Latest / Solopreneur Sessions with Fexingo: One-Person Businesses, Freelancing, and Independent Work / How a Solopreneur Built a Business on One Consulting Model
Transcript
- Lucas: There's this pattern I keep seeing in one-person businesses that hit six figures and then stall. They're good at the work but they're selling time — hours, retainers, maybe a day rate — and that ceiling is real. Luna: Yeah, the classic 'more hours, more money' trap. You can only work so many. Lucas: Right. So I wanted to look at someone who broke out of that by designing just one consulting engagement model — and built a whole business around it. Her name is Rachel — she's a former product manager who went independent three years ago. Luna: And she didn't just string together clients. She created an actual product out of her service. Lucas: Exactly. She calls it a 'strategic sprint.' It's a three-week, fixed-price engagement at fifteen thousand dollars. She only sells that one thing. No hourly work, no ad hoc requests, no retainers. Luna: Fifteen thousand for three weeks. That's five thousand a week — which is a great rate, but it's also a very specific price point. How did she land on that number? Lucas: She reverse-engineered it from her target income. She wanted to replace her old product management salary — roughly a hundred and fifty thousand a year. To hit that with a fifteen thousand dollar package, she needs ten engagements a year. That leaves room for holidays, business development, and downtime. Luna: So roughly one sprint a month, plus a couple of months off. That's a lifestyle business, but a very intentional one. Lucas: Yes. And the sprint itself is tightly scoped. It's not 'I'll help you with strategy for three weeks.' It's a specific deliverable: a product roadmap with prioritised features, customer interview insights, and a go to market timeline for the next quarter. Luna: That's a very concrete outcome. A client knows exactly what they're getting. That's the opposite of the ambiguity of a retainer. Lucas: And that's the psychological shift. She's selling certainty. The client isn't buying her time; they're buying a result. The fact that it takes three weeks is almost incidental. Luna: How does she actually deliver that in three weeks as one person? I imagine the scope is tight, but still — that's a lot of work. Lucas: She's very structured. The first week is research — she does customer interviews, reviews analytics, audits the current product. She does those interviews asynchronously using recorded video questions, then synthesises the patterns. Week two is analysis and strategy — she builds the roadmap, works through trade-offs. Week three is presentation and handoff — a slide deck, a recorded walkthrough, and a one-hour live Q and A session. Luna: Asynchronous delivery is smart. It means she can pack more into a day without scheduling conflicts. And it scales her time without scaling her hours. Lucas: Exactly. She told me her effective hourly rate on a sprint works out to around four hundred dollars an hour — because she's not billing for every hour, she's billing for a package. But her actual time invested per sprint is about forty hours total. Luna: So three hundred and seventy five dollars an hour — even better. And that's without the overhead of tracking hours or negotiating rates per project. Lucas: Right. And the pricing is the same for every client. No custom quotes, no 'well, this seems more complex.' She says the hard part wasn't the model — it was getting the first few clients to say yes to a fixed price when they were used to paying by the hour. Luna: How did she get those first clients? She didn't have a portfolio of sprints to show. Lucas: She started with people she already knew — former colleagues and managers who respected her previous work. She offered them a pilot sprint at a steep discount: five thousand dollars. That gave her three case studies, testimonials, and a process she could refine. Then she raised the price to fifteen thousand. Luna: That's a classic strategy — discount for the first few to build proof, then price at full value. But the jump from five to fifteen is big. Did she lose people? Lucas: She says some prospects balked. But the people who said yes were better clients — they understood the value. And she didn't negotiate. The price was the price. That actually made her look more credible. Luna: There's a confidence signal in a fixed, non-negotiable price. It says 'I know what this is worth.' Lucas: Exactly. And she did almost no traditional sales. Her entire client acquisition came from two things: writing about her sprint process on LinkedIn — detailed breakdowns of what she did, the frameworks she used — and then having those posts seen by people who were already in her network. Luna: So content marketing, but very specific. Not 'here's my opinion on product management.' More like 'here's exactly how I solve this problem for a client.' Lucas: Right. And each sprint gave her material for the next post. It became a flywheel. She'd finish a sprint, write a thread or a short article about one specific insight — like how she prioritised features using a weighted scoring model — and that would attract the next inquiry. Luna: I like that she's not creating content separate from the work. The work is the content. Lucas: And the content is the sales. She told me she has never made a cold outreach. Every single client came through a referral or a direct message from someone who read her posts. Luna: That's the dream for a solopreneur. No sales pipeline, no CRM, no follow-up sequences. Just do good work and write about it. Lucas: But here's the part I think is most important: she deliberately kept the offer narrow. She could have expanded into workshops, coaching, or a retainer option. But she didn't. She said every time she considered adding another service, she asked herself — 'will this make my core offer stronger or weaker?' Luna: And the answer was usually 'weaker.' Because adding options dilutes focus and complicates messaging. Lucas: Yes. She wanted to be the person who does this one thing exceptionally well. And that clarity made it easier for clients to refer her. They knew exactly what she does and who it's for. Luna: It also makes the decision easier for the buyer. They don't have to evaluate multiple packages. It's one price, one outcome, one process. Lucas: And that's the lesson I think a lot of freelancers miss. We think more options mean more sales. But for a one-person business, a single focused offer is actually lower friction and higher value. Luna: Look, if these kinds of conversations have helped you rethink how you structure your own work, you know what keeps this ad-free show going. If today's episode was worth a coffee to you, that link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Genuinely, it means a lot. Lucas: Yeah, and we don't run ads or ask for much. Just that if the show moves your work forward in some small way, you can toss a few bucks in the jar. No pressure ever. Luna: So back to Rachel's numbers. She's been doing this for two years now. Last year she ran eleven sprints — one more than her target — and grossed a hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars. Lucas: And that's not including the tax and expenses, but still — that's a solid income from one productised service. And she worked maybe forty weeks out of the year. Luna: But I'm curious — did she ever hit a plateau? I imagine after a while, the same clients don't need another roadmap. How does she keep the pipeline full? Lucas: She says the biggest challenge is that her clients are usually startups or scale-ups that need a one-time roadmap. So repeat business is rare. But referrals are strong — she gets about sixty percent of clients from past clients referring her to other founders. Luna: So the lifetime value of a client isn't high, but the cost of acquisition is almost zero. That works if you can keep the referrals coming. Lucas: Exactly. And she's now considering a slight pivot: she's thinking of adding a 'sprint alumni' option — a half-day check-in six months after the sprint for existing clients who want to review progress. She'd charge two thousand for that. Luna: That's smart. It's not a new service line; it's a natural extension of the existing one. And it keeps her connected to past clients who might refer her. Lucas: Right. And she's been very deliberate about not growing beyond herself. She gets asked all the time if she'll hire subcontractors or build an agency. She says no — because then she'd be managing people instead of doing the work she loves. Luna: That's a very clear 'no.' And I think that's part of her brand now. Clients know they're getting Rachel, not a junior associate. Lucas: Exactly. So the broader takeaway here isn't just about pricing — it's about designing a business around a single, high-value offer that you can deliver consistently without burning out. It's a very intentional way to be a solopreneur. Luna: And the key enabler was the fixed-price, fixed-scope sprint model. She didn't invent anything new — productized consulting has been around. But she executed it with discipline. Lucas: Yeah. And the discipline is what most people skip. They know they should stop selling hours, but they don't actually draw the line and say 'this is the only thing I sell.' Luna: So if someone listening wants to try this, what's the first step? Should they pick a service and a price, or start with a client? Lucas: Rachel's advice is: start with a problem you know how to solve for a specific type of client. Then scope a three-week engagement around solving that one problem. Price it at something that feels a little uncomfortable — but not crazy. Then go sell it to one person you already know. Luna: And don't call it a pilot. Just call it your offer. Lucas: Right. Because the language matters. 'Pilot' sounds temporary. 'My strategic sprint' sounds like a real product. And after that first one, iterate and raise the price. Luna: I think the most powerful part is that she built a business that funds the life she wants, not the other way around. She's not chasing growth for growth's sake. Lucas: Yeah. And that's maybe the real story here. A one-person business doesn't have to scale to be successful. It just has to work.