You’ve got the skills, the knowledge, and the drive to start your own consulting business. But as soon as you start to take the first steps, all the fears, worries, and excuses start to kick in.
You fear you don’t have the skills to charge what you need. You think you don’t have the network to find enough clients. You believe in anything but yourself.
All too often, the big difference between those who start their own successful businesses and those who don’t is simply that the former are willing to take the plunge and learn as they go. If you can do that, you’re more than halfway to becoming an independent, profitable consultant.
Of course, we at Foundr are also big believers in one critical secret weapon that can get you there—learning from others who took the plunge before you.
In that spirit, we talked with six Foundr students in order to learn more about their backgrounds, and how they all took their existing knowledge, set aside their fears, and got their businesses started.
These students weren’t born with VC funding or Harvard MBAs—they’re just like you. By learning from their examples, we hope you’ll realize that you too can start your own consulting business and earn the freedom and success you desire.
Let’s take a look.
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José Sevilla
Business: Happpy.me
Service: Storyselling Services®
Coming from Mexico City, José Sevilla is a marketing consultant who helps companies develop powerful stories around their brands. José already had some clients who were helping him make a living—after all, he’s a marketing expert. But it wasn’t enough. He wanted more and higher-paying customers.
It’s easy for a freelancer to try to be and do everything at the same time: billing, marketing, communications, etc. José needed a way to break free from all this administrative work so he could do the work he set out to do: develop brand stories. It was the only way he could grow his business.
After he enrolled in the course, José learned the exact systems he’d need to use, not only to free up the time to grow his business, but to command higher fees.
To José, taking Foundr courses was a pivotal moment that helped him go from being a skilled freelancer to a highly paid consultant.
I know that you have something to teach that you can teach to the world, and you just need the right steps to take to deliver your message and to help more people. I wish more people knew that this thing exists, because it can change your life forever.
JP Wallhorn
Business: Syntx
Services: Web Development
A year ago, JP Wallhorn was a software developer with the ambitious goal of launching his own agency where he could work with amazing clients who appreciated his web development skills. The problem was that JP didn’t know how to attract clients and close sales, which was holding him back.
His business had a pretty solid start, but was far from a web development agency’s potential. Soon after enrolling, however, things changed.
JP quadrupled his agency’s revenues by applying some of the tactics in the course.
His agency has been around for less than a year—he founded it in April 2018—and so far, not only has it won an industry award, but JP also learned how to make it into a six-figure business with huge growth potential.
JP is thankful for having learned so much from Foundr’s course, but most importantly, for what he learned by surrounding himself with other like-minded people enrolled in Foundr courses.
Mario García
Business: Marketing DV/SN
Services: Digital Marketing
There are few more valuable skills for a business that operates in the online world than digital marketing. If you have a website or a company doing business online, you need to learn how to market it. But the rules that run the offline world don’t necessarily apply online.
Within that need, there’s a huge opportunity for people like Mario García.
You may have wondered, if there’s so much potential for digital marketers to make lots of money, why are there are so many skilled people fighting for business at the bottom of the barrel? Check any freelancing site and you will see hundreds of people selling their services for dirt-cheap rates.
This was exactly the challenge Mario was facing before he made the leap to becoming a digital marketing consultant.
When he got started, Mario was unhappy in a corporate job. Sure, he was a great digital marketer, but he wasn’t enjoying the way he was applying his knowledge in his day-to-day life. He also didn’t know how to separate himself from the crowd of cheap digital marketers.
Then, Mario discovered that a Foundr course was opening its doors and, at that moment, he knew he had to take the chance to learn from an experienced consultant—who also happens to be an amazing digital marketer like Mario.
Soon after he enrolled, Mario realized all he had needed was a way to find new clients and learn how to pitch them, based on the value of his proven skills.
The proof, as the saying goes, is in the pudding. In 50 days, he closed more than $30,000 of client work, and is still in the process of landing more clients.
The moral of the story isn’t that Foundr courses changed his life. While it did make an impact on his income, what it really did was show him that he was capable of being a successful digital marketing consultant all along. If only he had known that before.
Rochelle Barclay
Business: Space Foundation
Services: Yoga and Pilates
Running a small yoga and pilates practice can be bliss for someone who loves exercising and teaching others. But managing a studio? That’s a different game.
For starters, there are new yoga and pilates studios popping up every few months, many of which play the “race to the bottom” pricing game to earn new clients, and then never make enough money. What’s more, you need to manage the various classes, the teachers, and the high expectations of customers (not to mention their reviews).
These were the problems that Rochelle Barclay was facing when she started her Foundr course. Not only did she want to generate more revenue, but she also wanted a system that would help take her mind off the business and focus on other higher-ticket services.
Ryan Sprance
Business: Kaihatsu Media
Services: Digital Marketing
The corporate life comes with many benefits: high wages, lots of perks, and relative stability. Along with those benefits come the high pressure to perform, the never-ending bureaucracy, and the lack of control over one’s work and schedule.
As a digital marketing expert, Ryan Sprance was suffering from all of these pains, and he knew something had to give. So he did what any entrepreneur would do: when he was fired from his comfortable corporate job, he started his own consulting business.
Ryan’s new consulting business was profitable, but not as profitable as he had wanted it to be. Given all the costs he had to incur to sustain it, he needed a proven plan that’d allow him to truly make it an A-player in the industry.
The results Ryan got from the course have been outstanding. In just a few months, he increased his revenue by seven times and transitioned into a highly profitable agency that’s driving customers on autopilot.
What you get back is tenfold, even if it’s just from that community. I always knew with Foundr that the quality was incredibly high and that I was gonna get something of value for it.
Sonaya Williams
Business: The CEO Partner
Services: Management Consulting
A business, much like a small child, is a time-consuming enterprise, and Sonaya Williams knew this better than anyone else. As an experienced management consultant, Sonaya knows how to help companies increase their productivity and efficiency. Skills notwithstanding, a few months ago she had just had a child and needed to balance her new responsibilities with the consulting business she had started.
Then she found Foundr’s courses and soon after, she started to close clients. Instead of pitching prospects with her services, she provided lots of free value first, and then followed up to close the sale.
In just a few weeks, she went from closing one client every six months (24 weeks) to three or four weeks, which means she increased her sales efficiency between 300% and 400%.
The course has been just the beginning for Sonaya’s new life as an independent consultant, which so far, has been extremely promising.
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Conclusion
What these six stories have in common isn’t just our courses. It’s the power of having a proven system backing you up and giving you confidence during that uncertain time at the beginning of a business. And it’s the community of people you connect with and continue to learn from, even after the course is over.
These people were all experts before they enrolled in the course—we can’t take any credit for their success. Rather, we can only be grateful for having them trust us in realizing their true potential.
The act of starting a consulting business isn’t the hardest part, it turns out. What’s hard is to face one’s fears and be able to take bold action. It’s trusting the process, learning from others—both the instructor and the other students—and having patience and persistence.
What’s stopping you from starting your own consulting business? Please, let us know in the comments below!
