Latest / The Side Hustle Career Podcast with Fexingo: Second Income, Freelancing While Employed / How a Procurement Manager Built a 9K Monthly Side Hustle in Supplier Diversity Consulting
Transcript
- Lucas: So today's episode is about a corporate function that a lot of people do every day without ever thinking it could be a standalone consulting business: supplier diversity. And the person we're talking about is a procurement manager named Mandy Rivera. Luna: Supplier diversity — that's the whole push to make sure companies are buying from minority-owned, woman-owned, veteran-owned businesses, right? Lucas: Exactly. Mandy worked in procurement for a large manufacturing firm here in the Midwest for about eight years. She was managing the company's supplier diversity reporting, which is basically tracking how much spend goes to diverse suppliers and filing compliance paperwork. It was a small part of her job, but she noticed something: every time they had to report, her counterparts at smaller companies — mid-size firms with maybe 200 to 500 employees — would call her asking for help because they had no idea how to even start a supplier diversity program. Luna: So she realized there was demand that her employer wasn't capturing. Lucas: Exactly. She started informally helping a few of these contacts, and within about six months she had three paying clients at $1,500 a month each, all while keeping her full-time job. By month nine she was at $9,000 a month recurring, and she had to decide whether to go full-time or keep both. We'll get into how she built that, but I think the most interesting part is the pricing model she designed. Luna: Okay, I want to hear that. But first — what was her actual pitch? How did she get someone to pay her for this? Lucas: Great question. Her pitch was remarkably simple. She'd say: 'You're likely leaving money on the table with state and local contracts that require supplier diversity reporting. I can build you a program in 90 days that qualifies you for those contracts and saves you hours of compliance headaches.' She targeted mid-size companies that didn't have a dedicated procurement team — the CEO or the COO was handling purchasing directly. Luna: So she was selling a compliance solution, not a feel-good diversity initiative. Lucas: Exactly. She framed it as a revenue enabler, because many government and corporate RFPs now require a supplier diversity plan just to bid. So if you don't have one, you're locked out of entire categories of business. That was her wedge. Luna: And what was the pricing model she used? Lucas: She created three tiers. The first tier was a one-time audit and report for $2,500 — basically she'd review their current vendor list, identify where they already had diverse suppliers they weren't tracking, and give them a baseline report they could use for compliance. Tier two was a monthly retainer for $1,500 a month, which included ongoing reporting, quarterly updates, and a basic outreach plan to find new diverse vendors. Tier three was the full program build — she'd actually set up the entire supplier diversity program from scratch, including training for their procurement staff, and that was $3,000 a month for six months. Luna: So most of her clients started with tier one, then upgraded to tier two once they saw the value. Lucas: Exactly. She told me that about 40 percent of her tier-one clients converted to the monthly retainer within three months. And she kept her day job the entire first year, doing the consulting work in evenings and weekends. She'd set up a separate LLC, got a business bank account, and used a simple spreadsheet to track hours and invoices. Luna: And her employer never had an issue with it? No non-compete or conflict of interest? Lucas: She was careful. She checked her employee handbook, and there was a clause about not competing directly, but since she was targeting completely different companies — mid-size firms in different industries from her employer — and she wasn't using any proprietary templates from her day job, she was in the clear. She actually built her own templates from scratch based on publicly available standards. And she never pitched any of her employer's suppliers. Luna: That's a really important distinction. A lot of people worry about that, and she handled it well. Lucas: She did. Now, one thing that really accelerated her growth was that she started writing about it on LinkedIn. She'd post once a week about a specific supplier diversity statistic — something like 'Only 2 percent of corporate procurement spend goes to Black-owned businesses, but companies with diverse supply chains see 20 percent lower costs.' That kind of content got her inbound inquiries from companies that hadn't even thought about this as a service. Luna: So content marketing worked for her even in a niche B2B space. What was the turning point where she went from three clients to nine? Lucas: It was actually a referral from one of her tier-two clients. That client was a mid-size logistics company that had just won a state contract partly because of the supplier diversity program Mandy built for them. They mentioned her in an industry association meeting, and she got three new leads from that one conversation. Within two weeks, she had signed two of them. Luna: That's the power of a concrete outcome. Not just 'we helped you comply,' but 'we helped you win a contract.' Lucas: Exactly. And that's really the core lesson here — she didn't just offer a service, she offered a result. And she could point to a real example. Now, she did eventually leave her full-time job after about 14 months, when her side hustle was consistently bringing in $12,000 a month. She's been doing it full-time for about six months now, and she's at around $15,000 a month with four retainer clients and some project work. Luna: That's a pretty rapid ramp. Do you think this is replicable for someone in a similar role? Lucas: I think so, but with a couple of caveats. First, you need to genuinely understand supplier diversity compliance — the regulations, the reporting frameworks, the certification bodies. That's not something you can fake. Second, you need a network of companies that are small enough not to have this in-house but big enough to pay for it. Third, you have to be comfortable selling. Mandy was already doing internal presentations, so she had that skill. If you're a procurement analyst who never talks to external people, you'd need to build that muscle. Luna: And what about the competitive landscape? Are there a lot of supplier diversity consultants out there? Lucas: There are some, but it's still a relatively small niche. Most supplier diversity consultants are either solo practitioners who came from big corporate programs, or large consulting firms that charge way more. Mandy's advantage was her mid-market focus — she was affordable and accessible. She told me that her average client spends about $18,000 a year with her, which is a fraction of what a Big Four firm would charge for a similar engagement. Luna: So she carved out a specific segment that wasn't being served well. Lucas: That's exactly it. And this is a trend we're seeing across many of the episodes we've done — the best side hustles are often the ones where you take a skill that's undervalued inside a large organization and repackage it for smaller companies that can't afford the full enterprise version. Luna: You know, it's funny you mention that. And it ties to something I've been thinking about with this show. We've done over a hundred episodes now, and one thing that keeps it going is that a handful of listeners chip in monthly through buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. And that's literally what funds making this many episodes — no ads, no sponsors, just listener support. So if you've gotten value from a specific episode or the show in general, that's the way to keep it ad-free and going. Lucas: Yeah, it's a small group that already does it, and it makes a real difference. It's not something we dwell on, but it's worth mentioning because it's the reason we can keep doing deep dives like this one. Luna: Exactly. Okay, back to Mandy. So she's now full-time. What's next for her business? Lucas: She's actually developing a digital product — a supplier diversity toolkit with templates, checklists, and training videos. She's planning to sell it for $500 as a DIY option for companies that can't afford her consulting. She thinks that could add another $3,000 to $5,000 a month in passive income. And she's also starting to offer a certification program for other procurement professionals who want to become supplier diversity consultants themselves. Luna: So she's scaling beyond her own time. That's the next level. Lucas: Right. And I think that's a good lesson for anyone listening who's thinking about a side hustle in a niche like this. The initial phase is trading time for money — consulting, advising, building the track record. But once you have that track record, you can start to productize your knowledge. Mandy is a great example of that progression. Luna: One last thing — what's the one piece of advice she'd give to someone starting out? Lucas: She told me: 'Don't wait until you feel ready. I started with one client who paid me $500 for a two-hour audit. I was terrified. But that one client led to everything. Just start with one small engagement, do a great job, and let the referrals come.' I think that's pretty solid. Luna: Simple, but true. Thanks for that case, Lucas. Lucas: Yeah, it's a good one. And if you're in procurement and thinking about a side hustle, supplier diversity might just be your lane.