Learn how to build and sell your own $75K advisory offer as a solo consultant: https://ambition.live

Is your consulting practice really struggling with marketing, or can serious buyers simply not tell when to call you?

Russell Raath has spent more than three decades in consulting at Deloitte and Bank of America and ran Kotter International, and in this video, he goes through Alex Hormozi’s latest service business advice to show what consultants should use, where he disagrees, and what to do instead.

You will learn how to build an authority offer around a live decision, price your work using potential, attributable and realizable value, pick the right end of the market, and handle proposals and guarantees without promising outcomes you do not control.

If you want to turn your experience into a credible commercial offer, apply for the Ambition Playbook at ambition.live.

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Transcript

0:00 Alex Forzosi is right about more than

0:01 most consultants want to actually admit.

0:03 You see, a lot of independent

0:04 consultants are too vague about the

0:06 problems they solve, too passive about

0:07 creating demand, and far too

0:09 disconnected from the economics of their

0:11 work. But executive consulting and

0:12 advisory isn't simply a high ticket

0:14 service business. It's a trust and risk

0:17 transfer business. The principles are

0:18 valuable, but the tactics need a little

0:20 bit of translation. And so, I went

0:21 through his latest advice to show you

0:23 what I think consultants should use,

0:25 where I disagree, and what I would do

0:26 instead. Let's start with how do you

0:28 make the service itself more valuable.

0:30 >> One of my favorite business models in

0:31 the world. Look at what everyone else is

0:32 doing. Do it in half the time. If

0:33 normally it takes you 100 days to get

0:34 the average customer to win, figure out

0:35 how you can do it in seven. Figure out

0:36 how you can do it in three. Figure out

0:37 how to do it in 24 hours. Think about

0:38 the difference between the marketing

0:39 agent that signs up a customer and says,

0:41 "Okay, we're going to start running your

0:42 ads and uh it'll take us about 60 days

0:43 to get you spun up and then you should

0:44 start getting some lead flow." Consider

0:46 that with as soon as the guy hangs up

0:47 with the sales guy, his phone rings.

0:49 Hey, I just saw your ad. Now, that's

0:50 obviously a super extreme example on

0:52 both sides. Well, the closer you are to

0:53 that one, even though the actual

0:55 deliverable is the same, how much more

0:56 valuable is this one? So much more

0:58 valuable.

0:58 >> Now, that is very good advice for a

1:00 service business. It's also the kind of

1:02 advice that a consultant can copy too

1:03 literally and get badly wrong. I've

1:05 spent more than three decades in and

1:07 around consulting. I worked at Deote

1:09 Consulting. I worked at Bank of America

1:10 and then I ran Cotter International. Now

1:12 I run my own advisory practice. What I

1:14 have learned is that consulting is not

1:16 simply a service with a higher price

1:17 attached to it. It's a trust and risk

1:19 transfer business. When a senior

1:21 executive hires you, they're putting a

1:22 consequential problem in your hands.

1:24 They're also taking personal and

1:26 political risk if that decision goes

1:27 badly. So speed matters, price matters,

1:30 offer and demand generation matters, but

1:32 none of them work for very long, at

1:34 least until and unless the client trusts

1:37 your judgment. The test throughout this

1:38 video is simple. Does the advice bring

1:40 you closer to a client's live business

1:42 problem, or does it merely help you look

1:44 more like a consultant? There's a

1:46 demanding issue for sure, but I think

1:49 that part of it is because you're

1:51 mispriced. And so the pricing has to do

1:53 with the offer. And so we kind of have

1:55 to start with the offer and then fix

1:57 price and then go sales motion and then

1:59 go demand increase. Does that make

2:01 sense?

2:01 >> Got it.

2:01 >> Okay. We got to fix the thing we're

2:03 selling. Once we fix the thing we're

2:04 selling, we'll fix how we're selling it

2:06 and then if we're selling it well, we

2:07 can price it the way we want to price

2:08 it.

2:08 >> This is where I think Horoszi is exactly

2:10 right. You see, consultants often

2:12 misdiagnose a marketing problem when

2:14 they actually have an offer problem.

2:16 They say, "I need more visibility," or,

2:18 "I need to post more," or, "I need

2:20 somebody to build me a funnel." And then

2:21 you ask what they sell, and you get an

2:23 answer like strategy transformation or

2:25 leadership or organizational

2:26 effectiveness. Those are categories, but

2:28 they are not a reason to buy. A serious

2:30 offer lets the buyer recognize the

2:32 moment in which your judgment becomes

2:34 useful to them. It names the problem or

2:36 the decision. It explains the movement

2:38 you can credibly help to create and it

2:40 makes your work concrete enough for

2:42 someone to defend it internally. See

2:44 saying I offer a 12week strategic

2:46 transformation package tells me the

2:48 category and the duration but it does

2:49 not tell me what becomes possible. A

2:51 stronger version would be in 6 weeks I

2:53 help the executive team determine

2:55 whether its performance problem is

2:57 primarily a strategy issue, an operating

2:59 problem or a leadership alignment

3:00 problem and we leave with the decisions,

3:02 priorities and the next steps required

3:04 to act. You see that example is an

3:06 illustration, but notice what changed.

3:07 The offer is now attached to a live

3:09 decision. My own ambition playbook is

3:11 built around a specific consequential

3:13 moment. The senior leadership team has

3:15 an important ambition, but it has not

3:17 yet turned that ambition into a clear,

3:19 shared, executable mandate. The work is

3:21 not a collection of deliverables. It's a

3:23 structured way to help the team make the

3:25 decisive next moves. I call that an

3:27 authority offer because it expresses

3:29 accumulated judgment. It does not

3:31 manufacture certainty or pretend that

3:33 every client is identical cuz they're

3:35 not. It gives the buyer enough structure

3:37 to understand why this process from this

3:39 person fits that problem. So before you

3:41 increase demand, ask whether a serious

3:43 buyer can tell when to call you. If they

3:45 can't, more traffic will only expose

3:47 your ambiguity faster. Number two,

3:49 charge more, but be honest about what

3:51 value creates.

3:52 >> The first thing that has to happen is

3:53 you have to cost out what true costs are

3:56 for different levels of delivery. And

3:59 then whenever you have that price, I

4:01 want you to five or 10x that cost. And

4:03 then that's what your price is.

4:04 >> Okay?

4:04 >> There's a practical discipline in this

4:06 that many independent consultants and

4:08 advisers need. See, most consultants

4:10 price badly when they first go out on

4:11 their own. And they do this because they

4:13 take their former salary, they turn it

4:15 into a day rate. They add a little bit

4:16 more because of self-employment risk or

4:18 tax or whatever and call that a fee.

4:20 That number has almost nothing to do

4:22 with the client's problems or the

4:23 conditions required to solve it. You

4:24 see, knowing the real cost of delivery

4:26 matters. It tells you whether the work

4:28 can support proper preparation, senior

4:30 attention, follow-through, and a healthy

4:32 business. Where I would diverge from a

4:34 simple multiple is in how we explain the

4:37 value. I separate potential value,

4:38 attributable value, and realizable

4:40 value. See, potential value is the total

4:42 upside if the problem is solved.

4:44 Attributable value is the portion that

4:46 your work can credibly influence. And

4:48 realizable value is what the client is

4:50 likely to capture after implementation,

4:52 after they've taken their leadership

4:53 decisions and the organizational

4:55 politics and the capital allocation and

4:56 the technology and the market

4:58 conditions. All of those have had their

4:59 say. I once worked at the beginning of a

5:01 growth initiative for a business trying

5:02 to move from roughly $3 billion to about

5:04 $6 billion. Now, that did not make my

5:06 contribution worth $3 billion. An

5:08 enormous amount still depended on the

5:10 leadership team and the organization. It

5:12 did mean the problem deserved a

5:13 different level of preparation,

5:15 judgment, and care. So yes, understand

5:17 your costs, but stop pricing from your

5:20 old salary. Charge enough to do the work

5:21 at the level the problem deserves and

5:23 enough that the client treats the

5:25 decision with the seriousness it

5:26 requires. Premium pricing does not

5:28 create value by itself. Instead, it can

5:30 create the conditions in which value is

5:32 more likely to be realized. Decide which

5:34 end of the market you're actually

5:35 serving.

5:36 >> This is me just being real. Like there's

5:37 so I mean obviously a lot of marketers

5:38 follow my stuff and so I get a

5:39 disproportionate amount of marketing

5:40 agencies and I've seen every model under

5:41 the sun. SMBs suck as customers and so

5:45 you have you have to do this one or the

5:47 other. You have to go up market, you

5:48 have to go down market and you guys go

5:49 really cheap and it's something that's

5:50 super automated. Uh or you do truly do

5:52 more of these high touch services, but

5:53 you do with a business that actually

5:55 knows their metrics, actually has a

5:56 sales process, already has a proven

5:57 model, uh rather than all of them just

5:59 like wanting to change their stuff all

6:01 the time, not knowing what they're doing

6:03 to begin with cuz like they're expecting

6:05 you to figure out something that they

6:06 haven't figured out themselves. So like

6:07 your price either goes up and you serve

6:08 a higher level avatar

6:10 >> uh or it goes down and you serve the one

6:12 you are now but you make sure that your

6:13 delivery is almost nothing and then it

6:15 becomes a CAC issue because you have to

6:16 offset CAC and so then it becomes big

6:17 headlong tail onetime setup into very

6:19 small recurring monthly high gross

6:21 margin.

6:21 >> Those are the two models that work for

6:23 what you want to do.

6:23 >> So drop low go high and then the middle

6:25 is just a dead zone

6:26 >> where everyone dies.

6:27 >> The language is characteristically blunt

6:28 but the choice underneath it is actually

6:30 quite useful. If you're going to provide

6:32 hightouch consulting choose a client

6:34 with a problem that justifies hight

6:35 touch judgment. A company with a proven

6:37 model, meaningful stakes, and [music]

6:39 decision-making authority, as well as

6:41 the ability to act is very different

6:43 from a client that expects you to invent

6:46 its strategy or repair its sales

6:47 processes or motivate its team and

6:49 somehow guarantee the revenue at the

6:51 end. This is the one reason niching

6:53 matters. But I would not treat a niche

6:55 as a label you choose simply because it

6:56 looks sharp on LinkedIn. Look, I came

6:58 out of broad transformation consulting.

7:00 That was my career and I believe that

7:02 transformation consulting was already

7:04 niche, but it wasn't. You see, there's

7:05 an enormous range of work inside that

7:07 description. My real territory became

7:09 clearer through the work I did. It was

7:11 that consequential moment at the

7:12 beginning of a transformation when the

7:14 leadership and management team need to

7:16 articulate a much bolder ambition, get

7:18 honest about what stands in the way, and

7:20 then create the conditions to move. That

7:21 was where clients consistently told me

7:23 the work mattered and I did it really

7:25 well with them. It was where the results

7:26 and the referrals accumulated. So, start

7:29 where you have earned the strongest

7:30 right to speak. Look at the situations

7:32 you have been close enough to understand

7:34 the problems clients already trust you

7:36 to solve and the proof you've

7:37 accumulated and whether you can actually

7:39 reach the people who buy or refer that

7:40 work. Your niche is not your identity.

7:42 It's the market's explanation for why it

7:45 should trust you with the specific

7:46 problem. And if you choose that

7:47 hightouch end of the market, you've got

7:49 to accept what comes with it. You cannot

7:51 automate away the judgment the client is

7:53 paying for. You can standardize the

7:54 method. You can sharpen your diagnostic

7:56 and you can make your delivery a little

7:58 bit more reliable, but the client is

7:59 still buying your ability to see what

8:01 matters in a complex situation. If

8:03 you're looking to become a consultant

8:04 and you've got a lot of experience

8:06 behind you, but you're still trying to

8:07 work out what that authority offer

8:09 should be for your own practice, well,

8:11 that's the work I take people through

8:12 inside the Ambition Playbook. We look at

8:14 the problem you have earned, the right

8:15 to own, the method underneath it, and

8:17 how that can become a credible

8:18 commercial offer. If that's the next

8:20 problem you need to solve, apply at

8:22 ambition.live. If it looks like a fit,

8:24 we'll take the conversation from there.

8:25 Now, a strong offer and a serious price

8:27 still do not remove the buyer's risk. Do

8:29 not hide behind the proposal. I have

8:31 very few rules of law, but a rule of

8:34 sales is never present an invoice via

8:36 email. Should always be over the phone

8:38 because they're going to have questions

8:39 and you want to be the person who can

8:41 answer those questions, aka resolve

8:42 their concerns and then get them to buy.

8:44 Now, to make this kind of offer better,

8:46 so this gives us our cost basis. What I

8:48 want to do is add um basically a price

8:50 lock guarantee. I agree with the first

8:52 part completely. Do not send a

8:54 consequential proposal into somebody's

8:56 inbox and hope the document makes the

8:58 decision for you. That's actually being

8:59 cowardice. A proposal cannot hear any

9:02 hesitation. It can't discover that the

9:03 scope no longer matches the problem. It

9:05 cannot tell whether the buyer is worried

9:07 about the fee, the internal politics,

9:09 the implementation burden, or what

9:10 happens to their credibility if the work

9:12 fails. You must discuss the

9:14 recommendation and the investment live.

9:16 Let the buyer ask you difficult

9:17 questions. If your offer cannot survive

9:19 that conversation, the document was

9:20 never the problem. The guarantee

9:22 requires a little bit more care, though.

9:23 Look, is right that risk reversal can

9:25 make an offer more attractive. The

9:27 difficulty in advisory consulting,

9:28 though, is that the result usually

9:30 depends on far more than the adviser or

9:32 the consultant can bring. You run an

9:34 exceptional strategy process and still

9:36 have a leadership team to refuse to make

9:37 decisions. You can produce the right

9:39 recommendation and watch the

9:40 implementation stall. You can create

9:42 clarity in a room and see organizational

9:44 politics diluted over the following 6

9:46 months. So, I never guarantee an outcome

9:48 I don't control. I can stand behind how

9:50 well I prepare, the quality of the

9:52 process, and what I personally deliver,

9:54 and the decisions the work is designed

9:55 to help the client make. I can define

9:57 what happens if my part falls short. And

9:59 I can also reduce risk through proof, a

10:01 bounded scope, very transparent

10:03 responsibilities, and a process the

10:04 buyer can defend internally. But that

10:06 last point matters. The senior buyer is

10:08 not only asking whether you can do the

10:09 work, they are asking whether they can

10:11 justify hiring you if somebody

10:13 challenges that decision later. Good

10:14 risk reversal gives them the confidence

10:16 without pretending that you control

10:18 their entire organization. Number five,

10:20 give away the thinking, not a

10:21 manufactured performance of expertise.

10:23 >> You're so low on the on on the awareness

10:26 thing. Like that's the issue. They don't

10:27 know who you are. Like like just saying

10:28 like, "Hey, book a sales call is a tough

10:30 ask."

10:31 >> Okay,

10:32 >> you've probably heard the whole like 97%

10:34 of the audience isn't ready to buy right

10:35 now and 3% is. Right now, you're

10:37 spending all your time on that 3%. If

10:38 you want to scale this thing, you got to

10:40 be able to go up.

10:41 >> Makes sense? Now, what happens is as you

10:42 go upfunnel, you might need to have a

10:44 longer process of breaking even, a

10:47 longer process of educating the

10:48 prospect, and you need to have wider

10:50 hooks. And if you're super hands-on,

10:52 which it sounds like you are if you're

10:53 charging $6,000 a month, you can give

10:55 away all the secrets. I promise you, it

10:57 will not matter. Give away all the

10:58 secrets, all the sexiest stuff. Put it

11:00 in your lead magnets, put in your ads,

11:01 put in your little video sales letter

11:02 that you have, and people are going to

11:04 be like, I don't want to do with that.

11:04 I'll just have them do it.

11:05 >> This clip was published yesterday, and

11:07 it addresses a mistake I see constantly

11:09 in consulting marketing. Consultants

11:11 either hide everything useful because

11:13 they think the client will steal it or

11:14 they publish vague thought leadership

11:16 and white papers that sound intelligent

11:18 without really helping anybody make a

11:20 better decision. Neither builds much

11:22 trust. A serious buyer does not hire you

11:24 because the information is impossible to

11:26 find. They hire you because applying

11:28 that information to their consequential

11:30 politically complicated situation

11:32 requires judgment. So show the thinking.

11:34 Explain how you differentiate or

11:36 distinguish a strategy problem from the

11:38 operating problem. Show the questions

11:39 that expose false alignment in a

11:41 leadership team. Explain why a

11:42 transformation stalls before the work

11:44 begins. For a long time, I really

11:46 resisted this whole idea of content and

11:49 being a content creator because I

11:51 associated it with self agrandizing

11:53 posts and manufactured certainty and

11:56 supposedly personal message sent by

11:57 somebody's virtual assistant that

11:59 happens in LinkedIn. Some of that

12:01 resistance was really justified. But

12:02 what was not justified was allowing my

12:04 dislike of bad content to excuse me from

12:07 becoming good at marketing. Content is

12:09 useful when it lets buyers encounter

12:11 your judgment before the conversation.

12:13 It gives the referers a better language

12:14 for the problem you solve and it can

12:16 make a warm introduction much more

12:18 powerful because the buyer arrives with

12:20 some sense of how you think. That is

12:22 different from publishing generic advice

12:24 and thought leadership just to satisfy

12:26 an algorithm. Hormosi's discipline

12:28 around demand generation is something

12:29 consultants need. But the unit of

12:31 measure should not simply be messages

12:33 sent or posts published. I would measure

12:35 meaningful trust building interactions.

12:37 A thoughtful recommendation with

12:39 somebody you know with somebody who

12:40 knows your work may be worth more than

12:42 100 generic messages. A useful piece of

12:44 content may not produce a lead today,

12:47 but it can give the right person a

12:48 reason to remember you when the problem

12:50 becomes urgent. You still need

12:51 consistency. You still have to make the

12:53 work visible. But in consulting and

12:55 advisory, volume that damages trust is

12:57 not demand generation. It is actually

12:59 reputational debt. [music] It's going to

13:01 kill your reputation. Number six, take

13:03 action, but choose what the work is

13:05 teaching the market. There's one final

13:06 hormosi principle I agree with, which is

13:08 take action. Waiting for the perfect

13:10 offer or the perfect client can become

13:12 another form or is actually another form

13:14 of avoidance. But action without

13:15 strategic selection can trap a

13:17 consultant in the wrong market, at the

13:18 wrong fee, doing the work that they

13:20 don't want to become known for. So the

13:22 useful question is not only will this

13:24 project pay, it is what will this

13:26 project make possible. Look, an early

13:28 project should do more than just provide

13:30 cash. It might create proof in the

13:31 market you want to serve, give you

13:33 access to an influential sponsor or a

13:35 referral source. It can help you build a

13:37 repeatable method, teach you the

13:38 language of buyers that they use for

13:40 their problems. But be honest about

13:41 which of these things you're actually

13:42 getting. A cash flow project can be

13:44 completely rational. Just don't tell

13:46 yourself that every paid project is

13:48 strengthening the practice you

13:49 ultimately want. I learned this myself.

13:50 I took on a piece of work that was

13:52 vaguely adjacent to what I did, but it

13:54 was not my core competency. The work was

13:56 okay. It was not exceptional by my

13:58 standards and it was at the wrong level.

13:59 Had I kept doing that, I would have

14:01 built a reputation for work I did not

14:03 want more of. The client did refer me,

14:04 but the referral was for the original

14:06 work, not the adjacent work. And so,

14:08 your first project is not only a

14:10 paycheck, it's a vote for the kind of

14:12 consulting business you're becoming. The

14:14 part of Horos's advice that consultants

14:16 should not ignore. Well, the common

14:17 thread across all of these clips is that

14:19 the market will expose your ambiguity.

14:21 If the offer is vague, more demand

14:22 exposes it. If the price has no logic, a

14:25 buyer's questions will expose them. If a

14:27 client is wrong for a hightouch service,

14:29 your delivery is going to expose it. If

14:31 your content contains no real thinking,

14:33 attention, or the lack of it will expose

14:35 it. Homozy's advice is valuable because

14:37 he keeps pushing business owners towards

14:39 commercial clarity. What advisers and

14:41 consultants must add is a more careful

14:42 account of trust, contribution, and what

14:45 remains outside of their control. The

14:46 aim is not to make consulting sound

14:48 mysterious. It's to be precise about

14:50 what the client is actually buying. They

14:52 are buying access to judgment that you

14:54 have earned in situations that resemble

14:56 their own. They're buying a process that

14:57 helps them make a difficult decision.

14:59 They're buying confidence that the work

15:01 can survive contact in their

15:02 organization. And that's the point at

15:04 which Hormos's commercial discipline and

15:06 serious consulting practice meet. So,

15:08 should consultants listen to Alex Forzi?

15:10 Yes. His latest service business advice

15:12 is direct, commercially useful, and far

15:14 more relevant to consultants that many

15:16 people would like to admit. But don't

15:17 copy the tactics without understanding

15:19 what the buyer is risking. Build the

15:21 offer around a live problem. Price your

15:23 real contribution. Choose clients who

15:25 can use hightouch judgment. Handle

15:27 consequential decisions in those

15:29 conversations. And make your thinking

15:30 visible enough for the market to trust

15:32 it. If you want to turn your own

15:33 experience into an authority offer and

15:35 build a more deliberate consulting

15:37 practice around it, apply for the

15:38 Ambition playbook at ambition.live.

15:40 We'll look at where you've earned the

15:41 right to speak, the problem you own, and

15:43 whether the program is the right next

15:44 step. From here, you could watch, "If I

15:46 started a consulting business in 2026,

15:49 I'd do this." It takes this argument and

15:51 shows you the sequence I would actually

15:53 use to build the practice from the

15:54 beginning.