I was able to do two small websites at $5k per + $3.5k in design consulting in a month. It's not $20k but I also wasn't killing myself either. It wouldn't be easy, but it's certainly attainable.

I think the bigger issue here is that $20k is insignificant. If you've already got a full-time job and you're working on this venture as a side-hustle you don't need the $20k. If you're working on this venture full-time and it's your only gig you'll need more than $20k. So I'm not entirely sure where this model fits.

I once did a code review for $3,500 and it took about 8-12 hours. After I was done, they asked me to fix the few bugs I found. I told them I was super busy (which I was) and they offered me $10,000 to do the work ASAP. Since it would only take me 8 or so hours to fix the bugs I could hardly pass it up. For two days of work I walked away with $13,500 dollars, of course there is also tax on that, so I netted like $9,000.

Depending how hard I/you try to find consulting work, you can totally make 20k, of course it depends on the month. The best part, is that you can write off business expenses on your taxes. So, you pay significantly less (if any) tax on that 20k.

Protip: Have a high bill rate and work in a niche but critical area.

I've spent 20+ years helping people designing, build & move entire datacenters. Migration of one or two servers is easy. It's exponentially harder when you have to move hundreds or thousands of servers running many apps with minimal downtime.

Still not sure how I ended up specializing in this but there was a need and still is. Turns out a lot of that experience is still applicable for customers moving to the cloud =)

No. I did not mean $20k in a month. I meant that over a period of a few months.

Sure, why not? If you bill $100/hr, that's only 200 hours per month, or 8 hours per day at 6 days a week.

I think you mean "in an hour?", which is how long the meeting lasts.