Turn Your Experience Into an Advisory Business You Own
Talk it Through
You May Already Have a $100,000+ Advisory Business Inside Your Career
The biggest misconception about advisory work is that you need dozens of clients. You don’t.
A specialized advisory practice can be built around a relatively small number of high-value relationships.
For example:
2 clients at $5,000/month = $120,000/year
Or:
4 clients at $2,500/month = $120,000/year
Or build a portfolio:
2 annual retainers + 4 projects + select advisory meetings = a meaningful second income stream
The exact model depends on your expertise, market, reputation, and availability.
But the important shift is this: You don’t have to monetize thousands of people. You need a relatively small number of organizations that place a high value on what you know.
A specialized advisory practice can be built around a relatively small number of high-value relationships.
For example:
2 clients at $5,000/month = $120,000/year
Or:
4 clients at $2,500/month = $120,000/year
Or build a portfolio:
2 annual retainers + 4 projects + select advisory meetings = a meaningful second income stream
The exact model depends on your expertise, market, reputation, and availability.
But the important shift is this: You don’t have to monetize thousands of people. You need a relatively small number of organizations that place a high value on what you know.
Everything You Need to Launch Your Advisory Business
A complete, business-ready advisory practice you own—with your positioning, services, pricing, proprietary approach, website, sales materials, and plan for landing your first clients.
Proprietary IP
A named methodology, framework, or system built around your expertise.
Visual Framework
A professionally designed model that makes your methodology easy to understand and communicate.
Finished Product or Service
Your expertise turned into something people can actually buy: an advisory program, assessment, workshop, toolkit, licensing program, AI advisor, or other offering.
Offer + Pricing
Exactly what you’re selling, who it’s for, what they receive, how it’s delivered, and what you charge.
Customer-Facing Materials
The presentations, assessments, reports, workbooks, templates, and other materials needed to deliver it professionally.
Your Website
Professionally developed site that presents your IP, explains your offering, showcases your expertise and thought leadership, and lets prospective customers book an appointment or even purchase directly online.
Sales & Marketing Package
Positioning, messaging, sales presentation, proposal materials, outreach copy, and talking points to help you introduce the offering.
First-Customer Launch Plan
Who to approach first, how to reach them, what to offer, and a specific plan for landing your first customers.
Build a Business Around What You Already Know
You don’t need a startup idea. Your expertise may already be the business.
Companies routinely pay experienced professionals for strategic advice, specialized expertise, introductions, project guidance, executive counsel, and help solving important problems. An advisory business turns that experience into something you can sell directly.
You might advise:
Companies routinely pay experienced professionals for strategic advice, specialized expertise, introductions, project guidance, executive counsel, and help solving important problems. An advisory business turns that experience into something you can sell directly.
You might advise:
CEOs and Founders
Become a trusted advisor to leaders navigating growth, strategy, transformation, or major decisions.
Companies
Take on specific advisory projects where your expertise can create significant value.
Leadership Teams
Work directly with management teams on the issues you understand best.
Investors & Private Equity Firms
Provide industry expertise, diligence, portfolio-company support, or operating perspective.
Startups & Growth Companies
Help emerging companies avoid mistakes you’ve already seen—and accelerate decisions you’ve spent years learning how to make.
Boards
Extend your advisory practice into formal board and advisory board opportunities.
The opportunity is to take everything you have learned over your career and turn it into a professional business you own.
Stop Giving Away Your Best Advice for Free
Think about how often someone calls you and asks:
What would you do?”
“Can I get your thoughts on this?”
“Do you know anyone who could help us?”
“Would you take a look at this?”
“Could I pick your brain?”
Those conversations are often evidence of something valuable. People already seek out your judgment. An advisory business simply creates the structure around it.
What would you do?”
“Can I get your thoughts on this?”
“Do you know anyone who could help us?”
“Would you take a look at this?”
“Could I pick your brain?”
Those conversations are often evidence of something valuable. People already seek out your judgment. An advisory business simply creates the structure around it.
Instead of informal conversations, you develop defined advisory services.
Instead of giving your expertise away, you establish what it’s worth.
Instead of helping occasionally, you create ongoing client relationships.
And instead of that value belonging to your employer or disappearing when your current role ends, you build a business around it that you own.
There Are More Ways to Get Paid Than Traditional Consulting
An advisory business doesn’t have to mean becoming a full-time consultant billing by the hour. In fact, we’d generally avoid building it that way.
Your business can include:
Your business can include:
Annual Advisory Retainers
Companies retain you throughout the year for ongoing access, meetings, and strategic guidance.
Companies retain you throughout the year for ongoing access, meetings, and strategic guidance.
Monthly Advisory Relationships
Work with a select group of clients on a recurring basis.
Work with a select group of clients on a recurring basis.
Strategic Projects
Charge fixed fees for defined projects where your expertise can produce a specific outcome.
Charge fixed fees for defined projects where your expertise can produce a specific outcome.
Executive Advisory Sessions
Offer individual or packaged sessions around particularly valuable decisions or problems.
Offer individual or packaged sessions around particularly valuable decisions or problems.
Advisory Boards
Serve companies through formal advisory board relationships.
Serve companies through formal advisory board relationships.
Workshops & Executive Sessions
Bring your methodology into leadership teams, off-sites, planning sessions, and company meetings.
Bring your methodology into leadership teams, off-sites, planning sessions, and company meetings.
Assessments & Intellectual Property
Turn your approach into diagnostics, frameworks, methodologies, and other products clients can purchase.
Turn your approach into diagnostics, frameworks, methodologies, and other products clients can purchase.
Speaking & Thought Leadership
Use your advisory platform to create speaking, media, and other professional opportunities.
Use your advisory platform to create speaking, media, and other professional opportunities.
The goal is to determine how your expertise can command the greatest value without simply selling more of your time.
Why Start Now?
Build Your Next Professional Chapter Before You Need It
Most professionals wait until they leave their full-time career to ask:
“What am I going to do next?”
We think that’s backwards. Start building it years earlier.
Your advisory business can begin with one client.
Then two.
Then several.
You can refine your offering, establish your reputation, develop your intellectual property, build relationships, and create recurring revenue while you still have the security of your primary career.
Over time:
Most professionals wait until they leave their full-time career to ask:
“What am I going to do next?”
We think that’s backwards. Start building it years earlier.
Your advisory business can begin with one client.
Then two.
Then several.
You can refine your offering, establish your reputation, develop your intellectual property, build relationships, and create recurring revenue while you still have the security of your primary career.
Over time:
TODAY
Experience + Expertise + Relationships + Reputation
START YOUR ADVISORY BUSINESS
Positioning → Services → Pricing → First Clients
BUILD IT ON THE SIDE
Clients → Revenue → Reputation → Referrals → IP
CREATE PROFESSIONAL OPTIONALITY
Keep Your Career OR Build a Portfolio Career OR Grow Your Advisory Business OR Make It Your Next Chapter
You don’t have to decide today where it ultimately leads.
The point is to start creating the option.
The point is to start creating the option.
An Advisory Business Can Be Built Around Your Life
One of the greatest advantages of an advisory business is that you get to design it. You can decide:
Who you work with
What problems you work on
How much you charge
How many clients you accept
How often you meet with them
Which projects interest you
How much time you want to commit
And eventually, whether you want it to remain a side business or become a much larger part of your professional life
For someone who has spent decades working within other organizations, that can be incredibly powerful.
You’re not looking for your next job. You’re building your own platform.
You’re not looking for your next job. You’re building your own platform.
Your Experience Is More Valuable Now Than It Was 20 Years Ago
Many assets depreciate over time. Experience can do the opposite.
Every company you’ve worked for
Every difficult situation you’ve navigated
Every major decision you’ve made
Every person you’ve hired
Every mistake you’ve seen
Every customer you’ve dealt with
Every industry relationship you’ve developed
Every pattern you’ve learned to recognize
They’ve all contributed to something that’s difficult to replicate: judgment.
And judgment is exactly what organizations often need when decisions become complicated, expensive, or consequential.
The question is whether that accumulated value remains locked inside your career—or becomes something you can monetize independently.
And judgment is exactly what organizations often need when decisions become complicated, expensive, or consequential.
The question is whether that accumulated value remains locked inside your career—or becomes something you can monetize independently.
The Return on Building an Advisory Business
An advisory practice can create value far beyond immediate consulting income.
Recurring Income
A small portfolio of retainer clients can create meaningful annual revenue.
A small portfolio of retainer clients can create meaningful annual revenue.
Professional Optionality
Build another source of opportunity before you ever need one.
Build another source of opportunity before you ever need one.
Ownership
You’re creating a business, brand, client base, and intellectual property that belong to you.
You’re creating a business, brand, client base, and intellectual property that belong to you.
Career Independence
Your professional value becomes less dependent on one employer, title, or organization
Your professional value becomes less dependent on one employer, title, or organization
New Relationships
Advisory work puts you directly into conversations with founders, CEOs, investors, boards, and other decision-makers.
Advisory work puts you directly into conversations with founders, CEOs, investors, boards, and other decision-makers.
Thought Leadership
Your advisory platform gives you a reason to develop and share your point of view.
Your advisory platform gives you a reason to develop and share your point of view.
Future Opportunities
Advisory relationships can lead to board seats, investments, partnerships, speaking, executive roles, or entirely new businesses.
Advisory relationships can lead to board seats, investments, partnerships, speaking, executive roles, or entirely new businesses.
Purpose
Continue applying everything you’ve learned to interesting problems and people long after you may want a traditional full-time role.
Continue applying everything you’ve learned to interesting problems and people long after you may want a traditional full-time role.
How SideStarter Helps
We Don’t Just Tell You to Become an Advisor. We Build the Business With You.
The hardest part isn’t deciding you have valuable expertise.
It’s turning that expertise into something people understand, value, and will pay for.
SideStarter helps do the heavy lifting.
We help you:
The hardest part isn’t deciding you have valuable expertise.
It’s turning that expertise into something people understand, value, and will pay for.
SideStarter helps do the heavy lifting.
We help you:
Determine where your expertise has the greatest commercial value
Identify the companies and executives most likely to need it
Define your ideal client
Develop your positioning and niche
Determine exactly what you should offer
Create retainer, project, and other revenue models
Establish your pricing
Develop your proprietary methodology or framework
Name and brand your advisory business
Build your website
Create your presentations and client materials
Develop your thought leadership
Create your outreach messaging
Identify prospective clients
Build your first-client strategy
Prepare you for sales conversations
Develop proposals and engagement structures
Create a roadmap for expanding the business
You provide the experience. We help turn it into the business.
What We Build With You
By the end of the process, you shouldn’t simply be able to say:
“I do some advisory work.”
You should be able to clearly answer:
“I do some advisory work.”
You should be able to clearly answer:
Who do I advise?
What problems do I solve?
Why am I uniquely qualified to solve them?
What exactly can a company hire me to do?
What do I charge?
What proprietary approach do I bring?
How do I explain my value?
Where do I find prospective clients?
How do I turn an initial engagement into a recurring relationship?
That’s the difference between occasionally consulting and owning an advisory business.
The SideStarter Process
1. Discover
We start by understanding your career, accomplishments, expertise, network, interests, and long-term professional goals.
2. Position
We identify where your experience has the greatest value and develop a differentiated positioning for your advisory business.
3. Package
We turn your expertise into clearly defined services, retainers, projects, frameworks, and offerings that companies can actually buy.
4. Build
We develop your brand, website, proprietary IP, sales materials, presentations, pricing, and customer-facing assets.
5. Launch
We identify your best initial prospects and develop the outreach, conversations, proposals, and strategy needed to land your first clients.
6. Grow
As you begin working with clients, we help refine the model, generate referrals, develop thought leadership, and expand the business.
What’s Included
A typical IP development engagement may include:
Expertise and asset inventory
Founder or expert interviews
Existing-content review
Audience and problem definition
Competitive and category review
Framework or methodology architecture
Naming and messaging
Visual model development
Diagnostic, assessment, or scoring design
Templates, playbooks, guides, or facilitation tools
Curriculum or certification blueprint
Pilot design and feedback
Offer, pricing, and packaging strategy
Licensing or delivery-model exploration
Brand and launch narrative
Intellectual-property roadmap
Coordination with qualified legal counsel where formal protection advice is neededaaaaa
Who This Is For
This is designed for accomplished professionals who have spent years developing expertise other organizations can benefit from, including:
Current and former C-suite executives
Senior corporate leaders
Industry experts
Functional experts
Lawyers, accountants, financial professionals, and other specialists
Operators with deep experience in a particular market
Executives approaching a career transition
Professionals interested in building a portfolio career
Retired or semi-retired executives who still want to work on meaningful problems
Professionals who want to create income outside their primary job
Anyone who regularly hears some version of “Can I get your advice on something?”
You don’t need to think of yourself as a consultant. You need expertise someone else values.
Frequently Asked Questions
1
Do I need to quit my current job?
No. In many cases, the ideal time to begin building an advisory business is while you’re still working. You can start selectively and grow it over time, subject of course to any employment agreements or restrictions you have.
2
How much time does this require?
That’s one of the advantages of the model. An advisory business can be designed around the amount of time you actually want to commit—from a handful of meetings each month to a substantial portfolio of clients.
3
How much can I charge?
It depends on the value and scarcity of your expertise, your target client, the type of engagement, and the outcomes involved. We help you determine appropriate pricing and build offers around value rather than simply defaulting to an hourly rate.
4
Do I need to know exactly what I would advise companies on?
No. Helping identify the most valuable and marketable parts of your experience is part of our process.
5
How do I get my first clients?
We help identify the people and organizations most likely to value your expertise and develop a specific first-client outreach strategy. Your existing network may be an important starting point, but it doesn’t have to be the entire strategy.
6
Is this just consulting?
It can include consulting, but we think much more broadly. Your business might include retainers, strategic projects, advisory sessions, board work, workshops, assessments, proprietary methodologies, speaking, licensing, or other ways of monetizing your expertise.
7
Can I do this if I’m still employed?
Potentially, yes, but you’ll need to make sure any outside work complies with your employment agreement, confidentiality obligations, non-solicitation provisions, conflict policies, and other applicable restrictions.
8
Can you create my website and materials?
Yes. That’s a core part of what we do. We help create the positioning, brand, website, service offerings, pricing, proprietary IP, sales materials, and other assets needed to present yourself as an established advisory business.
9
Do I own what you create?
Yes. SideStarter is designed around helping you build an asset you own. The specific ownership of final deliverables and any third-party or licensed components is defined in your engagement agreement.
10
What if I only want a few clients?
That may be the ideal model. The objective isn’t necessarily to build a huge consulting company. It may be to build an extremely valuable small advisory business around a handful of clients you genuinely enjoy working with.
You’ve Spent Decades Building the Expertise. Now Build the Business Around It.
Your career has already created the raw materials:
Experience. Expertise. Relationships. Reputation. Judgment.
SideStarter helps you turn them into something you own—a professionally positioned advisory business capable of generating income, opening new doors, and creating greater control over the next chapter of your professional life.
You don’t have to leave your career.
You don’t need dozens of clients.
And you don’t need to know exactly what the business should look like yet.
Start building the business your experience has prepared you to own.
Experience. Expertise. Relationships. Reputation. Judgment.
SideStarter helps you turn them into something you own—a professionally positioned advisory business capable of generating income, opening new doors, and creating greater control over the next chapter of your professional life.
You don’t have to leave your career.
You don’t need dozens of clients.
And you don’t need to know exactly what the business should look like yet.
Start building the business your experience has prepared you to own.