Take everything you've learned and become a consultant in an area you're familiar with. Consulting jobs pay well, you're usually your own boss, you can deduct a lot of expenses and you can basically charge what you want regardless of your experience. Experience will come.
Shoot for large corporations with a new contract. They'll have a big budget handled by some managers who don't know how to handle such a sum of money. They'll hire consultants to do work that's been done within the company many times. It's just easier to hire a person than to spend time trying to find something or someone within the enterprise. The trick is not to charge too low but to charge as high as experienced consultants. You just need to look really professional and speak well during the interview (Duh!).
After a while, consultants repeat the same things over and over with different clients. They look like they work but they're actually laughing! I work at a major telecom company in Canada and what I've described above is not only common, it's the norm. I've seen processes on Word documents that took months to complete and when you look at the document's properties, you see it was addressed to another person/company! It was just an existing document repurposed for a new client with minor changes.
I'm not saying you should be bad like that, I'm saying that once you get your first contract, it's then easy to find other work that's not too hard and pays well. You can work full time for one client or part time for several and contracts usually go from 3 months to one year at a time.
Like others are saying below, you've got to solve problem. But that doesn't mean you've got to find a solution to problems that have no solution yet. I'm sure that's what you've been trying to do so far. You don't need to invent new things to be an innovator, you can be an innovator every day by solving someone's problem, one step at the time. Taking my example above, if a company hires a consultant, it's because they have a problem to solve. Once you're there, you can help them solve their problem and innovate on what they're already doing.
No, I'm not a consultant but I'm thinking of becoming one. I just need a little bit more guts :)
Before you dive in & do consulting full time, make sure you have a few PAYING customers. The biggest issue with consulting is the recurring revenue issue. You want to have paying customers already then get referrals from them to keep business coming in.
Shoot for large corporations with a new contract. They'll have a big budget handled by some managers who don't know how to handle such a sum of money. They'll hire consultants to do work that's been done within the company many times. It's just easier to hire a person than to spend time trying to find something or someone within the enterprise. The trick is not to charge too low but to charge as high as experienced consultants. You just need to look really professional and speak well during the interview (Duh!).
After a while, consultants repeat the same things over and over with different clients. They look like they work but they're actually laughing! I work at a major telecom company in Canada and what I've described above is not only common, it's the norm. I've seen processes on Word documents that took months to complete and when you look at the document's properties, you see it was addressed to another person/company! It was just an existing document repurposed for a new client with minor changes.
I'm not saying you should be bad like that, I'm saying that once you get your first contract, it's then easy to find other work that's not too hard and pays well. You can work full time for one client or part time for several and contracts usually go from 3 months to one year at a time.
Like others are saying below, you've got to solve problem. But that doesn't mean you've got to find a solution to problems that have no solution yet. I'm sure that's what you've been trying to do so far. You don't need to invent new things to be an innovator, you can be an innovator every day by solving someone's problem, one step at the time. Taking my example above, if a company hires a consultant, it's because they have a problem to solve. Once you're there, you can help them solve their problem and innovate on what they're already doing.
No, I'm not a consultant but I'm thinking of becoming one. I just need a little bit more guts :)