Your Delivery Model - How You'll Actually Help People

You have validated the problem. People have told you it is real, it is painful, and they would pay to fix it. Now you need to figure out how you will actually deliver the solution.

This is where many people overthink it. They imagine complex platforms and elaborate systems. They want to build a course before they have taught anyone. They want to create a methodology before they have solved the problem for a single client. Start simpler.

The delivery model you choose right now is not permanent. It is a starting point. You will evolve it as you learn. But you need to pick one and start, because the biggest risk at this stage is not choosing the wrong model — it is not choosing at all.

The Four Main Delivery Models

There are a few main ways to deliver expertise as a business. Each has its own trade-offs in terms of income potential, scalability, time commitment, and how quickly you can get started. Your job is to pick the one that makes the most sense for where you are right now — not where you want to be in three years.

Option 1: One-on-One Consulting

You work directly with a single client. You are solving their specific problem in their specific context. This is the most personal and highest-touch form of service delivery.

• Price range: $150-$300/hour, or $3,000-$10,000/month on a retainer
• Best for: Complex problems that require customization and direct involvement
• Pros: High income per client; tight relationship; you learn deeply from each engagement; fastest path to revenue; no content creation needed upfront
• Cons: Your time is the limit. You can only have so many clients. If you stop working, income stops. It is hard to scale beyond 4-6 active clients.

What one-on-one consulting actually looks like in practice:

You might spend 2-4 hours per week with a client on calls, reviewing their work, providing guidance, and solving problems as they arise. In between calls, you might spend another 2-3 hours on research, creating recommendations, or building frameworks specific to their situation.

A typical engagement might run 3-6 months, during which you help the client achieve a specific outcome — implement a new process, solve a strategic challenge, or build something from scratch.

Example: A displaced IT director consults one-on-one with three small companies, helping each one migrate from on-premise servers to cloud infrastructure. She charges $5,000/month per client, works about 10 hours per week per client, and runs three engagements simultaneously. That is $15,000/month for 30 hours of work per week.

Option 2: Group Workshops or Cohort Programs

You teach a group of people the same material at the same time. Think of it like a class, but focused on a professional outcome. The key difference from a course is that you are there live, guiding the experience and answering questions in real time.

• Price range: $500-$5,000 per person, per workshop or cohort
• Best for: Skill-building topics where many people need the same knowledge; problems that benefit from peer learning and accountability
• Pros: Serve 8-20 people in the time it takes to serve 1; creates community among peers; participants often become referral sources; higher perceived value than self-study
• Cons: You need to attract a group, not just one client; harder to get started with; requires more upfront preparation; scheduling logistics

What group workshops look like in practice:

A workshop might be a single half-day or full-day session (3-8 hours) where you teach a specific skill or framework. A cohort program might run 4-8 weeks with weekly live sessions plus assignments between sessions.

The magic of groups is that participants learn from each other, not just from you. When one person shares a challenge and another person says "we dealt with the same thing — here is what we did," that is value you could not provide alone.

Example: A displaced HR director runs a 6-week cohort program called "Building Your First Performance Review System" for startup founders and first-time people managers. She charges $1,500 per participant, enrolls 12 people per cohort, and runs it quarterly. That is $18,000 per cohort, four times per year = $72,000 in annual revenue from this single offering, with roughly 6 weeks of active delivery time.

Option 3: Online Courses

You record your knowledge as a self-paced course that people buy and go through on their own. This is the most scalable model but also the hardest to get right.

• Price range: $97-$997 per course
• Best for: Well-defined, educational topics where the learner can self-direct; situations where you want passive income alongside active consulting
• Pros: Infinite scale; once built, it sells while you sleep; establishes you as an authority; can reach people who could never afford your consulting
• Cons: Hard to build audience without an existing following; takes significant time to create (50-100+ hours for a quality course); lower price points; high refund rates if the content is not excellent; competitive market

The uncomfortable truth about online courses:

Most online courses fail. Not because the content is bad, but because the creator has no audience to sell to. You can build the most incredible course in the world, but if nobody knows you exist, it will sit there unsold.

This is why I strongly recommend not starting with a course. Start with consulting. Build a client base. Prove your methodology works. Then turn what you have learned into a course, and sell it to the audience you have built through your consulting work.

When courses do work well:

Courses work best as a complement to consulting, not as a replacement for it. They serve the people who cannot afford your one-on-one rate, they establish your authority in the space, and they create a pipeline for your higher-touch offerings. Someone who buys your $297 course and gets great results is a prime candidate for your $5,000/month consulting.

Example: A displaced financial analyst creates a course called "Financial Modeling for Startup Founders" based on the frameworks she has developed through 18 months of consulting with early-stage companies. She prices it at $497 and sells 10-15 copies per month through her LinkedIn content and email list. That is $5,000-$7,500/month in mostly passive income, layered on top of her consulting revenue.

Option 4: The Hybrid Model

Most successful consulting businesses eventually combine approaches. The hybrid model is not where you start — it is where you evolve to. But it is worth understanding the destination so you can make smart choices along the way.

A typical hybrid model might include:

• Monthly retainer clients at $3,000-$5,000/month — Your bread and butter. 3-5 clients = $9,000-$25,000/month in predictable recurring revenue.
• Ad-hoc project work at $150-$250/hour — For clients who need help with something specific but do not need ongoing support. This fills gaps between retainer clients.
• Quarterly group workshops at $500-$1,500/person — Serve a broader audience, establish authority, and create a pipeline for consulting. 10-20 participants per workshop.
• An online course at $197-$497 — For people earlier in their journey or with smaller budgets. Generates passive income and credibility.
• A membership or community at $49-$99/month — For ongoing access to you in a group format. Lower touch, but creates recurring revenue and deepens relationships.

The beauty of the hybrid model is that each component feeds the others. Course students become workshop participants. Workshop participants become consulting clients. Consulting clients become case studies that sell more courses. It is a flywheel, and once it is spinning, your business becomes remarkably resilient.

Choosing Your Starting Model: The Decision Framework

If you are not sure which model to start with, answer these questions:

How quickly do you need revenue?
- Urgently (within 4-8 weeks): One-on-one consulting
- Moderately (within 2-3 months): One-on-one consulting, with workshops planned
- Patiently (within 6+ months): Any model, though consulting is still usually wisest

How complex is the problem you solve?
- Very complex, requires deep customization: One-on-one consulting
- Moderately complex, but repeatable: Workshops or cohort programs
- Straightforward, can be taught step-by-step: Online course (but still start with consulting)

How comfortable are you with selling?
- Very comfortable: Any model
- Somewhat comfortable: One-on-one consulting (selling to one person is easier than filling a group)
- Not comfortable at all: One-on-one consulting (start with your warm network, where selling feels like helping)

How much do you enjoy teaching versus doing?
- Love doing the work directly: One-on-one consulting
- Love teaching and facilitating: Workshops and cohort programs
- Love creating content: Online courses (eventually)

What to Start With: The Bottom Line

For displaced workers, begin with one-on-one consulting. Full stop. Here is why:

1. Speed to revenue. You can have your first paying client within 4-8 weeks. With a course or workshop, you are looking at months before you see a dollar.

2. Low startup cost. You need a phone, an email address, and your expertise. No course platform, no video production, no website with a shopping cart.

3. Maximum learning. Every client engagement teaches you exactly what your customers need, how they think about their problem, what language they use, and what they value most. This intelligence is invaluable when you eventually create courses or workshops.

4. Proof of concept. Successfully serving 3-5 one-on-one clients proves that your offering works. You now have case studies, testimonials, and refined methodology — all of which make it easier to sell workshops and courses later.

5. Flexibility. You can adjust your offering in real time based on what each client needs. With a course, you are locked into the content you recorded. With consulting, you can pivot mid-engagement.

Structuring Your Consulting Engagement

Once you decide to start with consulting, you need to think about how to structure your engagements. Here is a framework that works well for most expertise-based consulting:

The Discovery Phase (Week 1-2):
Spend 3-5 hours understanding the client situation deeply. Review their existing processes, data, and challenges. Identify the specific outcomes you will deliver.

The Strategy Phase (Week 2-4):
Develop your recommendations and present them to the client. Get alignment on priorities, timeline, and success metrics.

The Implementation Phase (Week 4-12+):
Work alongside the client to implement the strategy. This is where the real value happens. You are not just telling them what to do — you are helping them do it.

The Handoff Phase (Final 2 weeks):
Document everything. Train their team. Make sure they can sustain the improvements without you. A good consultant makes themselves unnecessary.

Your Exercise: Define Your Starting Offer

Take 30 minutes and write a one-paragraph description of your initial consulting offering. Include:

1. Who it is for (your customer avatar from Chapter 2)
2. What problem it solves (the validated problem)
3. What you will deliver (specific outcomes, not activities)
4. How long the engagement lasts (typical duration)
5. How much of your time it requires (hours per week)

This does not need to be perfect. It needs to be clear enough that you could explain it to a potential client in 60 seconds and they could understand whether it is relevant to them.

Example: "I help B2B SaaS companies with 50-200 employees build their first structured sales process. Over 3 months, I audit your current pipeline, design a repeatable sales playbook, train your team to use it, and set up the CRM workflows to support it. By the end, your sales cycle shortens, your close rate improves, and your sales team has a system they can run without me. I typically spend 8-10 hours per week on an engagement like this."

That is clear, specific, and outcome-focused. A potential buyer reads that and immediately knows whether it is for them.

Key Takeaways:

• There are four main delivery models: 1-on-1 consulting, group workshops, online courses, and hybrid
• Each has different price ranges, pros, cons, and levels of time commitment
• Start with 1-on-1 consulting — it is the fastest path to revenue and teaches you exactly what clients need
• Do not build a course or workshop until you have served enough 1-on-1 clients to know exactly what content to create
• Structure your consulting with clear phases: Discovery, Strategy, Implementation, and Handoff
• Define your starting offer in one clear paragraph that a potential client can understand in 60 seconds