Schmidt is a defense establishment insider, since, at least, his time at Sun. Having just finished Trillion Dollar Coach I can reaffirm that I am no fan of Schmidt as pop business book guy. But he's less wrong than Assange.

My best advice would be to partner with other consultants, agencies or contractors and create a productized service that they can include in their offerings. Seek out agencies in your area and cold call them - good way to train your sales muscle without really selling anything to them.

That's what made the difference for me. I partnered with a marketing consultant and she added me to her services every time she got a new client.

The best book on this would be Million Dollar Consulting from Alan Weiss. Do your job well and then promote yourself to reading Trillion Dollar Coach ;))

The book "Trillion Dollar Coach" is on my queue to read, so I plan on using Steve Glaveski's notes to decide how to read the chapters based on needs, interests and challenges I have today. This advice is one of my favorite ways to get people to control their time and create an internal sense of urgency: "Don’t tell people what to do, tell stories and help guide them to the best decisions for them."

And if you want to go beyond computer history, then I'd add

- "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman", Richard Feynman

- "The hard things about hard things", Ben Horowitz

- "Shoe Dog - A Memoir by the Creator of Nike", Phil Knight

- "Bad Blood", John Carreyrou [about Elizabeth Holmes]

- "Trillion Dollar Coach" [about the life of Bill Campbell]

A few recommendations from me and peers in my company who highly value some of the following:

- "Managing Humans" by Michael Lopp very insightful and easy to read.

- "Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps: Building and Scaling High Performing Technology Organizations" by Dr Nicole Forsgren brings a long research on how to organize teams for success.

- "The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change" by Camille Fournier which I especially recommend for new managers.

Lastly, and this time not tech-specific, but by far my best read of 2019:
"Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell" written by Eric Schmidt & others.