People ask if I'm available and if I find the work interesting and they can pay me I say yes. I have never looked for work since starting and have slightly more requests than I can fulfill (almost everything through my network). For efficiency I do full days of work + ad-hoc meetings when necessary and no more than 2 days per week per client.
Note that I'm not always a CTO in the strictest sense of the word, I like doing complex technical challenges with software companies and sometimes just lead a complex project like implementing ISO 27001 or re-packaging a software suite for on-prem deployment.
Sorry to off topic further but I also have a question - how do you deal with recruiters? As a consultant I get grilled and rejected if I ever have overlapping projects or anything that even remotely looks like more than 40h a week. They're very intimidated with implications of being "overemployed"
This isn't a problem for me. I mostly stopped getting interest from recruiters when I became CTO. Now I just get calls from CEOs or CPOs etc and they understand what I offer them. I have a rule for myself to never charge for hours when I'm not productive and never charge overlapping hours though.
Note that I'm not always a CTO in the strictest sense of the word, I like doing complex technical challenges with software companies and sometimes just lead a complex project like implementing ISO 27001 or re-packaging a software suite for on-prem deployment.