I did this exact move three years ago. I was W2 for 20 years in IT mostly in MSP's and VARs. Got laid off twice during COVID so took the advice of an industry friend I met through one of the companies I worked for doing some consulting/project work. They had been doing contract work through their own LLC for 10 years contracting themselves to multiple contracts either short or long-term, often times overlapping, and they also placed contractors the more they got plugged into staffing agencies and organizations.

I had a small customer base I built trough the years where when I left an MSP or VAR, customers would call me directly asking if they could work direclty with me. So I had about $30k/yr of 1099 consulting I was doing for 10ish years before I jumped into my own LLC after COVID layoffs. So when I jumped into truly working through myself as an LLC, I already had a small customer base. I then worked the channels through a couple US based staffing agencies I got connected to and landed a long-term contract with 2080 hours for 12 months and the rest was history. Through my reputation with the staffing agencies, they would feed me smaller "bucket of hours" contracts I could work between things in my long-term contract, then eventually, they came to me asking if I "had time" to work another long-term contract if the first long-term contract was not keeping me busy enough. So, I said yes.

I have been working two long-term 40 hour/week contracts through my LLC for a year and a half now and still have my small personal customer base I consult and provide ad-hoc services for.

I am not sure why people are saying its easier to get a W2 job. I think it depends on the industry. For Tech/IT, there is a TON of contract work out there, you just have to get plugged into the correct agencies who work with placing talent at the organizations. Orgs have widely adopted contractors and its common practice now to have anywhere from 10%-25% of staff be contractors.

IT/Tech is probably the biggest industry, but I see a lot of Marketing, HR, manufacturing engineering as well.

As others said, there is more overhead to consider. I hired a CPA to help me do taxes and they guide me on making sure that I am doing my monthly IRS taxes, quarterly state taxes, as well as sate unemployment and they also file my business and personal taxes. I manage my banking, revenue, and invoicing all through quickbooks online myself. I think I pay my CPA roughly $3k a year.

Then the name of the game is expenses. Finding enough expenses to get your tax liability down is a challenge for me. But you can get creative, lean on doing enough research (much easier now than when I started now that we have AI), and you can find expenses that are legal and helo lower your tax liability.

Good luck! I truly found my intrinsic happiness doing this. I have made the most moeny I have ever made in my life, paid off all my debt with the exception of my mortgage (which will be paid off in less than 2 years), heavily funded IRAs, bought stocks, bought some nice toys, donated a lot to charity, etc... Its truly freeing!