Going solo as a Webflow designer and developer | Matthias Cordes

Matthias Cordes is a Web Designer and Webflow Developer. He runs his own freelance business and creates high converting websites for fast growing technology startups. Matthias had his first freelance “gig” as a designer after highschool and while traveling around Australia and Bali. After graduating with a degree in Creative Technology at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, he pursued his passion by working on his agency full-time. Now, he supports tech companies as a team of one, with a specialty in Webflow development. In this episode, we talk about becoming a specialist in Webflow design and development, building trust and reputation as a freelancer, writing his case studies together with a copywriter, his design collaboration process with clients, ChatGPT for web development tasks, and so much more. 00:00 - LinkedIn videos 01:48 - Going freelance straight out of university 02:45 - Deciding to build a freelance career 05:17 - Client RED FLAGS 08:45 - Becoming a Webflow professional partner 11:41 - Results > Credentials 13:02 - Recent project + cool tricks 15:48 - Why his case studies are so good 18:15 - Basecamp for managing projects 22:00 - What clients did Mattias start with? 24:10 - "find a real job at a real company" 25:43 - The agency he started 28:11 - Professional video set up 29:48 - Video marketing for his freelance practice 31:41 - Web development vs. web design projects 34:54 - cheese with holes 36:14 - Switching from Sketch to Figma 38:00 - The adrenaline from collaboration 39:11 - What do you do when you get stuck? 40:17 - Using ChatGPT to build websites 42:21 - Coding as a non-coder 43:45 - Matthias' piece of advice