I failed for 6 months straight and then achieved $2K+ MRR in less than 15 days.

I'm Rhys, the founder of Consultily.

Some of you may have seen me around before, and that's great because, you'll know how long I've been around trying to make this work.

So, I started Consultily in January (You know, that "new year, new me, new project" feeling haha).

The original concept of Consultily was to create an on-demand marketing consultant "platform" where a business could come along with their marketing bottlenecks and "we" would connect them with a consultant that fitted their business for a flat monthly fee.

And well, that failed hard.

I'm a Marketing Consultant myself and have been for many years. I decided to start Consultily because I was fed up with the inconsistent work which I can honestly admit now, was all my fault.

Unfortunately, as a consultant, people love to hire you when and where they need you.

So, I wanted to attempt to give myself more financial security, improve my marketing knowledge further and create a business without really distancing away from the job I was already doing.

Anyway, let's move forward...

January

I spent the month putting together a website on Tilda and honestly, now I look back at it, it was shocking haha. I spent way too long trying to perfect something that honestly, could not be perfected.

February to March

These months were full of LinkedIn outreaches, cold email outreaches and a few odd direct outreaches. I'd have calls scheduled with interested prospects but after the call, 90% of them just didn't want to know because I didn’t really know how to sell the service, it was too broad. I think I signed 2 clients at £99 for the sake of it, the issue was that they were not my ideal client so, I knew in the long term, they wouldn’t stick around.

Anyway, I was excited that I had my first 2 customers but, I had no idea what the next steps were.

March

With the same outreaches running, I closed a few more clients but had also lost a few. It didn't seem like I had done anything wrong in regards to the consulting itself, the feedback was great, it just seemed that the businesses that were signing up were not my ideal customers and they were not ready to commit to that monthly fee.

April

I decided to launch on ProductHunt and honestly, I thought this was the eureka moment just like most others would. To be honest, it actually went pretty well, and I ended up with 170+ upvotes, a tonne of traffic, some great feedback a few spammy emails asking me to do interviews but unfortunately, no new signups/trials.

May

So, after the previous few unsuccessful months, I was ready to throw the towel in, I didn't let anyone know this but, I'd just had enough. I was fed up with the constant chase of finding new clients, dealing with businesses that I didn't really enjoy dealing with and of course, at the time, the dreaded COVID-19.

June

Let's get a little personal, I went through a breakup, financially things were not great and I was stressed. I didn't work all month, I'd be away from the desk every day distracting myself, finding random things to do and generally, just got a little lazy.

July

July hit and this is where things changed a little bit, after a month of wasting time I'd come to the conclusion that either I get my sh*t together or sit back and watch everything slowly fall apart.

So, on the 1st of July, I pulled out the pen and paper and came to a few conclusions:

• SaaS companies loved working with me.
• I loved working with SaaS companies.
• SaaS companies have stopped with me since day 1.
• I was the consultant they wanted to work with and not someone else.
• If I wanted to make this work long term, I needed to charge more.
• I needed to niche down and laser target my audience.
• If I wanted my target audience to convert, the website needed to be aimed towards them.

With those notes on paper, here is the action I took:

• Decided to only focus on SaaS companies.
• Changed my price from £99/$149 to $295 per month.
• Developed a new website, you can see it here.
• Created a laser-focused lead list.

I was motivated, I managed to get all of this done in around 48 hours and outreaches were launched straight after. I didn't have time to sit around this time. It was either make it work or start applying for jobs.

Day 1 found me 3 interested prospects, I was excited, I hopped on the discovery calls the next day. I enjoyed the calls, they enjoyed speaking to me and because I'd managed to show how much value I could add to a SaaS business already through the website itself, they all closed on the call.

This continued for the next week or so and that was it, I was full, I had no more space left on my calendar for new clients. I’d actually achieved my year-end target in 2 weeks. Essentially, the target at the start of the year was to not have to look for work because I had enough work to keep me going and referrals came to me.

So, here’s a summary of what I’ve learnt:

• Find an industry that you enjoy because you’ll genuinely not need to sell to them because you’ll enjoy speaking to them and they’ll enjoy speaking to you.
• Once you have an industry, niche down, there’s plenty of businesses to reach out to. Reaching out to everyone and anyone just won’t work.
• Raise your prices, you’ll hear this a lot but it’s true. Clients will value your proposition more and you’ll also attract more serious clients which will result in less churn.
• Have your resources in place - resources sell, this could be reviews, testimonials, case studies and screenshots. Just show them what they need to see and why your service benefits them.
• Automate as much as you can. The idea is that you want them to be either signing up or jumping on a call with no work from your side. This will enable you to focus on your clients/users or even the next project/move.

So, I hear you - I'm fully booked, what's next?

Consultily now has a waiting list on the website and there are a few companies already currently on the list from referrals. So, worst case, if a client drops off I have backup clients at the ready.

Also, I'm currently in the process of creating a productized service to help SaaS companies get new users. So, sort of an agency/productized service. Anyway, that’s the next move and I’m sure I’ll update you all once it’s ready.

Anyway, that’s me, I’ve probably bored you all but there’s just one point I want you all to remember.

DO NOT GIVE UP.

If you want me to bore you more, you can follow me and my journey on Twitter here.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments below.