$400K proves you’re good at consulting. $600K means taking it to the next level. 

At some point, the consulting practice stops feeling experimental and starts feeling established. 

The work is steady. The clients are solid. 

And instead of asking “Can I make this work?” you start asking, “Is there a way to make this more profitable?” 

If you’re already hovering around $400K a year and feeling more ambitious, this is for you. 

If you’re not there yet, this one can wait. 

Because the move from $400K to $600K isn’t about doing more of the same. 

There are levers you need to take advantage of – and we’re about to break them down here.

Making $400,000 a year is already the mark of a successful consulting practice. 

It means you have enough financial stability without drowning yourself in too much work. You can afford to be a bit pickier about the engagements you have. 

You can read the full article again here, but the math looks roughly like this: 

$400K ÷ 11 working months (4 weeks of vacation baked in) means you need to make $36K/month. 

That revenue can come from: 

For most fractional executives, three clients at ~$12K/month is the sweet spot. 

That usually translates to a couple of days a week per client, predictable scope, and enough air in the schedule to stay sane.

Now let’s talk about the jump. 

$600,000 a year means adding $200,000 on top of what you’re already doing. 

This is where people get vague – because it’s not easy to “just work harder” or “just sign more clients.” 

At this point, you need to rethink your business model. 

Let’s go back to the math first: 

$600K ÷ 11 working months (4 weeks of vacation baked in) means you need to make $55K/month. 

If you’re currently at $400K, that means you need to find room to earn $19K more per month.

Signing another client is out of the question – your workload is already ideal, and adding more will only burn you out. 

The best solution? Either one of these two levers: 

That’s it. Everything else is a variation on those two levers. 

Let’s see how each one works. 

Before you even consider adding the leverage of a full-sized team, you need to evaluate your own rates first: does your pricing still reflect the value you deliver? 

Let’s assume you’re at the common setup (and you’ve been here for a while now): 

That puts your effective day rate around $1,800/day. 

That’s not low. But it’s also not especially high for someone with 20+ years of experience, real operating context, and executive-level judgment. 

I suggest increasing your day rate to: 

It might feel like these numbers are too high, but they’re not unreasonable. 

For many senior operators (especially in finance, strategy, revenue, product, or tech), this is well within market reality. 

In some specialties, $2,500/day is even table stakes. 

Now, this leads us to the real question: 

Can your current clients support that rate? 

Sometimes the answer is yes. And when that happens, this is the easiest money you’ll ever make. 

But more often, the answer is some can, some can’t. And that’s fine. 

This is where people get emotionally attached to clients they’ve outgrown. 

If one or two clients can’t move with you, the professional thing to do is to phase them out thoughtfully. 

This buys you: 

And we’ve done this ourselves. A few years ago, we raised prices by ~25%. 

Out of a healthy client roster, one couldn’t make the jump. The upside from the remaining clients managed to cover that loss – and it was better for everyone involved. 

This isn’t reckless, as long as it’s sequenced. 

If pricing alone gets you most of the way to $600K, great. 

If it doesn’t, you move to the second lever.

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This is where things get more interesting – and more nuanced. 

Once you decide to add leverage, you’re implicitly accepting that: 

There are three common models, and most successful consultants end up using a hybrid.

This is the cleanest form of leverage. 

You bring in someone adjacent to you, like a peer you trust, to take on a defined scope independently. 

You remain the relationship owner. They do the work. 

Financially, this works through a margin spread: 

At Keenan Reid, we charge 25% and are transparent about it. Other platforms have margins closer to 30–40%.

This model works best when: 

This was the first leverage move we made. 

When I had more work that I could handle myself, I called three friends – moms who had kids who spent their afternoons driving kids but were bored during the day.  

They all had amazing career backgrounds and were ready to get back in the game. I offered them the job, onboarded them, and managed invoicing.  

It’s straightforward, relatively low risk, easy-ish to execute, and very effective when done well. 

Now, let’s look at what it takes for the model to financially work. 

This is where you bring in people with slightly less experience (like your juniors) and operate as the project lead across multiple clients. 

You give them execution-heavy work. You stay focused on strategy, client advisory, quality control, and business development. 

The economics are different here. Typical margin profiles: 

But the downside is mental fragmentation. 

You’re still doing the work. You’re still selling the work. 

But now, you’re also responsible for processing, training, and standards.

This model can get you to $600K, but it requires more operational maturity than most people expect. 

Here’s how you can make it work financially.

In our case, this is when we brought in Sarah Olson.  

It took about 18 months to fully transition client work and trust, but that timeline is normal. 

Anyone who tells you otherwise is skipping details. 

This is the least glamorous, but highest-ROI model. 

While you’re not adding revenue directly, you’re buying back time. 

Time arbitrage means hiring other people to help you behind-the-scenes with your business. 

For example, if you hire: 

That person can free up to four to five days a month of your time. 

If you have a $2,000/day rate, that’s a 4–5x return on cost.

Again, this isn’t about margins. It’s about capacity. 

With the freed-up time, you can work on other high-level work – maybe even take on a new client. 

Let’s see how that will work financially:

Behind-the-scenes leverage, like ops, project management, analysis, scheduling, marketing, often produces the cleanest path to incremental revenue, especially when paired with a price increase. 

Instead of picking just one lever, I suggest creating a pattern for it: 

None of this requires grinding harder. It requires designing differently. 

This is the moment where you stop asking, “How do I work more?” 

And start asking, “How should this business work?” 

And once you rethink that model, the path to $600K gets a lot clearer. 

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Remember, the path to success is paved with continuous learning and embracing fresh perspectives.

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