I'll offer two pieces of advice, having done this. First, get clear on what you're doing. Are you offering actual "consulting" services, where you're coming in

I'll offer two pieces of advice, having done this. First, get clear on what you're doing. Are you offering actual "consulting" services, where you're coming in and solving business problems? Watch Burn Notice -- you're Michael. That's a "high dollar, low volume" proposition. In this sort of role you need to work directly with business decision-makers and sell them on things like revenue increase, cost decrease, etc. Consultants primarily sell expertise, and "the ability to do very risky/complicated things well". Surgeons are consultants. This is the world of small, sharp, high-prestige teams. Think BCG, McKinsey, Bain. You can also run a contracting company. There is a lot of money in this (a lot more than consulting actually) but it tends to be less glamorous. Look at the Bechtels and Fluors of the world. The main thing a company is selling here is top-notch coordination, project planning, and management services, not necessarily "expertise" as such. "You know what you want, we are the people who can get it done". In this world, you'd better know how to manage big teams (often cross-functionally), hit deliverables, and control costs. Look at how large-scale construction projects are managed for inspiration. Contractors take direction from their clients; consultants give it. In either case, your best bet is to be narrow but very recognized. Pick some problem, for instance, "converting hotels from booking.com to commission-free direct booking" or "helping restaurants improve labor utilization" and be the absolute best at it. Note also that consulting tends to be defined by "industry problems" more than any sort of technology (e.g. ASP.NET, Java, etc). Second piece of advice: realize running a company is too hard to do "on the side". If you're going to really excel at running a business, you need to be OK with the idea that your #1 job, at all times, is sales, and that your tech chops will decay. Deep in their hearts, many technologists aren't OK with this, so they end up as relatively crappy engineers and businesspeople. You need to be comfortable with the idea that your professional identity is no longer, "person who's very good at shipping/building technology". Your ability to get a high-paying tech job is valuable (do an NPV analysis) and is absolutely going to suffer if your resume doesn't follow the standard "track". Running a shitty consulting company is both less fun and less financially rewarding, than being a mid-level engineer at a SV tech company. If you want to write code or lead complicated cutting-edge technical projects, you probably aren't cut out to run a consultancy/contracting company. That's OK. Just do some real soul-searching about the choice. Parting word: most contract work is garbage. It is by definition the work a company doesn't view as sufficiently core or important, to justify doing in-house. Again, you need to give this a hard think and really be OK with it, otherwise you're setting yourself up to fail.