It's a bit irrelevant to go down this road since patio11 has quit direct consulting, but from what I've read, patio11's path to (consulting) success goes like this: patio11 likes teachers, makes bingo card app, charges for it like a reasonable person; patio11 notices all these mistakes he's making while selling to teachers, blogs about it, blog gains popularity among like-minded individuals; patio11 falls into consulting, delivers a good service, and finds out how much he can charge for it.
There's nothing in this story that's dependent on being very lucky or being exceptionally smart; the only outstanding traits here are overcoming the fear of the unknown that plagues everyone and being a good teacher, but both of these can be learned. It mostly just comes down to spending your time doing the right things.
And now with AR, just by focusing on the major mistake from BCC (selling to teachers), patio11 has sort of proven my point for me: it doesn't take that long to bootstrap a successful business with all the resources available to you now. There are more than enough blog posts telling you what to do, what not to do, and there are more than enough open niches that are perfect for microbusinesses to supplant the dayjobs of everyone on HN who has the same restless ambition that makes staying in those dayjobs an impossibly depressing prospect. And from there, consulting for larger businesses with what you learn in your micro is just icing on the cake.