How to Get Paid for Ideas & Advice You Already Give Clients for Free
Alright, my freelance and consulting friends, I’ll start with the nitty gritty details, followed by the backstory, rationale, and some testimonials.
Length – 120 minutes. I’ll do a 35-minute training, followed by a short break. Then, during the second half, I’ll guide you through the steps and help you prototype your strategy offer with prompts and examples.
Content
Learn how selling strategy, diagnostic work, and planning transformed my freelance business in early 2016.
Learn why it’s more important than ever for freelancers and consultants to move up the value stream and sell our expertise and perspective, not just our skills.
Learn the key definitions, concepts, and my approach, including what the scope can be and what to charge.
Create a prototype of your own strategy offer that you can confidently sell.
Offer – What exactly should it be?
Audience – To whom are you selling this offer?
Positioning – How do you position it so that people find it valuable?
Structure – What will fulfillment look like?
Experience – How will you deliver it and make it satisfying?
Timeline – How long will it take?
Marketing – How will you put the offer in front of people?
Here’s the backstory if you're interested…
Back in 2021, Ed Gandia was kind enough to have me as a guest on his High-Income Business Writing podcast, and I was floored by the response to that episode. Dozens of emails and LinkedIn messages flooded in.
Everybody wanted the open-ended consulting questions I used. Everybody wanted to know how to get paid not only for their creative skills but also for their expertise. What was this strategy as a standalone service offer thing I was talking about?
You can obviously go listen to my conversation with Ed, but here’s the short version.
In early 2016 I started playing around with project roadmapping and content roadmapping. Basically, I was sick of sinking time into marathon discovery sessions and big, beefy proposals that often came to nothing.
I had always had more to offer than being “just a writer,” and my clients had always asked me for my perspective and advice.
Those “expert opinion” conversations were often more valuable and transformative for them than whatever writing or branding project I had delivered.
I realized that I was already doing the strategy and high-level problem-solving work, only I wasn’t charging for it.
Instead of giving away my time and advice for free, I wanted to get paid to help clients get clarity and pick a direction. Brennan Dunn at Double Your Freelancing woke me up to the possibility of getting paid to create my own proposals. Wait, whaaaa?
Brennan also equipped me with language to describe what I was doing and to describe what the client was buying—“roadmapping.”
Once I got a yes to that first “project roadmapping” engagement, I was hooked.
By charging for advice (“Do this, not that”) and strategy (“Based on your goals and resources, this path seems best”) on the front end, I went from doing discovery for free to earning a high effective rate ($300 to $750 an hour) to help my clients get clarity, set direction, and define the steps forward.
Better yet, by selling advice and strategy I positioned myself as a trusted advisor, not a vendor or order taker. Later, when it came time to hire someone to implement the plan, to whom did clients give the first right of refusal?
Me. Even if I was often the more “expensive” option, I had earned their trust.
Fast forward to 2026, and most of what I now sell is strategy, planning, and advice in some form.
For example, on in late December 2025, I did a 1-Day Growth Sprint. I charged $7,425.
I used to teach a $1,500 six-week How to Sell Strategy program with Ed, and this workshop is the condensed version.
Strategy, planning, and diagnostic offers vary widely from one freelancer to the next:
For example, an SEO specialist may do an initial SEO audit before agreeing to start optimizing a website.
An identity designer may sell brand strategy before kicking off the design phase.
A marketing consultant may do some diagnostic work, followed by a marketing plan workshop.
The nature of the work changes, but it’s always some mix of diagnosis plus prescription, or gathering insights then turning them into recommendations.
Clients often can’t see the full picture because they’re inside the fish bowl. They desperately need someone with outside perspective to help them notice their biggest problems and opportunities, make key decisions, and pick a path forward.
Why shouldn’t you be that someone? Shoot, I wish every freelancer and consultant was leading with some kind of advice offer, but the reason they don’t is because we’re so accustomed to getting paid for our hands, not our heads.
Of course, good thinking precedes effective doing, and that’s why this paradigm shift—”I can and should sell the way I think as strategy, diagnostic, and planning offers”—represents $100,000s in potential future earnings.
In a very practical sense, asking prospects to kickstart the relationship with this type of engagement is simpler.
Having your offer in place helps more clients get off the fence and give you a quick yes.
My consulting and coaching businesses brings in more revenue in part because I have something “smaller” to sell consulting prospects who can’t afford a big, extended engagement with me (e.g., 1-Day Strategy Sprint), as well as to coaching prospects (e.g., a Clarity Session or Custom Business Roadmap).
If you get 26% more leads, close 26% more of them, and increase the project value by 26%, you effectively double your revenue. My initial strategy offers help me with the middle piece—closing 26% more leads.
Yours can help you do the same.
“Just got off a call with a new prospect and at the end of the call, she said, ‘Sounds great, thanks so much for walking me through your processes, it’s really helpful to be able to see in detail exactly what you do, not everyone does that.’ BOOM! Hat tip to Austin’s strategy offer workshop for helping me figure out how to clearly articulate what I do. Now I’m off to hastily write down everything I said on the call and turn it into another process for the next lead!”
– Rachel Bicha, Content Writer & SEO Consultant
“Just wanted to say thank you for an epic workshop and reach out with some appreciation. I did a one-day sprint today to get a minimum viable offer drafted, and now it's live! I soft-launched today to family and friends, and I already got a booking. This wouldn't have happened without you. Thank you, brother.” – Charles Daly, DalyProse.com