Speaking for myself, the biggest shift was mindset. You can really approach business in two ways and they're completely different. Decide which is for you. One

Speaking for myself, the biggest shift was mindset. You can really approach business in two ways and they're completely different. Decide which is for you. One: the artisan/boutique way. You can make plenty of money this way, it's how a lot of high-end law firms, marketing agencies, etc. run. Focus on a very high-value problem, do most of the work yourself or with a small team of partners, and be the best at it: medical malpractice cases, patio11-style marketing optimization, that kind of thing. Stay small, make a million (or more) per year, build your brand. Get work through referrals and keep charging more as you get better and more well-known. Most of your gains will come from serving clients with bigger pocketbooks, even through the work will be substantially the same (funny how that works). Option 2: the true "business owner". Reframe from "I can make X for Y hours" to "I need to sell x million @ y% margin". Think like a drug dealer or a guy selling shoes. Sell a million dollars of product, keep 10%, you make 100k. Two million in sales @ 15% = 300k. The point is, you aren't selling yourself, you're selling a product, whether that's hours of developer labor, some kind of outcome, or even a physical product. You're a merchant. This is what it means to be a true "business owner" -- not that it matters that much, many people that go down the other path do just fine. The main thing is to get into the mind of a (your) customer. It's no longer about the work itself, but your customer - how they find you, why they're paying you, etc. You need to figure that out. Good luck. (used to run an agency and now starting a software company.)