When you started your business, you probably imagined steady revenue growth under your original business model—only to discover that the only way to grow the way you want is by experimenting! Business Coach Jessica Lackey (a McKinsey and Nike alum) shares her year-by-year experience in crafting her ideal business model:

How she contracted for “bridge jobs” in Year 1 to ensure cash flow—and why she’d do it again.

Year 2: building a “whale” delivery model with enough whales so you’re not overly dependent on any one.

Why she pivoted from a 1-1 delivery model to group and membership options (and it wasn’t because she had a large email list).

The pros and cons of running multiple revenue models as you pivot vs. making a faster shift.

How building interchangeable assets allows you to leverage your authority faster.

LINKS

Jessica Lackey Website | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

Rochelle Moulton Email List | LinkedIn | Twitter | Instagram

BIO

Jessica Lackey is a strategy and operations advisor who blends business strategy, practical application, and a human-centric approach to create sustainable businesses.

With a background in corporate leadership, McKinsey & Company consulting, and a Harvard Business degree, Jessica knows a thing or two about hustle culture and what it feels like to judge success by the bottom line…at all costs.

Now, she combines her deep experience in consulting, Fortune 500 operations leadership and coaching to help businesses grow without sacrificing the well-being of their clients, team, and community.

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TRANSCRIPT

00:00 - 00:19

Jessica Lackey: I had a social media team, but I actually dropped Instagram in 2023 and I stopped doing as much LinkedIn. And I really focused on those marketing platforms that took more time, but had a bigger result. So again, I write once a week, I guess teach once a month. And people are like, you do that for free? I'm like, well, yeah.

00:24 - 01:05

Rochelle Moulton: Hello, hello. Welcome to the Soloist Life podcast, where we're all about turning your expertise into wealth and impact. I'm Rochelle Moulton, and today I'm joined by soloist Jessica Lackey. She is a strategy and operations advisor who blends business strategy, practical application, and a human-centric approach to create sustainable businesses. With a background in corporate leadership, McKinsey & Company consulting, and a Harvard Business degree, Jessica knows a thing or 2 about hustle culture and what it feels like to judge success by the bottom line at all costs. Now she combines her deep experience in consulting, Fortune 500 operations

01:05 - 01:15

Rochelle Moulton: leadership, and coaching to help businesses grow without sacrificing the well-being of their clients, team, and community. Jessica, welcome.

01:16 - 01:17

Jessica Lackey: Yay. I'm so glad to be here.

01:17 - 01:29

Rochelle Moulton: Well, I feel like we're kindred spirits here, like escaping from big firm consulting and evangelizing on building sustainable businesses without buying into hustle culture. So let's just dive in.

01:29 - 01:31

Jessica Lackey: Sounds Good. First, your

01:31 - 01:43

Rochelle Moulton: resume reads like a who's who of American business. Harvard, McKinsey, Nike. You even interned at Apple. What made you decide to leave all that to start your soloist business?

01:44 - 02:14

Jessica Lackey: When you work in firms like that, there's, as you know, there's a real upper out culture. And these are places that will suck the life out of you if you let them. And in my 20s, like I did, McKinsey and Company Consulting, I was on the road, as you know, you are Arthur Anderson, 4 days a week, sometimes 5 days a week. Like I gave up my Sundays, I gave up my Fridays. I didn't have roots in town. All my friends were working. And that kind of moved with me to business school and that moved with

02:14 - 02:46

Jessica Lackey: me to Nike. Nike, it's so cool as a campus, there's the gym, there's restaurants and beer on campus, but it's really kind of designed to keep you in the berm, as they call it. Literally, they have a track and things like that. I was working 12 hours a day. The 1 job I was in, I was working weekends. And I realized at some point I had a health crisis and I realized, I'm like, okay, I have no life. I was making good money, but I didn't want the next step up on the ladder. And so I

02:46 - 02:51

Jessica Lackey: hit kind of a wall in 2015 and decided, all right, it's time for me to do something different.

02:51 - 02:55

Rochelle Moulton: Well, yeah, because it doesn't get any better when you go higher up the ladder. It usually gets harder.

02:56 - 03:18

Jessica Lackey: They tell you it gets better. And really, what's interesting is that you end up with more responsibility. But a lot of these places, you end up with more politics, you end up farther away from actually doing the work and much more Pushing powerpoints around and that wasn't I didn't want to play the politics I didn't want to be mucking around a PowerPoint our day I wanted to solve real problems in the the farther up the organization I got, the less I got to do that.

03:18 - 03:36

Rochelle Moulton: Well, preach, sister. That's exactly what it was like being a partner at a big firm. And the minute I got there, I was like, oh, finally, I've arrived. And then you look around and you go, oh, crap. It's like, now I have to do this every day. Yeah, it's a bit of a change, isn't it?

03:37 - 03:44

Jessica Lackey: Definitely. I'm thankful I had the experience, but at some point I was like, this is not the life for my second chapter in my professional career.

03:45 - 04:12

Rochelle Moulton: Yeah, exactly. So 1 of the reasons that I wanted to have you on the show is that you've done some really intriguing Experimenting with your business model as you've grown. It's it's like you've served as your own Petri dish Which I love especially for soloists. So year 1 if I have this right so you started coaching but you subcontracted to a consulting firm to keep the cash flowing. So talk us through how that worked and why you made the decisions you did.

04:13 - 04:40

Jessica Lackey: Yeah. So a little bit of backstory. I tried, I got certified as a life coach because I thought I wanted to be a life and leadership coach in 2018. And I tried to build a coaching business as a side hustle 2019, 2020. And yeah, I mean, you know, I was working 1 of those big jobs where I was, you know, I didn't have time. I didn't have the mental mind space. So in 2021, I knew I was going to leave. I hadn't really done any biz dev. I had connections, but I was like, I don't really

04:40 - 05:11

Jessica Lackey: know what I want to do for my personal business. I was like, I just don't want to be at my job anymore. And so I quit thinking, I was like, I don't know what I'll do. I'll figure it out. And so I did my first year was all the subcontracting through a bunch of those matching platforms and with another firm. So I was through some connections. I got connected with, again, I did project management for a rebranding company. I did sales and operations consulting through, I got matched on a platform. I didn't actually know the firm

05:11 - 05:42

Jessica Lackey: I was going into. It was 1 of those like a BTG or Catalan. I think I was with Graphite there. And then some of my former colleagues from Nike started up a consulting firm. They didn't have a huge book of business, but I got to be part of some of those projects, which was really great because I got to show up and be an analyst associate from a consulting perspective without having to do any biz dev. It certainly wasn't the top money, but it was a way for me to get paid in fractional part-time work, which

05:42 - 05:44

Jessica Lackey: was fantastic for the first year.

05:44 - 05:51

Rochelle Moulton: Well, yeah, it's kind of like an easy glide path into seeing what it's like. And if you hadn't liked it, it wouldn't be so hard to go back.

05:52 - 06:22

Jessica Lackey: Exactly. And I'm super thankful that I quit during the pandemic where everyone was at home and it was normalized to be fractional. It was, You could do part-time, you could show up for the calls you need to show up to, do your work, but not have to be on site. I don't know if this would have been as doable of as an opportunity 2019-2018 before it got normalized that we worked from home, But I was thankful that it happened when it did. I didn't have to do a ton of my own biz dev during the first

06:22 - 06:26

Jessica Lackey: year and ended up making money. It was great.

06:26 - 06:30

Rochelle Moulton: Well, of course, that's the question I'm gonna ask. How long did it take you to hit your first 100, 000?

06:32 - 06:34

Jessica Lackey: I hit my first 100, 000 in my first year.

06:34 - 06:36

Rochelle Moulton: With those contracts? Those contracts, you

06:36 - 06:57

Jessica Lackey: know, when you're billing a hundred dollars an hour on a 20 hour a week consulting project, even if that's not nearly the kind of money you want to be making, It was easy to do in the first year, but I didn't. 70% of that was all through these contract jobs. I think I made 30K in my first year from business coaching and consulting under my own

06:57 - 07:08

Rochelle Moulton: brand name. Okay. So that was going to be my next question. So you were doing both. You were doing some business development for yourself, but the big kahuna, the big percentage of your revenue came from these other deals.

07:08 - 07:39

Jessica Lackey: Exactly. So I think I got my first business coaching client. I quit in March. I got my first business coaching client in June or July. That's not bad. Yeah, and I got my second 1 in September and then I got my third major 1 in December. So it took me quite a while to, I work on a retainer model for many of my clients. So once I get 1, then it's not a 1 and done type of project for my own business. So I kind of built 1, then the second and the third. But it took

07:39 - 07:48

Jessica Lackey: me, you know, if I hadn't had these other consulting jobs, I'm not sure what I would have done with my time, honestly, because there's only so many hours a day you can do networking when you're starting.

07:48 - 07:56

Rochelle Moulton: Well, and you don't want to have that sense of desperation, because people can smell it on you. So it sounds like it was a nice balance of those 2 for year 1, right?

07:57 - 08:19

Jessica Lackey: Yeah, and my husband actually told me, I was terrified about how I was going to get my first client, but I was like, okay, well, I have enough money. I made a bonus right before I left. So I was like, okay, well, I can, you know, I have an extra 3 months of salary. And then I got a call from 1 of the, my friend put me in touch with a matching platform and They said, hey, do you want a project? I'm like, okay, I was planning to take some time off. And then of course I

08:19 - 08:25

Jessica Lackey: didn't. Resh respect, I probably shouldn't have taken the time off, but I was terrified I was never gonna get that first client, so I jumped right in.

08:25 - 08:38

Rochelle Moulton: You're not alone, that happens a lot. Okay, so take us forward. We're gonna go to year 2. So do you still have these consulting contracts in year 2? Are you still doing that or do you stop?

08:38 - 09:12

Jessica Lackey: So I am not doing the subcontracting anymore through the matching platforms. That was year 1. But in year 2, What happened is 1 of the consulting, I was working again with some colleagues from Nike, they had some projects so I did those. But interestingly enough, 1 of the clients that I picked up in year 1 from a business coaching perspective, they let go of their CLO, they were a seed stage startup, and they said, will you step in to do fractional COO? So I went from doing subcontracting and doing strategy work to now actually being a

09:12 - 09:28

Jessica Lackey: fractional COO for 6 months. So I worked, I had like a part-time job, not even doing consulting, but doing in the business, running reports, running an account management process. I ran a fractional COO for a startup for 6 months with an existing client.

09:29 - 09:35

Rochelle Moulton: Let me just make sure. Do you still have your 3 retainer clients that you had from year 1?

09:35 - 09:48

Jessica Lackey: I did. I've had 3 of those. I picked up some additional coaching clients at that point in time, but 1 of those retainer clients, we went from, I think, a thousand dollar a month retainer to a $5, 000 a month fractional COO gig.

09:48 - 09:55

Rochelle Moulton: The fractional. Yeah. Okay. Got it. And how many clients did you have total? Just roughly.

09:55 - 09:58

Jessica Lackey: I think at that time, like 6 or so clients at that time.

09:59 - 10:25

Rochelle Moulton: Well, here's why I'm asking is because a lot of people get stuck with this idea and they stop when they get to the 2 or 3 whales because they're like, that's all I can do. I can't do anymore. And when you have 6, you've insulated yourself quite a bit, even if half of them drop off, you've still got a decent book of business, what I call a whale model. You don't need 60 clients, you need 6 or 10 or whatever your magic number is.

10:26 - 10:53

Jessica Lackey: Yeah. And everyone asks me how I managed to have, for my first 2 years, I had 1 whale client at a time and a bunch of other little ones, little as the eye of the eye of the holder, but you know, 1 like 5 to $8, 000 either fractional COO gig or consulting gig. And people are like, how did you manage having a bigger client and like a bunch of small ones? And the nice part about it is because it's flexible, I could manage in the pockets of time that I had. And so, you know, as

10:53 - 11:18

Jessica Lackey: a soloist, sometimes the time where I get to do focus work on my COO client was on a Sunday morning because that's when it made sense. I could really focus. And on other times it was sometimes hard for me to do a lot of like deeper dive work on when I had like coaching calls that day. So I structured my calendar to say, when can I serve my big client and when can I serve more of the in and out context switching coaching clients?

11:19 - 11:38

Rochelle Moulton: So if I had to sort of summarize year 2 from a big picture perspective, you got away from these matching relationships. You basically doubled your client base, but you also significantly expanded 1 of those relationships in particular and discovered the glories of fractional work.

11:39 - 11:39

Jessica Lackey: Yes, I did.

11:39 - 11:46

Rochelle Moulton: Yes. So should we go to year 3 or was there anything else that you kind of, some seeds that you planted in year 2?

11:47 - 12:16

Jessica Lackey: Yeah, So year 2, I actually started my first round of a group business coaching model. So it was in the fall of 2022. I realized that, again, in order to keep growing my revenue, I wasn't going to be able to take on, I thought at the time I was going to be taking on more clients, we'll talk about your 4, but I couldn't take on more clients at the price point I wanted to serve for that audience, which is small business owners. So I started a group coaching model, coaching program. And this 1, it was, there

12:16 - 12:41

Jessica Lackey: was no big launch. I think I invited, I had like 200 people on my list at the time. And I think it was 8 loom videos. They were like 5 to 10 minutes talking about some concepts. And then it was 6 weeks of teaching and 4 months of Q&A. And I had like 5 people sign up and they were all people I knew and they were all people from my local network who said, yes, I'm in for this round. There was no big launch. There was no fancy tagging or anything like that. There was no course

12:41 - 13:00

Jessica Lackey: platform. It was here's the link to register. And I taught live. Love it. Did you record? Oh, I recorded and I posted, I think I had a Mighty Networks at the time. So I recorded, but I didn't have worksheets. I didn't have templates. I just had like a 5 minute loom video where I taught about some concepts and then we did it all live.

13:00 - 13:17

Rochelle Moulton: I love that because it's starting with, I mean, think about it. Not having to do all that other stuff meant there wasn't really any pressure on you to fill, and I use that word in quotes, to fill your class, right? You just get a chance to try it out and see what works and your investment is fairly small.

13:17 - 13:32

Jessica Lackey: It was great. And I know what it takes now to put a whole program like that together, which was year 3. But it was so, it was low effort. It really was just an opportunity to, and I didn't sell hard. They all came from personal limitations. I didn't have a fancy sales page.

13:32 - 14:01

Rochelle Moulton: I was like, here's a Google doc. It was just really nice to step into that with low effort on...