Chelsea Lewis quit her corporate job in October 2025.
She took three months off, then started her independent consulting business in January 2026. When she joined the Lead Gen Sprint in the spring, she rated her confidence in her ability to generate leads as a 4 out of 10.
By the time she recorded this episode, she had built a six-figure business in seven months, a current six-figure client engagement, a $20K-per-month advisory retainer proposal on the table, and a pipeline of $1.1 million.
In Episode 284 of the Grow Your Independent Consulting Business podcast, Melisa Liberman sits down with Chelsea to find out exactly how she got from a 4 to here.
About Chelsea Lewis
Chelsea Lewis provides strategic advisory to growth-stage founders and CHROs of mid-size companies who want to build high-performing teams. Her work spans change management, org effectiveness, and org design, primarily in technology, consumer goods, media, and arts and culture. She’s based in the Washington, D.C. area and brought 15 years of management consulting experience with her when she went independent.
You can connect with Chelsea on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/chelseamlewis/
What a 4 Out of 10 Confidence Actually Looked Like
Before the sprint, Chelsea had a three-hour business development block on her calendar every day. She was sending texts to former colleagues, making new LinkedIn connections, emailing past clients. By her own description, it felt haphazard.
“I woke up and I had this big block of business development time on my calendar. I would wake up, I would send texts to former colleagues, I would make new connections with people on LinkedIn, I would send emails to former clients, and it just felt very sporadic.”
The overwhelm wasn’t about willpower. It was about not knowing what channel to focus on, how to spend the time most effectively, or what success looked like in any given week.
The Surprise for a Management Consultant
Chelsea came into this with more business development experience than most new independent consultants. In traditional management consulting, she hit a $3 million revenue target regularly. She had sales calls, knew the business development process, and had what she calls “an arsenal of selling skills.”
When she went independent, those skills essentially disappeared.
“When I switched over to becoming my own CEO, those skills kind of go right out the window. You say, ‘How do I apply them to me?'”
This is one of the most important things Chelsea offers in the conversation — the insight that having consulting and selling experience is both an advantage and a complication. There are skills to carry forward, but there’s also unlearning required. The way she talks about client acquisition in a corporate consulting firm is fundamentally different from how it works as a solo practice.
Her advice to consultants who come in with none of those skills: entrepreneurship and business development are learnable. They’re not a fixed set of personality traits.
“If anyone is listening and you’re a person who says ‘I’m too introverted’ or ‘I think selling is kind of cringey,’ there are ways that you can find to sell that feels very organic for you, that’s connection focused.”
Why She Joined the Sprint
Chelsea joined the sprint at what felt like the right moment. Her first high five-figure contract had wrapped. A six-figure opportunity in the pipeline had reached a signed engagement, then fell through due to funding. She needed to rebuild.
But the deeper reason she joined was focus. With so many possible channels and activities, she needed structure — a way to narrow down the options and know she was spending her time on the right things.
“I joined the sprint because I needed to focus. I needed to focus my time. I needed a little bit more structure.”
The Scientist Mindset
One of the most distinctive things Chelsea took out of the sprint is what she calls the scientist mindset.
The concept: when you run an experiment, the data is the data. You don’t make it mean anything about your worth as a scientist. You collect the results, assess, and iterate.
Chelsea applied this to her business development. She tried LinkedIn outreach messages, looked at which ones got responses, and adjusted. She reached out to organizations and universities about speaking engagements and tracked what worked in terms of generating responses. She treated each conversation as an experiment, not a test of her worth as a business owner.
The result of this mindset shift: she’s counted at least 137 rejections, and she names it with genuine excitement.
“I have been rejected at least 137 times, at least. And it’s not a problem. It’s not a problem is a quote from the sprint that I apply in my business.”
That’s not a passive frame. She’s actively counting. The number itself has become evidence that she’s doing the work.
Moving the Warm Network Out of the Friend Zone
Before the sprint, Chelsea was already reaching out to her warm network. The problem was that those conversations were staying friendly and going nowhere — what Melisa calls the friend zone.
The sprint helped her develop the micro-skills to navigate those conversations forward. Specifically: always have a follow-up or an action item or a clear next step based on what the person said in the conversation. If there was no specific opportunity with that person, ask for two or three introductions to people in her ICP.
She also addressed the fear that comes up for many consultants about re-engaging an old contact — the worry that the person will feel like they’re being used.
Chelsea’s perspective: give generously before you need to call on anyone. Show up in relationships consistently, even with people you haven’t talked to in a decade. When you reach out, start from the belief that there’s inherent value in reconnecting — not just for you, but for them.
“Some of my most favorite conversations that I’ve had since I started my business have been with colleagues I haven’t talked to in a decade.”
The Value-First Approach That’s Landing Clients
The tactic that’s working best for Chelsea right now: adding tangible value before the engagement starts.
Here’s how it works. She finds her ideal clients in the networking communities where they hang out. When someone posts a question in her area of expertise, she responds with insight and offers to get on a call. She goes into that call knowing there’s likely something below the surface they’re working through.
Then, based on that conversation, she offers something specific and useful — not a one-pager, not a proposal, but actual thinking they can use immediately.
One example: she was talking to a COO about launching a new service line. She offered to put together a 30/60/90-day plan for how to think about taking it to market. He said yes. That became the beginning of her current six-figure client engagement.
Another: she had a conversation with a CHRO whose company was going through executive changes. She offered a high-level transition plan and key considerations. That opportunity is currently in her pipeline.
On the time investment: “I use Claude Cowork, and I go from thought to a finished product in about 75 minutes, which is about as long as I would spend on a proposal — or even longer.”
The mindset behind it: give generously, trust the process, and don’t hold on so tightly to any one opportunity that you can’t show up in the conversation with the right energy. When you’re not desperate for this specific client to say yes, you show up differently.
The Goals She Set — and What the Results Were
Chelsea set two goals going into the sprint: land at least one client, and have fun.
She was self-conscious about the second one. But she shares what happened when she started prioritizing it: “When I started to focus on having some fun, at least in my business, doors opened up. Because if you’re doing something that lights you up, that’s pretty infectious, and it changes the way you show up on calls.”
At the post-sprint point, her results included a landed client and — from the post-sprint survey — a million-dollar pipeline. By the time of this recording, that pipeline stood at $1.1 million.
The broader result: “I built a six-figure business in seven months, and I do credit that to a lot of the skills that I gained in the sprint.”
What She Kept Doing After the Sprint
The sprint ended at the end of May. By the time of this recording in August, Chelsea had kept the process going and grown the pipeline further. Her method: stick with the plan from the sprint and tweak tiny things.
She tweaked her outreach language for the warm network. She tweaked how she responds to posts in her networking community and what she offers in those conversations. Those small adjustments let her get more of her ideal buyers on the phone.
Her framing on what made it sustainable: “Keep working the process, even if the data hasn’t shown up yet.”
What Made the Sprint Worth It
Chelsea’s response when Melisa asked whether the investment was worth it:
“I got all my money back and more with landing a client. Numbers to numbers, it made sense.”
But she goes further than the financial return. The intangibles she names: a changed relationship with rejection and failure, the ability to keep working the process without needing immediate results, and a community of other independent consultants who showed up on the coaching calls and gave her perspective on their businesses.
“Not only are you gaining the micro skills to find opportunities when you want them in your business, but you are also becoming a part of a community and a support system of other sprinters.”
And a final note for management consultants specifically who might be wondering if the sprint is too basic for where they are:
“Why guess for years and years when you could do a sprint for a couple of weeks and build those foundational micro skills?”
Resources Mentioned
Companion Resource: The Consultant’s Lead Gen Sprint — fall cohort starts September 22nd. Enroll at www.ConsultantSprint.com.
Connect with Chelsea Lewis: linkedin.com/in/chelseamlewis/
More Resources for Independent Consultants
- Coaching for Consultants: Click here to apply for your Coaching Fit Call.
- Book: Grow Your Consulting Business: The 14-Step Roadmap to Make Your Independent Consulting Goals a Reality
- YouTube Podcast Channel
- Melisa’s Free Resources, Books, Planners & Journals: https://linktr.ee/melisaliberman
- Website
