Starting a consulting business

Here are two ideas:

1. Start your consulting work on a part-time basis, on your own time, from a home-office. This keeps start-up costs low and income from your full-time job steady.

2. Find an "anchor client." This is a large, dependable client that will give you a contract for work over a period of time, like a year, for example.

In both cases, while doing the consulting work, you will need to simultaneously expand your client base beyond your part-time clients, or that big one, in order to become truly viable as a full-time consultant.