Consulting Curious?
Welcome. If you scanned the QR or followed up after the talk — this is the page where the receipts live. Everything I referenced on stage, plus the worksheets, the prompts, and the tools I actually use.
A reminder, before any of the links: this is what worked for me. There are unlimited ways to do this.
The 3 honest questions
Before any LLC, any Stripe account, any website — these are the questions you have to answer honestly. Read them like a therapist would. Not like a credit application.
Honest runway
What's your real floor? Not just savings — your full picture.
- Money in the bank
- Unemployment eligibility
- Partner or household income
- Health insurance situation (COBRA, partner's plan, marketplace)
- Your track record with income volatility (have you been on commission before?)
- Time-cushion realities: kids, surgery, caregiving, mortgage
Network
Five specific humans who know what you do and could refer you to a paying client by Monday. Not fifty. Not a LinkedIn audience. Five.
- If yes → you have warm pipes. You can probably go to earn.
- If no → your network is the thing to build first. That's a learning chapter, not an earning chapter.
Learning or earning?
The chapter you're in determines everything else — your offer, your pricing, your structure, your timeline.
Learning chapter
- Optimize for reps and reference logos
- Take projects below market for case studies
- Side hustle is fine; stay employed if you can
- Lower pricing, focused on testing offers
Earning chapter
- Optimize for revenue per hour
- Higher pricing from day one
- Real packages, real systems
- Going full-time to replace and exceed your salary
Offer design
Pricing isn't a number. It's the math of what someone wants divided by what it costs them to get it.
The Hormozi value equation
Maximize the top, minimize the bottom. RevOps consultants almost always over-emphasize the bottom (we work hard! we're rigorous!) and under-emphasize the top (what dream outcome? how confident is the buyer?).
Three packages — Floor, Target, Dream
The smallest thing you'll do. Defines your minimum viable engagement. Protects you from saying yes to garbage.
Where you want most clients to land. Designed for your ideal customer. This is your actual product.
The version where you blow it out. Most clients won't pick it. The point is what it does to the target in their minds — it makes the target look reasonable.
The dream-tier exercise
If a client paid you $1,000,000 — what would you actually deliver?
Most people freeze at this question. The answer tells you what you're actually selling. Once you can describe the $1M version, the $50K version becomes obvious — it's a thinner slice of the same thing.
Do this exercise this weekend. Before Monday. It's the most useful 30 minutes you'll spend on your business this year.
The coffee chat loop
The actual Monday motion. The system that turns ten chats into ten different experiments instead of ten reps of the same mistake.
The motion
5 coffee chats a week. Ask for advice, not work.
That's it. That's the whole script.
The loop
Record it (with permission).
Ask it to be your harshest critic. Use the prompt below.
After every. single. chat. Change something.
Next chat tests the new version.
Recording tools (pick one)
The "Tell Me Harsh Things" prompt
Copy-paste this into Claude after every coffee chat. Get the full prompt and instructions here — keep it bookmarked. Use it religiously.
The boring 90 minutes
Two Saturdays. Three hours total. Don't let this become the job — but don't skip it either.
Saturday 1 — Form the entity
Apply at IRS.gov. Never pay for an EIN. The IRS issues it for free in about 10 minutes.
Contract templates
You'll need both an MSA (the long-term framework) and an SOW (per-project scope).
Saturday 2 — Set up money
Business banking
Payment processing
Connect Mercury and Stripe. Send yourself a $1 test invoice. Done.
Insurance (don't skip this)
Most B2B clients require professional liability / E&O insurance. Get it before your first client asks for proof.
The reading list
Two books. Read both before Memorial Day and you're more prepared than 90% of people who jump.
Read it in a weekend, by design. The fastest path to your first $0 → $1.
When you're ready for more: $100M Leads — Hormozi's sequel, on demand generation.
The communities that helped me
None of this happens alone. These are the rooms where the actual work gets done.
For B2B SaaS GTM operators
The host of this talk. Free, active Slack community.
Finance + ops community, chapter-based
Revenue architecture training and community
Website + brand
You don't need a website to book your first five coffee chats. You will, eventually, want one — but later than you think.
Traditional website builders
Owned-channel alternative
Logo + basic brand
Brand and website are not what win you clients in year one. Coffee chats win you clients. Don't let "I need a logo" become an excuse for "I'm not selling yet."
CRM + admin tools
Track your coffee chats, your pipeline, your follow-ups. Most people start with a Google Sheet and that's fine.
CRM
Scheduling
Bookkeeping
Time tracking + invoicing
Book five coffee chats.
Don't open a Squarespace account. Don't buy a domain. Don't tweet about it. Book five coffee chats. That's how you find out if the key fits.
If we didn't get to chat at the rooftop session, find me on LinkedIn or at jacki@activatethemagic.com.
The doorway is always there. — J 🗝️