I had to do something similar when I started my consulting business. I was very aggressive about finding work, and it breaks down like this, for every week day:

I had to do something similar when I started my consulting business. I was very aggressive about finding work, and it breaks down like this, for every week day: 1. Reach out to 5 contacts in my network. Ask them if their company needs any contracting work. If they don't, can they recommend 3 people who might even remotely need it OR if they ever worked with consultants before and used a firm. 2. If there are leads, follow up with up with them (usually around 3) asap. Get to a conversation in person or over the phone. 3. If there are prospects, promise them a 24 hr turnaround on an estimate and get them a statement-of-work/proposal in that time. Building trust is about doing what you'll say. You'd be surprised at how many people will not follow through on super simple things like this. 4. If there are potential buyers, you should have put in your SoW/proposal that you'll check in within 48 hours. Make sure you check in! Do revisions, get on the phone, do whatever it takes to ensure that they feel special and valued and you want the business to be mutually beneficial. I was able to close multiple six figure deals with this strategy. In terms of the money part - stop charging an hourly rate. Do fixed price projects or charge by the week/month. Yeah, it still comes out to a "per hour" amount if you amortize over 40 hours in a week or 160 hours in a month, but sell on the intangible benefits. Your customers don't have to sweat phone calls any longer. And YOU don't have to worry about being on the clock all of the time. Focus on results instead of minutia in billing. $200 is going to be tough to get with any regularity if you're brand new to consulting. Brennan Dunn is a great dude but in my experience the whole "double your rate" thing doesn't just come out of thin air when you already have a high starting point. Easy to do if you're doing commodity work like CMSs or basic data entry. Not so easy to do if you already have a high salary and you're in a specialization like mobile. Start with $200. If you only get nos, drop it to $150 or $175. Drop until someone bites, but realize the more potential closes you have because you're reaching too high, the less time you'll spend earning a buck. You can always work up to that with every subsequent deal - maybe start at $125 or $150. Get cash coming in, and then continue to source deals for when this gig ends. Keep turning down folks that won't meet your STARTING_RATE * 1.1 to 1.25, or whatever. Easier to stay in business and keep the lights on that way than just start throwing out what is effectively $400k a year when no one knows who you are.