The trick then is to get clients who know they just want to "have it taken care of", and have much higher billing suppliers (IP lawyers, pharma experts, etc). In that case, they don't really think twice about paying for process in advance of coding. Pharma is a good example.
Being a contract resource for a software company, where management tends to think everything related to software/IT is "easy", is a guaranteed shitty project. They'll second guess and micromanage everything you do. And then when they burn through their OPM, they'll screw you.
I ran a small software consulting business for about 5 years and I agree 100% with you. Business was stressful for the first few years until I narrowed down my client base to only those in the first category. I never did land a huge, corporate client, but I did have several smaller sized companies with a never-ending list of things to do and around X number of dollars budgeted each month.
Being a contract resource for a software company, where management tends to think everything related to software/IT is "easy", is a guaranteed shitty project. They'll second guess and micromanage everything you do. And then when they burn through their OPM, they'll screw you.