I do freelance consulting alongside building my own product.

My first clients came through a friend who connected me with people that needed someone to maintain a mobile app and its backoffice. Thats it. No cold outreach, no fancy strategy, just someone who knew what I could do and made the intro. I think most engineers underestimate how much work comes from just telling people around you what you do.

For getting more visibility I started writing about what I'm building on LinkedIn, sharing technical decisions, things I got wrong. People reach out from that. Not a flood but enough

One thing I'd warn about: consulting can eat your whole schedule if you let it. I had to put hard boundaries around my consulting hours because my own product was getting zero attention. Now I treat consulting as the thing that pays the bills while I build the thing I actually care about. If you dont set that boundary early you wake up in 2 years running a consultancy you never wanted.