Ep 289 – Building an HR Consulting Business from Scratch | Matt McFarlane, FNDN

1. Don’t start by offering everything. Start by getting painfully specific.

One of the most useful parts of the conversation was how Matt described narrowing his focus.

He didn’t begin with a perfectly polished offer or a crystal-clear ICP. He started broad — “I do compensation” — and then used conversations with real people to learn what the market actually needed from him.

Over time, that led him to a much tighter positioning: compensation support for startups in a very specific size range, focused on a very specific set of deliverables. That clarity made it easier for buyers to understand what he does and why they should hire him.

“You need to define your customer to the narrowest point — so narrow that you think there’s one person or two people in your community that are actually going to be who you would sell to.”

That’s the part a lot of people skip. They assume a broad offer gives them more opportunity, when in reality it usually makes them harder to buy from.

The practical takeaway: if your website or pitch sounds like a menu of every possible HR service, you probably haven’t narrowed enough yet.

2. Treat your service like a product — and validate it before you try to scale it.

Matt didn’t leave his in-house role and immediately start blasting outbound emails or spinning up a dozen offers. He used his early window to talk to as many people as possible and test whether his assumptions were actually true.

Do startups really need help with compensation? Which parts are most confusing? Where are the real pain points? That customer research helped him move from a vague idea to a sharper service that matched real demand.

“Do startups actually need help with this? Is compensation really a challenge?”

That’s a simple question, but it’s doing a lot of work. It kept him from building a business based on his own assumptions instead of buyer reality.

The lesson here is to borrow from product thinking: before you perfect the packaging, make sure you’re solving a painful enough problem for a specific enough customer.

3. Your brand matters more than most HR consultants think.

Matt made a really strong case for branding as a business tool — not just a visual exercise. He was intentional from the beginning that he didn’t want to show up as “Matt McFarlane Consulting” and look like a temporary placeholder between jobs. He wanted a brand that felt real, distinct, and memorable. Just as importantly, he wanted it to stand apart from the more traditional, buttoned-up look of larger compensation firms in the market. That decision helped him show up differently from day one.

“I knew that I didn’t want to be Matt McFarlane Consulting.”

And later:

“I want people to see that I’m serious about this.”

There’s a practical lesson here for anyone building in public or selling services: brand is part of the signal. Buyers are making judgments before they ever talk to you.

Clear positioning, a distinct point of view, and a recognizable visual identity can all help create trust faster.​

4. Content works when it teaches, not when it pitches.

Matt’s go-to growth channels were LinkedIn and networking, but the way he approached LinkedIn is what stood out. He didn’t use it as a place to constantly ask for business. He used it to teach.

He shared practical insights on compensation topics his audience was already struggling with and focused on giving away useful thinking that built trust over time. That’s what turned content into inbound interest.

“To build trust, you have to kind of give something.”

He also shared a great prompt for figuring out what to talk about: what problems were you dealing with one, two, or five years ago that your audience is dealing with now? That’s such a useful lens because it grounds your content in real experience instead of generic thought leadership.

The takeaway: the best content usually comes from solving yesterday’s problems for someone who’s still in them today.

5. Price your work like a business owner, not like someone guessing what feels comfortable.

The pricing section was one of the most practical moments in the episode. Instead of pulling a number out of thin air or copying what others charged, Matt worked backwards from the economics of the business.

He started with the salary he wanted, added the real costs of operating the business, included profit, accounted for leave and non-billable time, and then calculated the rate from there. When he saw the number, he was uncomfortable — but that discomfort turned out to be part of the lesson.

“I was negotiating myself down before I’d even put something in front of the client.”

That line will hit home for a lot of people. It’s incredibly common to second-guess your pricing before the buyer ever reacts to it.

The takeaway is simple: build your pricing from the reality of what the business needs, not from your own fear of rejection.

6. A sustainable business usually becomes a portfolio, not just a single offer.

Another important insight: consulting revenue is valuable, but it has limits. There are only so many hours in the day, and once you sell time for money, scale gets harder. Matt talked about realizing that the content, community, and audience he was building could become additional business lines — from sponsorships to media to events like Startup People Summit.

That shift didn’t happen because he wanted to chase shiny objects. It happened because he saw that building a durable business meant creating multiple ways for the brand to generate value.

“As a consultant who sells time for money, I’m limited by the hours in the day.”

That’s an important framing for anyone building independently. Your first offer might be services, but that doesn’t have to be the end state.

The bigger opportunity is often in building an ecosystem around your expertise — one that creates leverage, resilience, and more room to grow.

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