[D] What best practices and workflows those working solo as DS/MLE should keep in mind?

I'm wondering what technical recruiters or seasoned DS/MLE have to say about people with profiles like mine: good theoretical and decent technical background but working solo for too long.

Summary of my career for context: I've been working 8 years now as a DS, the first 3 in medium sized R&D and consulting teams (for a big tech company), then for the past 5 as a solo DS for relatively successful non-ai focused start-ups, mostly developing ML/NLP stuff to address …

best practices career context good machinelearning mind mine mle people practices profiles recruiters summary technical workflows