I've used a lot of the same tactics. I find that although I like the "control" of direct projects, I do more and more subcontracted work because I can push a lot of the account and project management back to the company that subcontracts me, often this frees me up to just do the work, rather than all the activities around the work.

Also, I tend to do 80% of my work with the same two clients - professional services firms that subcontract work to me. On one hand this is obviously a risk, but I know that I'm the most profitable consultant for one of the customers (significantly more profitable than their in-house consultants) and when I get in to a time crunch it is easier to deal with because a lot of the time it's a conflict between two of their projects and not one of their project s and one unrelated to them.