[kasey_junk]

Full time consultants do not charge their bill rate 100% of the time they are working. A very good number is 70% of the time and this is in the case where you are NOT spending time finding your next client.

The other 30% goes into time spent that would be problematic to bill for. Writing notes, updating documents, attending conferences, doing specs for the next projects etc.

Finally, even if you can keep your stack full of work, a few things are always true in consultancies:

1) Once you stop it takes some time to fire the machine back up. Patrick has said he hasn't been doing this work. Getting the consultancy started up again would most probably take more than the 3 weeks selling Bingo Card Creator did.

2) You are, of necessity, working on projects for other people. If you've got a burning desire to work on your own projects, you simply can't and keep the consultancy going.

3) Once you become your own boss, the idea of "down time" or "idle time" where you can devote resources to things you aren't interested in or aren't your focus (like Bingo Card Creator) becomes much less concrete. If you truly choose what hours you work and what you work on, why would you spend any of it on work you don't want to do or that is not driving forward your primary goals. Consulting gets in the way of that.