just filling out stupid paperwork. This would help each employee save at least 10 hours a week.”

Me: “how many employees do you have?”

Client: “20”.

Me: “How much are you paying them?”

Client: “Hmm… About $15/hr.”

Me: “Why do you need an invoicing system?”

Client: “Qazi, we need a formal way of sending invoices because otherwise we forget to follow up with the companies & collect invoices. Not to mention it makes our business look unprofessional.”

Me: “How much money does it cost you NOT to have a proper invoicing system in place?”

Client: “Well… Just this last month we lost a client that was paying us about $30,000/year. Hopefully, that puts it into perspective.”

Aah. Interesting.

What do you notice?

Here’s what I notice… Crafting a solution to their problems would have a very direct impact on their bottom line.

1. They were paying their employees $15/hr. They had 20 employees. Each of those employees was wasting about 10 hours per week on “doing stupid paperwork”. Doing some simple math I found out they were losing $12,000 a month in revenue at the VERY least. That’s $144,000 a year.

After I got off the call with them…

I immediately hopped on a call with one of my mentors.

I shared with him my thoughts and together we crafted the perfect proposal (which we would refer to as the Profitable Proposal in the future).

The most important thing to do in the proposal was to shift the focus of my client from the cost of the project to the VALUE of the project.

I had to help them understand that it would save them at least $150,000+ a year according to their own calculations.

My mentor was pushing me and finally convinced me to quote them $100/hr.

This was gonna be my first client ever. I was FREAKING out. “How the hell would I be able to charge them this much. There is just NO WAY.”

Now you have to understand that at this time, I was going to a community college, had a 2.0 GPA, and this was quite possibly the biggest opportunity of my life.

As I was hitting send on this email. Thoughts were going through my brain at a million miles per hour. I was SO nervous. My index finger was literally dripping sweat.

It was kind of disgusting actually.

“There is NO way in hell they are gonna say yes.”

“Even if they said yes… How the hell am I gonna actually get this done?”

“They’re not gonna pick me, I don’t have any experience”

“I don’t even have a college degree… I have no chance.”

One day passed. No reply from them.

Another day passed… Nope.

My heart sank into my throat. I had that feeling in my gut like I was punched by poseidon himself.

And then I was talking with my friend and sharing all the reasons they aren’t gonna reply to me.

My phone buzzed in my jeans. I reached into my right pocket and read a notification from outlook. The subject line of the email read “let’s get started this wednesday”.

I literally threw my f****** phone on the sofa and started SCREAMING. My friend and I teared up harder than I can ever express through words. I went home and told my parents. They had tears in their eyes. I facetimed my brothers who were in California and they couldn’t stop yelling out of excitement.

It was one of the most amazing moments of my life.

But, when everyone went away and it was time to be alone and by myself.

What kept me going wasn’t the cheers of my friends, the proud faces of my parents, or the support of my brothers…

It was much quieter.

It was much more powerful.

It was a fire.

The fire that had ignited when I was 12 years old and felt truly helpless.

And now that my goal was becoming a reality… The fire was burning stronger than ever.

Deep down for me why this was SO important was because it put me closer towards one of my goals… Helping my mom.

Here’s a super lame picture of me on my first day at work on Wednesday, May 18th, 2016.

I thought I looked SO cool ?.

When I walked in… My client even had my office ready for me!

This picture is taken at 2:30 pm on my first day at work from my new office…

(did you notice my sexy coat on the seat ??)

I couldn’t get OVER IT!

“MY OWN OFFICE. FOR ME!? WHAT!!??”

I was getting paid from this client on a net 7 basis (weekly payments). Here is what I got paid over the span of about 2 months of me working them and completing their project…

I was working roughly about 20 hours a week and I got to work from anywhere I want. Going to the office was optional.

I then took this money, and the money I had saved from coaching…

Took my mom to Lutheran General hospital and made it rain $$$.

Here is a picture of my cute, happy, and short little momma! Giving that beautiful radiant smile after her surgery…

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

How’s that for a story huh? But, it doesn’t end there…

So… okay that was the most epic moment in my life. And changed my mom’s life.

But then my new skill set, and the clients I was working with changed MY life too…

I’ve ALWAYS loved chess… So I finally got time to play in chess competitions again…

I had always wanted to skydive since I was 7 years old… And finally at 21… I did.

You can see, it completely changed my entire life.

After awhile I reflected on my entire journey…

And I began asking myself… “Why did it have to be so hard… So confusing… And so painful?!”

There were hundreds of points where I could have gone completely wrong.

There was no simple path I could just follow. Everyone just gave hodge podge advice.

Professors said get a CS degree but they themselves don’t have real developer jobs and that’s usually the only reason they are stuck teaching…

Developers said learn data structures but they forgot how it feels like to be a beginner themselves…

Most developers who even have full-time jobs or freelancing jobs mostly just got lucky and give you advice like “don’t give up. Keep fighting. Work harder. Keep learning…” without any clear path…

Online job postings for ENTRY level jobs say you need at least 3 years of experience and you think to yourself “WHAT! How does that even make any sense?”…

And then there are other developers who are charging like $30/hr with YEARS of experience while others are making $100/hr with a few months of experience…

Isn’t that frustrating? Doesn’t it piss you off?

I had to invest thousands of dollars into getting mentorship from professional developers to learn this stuff.

I had to consume every piece of YouTube tutorial in existence. I pretty much bought out all of Udemy taking coding courses.

Almost killed myself by missing food, downing energy drinks, and popping advils to make terrible headaches go away.

I was coding 15-20 hours a day without exaggeration.

It took me thousands of hours of intense practice to master the fundamentals of python to get good enough to make an income from coaching it. To then trying to figure out how to leverage my python skills to make full-stack web applications that are powerful and scalable with Python & Django.

And then ultimately, to attract the right clients who see you as their trusted advisor and who would pay you what you’re worth because you deeply understand what they need and can show them the value that you would bring to them.

Wouldn’t it be cool if you were a badass developer and people needed your skills?

Wouldn’t it be epic if people paid you for your coding skills WHILE you were working on your web development skills?

Wouldn’t it be amazing if you could build web applications from scratch using Python & Django and finally – proudly – call yourself a full-stack web developer?

… And wouldn’t it be a dream to attract the right clients who see you as their trusted advisor who you could charge what you’re worth because you deeply understand what they need and you can show them the value that you would bring to them without having to be sleazy?

What if you had to just follow ONE system that can take you through the entire journey I went through to becoming a 6-figure python full-stack developer? Minus the pains, frustrations, and overwhelm of figuring it all out yourself? Well, now there goddamn is ?.

2. They needed a simple system that kept track of everything and all in one place. Not having one cost them at least $30,000 a year.

They wanted…

Introducing…

Finally, a system that shows you how to become a python full-stack developer and use those skills to charge what you’re worth. Even if you’ve never written a line of code…

What if you could have the confidence of a highly skilled python developer that’s irreplaceable? The freedom to choose your own hours? And the ability to charge what you’re worth?

Week 0: The Mindset of Highly Successful Developers

The first week we are gonna cover all the big picture things you need to know to become a badass developer

4 crucial tips on how to be a top performer that highly successful python developers use

The #1 secret to never quit anything (hint: it’s not motivation or passion)

Powerful & specific strategies to leverage your money to buy you more time. You can use this to magically find time in your day, speed up your learning progress, and shorten your journey to becoming a python django full-stack web developer.

Here’s how to build accountability systems for yourself that will automate your success as you become a highly paid developer. No more thinking really hard & relying on motivation. These are the same techniques top CEO’s use to run multi-million dollar businesses and still find time for their friends & family.

Why you don’t need degrees, certifications, or any other fancy pieces of paper to be a successful python developer (and why many people who even have them don’t make money).

Week 1: Python Crash Course

We’ll cover all the python fundamentals. This will be the building blocks for developing python web apps

You’ll master the following things and pretty damn fast too…

The one tool I discovered that’ll accelerate your learning progress 10 folds.

How to check your coding ideas before you spend hours or days building something completely wrong.

How to write reusable code according to DRY (don’t repeat yourself) principles so that when you build an awesome feature for app #1, you can easily plug & play it into app #2.

How to create intelligent programs that can make decisions automatically.

How to solve some problems in python that can come up in your interview questions. All the while mastering data types like lists and dictionaries.

Week 1 Quick Win: Shreshth started earning an income following the module in week 1.

Week 2: Your Python Freelancer Portfolio Web App

I’ll give you your python freelancer portfolio & show you how to put it online so anyone in the world can see it! We use Python + Flask + Heroku.

I’ll let you steal my python flask portfolio web application in 4 easy steps

The best tool to use for hosting your python application online

This is the portfolio where you’re going to add all your upcoming Python Django full-stack projects onto

You’ll put your first web app online faster than ANY WordPress, Squarespace, or Weebly site… And all for free (You won’t have to pay a cent for hosting)