Can You Charge $400K For What You Know?

When most people say they want to start a consulting business, what they really mean is, “I have experience—someone should pay me for it.”

That assumption is where a lot of consulting businesses quietly die.

In this video, I walk through what actually makes a consulting business work—and more importantly, what makes companies willing to pay real money for consulting services. I’ve seen this firsthand, both as a former Air Force acquisitions officer and as someone who’s helped hundreds of people build consulting offers that generate revenue instead of just sounding impressive.

The truth is simple but uncomfortable: consulting success has very little to do with how smart you are or how long you’ve been in your career. It has everything to do with whether your service clearly helps a company make money—and whether you can prove it.

Why Most Consulting Offers Fail Before They Ever Start

One of the examples I share in the video is a 20-year military officer who wanted to start a consulting business. Like many people transitioning out of government or the military, he led with what felt natural to him—team building, leadership development, and organizational culture.

On paper, those services sound valuable.

In reality, they’re incredibly hard to sell.

Not because they’re useless—but because they don’t clearly tie to revenue. When a company is deciding whether to spend tens of thousands of dollars on a consultant, the first unspoken question is always:

“How does this make us more money?”

If the answer is vague, indirect, or emotional—better morale, stronger teams, improved communication—the deal usually dies quietly.

That’s what happened to him.

So we stepped back and rebuilt his offer using a simple but ruthless three-question framework.

The Three Questions Every Profitable Consulting Offer Must Answer

Every consulting service that consistently sells answers all three of these questions clearly.

1. Does This Service Directly Help the Client Make Money?

This is non-negotiable.

Companies don’t buy consulting because it’s interesting. They buy it because it helps them:

• Win contracts

• Increase revenue

• Reduce risk tied to revenue

• Speed up deal flow

• Protect existing income streams

When you position your consulting as a revenue enabler—not a “nice to have”—sales conversations change immediately.

That’s why government contracting consulting works so well. Helping a company win a contract isn’t theoretical value. It’s direct, tangible, and measurable.

2. How Much Money Can This Service Help Them Make?

Once a service is tied to revenue, the next question is scale.

If your consulting helps a company win:

• A $500,000 contract

• A $2 million IDIQ

• A multi-year government program

Then your fee can be framed in proportion to that upside.

This is where pricing power comes from.

If you can help a company win a million-dollar opportunity, a five-figure consulting fee suddenly feels reasonable—often conservative. In many cases, consultants price based on a percentage of expected profit or revenue because the value is so obvious.

This is also why vague benefits kill pricing leverage. If you can’t quantify impact, you can’t confidently price your service.

3. How Rare Is Your Expertise?

Rarity is the final multiplier.

If thousands of people can do what you do, price competition drives fees down. If very few people can combine the skills you have, the market does the opposite.

This is where combining skill sets becomes incredibly powerful.

For example:

• Cybersecurity plus government contracting

• Proposal writing plus deep agency knowledge

• Technical expertise plus acquisition strategy

Each skill on its own has value. Together, they create scarcity—and scarcity commands premium pricing.

That’s exactly what we see in high-value niches like proposal consulting for government contracts. It’s specialized, technical, deadline-driven, and directly tied to revenue. Few people can do it well, and companies desperately need it.

How Repositioning Changed Everything

When that military officer stopped selling “team building” and instead repositioned his expertise to help companies sell training programs to the government, everything changed.

Same person.
Same experience.
Completely different outcome.

Why?

Because now his consulting offer:

• Helped companies win contracts

• Had a clear dollar impact

• Leveraged rare, hard-to-replace knowledge

The market responded immediately.

This is the part most aspiring consultants miss: the problem isn’t your background—it’s how you package and position it.

Why Government Contracting Is a Perfect Consulting Vehicle

I use government contracting throughout the video because it naturally satisfies all three criteria.

The federal government is the largest buyer in the world. Companies want access to that revenue. But the system is complex, regulated, and unfamiliar.

If you understand:

• How agencies buy

• How proposals are evaluated

• How acquisition timelines work

• How compliance and strategy intersect

you’re sitting on monetizable knowledge.

And you don’t need to be a former contracting officer to do this. Proposal writers, researchers, cybersecurity professionals, program managers, and sales professionals all fit into this ecosystem—if they frame their services around revenue outcomes.

Where GovClose Fits Into This

This is exactly why I built the GovClose program.

It’s not about theory. It’s about helping people:

• Understand government contracting deeply

• Translate that knowledge into consulting offers

• Learn how to sell, price, and deliver those services

• Get real-world experience with actual deals

The combination of training, coaching, and live deal support is what closes the gap between “I know this stuff” and “people pay me for this.”

Because knowledge alone doesn’t create income.
Application does.

The Real Takeaway

Consulting isn’t about being impressive.

It’s about being useful in a very specific, measurable way.

If your service:

1. Directly helps a company make money

2. Has a clear, quantifiable financial impact

3. Is based on expertise that isn’t easy to replace

you can build a consulting business that commands premium fees—even without a massive brand or decades of experience.

But if any one of those pieces is missing, the market will let you know very quickly.

That’s the difference between consultants who struggle and consultants who scale—and it has nothing to do with intelligence or effort.

It has everything to do with alignment.

👉 Learn more about starting your consulting business at GovClose.com

👉 Hire a GovClose-Trained Consultant here: https://match.govclose.com

👉 Get Weekly Government Contracting Business Tips: https://federalytics.substack.com

👉 Explore the GovClose Certification Program for step-by-step training

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