I'm totally on your side of this and rooting for you. I mention that to soften the following: "a github with a few apps that Ive messed around" does not necess

I'm totally on your side of this and rooting for you. I mention that to soften the following: "a github with a few apps that Ive messed around" does not necessarily suggest to me that you're capable of shipping software projects. (Github is a terrible platform for showing customers you can produce things that they care about, guys. Github shows off source code. Most customers want to buy business outcomes. Source code is rarely a business outcome. If you tried to present a very very compelling business outcome caused by source code via Github, just the nature of hosting it on Github would de-emphasize the business outcome in favor of the source code... which is, by the way, totally impenetrable to many buyers of custom software.) A better way to present a business outcome is a case study: here's the business, here's the problem, here's (a brief sketch off) what we did, here's the results. (You can write a case study on any blogging platform and it will work better than just throwing the repo for that project on Github.) Are you capable of shipping software projects? Shipping a software project would persuasively demonstrate that you are. Conversely, if you've never shipped a software project... well, the customers might not be totally crazy about wondering why you'd command high prices. How do you better at sales? I wish I had a better answer for you than "Read a little, practice a lot." but I don't.