hey man, can you give some advice about how to start consulting? My day job is a hardware engineer for a semicon company. I write software models for HW devices

hey man, can you give some advice about how to start consulting? My day job is a hardware engineer for a semicon company. I write software models for HW devices so we can estimate their performance before fabricating them. Mostly involves C++ and analyzing data. I am not sure most companies would hire some consultant as opposed to just hiring them in-house. Can you elaborate your field of expertise and how you got started? thanks