I worked for two large companies in a consulting/contracting role for about eight years and built a reputation for good work and network of contacts from there. I'm still trying to expand out into some other markets to get a little diversification, so I've been trying a variety of routes to make that happen- mainly looking for problems that I could solve and building some prototypes that could be adapted to their needs. We have about 25 people on my team now though, so I have the coverage to do that kind of stuff.