I spent the last 4 years consulting, and I just last month deliberately wrapped up with my last two clients, because I know if I keep just stringing along on sl

I spent the last 4 years consulting, and I just last month deliberately wrapped up with my last two clients, because I know if I keep just stringing along on slow lingering projects with them I'll never get serious about finding a new fulltime job. The people who tell you that this is as much about sales/marketing/relationships than any actual technical topic are so so right. When I started out I didn't deny that, I just didn't realize that its not an abstract concept you need to be open to, its a full third of your manhours you need to grind. You need to be contributing to open source, writing blogs, doing videos, helping out in community slacks, going to conferences, attending meetups, giving presentations/talks, etc constantly. And thats just the background stuff. With your clients you need to relentlessly be the one who follows up, asks for work, ask for introductions, invites people to things, etc. Then comes the "relationships" part of the work-dynamic, which is overwhelmingly one-sided (like most vendor relationships). You need to be the one who repeats yourself endlessly without getting frustrated, who doesn't take being ignored and schedule-bumped personally. Who politely handles not getting paid as an administrative kerfluffle not a rude form of apathy driven wage theft. You need to have dozens of conversations with people over and over about wether or not you are worth it to spend the money on for this project. Usually your direct contact will be kind enough to express shame over it, but its still an inevitable part of the multi-layer-management/budget-approval process.