Most of my indie-or-small-team consultant peers have an anchor client that drives 90%+ of their revenue. And most of them make substantially better money than I do, as their billing utilization rates can be nearly perfect.

I'm admittedly slightly envious, as I have to work quite a bit harder for each dollar of revenue and my utilization rates are more in line with traditional professional services firms.

I do, however, take comfort knowing that my largest customer is ~8% of my annual revenue. I feel like I have a more sustainable and resilient business. And I think business development is something that needs to be happening all the time, not just when the threat of imminent starvation looms.

Another unexpected benefit of this arrangement is that I can walk away from "bad revenue". Since I'm not under pressure to grow or feed the beast of a substantial payroll, I've been able to start being more selective about the projects I take on. Once you've been in this business awhile, you can spot bear traps ahead of time, but that only matters if you're able to maneuver around them.

I think you have much better chance long term and you can probably scale up if you want to do so. With the anchor client you are stuck in a very comfortable place but you can't raise rates, you can't do different things or hire people.

And worse, even as a consultant, you have a sample size of 1 with which to base all of your decisions re: what customers want, what solutions are best, etc.

Which makes you even less appealing to other clients.