How “We’re booked” was ruining our business

This meme has little entanglement with reality. A one-man consultancy's chief concerns are almost entirely alien to a W-2 employee's chief concerns: as a W-2 employee your chief economic objectives are work-performance, as a consultancy your chief economic objectives are almost certainly external to the actual delivery of your professional skills. A one-man consultancy can unilaterally offer themselves a pay-raise of 25%+ every 6 months if market conditions support it; this happens in vanishingly few salaried jobs. A one-man consultancy can build intellectual and other forms of capital which are absurdly portable; this is possible as a salaried employee but their access to capital formation is markedly inferior. (For example, it is exceptionally difficult as a salaried employee to licitly walk away with your employer's take on your core job function and then implement it for competitors. That's pretty much the default in consultancies, and deviating from it costs the client extra money.) A consultancy has significant work-related expenses in a way that a salaried employee does not. A consultancy has a vastly more complicated tax, compliance, insurance/risk-mitigation, etc etc, situation than a similarly situated employee.

Perhaps most relevant to someone who thinks headcount is the only meaningful way to scale things: a consultancy, even a one-man consultancy, even a one-man consultancy which outside observers believe is impossible of maturity required to scale, has a permanent call option on growing headcount.

No matter how busy we are, I never say "no" to an opportunity to talk or sit down to coffee with new people, whether they be a potential client or just someone seeking advice. I'll even go through the discovery phase and estimate/quote out their project, and only after the quote do I bring up our timeline. Most of the time, they are fine with the timeline (though I've always found a way to make it sooner than "next year", usually a few months out at most). If they need it doen sooner, then I'll find a way to get it done with our partners by sub-contracting. The rest have been fine with that. If they weren't, then I'd simply help them find someone else who can do it.

It's worked pretty well so far. But I can attest, it is very hard to go talk with someone for an hour when you know there's actual work you should be doing. I feel the same way though when I'm doing taxes or keeping our books. They have to be done. You just do it anyway.