How I Would Start a Consulting Business From Scratch Today

I spent over a decade inside firms like Deloitte Consulting and Bank of America, and I ran Kotter International alongside Dr John Kotter. So when I went out on my own, I did what felt natural - and took the big firm model with me. I did not do it explicitly, and I did not do it on purpose. I copied the only model I had ever seen work: long engagements, hourly billing, a heavy deliverable at the end, breadth over depth, and months embedded inside a client. Then I shrank all of that down to one person - and reality hit. What I had built was a smaller, more exhausting version of the thing I had just left.

If I could go back and start again today, with no clients, no pipeline, and no brand behind my name, I would do some things very differently. Here is exactly what I would do.

Why does the path almost everyone takes trip them up?

The path catches people because it is the most natural path in the world. You leave a firm, you take its model with you (because it is the model that you've seen work), but that model was never built for a solo consultant.

It was built for a bigger firm's economics: headcount, overhead, hours, and a bench to deploy. Strip the bigger firm away and what remains is a machine designed to consume your time and cap your income. Something else erodes slowly as well, which is your objectivity, the one thing that made you valuable in the first place. An advisor embedded for months is no longer advising from the outside.

Here is the cruelty of it. When it does not work, you blame yourself. You decide you are not good enough, not specialist enough, not known enough, and that your network is too small. But you are wrong, because that model was never designed for you. It was built for another kind of business entirely, and when you left you simply carried it out of the door with you because it was the model that you had seen first hand.

I know that because for a while I lived it - and it was exhausting. And then I noticed something. The most valuable work I ever did was never the longest work. It was the sharpest intervention, applied fast and with precision, when expertise mattered more than time. So the answer to the independent consultant paradox is to stop working the machine harder, and instead to design a different business on purpose. Here is how I would do that:

1. What do I actually sell? I would own one real problem

I would stop calling myself a generalist on day one, and I would build the business around one specific problem I know I can solve.

Experienced people undersell themselves with one word, and the word is generalist. I believed that safety came from breadth, because I had watched it work for years inside consulting. The generalist could walk the halls, meet people, talk about their business, and sell more work, and that is what a big firm rewards. The specialist, by contrast, has a narrow market. So after years of "strategy execution", "organizational performance", and "transformation and change" work across almost every industry, I told myself the obvious thing: I am a generalist. And I built a business for a generalist. And as I've said before, generalists are generally useful and specifically unremarkable.

Being a generalist lasted until I walked out of an incredible meeting with a client and realized that the specific thing I had just done, a problem I had solved for them in a single day, had unlocked massive growth. I loved it. They loved it. And that was the day I understood what I actually sell. Sell your generalist skills, and you compete with everyone. Own one problem, and the buyer who has it comes looking for you.

If I started again, I would get clear on that from the first day. I would refuse everything else and focus on that one thing. I have written about the cost of getting this wrong in The Generalist's Curse.

2. Why would I build the method before the pitch?

Because without a method you reinvent yourself with every proposal, and that is where impostor syndrome lives.

Most solo consultants write a new deck for every new scope and negotiate bespoke terms every time, and they assume that is simply how it has to be done because that is how the big firms do it. I came from a boutique firm with a proprietary methodology named after its founder, respected, and entirely his. I did not have one of my own, and I felt that lack keenly.

So here is what I did, and the how matters. I did not staple together a few borrowed frameworks and call it a method. I studied the science of why the existing approaches to my problem were falling short, I formed a real point of view about it, and I built my approach from that.

Here is the part beneath it all: without a well-thought-out approach to the problem and a sequence for how you will address it, you are living in a land of ambiguity, and ambiguity is where the questioning of your own value lives. The day I codified my methodology, that impostor syndrome fell off a cliff. The work underscored the value, and the value began to repeat itself: clients hired me again, and they referred me. A referral is a currency you cannot ethically buy, because you only get one when someone has decided you are worth it. If I started again, I would build the method first and let it carry the confidence I could never fake.

3. What is the problem worth? I would never quote an hourly rate

I would learn the cost of the problem I solve and charge for that, and I would never, under any circumstances, quote an hourly rate.

Two things work against you here: The first is your own frame of reference, because the big firms calculate fees and bill clients on a rate per hour, and that is quite possibly the only arithmetic you have ever used. The second is the buyer. Organizations have been trained to buy consulting as a commodity. A rate card already exists in the buyer's organization and frame of reference, they will ask for your hourly rate, and procurement teams, God bless them, focus on one thing, which is cost per unit. So part of your job as a seasoned advisor in your own business is teaching the buyer to buy differently. If you let them lead, they will frame the wrong conversation for you every time, and you will end up justifying an invoice by counting hours. The only way to earn more under that arrangement is to work more, and you know how that story goes.

In my case the work I do is exceptionally high-stakes. I spend a few days with the most senior leaders of a company, helping them focus on growth. I feel strongly that as ethical advisors we should go in, do the work, solve the problem, and leave knowing we have set the client up for success. Charge for the days and the client measures your time. Charge for the problem and the client measures the result. My methodology, my insights, and my experience come together to solve whatever is impeding their growth faster than anyone else can, and that is worth a great deal to them.

In 2024 I billed a CEO over $60,000 for a couple of days of work. The days were not long, but the cost of the problem was high, the outcome was not optional, and I knew I could solve it. Two years on, that company is at an all-time high.

Inside a big firm, your credibility is borrowed from the logo on the door. The minute you go solo, that borrowed credibility is gone, and the new credibility is yours to build. The hourly rate conversation is the old credibility trying to reassert itself, so do not let it. I explain how I hold that line in Why I Do Not Negotiate My Fee.

4. Why would I solve it and then leave?

Because going into a client and solving their issue is an ethically stronger position, whereas a retainer generally serves the consultant more than it serves the client. As a consultant, your exit is the proof that the work worked.

In the bigger firms the retainer feels like a prize: recurring revenue, predictable cash flow, and a client who keeps paying. I ran that model, and I understand the appeal completely. But here is the truth I had to face. If a client needs you every month, there is a fair chance you have not solved the problem.

Think of a doctor. You go in with an ailment, the ailment is treated, and you leave. You do not return every month to confirm you are still well. That is how I like to work. I go in at a precise moment: an offsite, a new leader, a milestone the team has missed, a team that needs to find its shape again. I create the conditions with that team, we focus on the few things that matter, and then I leave so they can make progress on their own. Often they call me back six months later to go deeper, or to work with the next layer of their team. The work is event-driven rather than open-ended, and the exit is where the value lives, because it is the proof that the problem has been solved. So go in, solve it, and get out.

5. How would I be findable? Through authority, never hustle

I would build a referenceable record of what I know on one or two platforms, entirely on my own terms, and I would refuse the hustle.

The big firms have marketing machines and budgets, alumni networks full of loyal customers, and boxes at the US Open. So how would I do it solo? You may have been told it is all about influence and networking, and that could not be further from the truth. You do not need to become a content creator either. To a serious professional, hustling for clients sounds repellent, and the instinct to reject it is right. It is only half right, though.

What I faced was my own resistance. I dislike the performance of being a creator of content, and in truth I still do. But I had to accept one thing: buyers credential you by where they find you. So I made my peace with a few platforms on my own terms. I embraced LinkedIn and YouTube, posting something meaningful once or twice a week rather than shallow content pushed out by an assistant to chase likes. I do it all myself - I write my posts, I think through my ideas, I record videos (I really do not enjoy watching myself) but collectively it has become a referenceable record of what I actually know.

The refusals matter just as much. I do not attend networking events with no purpose. My buyer is a corporate executive, and a corporate buyer is not standing at a networking event hoping to find someone who can help them. I would never pay an agency to find and close leads on my behalf. And I will not take work I am not qualified for just to get a door open, because I learned that one the hard way and I am not going to repeat it.

6. What protects me in a bad month? The model, never the paperwork

Premium fees for a problem you own build a buffer that a day rate never can, and no legal entity will protect you when the pipeline thins.

You are going to have bad months. In a lean month, the old firm logic whispers: find a buyer, any buyer, with any problem you could broadly solve, and figure it out. That logic helped build the big firms, and it will dismantle a solo consulting business quickly, because every time you try and respond that way in your own firm you are doing work that is not yours.

This is where people pour their anxiety into the wrong place. At the start, the temptation is to fuss over the structure. Do I incorporate? Do I become an LLC? What insurance do I need? What template should I use for my statements of work? Should I rework my website? Perhaps I need a new logo? All of it is necessary, and none of it is the thing. People reach for the paperwork because it feels like progress and because it postpones the harder question, which is what problem do I solve, what do I actually sell, and what is it worth? The legal entity does not make you legitimate, and it will not protect you when the pipeline thins out. The model will.

For me, a couple of strong engagements a month set me up to travel and to think. I can choose my clients rather than taking whatever pays, and that is the difference between a business that survives a bad month and one that does not. If you are already in the feast-and-famine cycle, I have written about the way out in You Cannot Out-Work a Revenue Problem.

What I would do differently, in one idea

Knowing what I know now, I would not rebuild the big firm in miniature. I would own one real problem rather than a list of services. I would build the method first and let the confidence follow. I would quote a problem rate and never an hourly rate. I would go in, solve it, and leave. I would build authority that gets me found and refuse the hustle. And I would remember that the model protects me in a bad month, and the paperwork does not.

If everything here comes down to one idea, it is this: the problem was never you, it was the business model you assumed was the only option.

If you are building a consulting business and you want to design it on purpose rather than copy the one you left, start at ambition.live.

Should a new consultant start as a generalist or a specialist?

If you're brand new to business and working in the advisory space, start as a generalist. Learn what you can, build your knowledge up, and get cross-industry and cross-application experience. But if you're a seasoned consultant or professional who has worked in industry, you absolutely can (and should) start your solo consulting business as a specialist, even though breadth feels safer. A generalist is generally useful and specifically unremarkable, and buyers do not go looking for a generalist. Own one expensive problem and the buyer who has that problem will find you.

How do I price consulting work without quoting an hourly rate?

Learn what the problem costs the client, and price the solution against that cost rather than against your time. When a buyer asks for your hourly rate, explain that you charge for the problem you solve, and then show them the cost of leaving it unsolved.

Are retainers a good idea for an independent consultant?

Generally, retainers serve the consultant more directly than they serve the client. If a client needs you every month, you have probably not solved the problem. Your incentive should be to solve the client's problem faster than anyone else. If they expect a months-long retainer but you can get it done in a few weeks you have already won the reputation prize. Event-driven work, where you go in at a precise moment and leave once the problem is solved, is better for the client and better for your reputation.

Do I need to incorporate before I take my first client?

You will need an entity, insurance, and a statement of work template eventually, but none of them is the thing that makes you legitimate or keeps you solvent. Be clear on what you sell and what it is worth and commit to this first. The paperwork follows quickly once the model is clear.

How do I find consulting clients without networking?

Build authority that gets you found. Publish something meaningful once or twice a week on one or two platforms, such as LinkedIn and YouTube, so that a buyer who searches for your problem finds a record of what you know. Corporate buyers credential you by where they find you, and they are not at networking events.