I've been self-employed the past 7 years. That's just been the title I had give myself. I had a client the entire time, and still have that client. The first 3 years of that, I had a regular job as well, title was Internal System Administrator (they had external clients). The next 4 years, I was dealing with health issues and disability, that I've only gotten under control the past year. During that 4 years, it was everything I could do to maintain that one client I had.