Making 180k/y as a freelance consultant, I have 3 scenarios going forward, which should I choose?
My situation:
- Working as a freelance management consultant (MBB background) for 3 years now
- Current day rate is 1,500 $
- Current project is for 2.5 d/w till the rest of the year
- Main earner for the family; toddler + baby on the way
- By the time current contract is done, roughly 19 months of runway
- Clients keep renewing my contract due to problem solving skills, ability to quantify problems and creating really effective C-Level decks (directly received feedback); also try to be super low maintenance and just easy to work with in general
- Started the freelance consulting due financial security, but love building things so much more than classical consulting.
Problem:
- Want to make more money by adding more scalable elements; simply increasing "days staffed" is not something I want due to family commitments, raising my day rate is an option but I am hesitant to push for that
- Have some coding skills and I am currently building an AI agent to create PPTs just like I would; I know there are already a lot of tools out there but they are not something I could give my clients and they can replicate what they get from me, neither are those tools something I can use to increase productivity for myself at the moment (trying to not slip into wishful-thinking territory and always being realistic about the gap in the market)
- The algorithm I have developed conceptually is already helping me right now to produce better slides faster
- However, with client work and family time, I am not able to progress on the development end as quickly as I want
- Therefore I am thinking about different scenarios
Scenarios:
#1: stay patient, keep building, continue to delay gratification
#2: Build a productized service business to replace "classical" consulting, make more and use that money and time for building
#3: Quit consulting earlier and focus on building full time
Essentially, I am quite impatient at the moment and would like to have more control over my income, raise the ceiling of what I can earn and really build a business and not just have a job (which the consulting currently is).
My brain tells me #1, but my gut wants to find arguments for the other scenarios.
What do you think I should do?