[asanwal]

1. Can you contract out any elements of consulting work to others to free up time? Perhaps some of the lower-value work? You'll make the spread b/w the rate you get and what you pay them. You'll profit less but gain incremental hours for your venture.

2. Pick or find consulting work that "scales well" meaning it allows you to leverage (sorry for jargon) knowledge/things you've already done or built. This type of work will be more efficient for you, more profitable and you can reinvest saved time into your startup.

3. Regarding multiple startup ideas, I'd pick one to focus on. Diversifying amongst startup ideas esp if unrelated doesn't work in my experience. It leads to doing them all half-baked which ultimately won't get you further from consulting which is where you want to be.

4. As mentioned below, we treated our own company as a client which meant we acted with same sense of urgency as we would with other clients. It is a good way to make your own venture a priority else it always gets back burnered.

5. This one is a bit drastic but exit the mortgage if you can by selling your home and renting. Fixed costs like mortgages can be like anchors for an entrepreneur. Take the money you may make and put some away for a rainy day fund for the wife/kids/you and a portion can be used to give your own venture some additional fuel or runway.

In same boat as you my friend so "feel your pain" although sounds like you have too much consulting biz which is a high class problem IMO.

Good luck. And if you figure out a "solution", pls let me know.

[petervandijck]

Don't sell your house though. Rent costs money too.

[asanwal]

True. Perhaps it's me being in NYC where you can rent for significantly less than carrying cost of mortgage/maintenance on your own condo.

Plus why invest in real estate (highly uncertain and perhaps going nowhere in near future) vs. invest in oneself?

[mgkimsal]

Selling for most people now is not a great idea for a couple reasons.

A) as the other person pointed out, you'll still likely have rent. As for bouncing around looking for cheaper rent, you typically get locked in to a rental agreement for at least 6 months, if not a year. You can't just move every month to save a few bucks.

B) Moving costs money (and time) in and of itself.

C) Selling costs. At least in the US, most housing sales are going to eat up 5-6% of the house price in commissions. On a $150k house sale, it's going to cost you $9k (plus, again, the time and expense of moving).

Unless moving is going to save you significant expenses vs renting, it's probably not that wise to blindly sell and move. Assuming, that is, you even could sell to someone in this market. It's not great in many areas for sellers right now.

If I could rent someplace $800-$1000 less than where I'm at now, I'd consider it, because the cost/expense would be recouped in probably a year, but I wouldn't go through all that hassle/cost/expense to save a couple hundred per month.

YMMV.