Juggling multiple clients and projects is tricky. Having strong project management skills makes it much easier to handle plotting out project timelines and managing workload to provide reasonable delivery timelines to clients as well as being a good steward to your own personal time.

Being self-employed, motivation is a key component to moving my business forward. Without a "boss" or other team members propelling me forward, I have to rely on my own motivation to seek out new clients, improve on my methodology, and ensure that my work is getting done.

In consulting, it's typical to be staffed on teams on 2-5 people for ~3 month engagements. Teams will generally have a manager, whose focus is on the broader project timeline and deliverables. The manager will be less focused on the day-to-day so the ability to manage up and express roadblocks, challenges, etc is important. Furthermore, as one becomes more senior and serves as a project manager, the ability to manage a team will a focus on final product delivery is fundamental to the role.

As one becomes more senior they generally grow into the role of project or team lead which involves managing timelines, deliverables, budget, as well as training and mentoring more junior team members.