I'm thinking about starting a consulting company next year. I've been in an engineering role for over 10 years, but I really want to move into a role where I'm not selling my time in exchange for code, but rather selling the value my code creates.

I'm curious how you got your first few "gigs". What should the sales process actually look like? Did you cold call, or did you have enough established relationships first? How do you typically agree on a contract, has the customer come to you with needs, or did you ask them for problems first and propose some solutions, and they agreed to them?