New - the 2026 edition
The Consulting
Playbook.
A free five-day email course. One idea a day, in the order the work has to be done in. Who your buyer is, what you sell, what it costs, who is actually listening, and why almost everybody starts at the fourth one and then decides the market is saturated.
Rewritten for 2026, not refreshed. New arguments, and the evidence behind them is my own: 295 first qualifying calls read and coded in full. If you took the old version, this is not the same course.
Five daily lessons, then a few notes from me over the fortnight after. One idea each, about two minutes to read, and something to do at the end that takes ten.
What you get
Five days.
Five ideas.
And the order they go in.
ICP Precision
An ICP is a decision, not a description. A description is written to be agreed with. A decision rules people out, and that is the entire function. Includes the referral test, which takes one message to each of three people and is the most uncomfortable ten minutes of the week.
Offer Architecture
Most people sell a list, and a list makes the buyer do the work of deciding. There are three tiers and almost everybody has only two: free content, then a five-figure retainer, and nothing in between. The missing middle is the paid diagnostic, and it is the one that sells the retainer.
Pricing Confidence
Sixty-eight of my own first calls, across twenty months, reached the end without anybody moving the conversation to money. Not the prospect, not me. The comfortable belief is that being useful is the safe move and naming the number is the risk. It is the other way round, and this one is argued from the record rather than from an opinion.
Visibility Without Cold Outreach
About 5 per cent of your market is looking right now, and almost every piece of outreach advice you have read is written for them. Today's revenue comes from that 5 per cent. Every future quarter comes from not burning the other 95. Includes why the pipeline is usually already in your contacts list.
The Demand Engine
The shortest one, and the one that matters most. Do the first four in that order. Almost everybody starts at outreach because outreach feels like doing something, then concludes the market is saturated when it does not work. It is not saturated. They started at step four.
This course is for you if
- You have twenty years behind you and can plainly deliver
- You have never had to create the work yourself
- You want the order, not another list of tactics
- You would rather see the numbers than take my word for it
Written by Dan Gwalter
Built from 15 years
of doing it.
Not studying it.
Dan Gwalter is a former technology executive who went independent in 2011. He built his own practice on the same five ideas in this course - no advertising, no bought leads, no cold pitching. Since 2022 he has worked directly with 150+ fractional consultants doing the same thing.
The 2026 rewrite is argued from the record rather than from experience alone. Every figure in it comes out of 295 first qualifying calls, read and coded in full, or from a named external source with its date attached. Where something cannot be sourced, it does not appear.
More free resources
The Ultimate Guide to Fractional Consulting
The complete framework for building a fractional consulting business. Downloaded 1,350 times.
Get free access →The State of Fractional Consulting 2026
Seven English-speaking markets measured from their own statistics offices, and the seven mistakes that stall good operators.
Download free →The Webinar Vault
Replays of every live masterclass. Pipeline, niche, positioning, and turning one lucky client into a system.
Watch free →If you would rather read than subscribe, the ICP article is day one of this course in long form. Fractionally Thinking goes out each Friday to 1,000+ operators.