So you want to be a consultant...

Or: Why work 8 hours a day for someone else when you can work 16 hours/day for yourself? I've been a consultant of one form or another since 1985 when I started my old company, V-Systems, with a friend from college, and actually did bits and pieces of consulting as early as 1982. I have been asked often about the business, and I decided to write this up. Please note that I am providing observations from my own personal experience, but I am not providing tax or legal advice. You need to pay somebody for that, and I'm not qualified. Furthermore, I am not even attempting to make this a comprehensive guide for everything required by one in or contemplating the consulting business. I am purposely omitting whole areas, such as licensure, insurance, and negotiating - there are other books for that, and this isn't one of them.
Read more here. By the way, Steve describes our job first hand.