You'll get to a point (with lots of hard work and good decisions) where selling yourself isn't the hard part of the job and you don't have to spend as much time

You'll get to a point (with lots of hard work and good decisions) where selling yourself isn't the hard part of the job and you don't have to spend as much time and energy marketing yourself. Juggling time and projects and choosing who to work with and who not to and also finding time to study to get better is the tough part for me. And also having a life. You'll figure out how to manage your rates and increase them as your skills warrant, but if you're good people will hunt you down. You can only handle so many clients at a time as a sole proprietor though, so it's important to focus on the best clients and lose the duds. I only have 5 clients, but charge $135/hr. (I also have an MBA and lots of business experience) With that few clients, it's important to not let all your eggs end up in 1 basket, which is tricky sometimes since the client mostly determines the project timeframes.