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When my third consulting client paid me $12,250 for a three-page document, I almost felt guilty taking the money.
It was a vendor recommendation list for a seed-stage fintech startup — something I could produce in a few hours after years of working at Stripe, Plaid, Gusto, and Mercury. But this client wasn’t paying for how long it took me to create this particular document. They were paying for the decade of expertise I’d developed as a risk and compliance leader at some of the fastest-growing fintech companies in the world. My judgment would help them skip months of research and costly mistakes in a space they didn’t understand.
In two years, working an average of three days a week, I’ve built a $2 million consulting business. But my path was far from a straight shot. I sent hundreds of cold emails without getting a single lead in the first three months. It took me four months to figure out my pricing.
Early on, I desperately wished there was a roadmap to follow. Now, I feel equipped to create one for others. So here’s the six-week plan I wish someone had given me.
Week 1: Stop selling everything you know.
When I started my company in October 2023, I was pitching all of it: a decade-plus of experience across compliance, risk, and fintech operations, expertise in anti-money laundering, the Bank Secrecy Act, fraud, credit risk, customer support, growth strategies, automating operations. Nobody knew what to do with me.
The shift came when I got specific. The consulting world rewards specialists, not generalists. So I forced myself to answer one question: What’s the single problem I’ve solved more times than most people on the planet?
I challenged myself to write the answer as a single sentence. Here’s what I put in my notebook: “I help early-stage fintech companies navigate risk and compliance challenges before they scale, so they can avoid the costly mistakes I’ve seen derail companies at this stage.”
The sentence didn’t need to be perfect. But it needed to be specific enough that someone could immediately know whether they needed me. And it would become the foundation for everything else. If you want to do this for your own business, follow my simple formula: “I help [type of company] solve [specific problem] over [timeframe].”
Week 2: Find your first client.
When I thought about who my first client would be, my instinct was to cast a broad net. I built a spreadsheet of potential clients, researched leadership teams, and drafted outreach templates. I targeted smaller startups, because I knew they often couldn’t afford full-time salaries; I reached out to ask if they needed fractional compliance help instead. After hundreds of cold outreach attempts, I hadn’t landed a single lead that way.
When I finally got my first client, here’s how it happened: They found me because a woman I’d never met posted a few sentences about what I did in a private Slack channel.
My husband and this woman had worked together at Stripe, though she and I had never crossed paths when I worked there. She had since moved into VC. When I was starting out, my husband mentioned my venture, and she asked for a four-line blurb about what I did. She posted it in her firm’s portfolio Slack channel. One of her portfolio companies happened to be looking for exactly the kind of compliance help I offered.
Your ideal first client is not a cold lead. It’s someone who already trusts you, or who trusts someone who trusts you — like former colleagues, hiring managers, and vendors you’ve worked with. I made a list of 10 people who fit that description. These were people I had worked late nights with, people I looked up to, people I had helped over the years — my warm network. Don’t reach out yet; just decide who you’ll be talking to.
Week 3: Avoid the hourly pricing trap.
When I first started, I quoted an hourly rate because it felt fair. I only wanted to charge for what I actually did. What I got in return was scope creep, vague projects, and clients who wanted to negotiate every invoice.
The $12,250 three-page document I referenced earlier changed how I thought about this. That client didn’t ask how many hours it would take; they asked what it would cost to solve the problem.
This is the pricing framework that worked for me: What would it cost the client if this problem went unsolved for another six months? What could they make or save if they implemented the solution in the first year? Charge 10% of that. It made sense to both of us.
Changing the conversation from “How much is your time worth?” to “How much is this result worth to the business?” is a far better place to negotiate from.
Week 4: Write the simple, personal message that actually gets responses.
In week four, I started reaching out to people with this simple message: “I’ve been doing some consulting work in risk and compliance. If you ever come across someone dealing with that, I’d love if you kept me in mind.”
I didn’t create any decks or elaborate pitches. I just sent a genuine note to someone who already knew me, making it easy to refer me when the right time came. And it worked. Two of my early clients came from another former colleague at Stripe who heard I was consulting. He wasn’t looking for help himself, but he knew clients who were.
I sent this message to five people that week. Then I kept sending it to five people every week.
Week 5: Take calls to understand problems, not propose solutions.
By week five, some of my initial conversations had started moving, and I was getting on Zoom calls.
The goal of these meetings wasn’t to close a deal, but to understand the problem before proposing any solution. I applied something I learned time and time again at Plaid, Mercury, and Stripe: Work backward from your customers’ needs.
I asked three things: What have you already tried? What is this costing you? And what would solving it make possible? Some calls led nowhere, but more people knew what I did.
Week 6: Turn your best conversation into a proposal.
By this point, I’d had real conversations with real people about real problems. It was time to do something with this information. I started with a simple Excel tracker with seven columns: Contact name, Company name, Problem they described, What a solution would unlock for them, Next steps, Status (e.g., pursue, circle back later, dead end), and Date of last contact.
I filled it in for every conversation I’d had.
When I talk to consultants who are just starting out, I recommend that they start by finding the one conversation that felt most alive. Who was the person who leaned in, who described their problem with urgency, and who asked what working together might look like? Write that person a one-page proposal. You don’t need a formal scope of work with legal language and payment terms. You just need one page that says: Here’s the problem I heard you describe, here’s how I would solve it, here’s what it would cost, and here’s what this work will unlock for you. Send it before the end of the week.
When you’re embarking on something new, I’ve found the only thing that quiets the doubt is evidence. That document is your first piece of evidence. It’s proof that someone with a real problem thinks you might be the person to solve it. From that proof, you will get a “yes,” and from that first “yes,” everything becomes easier to believe in, including yourself.
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