Inside My Consulting Practice: Real Stories And Figures From 15 Years Of Consulting
Some people talk a good game, others show what they've actually done and what worked / didn't work. Let me try to be the latter with this post.
Note: This is the final day to sign up for the Indispensable Consulting Systems Program. If you want to discover how to significantly scale your consulting practice, please sign up.
Back when I was in my early days of consulting, I’d often discover plenty of simple-sounding advice, but rarely information that talked about what the author had actually done or the specifics of what they earned.
Anyone can talk a good game, but how many people actually show you the real financial figures and actual stories from their consulting practice?
In this post, I’m going to round up a few of the financial metrics and stories from growing my own consulting practice
Earnings And Growth
Over the past two years, I’ve tried to share the financial realities behind building a consulting practice.
What Did I Earn In My First Five Years? Use this as a waypoint to guide what you might earn per year in your consulting practice.
How I Landed My First Consulting Clients. Here’s my origin story about attracting my first clients with zero industry contacts.
How Much Have I Earned In Book Revenue? If you’re considering writing a book - read this first. Don’t expect to get rich from writing the book.
How I Invested Half A Million Dollars In Surplus Capital. Learn what you should do when surplus capital starts to accumulate in your business.
How I Generated $110k+ Through One Training Program. A lot of people offer courses - discover how to actually generate real returns.
My Company’s Annual Returns. Use official documents to validate what I’m saying above.
Critical Lessons
I’ve also tried to share some of the critical, painful lessons about building a consulting practice.
How We Signed Microsoft As A Client. Discover the principles to sign enterprise clients (also goes well with this post).
How I Lost $78k In One Bad Negotiation. This is the problem with following the advice of people who don’t actually do consulting work.
Why I Was Paid $33k For One Day’s Work. One simple technique that tripled my workshop earnings.
How We Rebuilt Our Website From Scratch. Learn from my mistakes when building a website that clients trust.
The Results Of Spending $10k In Ads To Grow This Newsletter. Was it worth it? Jury is still out - but you can see the results here.
Lessons From My Worst Ever Consulting Project. How to avoid landing yourself a really problematic client project.
Creating $100k Questions. Don’t sell for the problem you’ve been given. There’s usually a much bigger opportunity.
Don’t Miss This Big Consulting Red Flag. How to spot difficult client problems before they become real problems.
How The Speaking Circuit Really Works For Consultants. It’s really not what you probably imagine.
Beliefs and Key Principles
Here are a few core beliefs and lessons about building a successful consulting practice.
Why You Need Five-Figure Projects To Thrive As A Consultant. You simply can’t build a practice on four-figure projects.
You Only Need To Engage 50 People. You don’t need to play the social media game to have more clients than you can handle.
Trust, Not Tricks, Wins Consulting Clients. Stop doing all the cringeworthy tactics and follow these principles instead.
The Key To A Sustainable Practice Is Marketing To Past Clients. You can’t attract increasingly bigger projects forever.
Aside from that, I also like going deep into the weeds that I’ve never seen covered elsewhere. Like what should be in your contracts, why you need to negotiate acceptance clauses, and the costs that very few people ever think about.
The point of this isn’t to brag or humble myself, but to make an obvious point; the advice you’re going to get from someone who is doing the work day to day is going to be very different from that of someone who has been removed from it for some time.
The simple soundbites that work so well on the outside don’t work so well in practice.
Much of it overlooks or completely ignores what actually works in 2025 and just how complex and tricky it is to apply some of these simple soundbites.
This is why I invite you to sign up for my Indispensable Consulting Systems Program today.
What Does This Program Cover?
Indispensable Consulting Systems covers the entire process of growing and optimising your consulting practice.
The program covers the 12 critical systems for a thriving consulting practice over eight weeks.
You’ll learn:
How to select the right niche and services - even if you have no clue what that might be today.
How to attract the right kind of customers and charge to charge - we’ll also cover how to filter out those who aren’t the right fit quickly.
How to progressively move up from four-figure contracts to five (and even six) figure contracts - and how to negotiate your fees and rates.
How to properly position yourself in a competitive market - we’ll cover the psychology of positioning, the exact words to use, and how to rapidly test and adjust your options.
How to build and optimise your consulting website - we’ll cover how to avoid the mistakes 90% of consultants make and what top buyers are really looking for.
How to create consultant-quality deliverables - we’ll cover how to do the consulting part of the work,
How to build the processes for long-term clients and sustainable growth - we will create a roadmap and alliances for the long-term.
Each week includes key principles, a workbook, and additional resources.
What Else Does This Course Include?
In addition to the 12 distinct systems, this course will also include:
12 worksheets to clarify your thinking.
Live coaching sessions and feedback from me.
Access to our just-launched Indispensable Consulting Community.
A panel of experts - comprising several former clients who can give you direct feedback on your work.
Free access to Proposal Mastery ($500).