Get involved in organizing some geek events (dinners, hackathons, BarCamps, small conferences on specific technologies or industries) in your city. Figure out

Get involved in organizing some geek events (dinners, hackathons, BarCamps, small conferences on specific technologies or industries) in your city. Figure out who you'd like to work with and make events that will interest them. Develop the ability to learn about someone's project and offer a constructive suggestion within 5 minutes, and you'll quickly earn a reputation as someone who can listen and respond constructively. People hire consultants who make them feel awesome, and you should be able to do this at a personal as well as an organizational level. Find some other consultants in related areas and meet them for lunch so you can learn from them. Established consultants have a lot of extra leads and will often be happy to help you get started. Finally, if you're the kind of person who doesn't already have a great answer for how to do lead generation, you probably won't do a great job of reselling consulting hours. A good referring consultant has one or more of (1) an incredibly network for lead generation and (2) enough of a bureaucracy to eliminate some of the paperwork hassle of dealing directly with clients. If you don't have either of these, the sort of consultants who will cost you <10h/week to manage will probably prefer to work on their own rather than cut you a percentage.