My strategic suggestions: 1) lower your cost. Lowering costs is the easiest way to reduce unforeseen risks and pressure. 2) look for an anchor client and offer a retainer agreement that helps you pay all your bills. Don’t be too picky about the work, it’s mostly about the pay. This could also be you current employer if you’re leaving on good terms. Don’t commit more than 30-40% of your time, max. 3) Having all or most of your costs of living covered by 1+2, you’re free to use the remaining time to build and grow your business by specializing, improving your approach to sales, running experiments, looking for employees or partners. 4) once you’ve found your niche and you‘re 60-80% booked, start to lower your time-cost. Look for someone to take care of that unspecific retainer work you’ve taken on in the second step. Keep up the relationship to the client, but reduce your share of actual time spent on the job gradually to 20% (1 day every other week on your schedule). This step is important, because your time does not scale! Don’t wait to do this until you‘re 100% booked! Being 100% booked means that you cannot seize big opportunities that come along. A huge part of mild success is hard work, but big success needs hard work AND luck AND the possibility to take advantage of that luck. You don’t want to tell someone who gives you a one-in-decade-offer „cool offer, but I’m fully booked with boring and less paying jobs“. You want to be ready to seize the moment. The point of maximum long-term growth is not the one of maximum short-term revenue.