Maybe they have limited their hours because they don't have enough clients yet, and they would like to spin that into being "selective" instead of "desperate"?
Re: consultants: well of course there is a direct correlation between tightening markets and prevalence of miracle-promising consultants; why would you bother paying someone to tell you how to run your business when you're doing fine as is? It's when things get tight that the difference between a well-run and poorly-run operation really shows, and the latter get desperate.
My mom runs her own consulting business helping small charities learn how to do effective fundraising and run capital campaigns and the like. When the Great Recession hit, she was very very worried, because charitable donations were down significantly, so, she thought, who would have money to spare to hire a consultant? She ended up having her best year ever, and then the one after that was even better, and so on. Because when the overall charitable pie shrank, the little guys were desperate to figure out how to get a bigger share of it to stay in business.